Getting started in Malaga

I was awake just before the alarm at five, and after breakfast, left in a taxi for the city centre to catch the ten past six T9 airport shuttle. There were fewer people than last time queuing at the Vueling bag drop when I arrived, half an hour later. Even so, the flight was full. I'm not sure if the incoming flight from Malaga was delayed, or boarding took longer than usual, as we were half an hour late setting off and arriving. We flew through cloud all the way. For a change, I had an aisle seat and with no opportunity to see very little outside, dozed most of the way.

St George's organist David met me and delivered me to the chaplaincy apartment, familiar from my summer visit last year. Straightaway, I two food shopping trips, one to the SuperSol nearby and the other to Mercadona. I then cooked a meal, and organised my thoughts for tomorrow, when I have a midweek Communion plus Bible Study in the morning, followed by an afternoon Bible Study out in Velez Malaga. 

Doreen the Curate was assigned these duties, but the past couple of weeks of very heavy rainstorms have made getting around up country by car a precarious exercise, due to floods and hazards from rock strewn roads, plus unpredictable cloudbursts to make driving risky. She was unable to make it to Malaga last Sunday as a result. The seventy odd miles of motorway into the interior are not a problem. It's the caminos rurales, and the track from her hillside home up to a metalled road. Fine for most of the year, but Spain has long been notorious for the impact of its extreme weather events.

According to the press, in the past month, Andalusia has gone from water shortage to having full reservoirs. That's unusual of itself, and unexpected, apparently. Today has been dry and overcast. I wonder what it'll be like in the coming week?

Finishing off, ready to go

We walked through the slush to St Catherine's for the Sunday 10.30 Sung Eucharist, for which I was due to celebrate and preach. The roof has sprung a couple of leaks due to valley gutters overloaded with melting snow. Surprisingly, given recent weather there were over forty adults and a dozen children. The choir of eight sang a couple of anthems, rehearsed at the last minute, refusing to let bad weather be an excuse for not making the effort. The change of pace this last few days with people either getting extra rest or additional activity out walking or sledging, seems to have contributed to a good mood all round. 

I had a late night call from Gail last night asking for help in supplying an extract of recorded music which Mike in a diary entry last year said he'd love to have at has funeral, as it was so serene and beautiful. William Croft was a seventeenth century English church music composer, who turned the scripture settings of the Book of Common Prayer Burial Office into a collection of choir anthems. One of them, I remember us singing at Holy Trinity Geneva twenty years ago: 'Remember O Lord not our offences', but the opening processional sentences which Mike loved, I didn't know, but well understand why he thought so highly of them.

Finding a suitable recording to use wasn't a problem, but acquiring it to burn to a single use CD was more of an issue. It's years since I last did something like this, using the free Open Source 'Audacity' sound editing software. I simply couldn't recall how to go about this, and needed to Google for vital instructions. It may be years before I need to do this again, and be then will probably have forgotten how to do it, or suitable software will have changed beyond recognition.

Today it rained, clearing much of the remaining snow from the pavement and roads. We even had a short sunny spell. The shops are struggling to re-stock, as the supply chain routine is still being disrupted by weather in other places. Any company that has over- centralised its warehousing on the grounds of cost saving efficiency must be questioning the ultimate wisdom of this, for if central hub or road network grind to a halt nothing can be distributed, and meanwhile, shops that manage to stay open are emptied of food. Bigger is not always better. Heaven help the country in any period of real prolonged crisis, with road and rail networks paralysed.

Owain came over to see us for a couple of hours this afternoon. As he walks to work, he was able to go into the office and carry on as usual. He always takes Mondays off and does his week's worth of work in four days. He's just been given another contract extension, and while he's relieved about this it doesn't prevent him continuing the hunt for a permanent job. He's been with DVSA long enough to be entitled to be considered for a permanent post, and while they'd find it hard to manage without him there no certainty that he'll be considered for one, let alone offered a job, as he's a specialist 'contractor' to the department he works in. 

The agency has a budgeted employment spend to meet set targets. Established employee numbers aren't enough to cover the workload, but there's a discretionary budget for hiring 'temporary' workers to cover the excess plus special projects, some of which are long term undertakings. All this policy achieves is to rob some workers of the security of a permanent civil service post, no matter how good they are. Public spending cuts lead to budget revision, regardless of workload - making bricks out of straw, I call it. This, in its turn, makes for added insecurity among the workers. Governmental sleight of hand I call it. Owain is philosophical about the situation. It's been like this since he graduated. Our children deserve as good if not better than their parents. How were we so short sighted to allow this to happen?

The evening was devoted to packing for my trip, but first, I had to finish the last two episodes of 'Before we die', another excellent ten part Scandi-crime drama series in the Channel 4 'Walter Presents' show-case. The way it ended seemed fairly conclusive, although there was just enough unfinished business to hint at a possible second series, if a budget can be found, I guess. 

It met mixed reviews portraying the complex relationships between a mother working in the crime squad and her initially wayward son, who is actually risking his life as an informant employed by a Balkan criminal family with a tragic history and ambitions to run Sweden's illicit drug trade. It's rather low key, understated, though there are occasional excitements. Most importantly, it maintains a level of dramatic tension throughout, due to the danger the son exposes himself to willingly to earn his mother's respect, without her knowing about it until half way through the story. 

I was motivated to complete watching the story before my departure, as wretched digital rights management restrictions make it impossible to view this channel for free abroad. Even so, both bags were packed and I was in bed early for once. Is this a record for me?

