Croeso Dewi Sant

Although I slept quite well, I obviously needed more, so after breakfast, when I'd completed Morning Prayer and some Spanish exercises, I found myself nodding off, and slept soundly for over an hour. All I have to do is relax a while and I fall asleep, but if I have things to do, I can stay continuously active and not feel tired at all. I don't understand it. 

For tomorrow's video reflection, I started thinking about bridges with the re-opening of the Blackweir Bridge topical at the moment. Writing a script came easily, and with a surprise. I googled 'bridges in the Bible' and the search result didn't produce the name of any bridge. The fords of the Jordan and its tributary the Jabbok are mentioned, and the standing stones at the Jordan crossing, but no bridge, despite the fact that Greeks and Romans had already engineered lasting stone bridges around the empire centuries before the time of Christ. Yet, the idea of bridging the gulf between separated entities is there in scripture in the concept of reconciliation. The verb 'to bridge' rather than the noun 'bridge' is what you find. Bridge building is a commonly used metaphor. I didn't have time to dig deeper and find a reason, I first had to think of a way to illustrate the sound recording I made.

When I went for a walk in the afternoon, I went down to Blackweir Bridge and video'd a thirty second introduction to the reflection with the bridge in the background. My Google Photos accounts have scores of bridge photos taken on my travels. The Photos app uses shape recognition technology to guess which ones show a bridge. This gave me a huge variety of pictures to work with for a slide show to go with the audio and the video, and I'm pleased to say that with a little patience, it worked, as planned.

Fran and Mark came around to deliver the completed St David icon she's painted. It's hanging on the dining room wall, and looks magnificent. It' like having a special house guest. The four of us went for a walk in Thompson;s Park so we could chat socially distanced. I took my Sony DSLR with the 50mm lens, which I rarely use, preferring big long lens. The 50mm lens has limited scope compared to others I have, but I thought it was about time I learned how to work with and benefit from those limitations, or find out if there are any benefits. This is very much a matter of trial and error on my part!

I finished the task after supper and watched part of a Welsh language song writing competition with Clare on S4C, before watching this week's 'New Amsterdam' episode on More 4 catch-up. The episode highlighted inadequate health care resources in prison and the terrible impact this has on inmates' mental and physical condition. Tough watching.

Engineering changes

A cold grey day again, and the house gas supply was switched off again after breakfast for the last stage of the job of replacing the street's gas pipes. There as a few more houses to do, and then the mains supply is moved completely from the old supply line to the new. We've been loaned a little electric fan heater to take the chill off the house if needs be. A nice touch. I can't imagine how the switch-over is engineered. If there was time to ask the guys working outside I'm sure I'd get an explanation, but they're busy  today, working to their deadline. 

A couple of days ago when they were taking a breather from carefully uncovering pipes excavated, I stopped to chat with them about it. The oldest wide bore pipes, through which the new plastic ones are threaded are made of a substance called 'ductile iron'. it's harder than cast iron and doesn't shatter when hit with a hammer. Holes can be cut into it using a powerful circular saw, for the insertion of control valves, and now, new pipes. There are two generations of narrow bore pipework under the road, connected to the old main pipe. One is made of steel, and the other is made of steel coated in plastic. 

From their experience of working on them, they'd learned that the plastic coated steel pipes deteriorate more than the plain kind. Is this to do with the poorer quality of the stuff with the plastic coasting? Or is there something about having a plastic coating that generates problems? If water with a consistent acidity  seeps in under the plastic layer, this might create conditions that cause steel erosion, which don't exist in when bare steel is surrounded by soil with a more complex changing chemistry. High quality all plastic pipes will engineered to perform more durably, no doubt, even able to convey other kinds of gas under pressure to consumers in the long run, methane, and hopefully 'green' hydrogen, the sooner the better.

I did some more work on the bi-lingual funeral service after breakfast this morning and had a long talk on the 'phone with the son of the deceased, a family originally from the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire. Dad had trained as a mechanic on National Service not long before it was discontinued. Being a farmer's son he had a head start with using and fixing machinery, and was able to deal with any kind of vehicle during his working life. Mechanics today have less scope to learn how to fix problems on modern vehicles given the rise of complex electronic systems components, made in closed modules. You can't step into a workshop and fashion a broken component on a lathe. it's a matter of finding a serial number and ordering it on-line. The switch to electric propulsion will see further reduction in the number of components for a mechanic to work on. I imagine that maintaining and restoring vintage and redundant vehicles will remain a labour of love for those harbouring a passion for traditional mechanical engineering.  

Clare went in to the kindergarten and did her weekly session there this morning. I cooked us lunch, then made an early exit to drive to Thornhill for a funeral. By co-incidence I cuaght up with the hearse at the Gabalfa interchange and followed it all the way to the Briwnant Chapel parking area. The next of kind had travelled down from a village near Hungerford. The deceased was a single man, living alone. Only five mourners were present. He got the same send-off as he would have done if the chapel had been full to capacity. Nobody deserves less.

