Video labours

Slowly but steadily over the past few days, I've edited the footage from Rachel's gig last Friday into separate videos of all sixteen of the songs she performed. Technically speaking they're not perfect, but, the sound quality is excellent and the performances are remarkably good, well worth uploading to her YouTube site for a wider audience of fans family and friends. The first one to be published 'Bubble Trouble' is here. It's a song from ten years ago, and there an audio recording of it on her site, but the live video is value added in my opinion even if it's not as polished as a studio recording. She will release one song video a week on YouTube and publicise the series on her Facebook page. Good for getting her work a wider audience.

Yesterday morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's again. There were just seven of us as some of the regulars are away, which is only to be expected at this time of year. In the afternoon, I had an GP appointment to find out the result of last Friday's blood test and ECG. I was relieved and glad to hear there are no anomalies requiring further investigation, clearing the way for my next round of duty travel to Montreux, in three weeks time. Having said that, I have an endoscopy appointment next Monday to get through first, and optimistic about the outcome of that.

I was driven over to St German's church for today's funeral, and was pleased to be able to drop in and say hello to people in the old people's day centre in the hall beforehand. As expected there was a big attendance for the service, as the deceased was a well known member of Millennium Centre staff. The organist played us out to a largo version of 'There's No Business like Show Business', but I'm not sure if any of the congregation recognised this, as people were chatting on their way out. Ah well, it was still worth the effort.

Mission with relish at St German's

With no immediate duty assignments, I was free to visit St German's this morning and join in the Wednesday 'Class Mass', celebrated by Fr Phelim. It was lovely to be reunited with him and regular Wednesday worshippers for the first time since August. Next week he's taking twenty eight of them on a Parish trip to Rome, where he trained, and still has many friends. I imagine his personal guided tour will be great fun.

Instead of driving, I took the sixty-one bus, whose route has been extended across the city centre and into Splott while I'm away, which meant I was able to go as far as Tredegarville school and then walk the last 350 metres. The bus stops in the centre on Custom House Street, opposite to where the T9 airport shuttle leaves. Very convenient indeed, on both counts.

St German's Hall Day centre was as busy as ever, a new dishwasher had just been delivered, as the original one died. It's seen plenty of use, that's for sure. Back in the summer, there was a proposition to make use of the hall for a winter night shelter for the homeless next year, with typical enthusiasm the plan's been fast forwarded a year and £1,500 worth funding has been obtained for bedding and other necessities, starting just before Christmas. Cardiff Foodbank is pitching in with supplies. I'm so glad to see everyone so happily about their business, in mission as well as worship. If I wasn't fully committed to go Montreux, I know where I'd be spending time over New Year and January.

A foodie celebration

This morning, at the midweek 'class Mass' with children from Tredegarville School, I decided to talk about 'Stir Up' Sunday and preparing for Christmas. I didn't have enough to time to prepare visual aids, so I borrowed a pudding from the food stocks of Marisa, who manages the old peoples' day centre in St German's Church Hall on my way into church. She said she had thirty of them, in preparation for the series of Christmas dinners the day centre will be laying on over the next few weeks, for as many as a hundred people at a time. Just amazing!

It's impossible to remember the last time I addressed a group of children on the 'Stir Up' theme, so it's just as well I have nothing to recall to compare with what I did today. But I did have fun, asking the kids to think about the ingredients that make so tasty a pudding. Marisa's pudding was pre-packed in a plastic bowl suitable for boiling rather than in tinfoil (as we now do at home) or a traditional cloth bag. But, it was a suitably mysterious object around which to let the imagination weave a narrative.

Christmas pudding would be foreign to perhaps half of my audience, whose family origins were in Asia or Africa, although similar rich festive delicacies are made from dried fruit, nuts and rich fats all over the world. Finding out about the common elements would require a morning in a classroom or an after school session with families, rather than ten minutes in the middle of a service. It's great when families whose origins are far from our shores are given an opportunity to share their foods with the wider community. I know it happens in schools on special occasions. I remember this happening during my ministry in St Paul's Bristol, in Geneva, and recently during my month with the church in Malaga.

Talking about food we love to share in a faith context is something I greatly enjoy. It's wonderful to see churches all over the place rediscovering the value of food sharing and food culture as part of mission and evangelism through hospitality, communal meals and food banks, as well as festive celebrations. The mass industrialisation of food preparation and consumption during the 20th century made the task of feeding people daily less demanding of time and energy. All too often however, social and cultural dimensions of food were neglected, forgotten, divorced from relationships, contributing to the spiritual ailments of our time - chief among them, loneliness, identity loss, and (surprise surprise) eating disorders. 

Part of the Church's recovery of confidence in the Gospel message it proclaims is reconnecting with its food culture, something our ancient spiritual mother, Judaism, never lost. There's no better way to enjoy the 'abundant life' which Jesus came to share with the world.

Tale of two offices

After the midweek Mass with Tredegarville school children at St German's, I stayed around and chatted with people in the thriving church hall Elderly People's Day Centre. It was pleasing to hear that ITV local news would be visiting to do a feature article this Friday, as a follow up to one a year ago, when the centre landed a substantial piece of funding to sustain the excellent work done there. There was a karaoke sing along in the main lounge with a couple of dozen participants having a good time, and a reflexologist was giving someone a treatment in the hall, while others not musically inclined relaxed and chatted over a cuppa. 

I stayed around because Area Dean Fr Bob Capper was due to make a visit to inspect church records and premises certificates, all part of the Archdeacon's visitation report. Thanks to Angela, the church administrator, all the essential documentation is systematically and accessibly filed. Bob expressed his admiration if not a little envy as well. Such a thorough and disciplined control of paperwork is rarely a strength for any cleric, even if this virtue is high on their wish-list. It's ages since we last had a chance to chat, the August before last, in fact. How time flies.

When he'd finished his inspection, we parted company and I headed for PC World on Newport Road to shop for a computer. Much more choice of machines there, but not of non-touchscreen devices. So, I drove across Cardiff to Culverhouse Cross, where there are still two stores, a Curry's and a PC World, but it was the same story in both. Back then to Western Avenue and Staples, where I found exactly what I'd been looking for, and at a reasonable price. It's a stylish 23" Core i3 HP Pavilion All in One PC with 8GB of RAM and a terabyte hard drive. Far more capacity and power than is really necessary to get the job done, but properly set up from scratch in the light of experience, it should see off recent troubles and be reliable for a good few years to come.

It took me six hours to set it up with additional software to resemble the existing office machine, so as to make it possible for Julie to continue working where she left off when she next comes in. It was yet another machine which had Windows 8.1 pre-installed, but at least on this occasion, as soon as it had completed the set up routine, it switched smoothly into update mode. I do resent the fact that there is no warning about delays involved in getting a new purchase into use. But at least it didn't have a sticker on it saying Windows 10 NOW - such a downright lie.