   

Snow day three - the melt begins

By the time we got up this morning, the outdoor temperature had risen to minus one, and during the day rose to three degrees. It remained overcast with little wind, and there was light rain. As snow on the street started to melt, it became a bit more slippery than yesterday. It's not forecasted to freeze fortunately. By Monday normality should return and the days of quietness resembling Christmas be replaced by the usual relentless drudgery of winter in the city.

Cardiff Airport website displays a departure board for the coming days, with some cancellations but the Vueling flights are all happening, albeit with some delay. There are fewer flights to Spain at this time of year, thus any backlog from the past couple of days of airport closure won't be quite so long. The airport is sometimes vulnerable to high winds, fog or extreme rain, exposed as it is to the Bristol Channel. It's rarer for it to be cut off by snow. Hopefully, things will be back to normal by Tuesday when I leave, unlike northern and eastern Britain, still crippled by snow.

We walked before lunch out to Llandaff Fields, then down to the shops in Pontcanna. The Co-op has re-opened, though it's not yet been restocked, and some of the shelves are unusually empty. The supply chain still isn't working as it usually does with so many roads still out of operation. I expect it's the same all over the country.

We had a delicious cup of Peruvian coffee in Kemi's at Pontcanna nearby before returning for lunch. It was busy with people returning from walks in the snow slightly damp from the drizzle. Yesterday's powdery snow is fast packing down and melting, as much from beneath as above since the ground doesn't have a chance to chill deeply enough to preserve snow after only a week of zero degree weather, as it would with a long spell at minus ten. Thank goodness air temperatures are set to stay above freezing, so we'll have to put up with slush in the streets for the time being.

Snow day two

It snowed more heavily today than yesterday, but intermittently. We went out for another bracing walk after lunch. As the wind wasn't quite so severe, many more people were out walking streets empty of cars, the air noticeably fume free for a change. Few people in the neighbourhood have tried to take their cars out. The main road from town to Llandaff is driveable, albeit snow covered until there was a late pass by a snow plough, sullying the pristine snow. 

None of the shops were open, just the pubs and some cafes. Youngsters were sledging on the hillock at the far end of Llandaff fields. Some were sitting on the sled, others were lying flat, emulating the skeleton riders in the Winter Olympics. We were very  impressed to see a teenage lad standing on his tray-sled, as if he was on a snowboard. I wonder how many more we'll see trying this next time there's snow.

We went for a cup of tea to Canna Deli, one of the small retail units developed on part of the site of the Old Dairy, now mostly taken up by the Co-op. The address is Pontcanna Mews. I wonder if this pays homage to stables once on the site for the milkmen's horses? The place offers select niche market food products to buy and half a dozen tables for those who want a drink and a classy snack. Clare said she went out yesterday to get some porage oats from the Co-op, but found it was closed, as the staff were unable to get in. Canna Deli, however, was open and busy un-freezing customers with hot drinks. She asked if they had any porage oats, and initially was told they didn't have any. As she was leaving, however, the mager hailed after her and declared that he had a packet of Co-op porage oats he could sell her - presumably from kitchen stocks. How enterprising!

Not long after we'd got back home, and shed our outdoor clothes, I realised that I'd not yet taken my three month medication prescription to the Pontcanna pharmacy in KIng's Road, in preparation for my stay Malaga. A phone call established it was open, and I had half an hour to take the prescription there. So, I dressed up again and retraced my steps back to where we'd just been drinking tea, as the pharmacy is nearby, opposite our GP surgery. It was important to do this, as occasionally pharmacy supplies temporarily run out after a spate of demands. Deliveries might be delayed by the weather conditions if that happened, and I might end up short of supplies to fly out with on Tuesday. I should have thought of this days ago when I collected the prescription from the surgery, but I was on my way elsewhere at the time. I was thankful to be able to collect immediately. Number one on my travel preparation checklist now done.

I watched the last of the Scandi-crime series 'Rebecka Martenson - Arctic Murders' on Channel Four this evening. A sad, but rather ambiguous ending, ambiguous enough to leave open the possibility of a second season. The biggest unanswered question is the back story of the eponymous lead character orphaned young, raised by her granny in a hamlet in the far north of Sweden. How did she become a city lawyer? While temping during home leave in her childhood locality as a public prosecutor she shows a flare for unorthodox but successful detective work. Instead of returning to Stockholm to grow a new reputation, in the last frame of the series, she quits. Is it a love affair with her homeland? Or another character, who may or may not be dead at the moment? All will be revealed in due course, no doubt.

Quiet snowy Dydd Gwyl Dewi

Well, some days after the rest of the country, snow arrived this morning, fine powdery snow, as the temperature is still 3-4C below zero. After breakfast, our new hot water and central heating system stopped abruptly, displaying an error message. We phoned Matt, the heating engineer who'd installed it back in January, who was able to inform us that the error message indicated that a pipe attached to the boiler which drains away water produced by the combustion process was most probably frozen outside in these prolonged extreme conditions.

He explained how the plastic outflow pipe was attached to a flexible hose beneath the unit, and was detachable. Within minutes, I'd worked the plastic pipe loose, allowing the accumulated water to be released, and the boiler fired up instantly, thank heavens. Clare wrapped a thin strip of cloth around the now-leaking plastic pipe, to wick away the water into a bucket below. Matt told us he already had ten rescue calls for the day, and was relieved not to have to visit us.

We walked to St John's Canton where I was due to celebrate our national Patron Saint's feast day. We had been warned that none of the regulars would turn up, but as we were out and about, we went anyway, just in case. Normally at St John's, I wouldn't suggest a service in Welsh, as worshippers are for the most part unfamiliar with the language or liturgy in Welsh. Since it was just Clare and I, we used the 1984 Welsh Language Eucharist, something I haven't often done over the years. Only when I was working for USPG and visiting Welsh language parishes did I learn the Welsh language rite. Although I'm rusty and still have trouble with pronunciation and the rhythm of words here and there, it seemed a good opportunity to do justice to the day.