I reached home, sat down in the lounge, drank a cup of coffee, fell asleep for three quarters of an hour, then went for my walk of the day. Having written a text for tomorrow's refection on the way of the cross, I was looking for ideas about presentation. As I walked, I remembered taking photos of the Via Crucis in Taormina in Sicily, two days after arriving there for a month's locum duty in December 2012. Fifteen remarkable sculptures representing Stations of the Cross made by a local artist are set beside flights of stairs ascending 300m from the town to the summit of Monte San Rocco. 

After supper, I found the original photos archived on a hard drive, re-sized and corrected them for over exposure, recorded my reflection, and put words and images together into a four and half minute video. It's a lot easier when you've got all the photos you need to hand before starting! The pictures wee taken with a Canon Powershot G9 camera I'd won in a computer magazine subscribers' prize draw just before travelling. It was quite a sophisticated point and shoot camera for those days, but many of the outdoor images look over-exposed and needed post-processing. 

This is easy enough to correct, usually by enhancing shadows or boosting the black colour content. It's a common enough problem due to high levels of ultra violet light even in cloudy scenes. A skylight filter could compensate for this with a film camera but seems to have no impact with a digital camera's automatic settings. If there's a compensatory setting, I haven't found it yet, so post-processing is essential, and time consuming, but worthwhile.

The Windows 10 video editor is a simply set out and easy to use once you've found out how it works. I had to learn it from scratch when I was in Ibiza last year and found that it lacked a built-in user guide. In addition, it's designed to work primarily with files stored in the Cloud, and is much slower accessing any file stored on the PC's hard drive desktop, which is naturally where I put files acquired while I work on a project. I still store material on my hard drive, and use Cloud storage as a backup. Microsoft designs its operating system around giving priority to using Cloud files, even when using apps on the PC itself.  It's noticeably slower when accessing files locally stored. I've not found a way around it, and it's frustrating. In reality, from switch-on to the document editing cursor is as slow now as it was fifteen years ago, despite fabulously faster hardware. For speed of use, a Chromebook or Linux device is far superior.

Blackweir bridge open again!

Woke up just as Thought for the Day was starting, then uploaded my reflection to the Parish WhatsApp thread, with ease. After breakfast a quick trip to Tesco's on an errand for Clare, then time before and after lunch working on tomorrow's reflection, done in the same way. This also took me a long time, so it was almost four when I set out for my walk. Thankfully sunset now is almost at six o'clock, so I'm not having to finish my day's walk in the dark.

I was delighted to find that Blackweir Bridge has reopened today. I thought it was meant to be tomorrow, but Wednesday makes sense, for a University maintained bridge, given that the afternoon is reserved for sporting activities and Pontcanna Fields are well used to that end. Not that many teams can play officially at the moment, but individuals on training regimes can benefit from running circuits I guess. I was out rather late, so didn't see if anyone was actually out training earlier in the day.

Rules for bridge use are spelled out in bi-lingual notices - single file, well spaced, walking not lingering on the bridge. There were only a handful on the bridge when I walked to and fro, movement of the bridge deck was noticeable. The more people crossing the less vibration seems noticeable. It'll be good to walk in the Bute Park woodland again on a regular basis, more conveniently that it has been over the past year.

I had lovely messages from Rosi and Sarah in Ibiza, recalling my arrival there this Wednesday a year ago. I'm so glad they have a pastor wanting to serve them, and hope the formalities and eventual move don't take too long. Brexit and covid restrictions mean there are going to be hurdles to surmount unfortunately. The long wait to fill ministerial vacancies continues all over the euro-diocese, as it does in UK.

Having prepared tomorrow's funeral service this evening, I continued to work on the other two for next week, especially the bi-lingual one. I'll need to practice reading this one through a great deal until it feels right. I'd find it easier to do this in French or Spanish, sad to say about my native language. My first girl friend was a native Welsh speaker. I learned a few things from her, but we never got around to conversing in Welsh. More's the pity. I feel ashamed of myself.

Space issues

A cloudy start to the day with chill wind. I woke up in time to upload today's prayer video, but it took half an hour to clear my phone of redundant data to permit WhatsApp to upload it without error. It's such a rigmarole. My 2016 Samsung phone doesn't have enough memory for current usage.The Blackberry work phone contract and number will expire soon. When it does, I'll swap the SIM over and reconfigure the Blackberry anew, a task that will bring hassles of its own, no doubt.

Official statistics published today have shown a marked decline in the death rate nationally. This is due not only to a significantly drop in covid related deaths, thanks to vaccinations, but also a reduction due to lock-down generally. Less road traffic resulting in fewer road accident deaths. Hygiene precaution against covid are equally effective against 'flu, so deaths from winter 'flu have been drastically reduced, suggesting that these benefits, not only for individuals but the health care system and workforce may commend themselves for re-use annually in future.

On my pre-lunch walk around Thompson's Park with my Sony DSLR, the battery declared itself drained after just a few shots, and I finally ran out of storage space on its SD card fortunately I carry spares for both, battery in camera bag and SD card in my wallet, ever since running out of space on a photo visit to the Chateau de Chillon back in 2017, fifteen years after starting digital photography. The size of photo files has increased a hundredfold in that time and SD cards a thousandfold, so for the most part storage space is not a problem, but running out can happen very quickly if you have a day when you take thirty to a hundred, as opposed to a day when you only take three to ten. 

