War that nobody wins

Bright sunshine and clear sky to wake up to. I posted the YouTube link to WhatsApp for today's Morning Prayer video then got up. The meds really slowed down my thinking and reactions after taking them with breakfast. It wasn't dizziness, and I didn't lost my sense of balance. It was just a disturbing light headed drowsiness. 

Although it's nearly a month of polling day in the Welsh Senedd elections, I thought I'd better deal with my postal vote. This arrived a few days ago. Clare has made hers and has been reminding to do likewise to reduce the risk of losing the envelope. I opened the voting pack, thinking I would recall from last time the procedure involved, but looking at the instructions stopped me in my tracks. My drowsy head was so slow in processing the instructions and acting upon them that I needed to ask Clare's help to complete the task. This is cognitive impairment, whether caused by medication or insufficient sleep.

A walk to church for the Eucharist cleared my head, but not completely. Nobody apart from Fr Sion and I turned up, but we continued as usual. Instead of a homily we discussed the scripture readings for the day. It was a refreshing change. Afterwards we made ourselves coffee in the church hall and chatted until it was time for Sion to leave for the service at St John's.

I returned home and cooked lunch while Clare was out shopping. I didn't feel hungry or slightly faint with low blood sugar, as I sometimes do when preparing lunch. The light headed sensation diminished as we ate. Then, a walk to my acupuncture appointment on Cathedral Road with Peter at two thirty. I think it helped stabilise me. I felt more awake and sharper as I walked home. 

Clare had an appointment with Peter following mine. She was about to leave for it as I arrived home. Ten minutes later, a panicked call from her, walking up and down, unable to identify the clinic. It's not easy as  house numbers are poorly displayed and variable in their visibility. I had the same problem finding it, the first few visits I made there. Parkwood clinic has a big blue panel sign in the garden which you can only see when you're about fifteeen metres from it. Clare didn't have the house number written down, only 'Parkwood Clinic'. My fault, as the sign outside says 'Parkwood Chiropractic Clinic'. I recognised it by the fact that it was big, coloured blue with white lettering. I memorised it imperfectly. Ooops! She arrived  one minute late.

Trump announced an extension of the cease-fire between America and Iran whilst maintaining a blockade of its ports. He says that it might be possible to resume peace talks in the next few days. Meanwhile Iran is attacking and seizing ships in the Straight of Hormuz. Both sides are trying to assert control  by pulling economic levers. It's a a nobody wins situation.

Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon has so far cost 2,300 lives with over a million displaced, homes destroyed and land seized to create a buffer zone with Israel. A cease-fire and peace talks are taking place between Israel and Lebanon, aiming to engage Lebanon in disarming Hezbollah. Meanwhile two UNIFIL soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah fighters. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has served as peace keeper during the cease-fire in the civil war between Christian and Shi'ite militias in Lebanon since the war ended, and Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 1978. Concern is being expressed about rising tension between factions leading to civil war again. All parties distrust, hate and fear each other. Israel is determined to neutralise the threat from Iran backed Hezbollah, regardless of the suffering and death of its Arab neighbours.

Nothing I wanted to watch on telly so I made the Morning Prayer video slide show I started yesterday, uploaded it to YouTube and then went up to bed noticing how brain fatigue slows if not stalls a normally coherent thought process. 

Welsh Electoral application form shambles

Another overcast drizzly day. Another day of waking with a clear head, soon clouded by the toxic impact of the meds, slowing my thinking, leaving me feeling poorly. I feel like a prisoner. I wonder if this is how people with mental health conditions feel when drugged by antidepressants? 

After our usual Saturday pancake breakfast I made an effort to concentrate on next Wednesday's Morning Prayer video slideshow for uploading to YouTube. It took me  a couple of hours, until Clare called me for lunch. I'm not doing much in the kitchen apart from clearing the table and washing up at the moment. 

I lost my SD card reader, kept in a small box of digital accessories on a side table in between armchairs in the lounge. I've hunted high and low for it with no result. I dug out an old one from the back of a drawer in my study. It has multiple card slots, but is unreliable with a full size SD card, perhaps that's where the fault lies. Thankfully its micro SD card slot works, and these are what I use nowadays. They run faster and have a much larger capacity than the older cards, now relegated to being a very small portable archive. 

The lost card reader hadn't left the house for sure, but being small and black, it had to be somewhere in the shadows where I find it hard to see. Later in the day, I moved an armchair I had moved before and looked beneath and saw nothing. This time, light fell behind a chair leg and there it was!

Rain kept me indoors until mid afternoon. I walked under the brolly for an hour, braving gusts of wind and drizzle to try and clear my head without success, and went out again to the Coop for bananas after supper. 

In today's mail a notification to confirm we are on the electoral register, and can apply on-line for a postal vote. When I downloaded the application form I discovered that the layout formatting of the English language version and that of the Welsh language are not identical. Separate boxes aren't provided for the applicant's forenames and address in the English version, only in the Welsh. If applicants' forms are scanned and data extracted from them automatically, there is a risk that information will be incorrectly processed or corrupted. For a human reader this is confusing and misleading to say the least. The difference between English and Welsh layout format on the form in effect discriminates against non Welsh speakers. I emailed a report to Electoral Services, and a local city councillor. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to sort out this little admin embarrassment.

No telly this evening. Too tired to maintain concentration or interest. Even getting to bed early is a time consuming effort.