Before lunch, we went for a bracing walk across Llandaff Fields before lunch, and although we were well dressed for the weather (I still use my 20 year old ski jacket), the stiff wind blowing from the east quickly chilled us to the bone, so we soon returned home. I took several photos while we were out, and more from indoors during the rest of the day,  but there was no need to venture out again. So relieved and grateful it wasn't difficult to get the heating going again.

Sub zero days

It was around freezing point when we walked energetically to St Catherine's Sunday morning, where I celebrated the eight o'clock Eucharist. We returned home, and didn't go out for the rest of the day, although the weather was bright. With such a chilling wind neither of us felt like venturing far. Even though the days are lengthening noticeably, even though we have plenty of warm outdoor clothes, we seem to lack the motivation to go far. Except in imagination that is. My mind drifts south toward Málaga, where it's eighteen degrees by day at the moment.

Monday morning, I had to take the car in early for its pre-MOT diagnostic at our Golf specialist garage N G Motors in Splott. If it needs lots of costly work doing, we really will have to make the effort to buy a new one in the coming week before I leave for locum duty in Málaga. I caught the 61 bus back from Adamsdown as I couldn't establish where the nearest stop was over in Splott, so I had to walk about a kilometre to where I knew I would find one. There were three women waiting at the stop, and I let them board the bus before me. The last one, a lady about my age turned to me as she got on and said: "Thank you there aren't many gentlemen around these days. No please and thank you either" lamenting the lack of common courtesy that seems to pervade some aspects of life today.

Tuesday morning, I had a phone call from Mike's widow Gail, in response to a letter I'd posted to her yesterday with my written personal tribute to my oldest friend. She said she'd like it to be read at his Memorial Service, as she felt that I'd well captured the person she knew and loved, and expressed it beautifully. Indeed, as part of my mourning him, I put time into crafting and editing the text, so it would be beautiful. As a poet and writer, he so loved words. It was our shared delight. I wanted to do him proud. 

I suggested making a recording of my text for use in church. Gail liked this proposal, so I did just that, using the Windows 10 voice recorder app, and the Audacity sound editor to render the output into an MP3 file. I tested in on PC and Smartphone, and played it through my office HiFi, to check sound quality. I was pleased with the result, and emailed it to her straight away. Happily she thought the result was fit to use, and asked if I'd be willing to contact the Vicar, Fr Andrew Todd to arrange it with him, once she'd obtained his email address.

Later in the day, the garage called to say the car didn't need as much attention as I'd feared, given that it's 23 years old. With one minor welding repair, it passed its MOT and is fit to be re-insured and taxed again for another six months. This gives us longer to consider a replacement, and find a keen DIY enthusiast who might be glad of it for a restoration or race 'modding' project. After receiving the call, I had call from Fr Rufus to bring me up to date with his parish news. We chatted for so long that I no longer had enough time to go by bus and retrieve the car before the garage closed, so it had to wait until this morning.

I had to be out of the house and on a 61 bus by eight thirty to make the 45 minute trip to Splott, amid flurries of snow at minus four degrees. Still, the bus was warm, and this was far more relaxing than having to drive through rush hour traffic. The return trip in the car took twenty minutes, and Fr Mark arrived for a chat, and to hand over church keys, just after I got back. I was good to talk face to face, before I went to St Catherine's to celebrate the Eucharist on his behalf. It frees him for other duties in a crowded schedule, working without a colleague. I feel somewhat ashamed of my divided loyalties, going away to do similar duties abroad, leaving him here overburdened. There's need whichever way you look.

While I was out collecting the car, Gail called with her Vicar's contact details. This meant I could email the MP3 voice file to him. A little later, I had a reply, asking if I could provide it on a CD. He explained that there were few people around he was confident would be able to manage an MP3 player with the church public address system during the service. Having a CD guaranteed to play of typical church legacy equipment would be for him the line of least resistance. This is something I understand only too well, from bitter experience. 

Thankfully, I still have a small supply of blank writable audio CDs so was able to set about the task promptly, and post it to him later in the day. My only problem was working out how to burn an audio CD in Windows 10. This aspect of the system interface has changed considerably since the last time I needed to use Windows for CD burning. In fact, I have relied on a Linux driven computer to burn CDs for ages, as its old fashioned app interfaces are simpler, more straightforward, although just as feature rich. It's fit for purpose if you understand how it works and can control it without needing to spend too much time learning new features and layout. That's half the trouble with a lot of Windows products.

It's minus four tonight. Probably too cold to snow, even though it's overcast. Many parts of the UK have been disrupted by snowfalls. All day rolling news coverage about the weather makes this sound like the major crisis it isn't. Snow has always temporarily brought normal life to a halt in Britain and we moan and worry rather than do something about it. We don't manage adverse weather conditions to make daily life weather resilient as they do in the Alpine. It's a huge anxiety generator, along with brexit, if you listen to the news reportage. No wonder so many people resort to medication to cope with the impact on their emotions.

      

Contrasting portraits of evil

For our third opera outing of the winter season, we invited our old friends Martin and Chris to join us, and they took us to lunch beforehand, at a brasserie on the other side of Roald Dahl Plas from the Millennium Centre. It's ages since we last got together, as I've been abroad so much, so it was good to catch up with their news.

