Phishing or not?

After quite a busy Monday, apart from routine duties and a walk in the park I slept an extra three hours in the day and evening, before finally going to bed at midnight - no change there, go with the flow. The only new thing that came in was a request from Mthr Frances to cover a funeral next Thursday morning, when she's away on leave. I already have a Eucharist to celebrate and a lunchtime funeral at the Res. Both funerals are with Pidgeon's, and the timing works, with a driver picking me up from St John's and taking me to their funeral chapel then a burial in Llandaff cemetery, then a ride to the Res for the second funeral followed bt a burial in Western cemetery. It's a matter of being fully prepared for all three and relying on the funeral directors' teamwork to carry me through.  

A landline phone call yesterday presented a new robotic voice, rather posh, speaking on behalf of the National Crime agency, saying that my National Insurance number had been suspended because it had been detected in use as part of some illegal or immoral activity, and that I should press button one to speak to someone to respond to this allegation or expect to be arrested soon. What juvenile nonsense! The cops would never notify someone before making a surprise visit. How can a NI number be suspended? What purpose would it serve?

I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's with nine others this morning, then uploaded photos taken the previous day, and with a fresh burst of energy, recorded and edited tomorrow's WhatsApp daily prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube later in the day. I took our weekly contribution the the foodbank to the Rectory on my afternoon walk, and had a brief chat with Mthr Frances. It's the first time we've seen each other in person four a couple of months. She's looking forward to a holiday up north with her folks next week, as we look forward to a few days in Aberaeron the week after her return. I suspect most people need a respite from routine coping and confinement after a long and difficult year.

Spokespersons for the medical profession are speaking out about members quitting due to burnout or sheer disillusionment. I hear stories of slipping patient care standards and mistakes being made by exhausted staff, who have been forced to go the second mile all to often over the past year. And  ow we have the slow build-up of a third wave of the India coronavirus strain, and although the high number of vaccinated people does reduce the volume of infections and hospitalizations significantly, it means medics  can't relax as this casts a shadow over the resumption of normal planned treatments.

Clare had a live call today, a young man saying he represented the Co-op bank complaints department. We were both suspicious, as banks don't tend to call you except by arrangement, and Clare had no recollection of making a complaint about the Co-op bank, although the Co-op store's on-line grocery ordering service checkout can give rise to complaints on times because of slowness timing out purchasers. The caller asked Clare to prove her identity, and her response was, to ask if he would prove his identity first. Sensible. He referred to the contact phone number on the back of her Co-op debit card, and suggested she called and did the i/d check, as this would end up routing her back to him. Well that's on hold at the moment, to many other things to do apart from chase after a call about a complaint you have no recollection of making.

Alert level good news

A pleasant mild day with sunshine and cloud decorated skies. There are oceans of yellow daffodils, not only in parks but also in roadside grass verges, plus big white crocuses and smaller blue and yellow ones making a cheering sight wherever you walk. The maintenance team working on Blackweir Bridge has now returned the metal decking panels to their proper place. I believe they were taken up to do remedial work on the deck support structure, and maybe also to apply anti-rust paint. I don't suppose it means that the bridge will re-open any time soon, but at least, when it does re-open it'll be fit for purpose again.

I had to laugh this morning when I took a scam phone call from an English RP sounding robot voice claiming to be from HMRC about irregularities in my tax account, threatening me that the police were on their way to arrest me unless I pressed button one to talk to someone about it. That's one up from the Amazon Prime account anomaly robotic calls, we usually get, at least in quality. I'm so glad that for the past fifteen years or so I have filed my annual tax return on-line, so never have to worry about a paper copy going missing and causing confusion. The scammers must know very little really about the people they randomly dial with their messages. Those who get caught out are unlikely to have taken an interest in managing their own financial affairs, and not understanding that banks don't cold call people.

The work on replacing gas pipes in the street has almost reached our door. There are two neat holes in the tarmac waiting to be filled in with all the pipework exposed to view, and then it'll be our turn. You can see how new yellow plastic gas main piping has been threaded along the old iron pipework. Holes are cut in the old pipework allowing joints to be made for smaller bore piping to be run to individual homes, all very clever. Each house in turn has its supply cut off for a few hours while the job is done and the team leader lets you know when it's your turn.  

I've been invited to contribute a set of reflections for the Parish WhatsApp prayer channel next week. How nice to be starting with St David's day, and have Fran's Dewi Sant icon to talk about! I've now got to decide what to do with the other five weekday sessions. As we're resuming church services on Sunday, I think the rest of the week's reflections may well turn out to be about the Eucharist.

Today's good news is that the coronavirus alert level has been lowered from the most critical level five to level four. At level five, hospitals were at high risk of being overwhelmed by covid patients. Infection and death rates are falling steadily, but relaxation of restrictions needs to take much longer to avoid reversing the decline. About a third of the population has now been inoculated once, thanks to the coordinated teamwork efforts of medics, logistics and volunteer teams.

Historic anomaly

Another Bank Holiday Monday, a bright and sunny day, perfect for a walk to the far west side of the Parish to visit a couple whose one year old son I will be baptizing at St Luke's in a month's time. Both are busy young professionals and this was the best opportunity we could arrange to meet for a briefing. It was nice to discover that both of them come from churchgoing families. 

They were married three years ago in the 12 century chapel of St Pierre, near Chepstow, a place where I remember celebrating Holy Communion according the the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the days when I worked for USPG and helped in local churches on weekends when I wasn't away preaching. 

St Pierre was a chapel of ease belonging to the mediaeval manor of the same name, in the Parish of Mathern. It's now a prestigious golf club. It was one of a few Church in Wales churches which didn't in those days adopt the new service book, calling on the legal right to retain the old liturgy as long as the church committee approved. I wonder if it's still in use there?

I got back in time for lunch. We intended to go out down the Bay to visit the Urdd Eisteddfod, but we never got around to it, as both of us pottered around with other things to do.

We're currently being hit by robo-scam calls as I call them, threats to have broadband disconnected and this one offering a press button menu of several options, all of which probably are expensive to activate. These seem to be voice activated, and if you pick up and say nothing the rest of the call message isn't triggered. The number on the dial display points to a Glasgow exchange, and several different numbers get used. The scammers use genuine but redundant numbers in the i/d displayed by the device they use.

We get about half a dozen calls a day, between nine and six. TalkTalk offers a reporting service to get the numbers blocked, but it's actually quite an inconvenience to do this since these keep changing. We could deploy the call filtering service TalkTalk offers, but I'm not sure about the impact of this on occasional legitimate callers. It's bound to be annoying, so we'll have done no more than shift our annoyance to someone else.