In the news each morning this past week are reports of many half term holidaymakers all over the country hoping to travel abroad are having plans ruined by hundreds of flight cancellations, caused by a lack of ground staff at airports. The scaling up of recruitment for security personnel, baggage handlers, cleaners, food suppliers and flight attendants has not matched increased demand for air industry staff. During the pandemic hundred of thousands of employees lost the jobs, and many of them have found alternative and better paid employment since then,
It's had me wondering about the wisdom of flying out to Malaga the morning before my first service at San Pedro. If my flight was cancelled or seriously delayed I'd be in trouble, so I've been wondering about taking the ferry to Bilbao early in the week, and then the train via Madrid, maybe stopping over there with friend Roy for a few nights. It might well be worth the expense to take the uncertainty out of my arrival.
There were eleven of us at the St Catherine's Eucharist this morning, celebrating Justin Martyr. We were joined by Archbishop Rowan, back from his recent travels. I wondered if he'd come especially to pray for his successor at Canterbury, Archbishop Justin.
A call from Ashley queried an item in the CBS final phone bill for the hire of a pair of wi-fi broadband dongles he had no recollection of ordering. I'm not sure why we acquired this piece of kit, but it dates back to times when wi-fi chips weren't a standard component of a computer motherboard. That was ten years ago! I found the dongles in their original packaging stashed away on my bookshelf. On the package, it says they were designed to work with Windows 7. It didn't work that well in the days when just a 3G signal was available, and not everywhere, too slow to be useful for travelling abroad, so the dongles got shelved once I bought a new wifi capable laptop eight years ago. So is BT still charging us for devices, no longer fit for purpose, if they ever were? We'll see!
I fetched the organic veggie order before lunch, then in the afternoon collected the Beanfreaks order for the week. Before supper, I started work on next week's biblical reflection. There's a sermon to write for Sunday as well. In both cases, I need to pick up on the Queen's Platinum Jubilee theme. Amazing to think that it's sixty nine years tomorrow since her coronation, a ceremony which took sixteen months to prepare after her accession to the throne on 7th February 1952. two months before my seventh birthday.
Watching a film of the coronation service in Ystrad Mynach cinema with fellow pupils from the Junior School some months after the event I recall quite clearly. We didn't have telly then, but my memory of hearing it on the radio with Richard Dimbleby commentating is rather hazy. I recall his dulcet tones, the fanfares of trumpets and shouts of God save the Queen, but that's about it. And there was a street party at which Mum's piano was carried out into the street to be played for singing and dancing. My sister June sang 'This is my lovely day' from the musical 'Bless the Bride' to an audience of neighbours outside. It's all a lifetime away. So much profound change has happened since then. An amazing time to be alive.