Then, we went to the matinee performance of Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', a production we last saw with Eddy and Ann when they came over from Felixstowe to celebrate Clare's birthday in 2011. It's a morality play, set to the finest music. The portrayal of the wicked exploits and downfall of this manipulative sexual psychopath is presented, for the most part as a farce despite its dark undertones. The acting and singing of all taking part was, as we have come to expect from WNO, superb. It's fine to play most of the action for its comic content, but I would have liked to see more menace mixed in with Don Juan's charm, and more craven cowardice in his servant Leporello.

At the end, just before he can be brought to face human justice, supernatural retribution overtakes Don Juan. Heaven and earth in turn are appalled by his behaviour. It's a narrative cop-out really. A fairytale magical end to the bad guy implies human justice is incapable faced with such extreme wickedness. Over the last century, humankind has often believed that. Nevertheless, we've also seen that justice can eventually done, by persistent, patient application of due legal process, globally and locally. Perhaps things were that much worse in Mozart's time

Like the real Spanish 'Don Juan', the villain keeps a journal boasting of his seductions, narrating his own success as a serial sexual abuser. His reputation as a 'lover' makes him a source of fascination for some women, if not envy on the part of men. This is unusually relevant in the light of recent revelations of abusive sexual behaviour by movie and media men, and attitudes to this, disclosed or undisclosed. After the opera's final set piece madrigal reminding the audience of the moral of the story, Don Jan's journal is picked up and peered into by some of the singers, with fascination and curiosity written on their faces, rather than disgust or horror. It's a subtle final comment on attitudes despite the moralistic conclusion.

We arrived home by half past eight, in good time for supper followed by another double episode of 'Modus', the latest BBC Four Scandi-noir blockbuster about the kidnap of a female US President in Stockholm. The plot is complex, and a certain suspension of disbelief is required. What's interesting, however, is the role of a senior FBI officer, with a history as a serial abuser and rapist, who seems to be the orchestrator of the kidnap or may be a double agent with inside knowledge. A monstrous conspiracy is slowly being unveiled. The top G-man is the smoothest of operators, persuasive, calmly sinister at every turn. Nothing funny to see here.

Unchanging things - for good and for ill

I went to St John's City Parish Church this morning to celebrate the noon Eucharist, for Canon Sarah as she needed to be away. There were only five of us, and a couple of people seated out in the nave, who didn't join in, but stayed quietly, while others came and went. It's seven and a half years since I left, but it was as if time had stood still when I looked out over the altar into the church. That's not so much about remembering the past and the people who were here with me then. It's more about that persistent sense of presence, despite the noise of people coming and going outside, or a busking saxophonist bleating romantic melodies somewhere behind the East window. It's as if the building is silently listening to the passing world, and gently drawing you in, persuading to you pay attention, despite the bubble and clamour of thoughts and feelings within yourself.  It's such a gift to the city.

I went home for lunch, then later returned to town and visited the office for a couple of hours, to work on another document for Ashley, and discuss the current state of affairs, now that a competing security radio system has been foisted on users without anyone realising what problems this is likely to cause for city security and safety, not least because of the way this has come about, to the discredit of those entrusted with the welfare of this city. It has caused me lose respect for our local government and leading public 'servants'. I have heard people who know well how other cities in Britain operate declare that behind the illusions of modernity, nothing much has changed in Cardiff in forty years. Despite pretence and public relations exercises, power is still being exercised without genuine accountability. Nowadays, for better and for worse, we have social media. When people get fed up with being used and manipulated, who knows what'll come out next?

    

BIrthday camera

We were up early this morning for a celebratory birthday breakfast with Rhiannon, before she set off for London with Kath and Anto for a visit to Madame Tussaud's. Her Big Pressy was a Sony H400 camera, which several of us clubbed together to buy for her. Naturally, I'm delighted to think she's taking an interest in photography, and wanting to make the step up from small pocket camera. 

Apart from the prohibitive high cost of a DSLR as a first step up the camera ladder, Sony superzooms offer a lightweight alternative with a long lens and body of a similar size. It takes a while to get used to carrying around something which doesn't slip easily into your pocket, and getting the most out of a 50+ zoom. If using it regularly catches on with her, it may see her through the rest of school. 

As she seems headed towards an artistic career, a time will come when a high quality camera upgrade will be necessary, and by then she'll be more motivated to manage the added weight and size. One step at a time however. It's very pleasing to see her preference doing design work on paper, rather than with a digital device. Who knows, she might even take to old fashioned film photography? There are plenty of bargain antique cameras around. Pity about the cost of using film.

Our home journey after breakfast was relaxed and uneventful. The roads were fairly quiet, perhaps because it's half term. Later in the day, Kath started sending us funny family photos of them mixing with celebrities in wax on What'sApp. The problem for me was recognising who the celebrities are, as well as knowing anything about them. The same was true, watching last night's Brit awards. It's another universe I don't belong to. That's the trouble with getting old.

  

'The Play's the Thing' expo in Stratford on Avon

Tuesday morning I had a funeral at Rosemount chapel in Cathays, close to where we used to live in Queen Anne Square. This was followed by interment at Pantmawr cemetery on the outskirts of Whitchurch. I last went there for an interment when I was still working at St John's, maybe fifteen years ago. The skies were cloudy but bright, but there was a cold biting wind. That's what I recall from my previous visit there.

My Wednesday morning funeral was at Thornhill crematorium. Clare drove up and met me after the service, so we could drive directly to Stratford on Avon to meet Kath and Rhiannon, and visit the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatre, where there's a marvellous educational exhibition about what is involved in theatrical productions from every angle. It's called 'The Play's the Thing' and takes a very child friendly approach. The visit was a surprise birthday treat for Rhiannon who turns fourteen tomorrow, and has signed up for GCSE Drama, having been already involved in a Youth Drama group since the end of primary school. Soon she has a part in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream, alas, when I am in Spain. 

