Overdue phone upgrade

Another visit to St German's this morning to assist in funeral arrangements for Angela Brown, who grew up as a member of the congregation and was married there nearly forty years ago. Her brother Fr Chris Lea is Curate in Caerau with Ely parish. My task was to make sure everything was in place for Angela's parish priest, another Chris, Fr Chris Burr of Lisvane, to officiate at the funeral office and preside at the requiem Eucharist, part of the service. There was yet another Chris, Canon Chris Clark an old family friend also taking part in the service plus former Vicar Fr Roy Doxey, and several more clergy in the congregation of over 180 as well.

Often, on occasions like this a quarter of the congregation will take communion, but on this occasion it was more like two thirds, as a great number of fellow church members from Lisvane and other parts of the city, who knew Angela attended as well. The home team of servers and stewards did her proud. Although a moving and sad occasion, the worshipping community was charged with consoling warmth and affection. It's amazing the way St German's and its core community generates a relaxed atmosphere for a congregation of 30-40 on the regular basis, yet can scale up with ease and respond to having 200 or 500 in church. Essentially the regular members love what they do, and this in its turn influences all who turn up and join in. For once I had a background role, and enjoyed just being part of the crew.

I returned home for a late lunch then walked into town, having decided to buy a new phone. My three year old Samsung Galaxy III Mini feels comparatively sluggish, now I'm not using the Blackberry Q10 I had for work purposes. I've passed over several opportunities for a new phone after the 18-24 month renewal cycle, not approving of early redundancy which new technological innovation pushes consumers towards. Tending to be a late adopter, I hang on to working products as long as seems useful to do so. Now I use my personal phone a lot more, the difference is noticeable between a 5 year old and a 3 year old phone. Following a recommendation from Owain, I bought a Samsung Galaxy J3, for just £85 from the EE shop on Queen Street. That's almost half the price he paid for the same phone six months ago. It's amazing how quickly phone prices tumble when new ones come out. Some 'state of the art' phone features, I just don't need. Owain says the phone camera is not good, but that's no bother to me, as I prefer a proper pocket camera with real knobs and buttons rather than a device with only touchscreen controls.

I was delighted by the way the J3 copied my installed apps and email messages and phone numbers from the old one, leaving me only to log in or re-register some of them. The only thngs that wasn't copied across were SMS messages. So, I back them up from the old phone to my PC using Samsung Kies software only to find that Kies refused to play with the new phone, requiring me to use an app called 'Smart Switch', which I also had installed, to connect with the phone. Thankfully this automatically found the text message backup just made, and transferred the content to the J3. It took me a while to achieve this. After all, it's not that often I have to do this, so I forget how to. Now the new phone is running, nothing is lost, apart from a few hours figuring it all out. Not that it matters. There was nothing on telly worth watching this evening anyway.

      

 

Saturday tech and movie time

Owain departed after a late breakfast this morning. I spent some time 're-purposing' a work phone made redundant by the continuing upgrade cycle. It's a Samsung Galaxy III, functional and in good condition. Clare's phone is a Samsung Galaxy III Mini, just like mine. It's slightly newer and has more memory, but its connectivity has never been as good as mine, and no remedial fix has ever been effective, so it's probably a hard to detect fault in the aerial, as all else works fine. The new phone works just fine, but will have to wait until Monday to check of it can be used straightforwardly with a different network SIM card from the one the phone was first registered with.

In the afternoon, we walked in the rain to Staples on Western Avenue, to buy an Epson wireless printer and a Toshiba CR 104 Chromebook, like mine, for Amanda. A little shopping around had determined a price on both that was good enough to pay for an extra set of ink cartridges for the same price I'd have paid elsewhere. Carrying the kit back involved a capacious rucksack, long arms and patience. We got wet, but that was preferable to losing our parking space in the street, always crowded on weekends.

After supper, I used iPlayer to catch up on the first episode of 'Hinterland', set in the cefn gwlad up behind Aberystwyth, in and around Llanafan Parish uplands, which we discovered the summer before last when we visited our friend Margaret LeGrice, Vicar of that six church benefice. The lead actors in the series are melancholic, serious, preoccupied, in keeping with the often bleak storyline and stark landscape. It's beautifully crafted, and best of all, as normally bi-lingual as the social environment in which it is set. It's must-watch for Welsh people everywhere. The portrayal of the environment, the dialogue in either language and the relationships between characters are honest, resonant, authentic. A triumph of Welsh film making.

Then we watched together the ever comic and colourful with dark undertones second episode of 'Young Montalbano'. Much more complex threads in the storyline, but each thought provoking. Best of all in this episode was the banter between Montalbano and the parish priest about attending marriage preparation classes. It was very true to life, the excuses busy men make to avoid have to sit through life coaching sessions from someone they believe have no direct experience to draw upon in talking to them about intimate relationships.

After this I finally got around to writing and printing the baptismal homily which I'd devised in my head one very late night this week, and scribbled a few notes before falling asleep. And was late to bed again, thankful that I don't have an early start tommorrow.
   

Epiphany Day

Yesterday was such a grey chilly day, I missed the open sea and blue sky of the Mediterranean. I went the office for a couple of hours, then met with Clare and went shopping for a new phone for her, as the cntract, taken out for a new phone after her previous one was stolen in Taormina - two years ago already! After much agonising and a little persuasion, she settled for Samsung Galaxy Mini S III like mine only in white, as these are on offer at less than half the price I paid for mine sixteen months ago, with an EE sim-only contract.

Much of the evening was taken up with setting it up, with Clare learning as she went along, and much comforted to find that it works well indoors, since we received our EE signal booster box last Friday. There are so many configurable features on a smartphone that initial confusion is unavoidable, but by this morning, she was exploring and enjoying different features for herself, with just the occasional 'What does this mean?' about some arcane unfamiliar menu term.

The sun shone this morning, and there weren't many clouds around, a cheerful start to Three Kings Day was most welcome. A few days ago, I heard about a BBC2 radio programme which broadcasted a two hour compilation of live recordings of Frank Sinatra in concert. I listened and enjoyed, then recorded it on my old Minidisk player, to digitise and listen again when the download expires in iPlayer. It took me a while to remember how to operate the device, as it's years since I last used it. Digitising is now turning out to be something of a challenge, as I can't configure Audacity to play back what it's working on to ensure that I get the sound levels right. It's amazing what you forget it you don't use technical resources on a regular basis.

After an early supper I walked in the dark across Llandaff Fields to the Cathedral for the Solemn Eucharist of the Epiphany sung by the choir to Schubert's Mass in G. Amazing to think that the composer who wrote the 'Winterreise' lieder could also create such exultant spiritual sounds. But this says a lot about the complexity contained within every heart and life, I guess.

There were about fifty in the congregation, with thirty choir and servers present. No sermon tonight, just a quiet thoughtfully conducted service with the Cathedral beautifully lit internally and externally to offer that sense of being an ocean of light in winter darkness. Just perfect for the occasion. I slipped in through the side door as the altar procession arrived, so was able to slip into the choir without disruption. At the end, I slipped out into the darkness without staying to speak to anyone, savouring the hour of peaceful seclusion as I strode home across the fields, rejoicing in the Light no darkness can overcome.