In the exhibition, costumes from many prestigious productions are displayed, there are video presentations and interactive simulations to make accessible every aspect of putting on a play and what is involved. It was a delightful experience. I had hoped we#d get an opportunity to look around the theatre, or perhaps behind the scenes as well, but that didn't seem to be on offer. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a very fine brick built early twentieth century edifice, close to the river. Not far away in the old town centre is Shakespeare's birthplace, and in every imaginable kind of way his memory is marketed, not just preserved. It's a lovely country market town, somewhat overtaken by tourism and global brand shopping, it seems to me, but it's fortunate that so many mediaeval half timbered buildings have been conserved, perhaps surviving the ravages of town centre modernism during the 20th century because of association with the Bard.

We went on to Kenilworth for take-away pizza supper, at Rhiannon's request, with an overnight stay, so we could join the birthday breakfast, before they went off en famille to Madam Tussaud's in London. The joys of a birthday at half term! We started a Monopoly game after supper, but this soon fizzled out when the Brit awards ceremony broadcast started. Watching some of this over the next couple of hours really made me feel my age. It's decades since I took any interest in pop culture and its personalities, so I'm totally out of touch, and find almost all the music un-inspiring, and many of its perpetrators exotic and bizarre. Many seemed to be getting progressively drunk as the evening wore on. Perhaps the audience of music and media celebrities was as bored by the whole thing as I was. Bed was a merciful release.

Improved comprehension

A quiet Sunday for me, apart from walking with Clare to St John's, to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist. It was a very cold day, and we didn't venture out after that. I found a book of charming folk tales in Spanish which Kath loaned me last year. I read a couple of stories and then mislaid it for a very long time. This afternoon, I completed reading it in one go, finding now that my memory for vocabulary and sentence construction has much improved, so I can read and make sense of text with only occasional references to the parallel English text for obscure ancient words. I was quite cheered to realise this. Obsessive daily Duo Lingo daily practice seems to be paying off. I wonder what else I'll be able to read with enjoyment when I get to Spain this time?

Owain was meant to come over yesterday, but his plans were thwarted by disruptions in the regular Bristol to Cardiff train service, so he gave up in frustration, and came over to see us for a couple of hours this afternoon instead. So, I was finally able to give him the bottle of Gamay de Genève, I bought for him in Duty Free when I flew home from there three weeks ago. He wanted to open it and drink it with me, but I sent him home with it, as I am off wine for Lent. It's not much of a struggle to do so these days as I seem to get more sensitive to the after-effects of wine drinking the older I get.

Owain has given his techno music and culture blog a complete makeover, with new graphics and user interface, to make his expanding content more accessible to his growing readership. It's very simple, not at all flashy. It works well. He is talking about moving the site to another ISP later in the year. At that point he'll have no more use for the server capacity I've been hiring from Servage.net for his use and mine over the past ten years. I stopped making use of it altogether when I retired, not least because free Google and Microsoft storage capacity became more readily available, and I had no new need to develop website management skills, or fill the server with content. All part of simplifying one's life.

Operatic annoyance

This morning I went to St Luke and celebrated Mass for half a dozen people in Fr Mark's absence. Then in the afternoon, we went to the Millennium Centre for our second opera outing of the season. Verd's 'La Forza del Destino, which neither of us recall seeing before. The music was unfamiliar but so beautiful, the story a bit far fetched, about the far reaching consequences of a tragic accidental shooting, but the chorus and all the performers sang superbly. 

The set was minimal and abstract, albeit cleverly designed to represent the various scenes. I took exception, however, to the portrayal of the chorus, in one scene, supposed to be a choir of monks at a religious ceremony, which had all two dozen singers wearing white mitres. They were supposed to represent a community of friars for whom wearing a mitre plays no part in their life. Not even a global assembly of Benedictine mitred abbots would see that number of white mitres used in one place at worship. It was a vain pointless expression of 'artistic liberty', that would un-necessarily bewilder and distract a liturgically ignorant opera goer.

Come to think of it, I was equally annoyed at last week's 'Tosca' performance at the end of the first act where a congregation is assembling for a festive Te Deum, to see that the liturgical procession resembles an old style Papal procession where the Pontiff is carried aloft by bearers, wearing conical white hoods after the manner of Spanish 'penitentes'. Sure these costumes are used in Sicily, which was rule for a couple of centuries by Spain, but this is Rome. 

The mise en scène is the Roman city centre church of San Andrea in Valle. It's not a place where the Pope would turn up and take part in a parish event, in those days, when his life would have been confined to the Vatican and St Peter's. Once again, annoyingly inappropriate and un-historical use of church ritual and symbols, when the actual liturgical conventions, properly used are just as dramatic and powerful. It's now the third time I've seen this production, and nothing has changed. I should have complained before!

  

Grief addressed

This week has slipped by without me finding time to write regularly as I usually do. Mike's sudden death has thrown me off course. Getting up to Worcester to see Gail is proving difficult to plan given our commitments. The funeral date has been set for the week after I leave for Spain. The logistics of getting there and back in 28 hours in order to attend are stubbornly difficult whether I fly to Cardiff and drive or to Birmingham and drive a hire car, plus the service is on a day when I know duties are planned for me in Malaga. Delaying my arrival by another week, when I have already delayed it by  two weeks from what was originally intended also disrupts Sunday cover plans in place. It's proving hard to come to terms with being absent for the Final Farewell. 

Having said that, however, parting company at the end of our meeting last August, we hugged in a way that didn't come easily to Mike and I having grown up in an era where a conventional smile and handshake was what we were accustomed to. He seemed a little more frail than previously, but we didn't talk about ailments, apart from cursing statins, and the fuss over blood pressure medication, both of us claiming to be well and active enough for our time of life. On reflection, however, along with gratitude and appreciation of our long friendship, there was an unspoken shared awareness of the possibility that any meeting nowadays could be our last. I have two funerals locally next week to prepare for. In the less than usual time I've had to reflect and write, I've been writing my personal tribute to Mike to send to Gail and the family. It's what I would have said if invited to contribute, if I had been able to attend. Looking back across my entire adult life since leaving home and meeting Mike has been absorbing, and has ensured that grieving isn't evaded by the misfortune of absence.

Yesterday morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's for just three people. Few of the regulars were there, presumably because they'd turned out yesterday for the Ashing Eucharist. This afternoon, I took the 61 bus out to Fairwater Green, to make a bereavement visit. Both funerals in the coming week are of elderly people whose latter years were blighted by Alzheimer's disease. My task, to listen to their stories and prepare a suitable tribute doing some kind of justice to the entire life they'd lived, not merely dwelling on the tragedy of losing them well before they died. For both families, the end was regarded as a merciful release to their own suffering as well as the person they'd lost. I feel I'm still learning how best to speak consolingly to people in the light of such unhappy experience.

  

Remember you are but dust

Monday morning I took the car to NG Motors in Splott, to see if anything could be done about the broken heater. The journey to and from the garage is now much more convenient, as the route of the nearest of our buses the sixty one now stretches across town, all the way to Pengam Green in the far east of the coastal plain.

We started Shrove Tuesday with pancakes for breakfast. In the afternoon I had a bereavement visit to make in North Road Cathays, and walked there across Pontcanna Fields. I received a text message from Ashley on my way there to tell me that finally a Blackberry Motion ordered for me to replace the work phone I've had for three years had arrived, so I took the bus into town after the visit and met him in the CBS Office. It took a couple of hours to charge when I returned home, but by mid evening it was fully functional with my existing BT SIM card. It's well engineered, and runs Android. During the set up routine it installed all the apps from my personal phone, and transferred the data, which includes work account related stuff. Very slick.

Wednesday morning we had a phone call at half past eight to say that our mutual friend from Bristol days, Mike Wilson, best man at our wedding, dropped dead in their local Post Office yesterday. It's so hard to take it in, such a shock, just as I was readying myself to offer the Ash Wednesday Eucharist at St Catherine's. Apparently Mike had collapsed the previous day at home, but this was attributed to a recent change in blood pressure medication, as can happen when a GP is prescribing by what for the most part seems to be a 'trial and error' basis. If there was anything leading up to this which went un-noticed by the doctor, or undisclosed by Mike.

Lent starts with a symbolic reminder of mortality in the Ashing Ceremony. It's that time of year when I expect to be officiating at funerals, indeed, I have two next week. When it's a contemporary, with whom we've shared all the passages of life over the past fifty five years, it's a body blow. I can't help thinking - me next? There's no way of knowing, really.
 

 

Opera weekend

Saturday morning, Clare cousin Nick and his wife Sue arrived to stay with us. They'd flown down from Edinburgh to Bristol and driven a hire car across. Sue's a musician, and some of her students are working or studying in Cardiff, but the real purpose of the outing was a trip to the opera, with an opportunity to hear one of her students playing in the WNO orchestra. They had tickets for Verdi's Forza del Destino, which we'll see in a couple of weeks from now. We booked tickets for the Sunday performance of 'Tosca', long before they made their plans. After a long lunch, they went into town to meet the students and then go to the opera.

They came long after we'd gone to bed. Clare and I were up early, and went to eight o'clock at St Catherine's together. I was booked to celebrate, and Clare, as she was there and handy to ask, read a lesson. Then we returned for a big late breakfast and heard that they'd so much enjoyed their night at the opera, Nick and Sue decided to make the most of the weekend and attempt a late booking for the performance of Tosca. They were successful in getting last minute seats, so we set out together in good time. Their seats were in the Upper Circle and ours were in the middle of the front row within touching distance of the conductor.

After breakfast, despite the cold wind, we walked into town and then up to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which Sue was keen to see. Her former student was busy in rehearsal, so couldn't meet us there, but Sue was suitably impressed with the marvellous building. It's only twenty minutes or so across the fields from there back home. Crossing Blackweir Bridge I was relieved to see that the fallen tree was no longer stuck at the top of the weir, but had been washed by a fresh spate of upstream water about a hundred meters further down, where it would cause less trouble. We didn't stop long to look, as the wind was merciless, and we were in need of warming up with a good lunch, before heading out to the Millennium Centre for a four o'clock start.

I think this is the third time I've seen this particular production since we've been back in Cardiff. As ever the singers and orchestra were marvellous. I don't think Nick and Sue were disappointed. After the performance they took us to an Italian restaurant nearby for supper. After that brisk 7k walk and an intense musical experience followed by pasta, were all ready for bed. A delightful weekend.

     

Learning by doing

On Wednesday, I celebrated the midweek Eucharist at St Catherine's, and on Thursday at St John's as well. Fr Mark is away this week. I'm happy to do so, as it keeps me on my toes to re-engage with the old Church in Wales 1984 rite used in both churches for weekday and Sunday eight o'clock services. Spending half the year in the diocese in Europe obliges me to use 1662 BCP and Common Worship services, and the Church in Wales equivalent 2004 modern liturgy for main Sunday services here at home. That's four different liturgies with all their minor local variations to be familiar and at home with, quite an exercise in concentration. No wonder I can feel tired sometimes afterwards!

Apart from this, a funeral request for two weeks hence, it's been a quiet uneventful week, with a cold harsh wind. Frost and snow was expected,  but we had rain instead. One way or another, there was little incentive for leisurely exercise. It was a matter of staying in and keeping warm, working my way through episodes of the Flemish TV series 'Professor T', with an occasional brisk excursion to the food shops. Some of the characters are quite quirky, making for superb comic moments, but what's interesting is the exploration of motives on the part of ordinary people who commit crimes.

Some of the discussions between the Professor and his students in case study classes are well drawn examples of a masterly teacher at work, challenging students to think deep and question themselves and their ideas as much as the case study subjects. How come, I wondered to myself, did we never have that quality of teaching in our moral and spiritual theology classes half a century ago. It seems to me we had to learn to think for ourselves away from the classroom, out of college for the most part. We were given a good survey of the subject material and its background, but most of the practical learning and good discussion happened on the job. Come to think of it, understanding how scientific method works was first of all an experience gleaned by working in a laboratory. Being able to study Philosophy of Science shed fascinating light on the process, but little would have made sense without learning by doing first.

I guess I was fortunate in being one of the few students in St Michael's to be allowed to train and work with the Samaritans, and do a regular overnight duty on suicide watch at the end of a telephone line. That stimulated a great deal of discussion among participants, and occasionally with our Samaritan duty supervisors, some of whom were clergy. At least I have reason to believe there's been a substantial improvement in theological education and ministerial formation since then. Such a pity that meanwhile so many people have parted company with the church, and vocations are far fewer. In my formative years, we were awakening to the crisis, but tragically it was too late to make much of a difference to the hemorrhage of committed believers and shrinking of the church.
  

Car quandry

It's been cold, dry and clear skied this past few days, snow elsewhere, although not here. I've been asked to take a funeral in two weeks time. It'll be a burial. Never easy, especially in winter. Clare is slowly recovering from a cold, so I did the big shopping trip of the week, on foot to the Coop store on Cowbridge Road. I'm always amazed at how well planned Clare's shopping lists are. Everything is ordered around the sequence in which they can be found on a walk through the store, very logical, and most helpful. My lists aren't nearly as thorough. I figure out what I need, and take from what I see and recall, then walk around again to find what I missed first time. It's much more haphazard.

While I was away, the car heater died again. It could be a fuse, but may a solenoid burnout, judging from the smell after it stopped working. Well, it is 23 years old, and whilst it is mechanically sound, the cost of replacing the heating unit, parts and labour, is likely to be more than the car is worth. In this cold and damp weather, it's less than safe to be  driving a car whilst having to clear condensation manually. Sad really, after eight years of reliable use, I'm fond of it. It's still a good drive. 

I wonder if we could do without a car altogether, use public transport and hire a car if needs be for occasional use, but this has limitations when you need to ferry other people, transport bulky objects, or make short trips to places not well served by public transport. Getting out to Duffryn House or the coast for a few hours would take up much more time and planning. Neither of us is prepared to use a bike any longer, and that's not such fun in bad weather or on polluted congested city roads. We don't use a car that much either. It's relying on the convenience of having one to use that matters, it fits with lifestyle habits we're not yet ready, or compelled to change.

So, what kind  of car do we look for? Another Golf would be my choice. For Clare it'd be a Polo, as long as its seats are comfortable enough for longer journeys we make. We have to dispose of the car we have as well. It seems that may not be difficult as there's still interest among old car hobbyists in the Mark II Golf, either for restoring, customising, adapting for racing or rallying, because they are reputed for their robustness. To those who are keen of fixing things with money to  burn, replacing a heater is less trouble than it would be for us. I've driven a variety of cars on locum duty, so I know I can adapt to anything, though too small is less than fun, and the simpler and more standardised the dashboard layout the better. We'll have to see what's out there among affordable second hand cars around town.

Chilly weekend in

The start of the Six Nations international rugby tournament acted as a deterrent from going shopping in town yesterday, or for that matter, driving out of town, and having one's parking place taken by a car from out of town. Full car parks and match road closures in the city centre cause an overflow, up to a couple of miles out from the centre with visitors walking or catching the bus for the last stretch. 

It was cold, so we had little incentive to do anything other than walk to Pontcanna Fields and back before tea. By that time, visitors who'd been watching the game in one of the local pubs, were out and walking home, or to their cars. It was impossible to guess from the faces that Wales had gained a resounding victory against Scotland. Perhaps it was the cold. unless people were simply astonished.

The final episodes of the latest Engrenages/Spiral series aired in the evening.  Justice was done, with a few late surprise turns, but leaving a few loose narrative threads to propose the inevitability of a seventh series. The acting throughout was brilliant, portraying the imperfect and flawed character of key crime fighting figures, with their own personal struggles and failures to maintain integrity, faced with corruption on all sides and all levels. As movies, each episode is superbly crafted to carry the story-lines and reveal the lives, public and private of the players. It's as good as it gets.

This morning I celebrated and preached about God and creation at St Catherine's. Co-incidentally the Gospel of the day was St John's Prologue, the same Gospel as I read and preached on the last time I was here at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and again on the Sunday after Christmas in Montreux. Not that I mind. It's one of my favourite Gospel passages to reflect and preach on. 

In an age dominated by the loud voices of advertising, propaganda and political spin, aiming to capture our minds and impose alien ideas and interpretations of reality upon us, I believe it's essential to keep on arguing and insisting that divine meaning and purpose is at the heart of all reality, and not man made substitutes. 

We had a lazy sleepy afternoon, and didn't venture out into the cold at all. I made a start on tidying my study and clearing out years worth of accumulated excess documents, leaflets, magazines and brochures, much of it financially related - years worth of terms and conditions, financial reports and notifications - there's little sign that digital banking has really diminished the volume. Sure, you can go paperless with internet banking, but the number of .pdf pages of documentation to read is still the same, and just as easily ignored, as when it's gathering dust in my office.

I was so pre-occupied with getting the backlog of necessary financial paperwork correctly filed that I missed the start of McMafia, and watched the final episodes of Professor T on Channel Four catch up instead. I'll do the same with McMafia in a day or so, when I get around to it.

  

Candlemass revisited

I ventured to the Post Office this morning to mail a parcel to old friend and colleague Bernice, with a blouse she'd left behind in Montreux. She preceded me there, doing locum duty in December. I also collected a new CBS bank card, sent to my local HSBC branch, as there is now no longer any counter service in the two City Center branches. Only banking machine services are now on offer, plus advice sessions on appointment. Does the bank no longer want to attract city business custom?  

As today is actually Candlemass day, I took a bus into town and went to Mass at St John's, to enjoy being on the receiving end for a change. In twelve days time already, Lent begins. I'm not sure I feel ready for this yet. Still, Fr Mark emailed me as I was arriving in Cardiff on Tuesday, to booked me for St Catherine's this Sunday, and who knows what else after this, while I'm back in Cardiff. Canon Sarah has booked me to stand in for her on a Lent Friday later in the month, when she has to go and make decisions about the Deanery house in St David's, where she'll live once she's inducted as Dean after Easter.

I didn't stay long in town, or go to the CBS office, as I wanted to return and have lunch with Clare, as she'll be out this evening, leaving me to while away hours watching Belgian and Swedish crime dramas on telly. How indulgent! But, it's what happens when I've been abroad, where UK catch-up TV is not available via the internet and often can't be accessed on Freesat didgy-box either. I continue to resist using a VPN to spoof my location and allow me on-line access what my UK viewing license permits me to watch freely. Frankly, I don't trust this kind of digital app to be a covert channel for malware or surreptitious bitcoin mining. Better not to take a risk with something you can't be sure of.
   

   

Home catch-up

I forgot to mention that while I was away, a new central heating boiler was fitted, and on Monday of  this week, our new secure front door was fitted, by the people who did our double glazing Secura Windows. and it looks good. There's more light in the hall due to its glazed panelling and white surfaces. The locking mechanism with a single key replacing the old pair of locks. It takes a little getting used to, as it operates dead bolts into the door frame. The previous door was fifty years old and undistinguished. This improves the appearance of the house from the street, and we joke about coming home and not being able to recognise our own front door

It's taken me a couple of days to settle down, and get back into domestic routine. Yesterday, I took my usual walk down to the river Taff. A large tree was lodged at the top of the weir beneath the footbridge. A lady walking her baby in pram told me there'd been high winds and torrential rain a few days earlier. It was hard to tell the place along the bank from which the tree had been uprooted.

Many big trees grow along the water's edge on both sides. I think they are Alders which flourish in wet zones and readily colonise a place where there's soil to take root in. Some grow for decades, if undisturbed, but the roots are shallow and tend to run through subsoil rather than go deep so they are subject to wind and water erosion where exposed, right. A few days of rain and flood water quickly masks a place where a large tree s torn out, so it's very difficult spot where it came from, along a well populated river bank.

One ivy clad Alder had split down its trunk and most of the tree now lies wedged among others on the bank. Many fallen trees not obstructing the path are left to rot back, offering a nourishing haven to insects, and that's good for bird life. As for the tree lodged in the river, I wonder if this will be removed fairly soon, as it's big enough to attract other floating detritus and build a blockage in the water, and lead to flood defences being overwhelmed. It worries me that Council budget cutbacks could lead to costly neglect. Would conservation volunteers be allowed to have a go at removing it? I wonder?

Today, we had another visit from the double glazing specialist who installed the new door, to replace the double glazed window panel which fractured due to thermal shock they day we had a home visit to order the new front door. The house is now secure and warm.

I've been playing catch-up with the More4 Water Presents series Professor T. It's interesting viewing as it's a Flemish language Belgian Crimmie, set in and around Antwerp. Flemish is related to Dutch and borrows words from English, French and German. London has a long historic relationship with Antwerp and Rotterdam due to maritime trade. It's fascinating to glimpse a little of the life of some of our nearest neighbours. 

Professor T is a psychologist and criminologist and university teacher of immense learning. He has complex mental health issues, including OCD behaviour, and a kind of autism expressing itself in what resembles Asberger's syndrome, though his remarks are delivered with often embarrassing bluntness and unapologetic honesty. It's very funny to watch with a superb supporting cast bearing with his odd behaviour patiently, because his analysis and judgements prove to be penetratingly accurate, if on times bewilderingly. This character reminded me immediately of Agatha Christie's quirky old Inspector Poirot, odd, self contained, larger than life. Another brilliant Belgian, anything but dull, despite appearances.

The crimes investigated (and I'm watching Series two first) most revolve around family relationships rather than criminal or political conspiracy. The analysis of complex motives, and inter personal dynamics as ordinary folk are precipitated into extraordinary situations is very thought provoking, as are various relationships within the workplace. Mental health and disability issues come into focus, and one of the secondary story-lines showcases senile dementia, and euthanasia, legal in Belgium, very sensitively done. It addresses serious everyday issues, and in an entertaining engaging way. Well worth a watch. I'd like to see the series on BBC Four.