Professionals carry lots of spares, as their life depends upon it, even if they upload direct to the web on the move. Much of what anyone takes may be nothing really special, but the fear of losing the one that's really worthwhile stalks amateur and professional photographers alike. When SD card prices dropped, it became affordable to use them archive originals, just as we did in the days of photo negatives, whether or not you kept copies on a hard drive or on the web. Keeping copies in several places makes it easier to find them in a hurry when off-line. It's a curious form of digital hoarding. I wonder why I do it?

Another funeral has come my way, a second one for next week. It seems the family wanted a Welsh speaking minister, but couldn't find one, so I was asked if I could manage to do something bilingually. It's not something I've been asked to do before, although I have celebrated the Eucharist in Welsh a few times, and once preached a prepared homily in Welsh. After practice I can read prayers intelligibly, which is what matters. I've done bi-lingual funerals with French and Spanish as the second language, and I have copies of all the Church in Wales liturgical material, tradition and modern, English and Welsh, so I should be able to to justice to the occasion.

All of the evening I spent on tomorrow's video reflection. Rather than talk to camera, I recorded a sound track first and then put selected photos to it, and it took much longer than I expected, but the end result was satisfactory. With this format the file size is a fraction of that of a proper video, so uploading won't be a cause of distress first thing in the morning!

Dydd gwyl Dewi Sant

My Dewi Sant video reflection uploaded and displayed as hoped for without hassle just after I wok up at eight today. June my sister rang at nine expressing delight and enthusiasm for an outdoor production of Puccini's 'Turandot' by Sydney Opera, live streamed on Sky Arts, starting at seven this morning. She set her alarm to get up early enough to watch it. This is one of series of brilliantly staged outdoor operas the company has staged this year apparently. I think the Aussies have weather on their side, plus plenty of wide open spaces.

The house gas supply is being switched off today to upgrade the piping from street to meter, Clare got up early and raised the thermostat to warm the house through as much as possible before shut down. It's overcast again today but mild, so the house will cool down slower than at night. The gas went off at ten and work was done first at the house gas meter end, then along the supply path. The gas supply was on again at two, pretty good going.

Interesting, a couple of days ago the new said that Ghana would be the first West African country to get a supply of vaccines. This morning's first day vaccination report was from the Ivory Coast. Then in the evening new the vaccination launch in Ghana was reported. It makes me wonder how much guesswork and how much co-ordination is going on in the news reporting editorial office. 

Trump has spoken publicly for the first time since leaving office, to a Republican convention, talking about a re-election bid in 2024. A golden image of him adorned the stage before he arrived in person. What do his biblical fundamentalist fans make of this I wonder? Some commentators reckon this self trumpeting behaviour will end up being counter-productive and drive moderate Republican support away to the Democrats. We'll see.

Before I went out for my walk of the day after lunch, I sat down for a while with my Olympus camera and started to explore the 'settings' dial. For the most part, I used the camera the lazy way, leaving the camera set to 'Auto'. When setting it up at the outset, I realised it had a complex set of menus. I found out in the 'Art' menu how to use a black and white photo pre-set but that was all. I was more interested in seeing how well it handled, how easy it was to use, and what sort of photos it gave, treating it like a simple point and shoot device. I felt it was time to get to know its settings better.

I turned its main top left dial to the SCN setting, and was surprised to discover a collection of sub menus that would suit portrait, landscape, night shots etc, but also some unexpected pre-sets, one is for 'macro' shots, very close up to small objects. Another pre-set was labelled 'wide angle'. This really surprised me. The all purpose short telephoto lens I mostly use isn't especially wide angled, but selecting the pre-set makes the field of view far wider. Likewise with the telephoto lens. And I'd been thinking that when the camera shops re-open my first purchase should be a wider angled lens! I've no idea how this works but the pre-set seems to change the aperture width, although there's no physical change to the lens. When I go looking for a new lens (most likely a long telephoto) I'll ask if anyone can explain this to me.

My walk took me up to Western Avenue and the down the west bank Taffside footpath, now dried out at last and no longer treacherous. I stopped to take a photo of the river, and while I was switching on, a Kingfisher emerged from the riverbank below me and flew upstream in full view at close quarters. It was too quick for me to raise and point my camera, but an ephemeral moment of delight. The last time I got a clear, if not so close look at a Kingfisher was in Corsica fourteen years ago. One day I'll get a photo!

Confirmation today of a funeral I was asked about before the weekend, and a request to do another. Both are next week, and I have one this week. It'll keep me busy. Glad to help out my colleagues too. There are still a lot of extra deaths, many of them pandemic related. I called the next of kin about this week's twice delayed funeral, and learned that not only was it a covid death, but that the care home in which it happened was closed down and is subject to police investigation of criminal neglect of residents. This help to explain the double delay. Covid has really exposed the inadequacies of social care for the elderly, disabled and vulnerable, accumulated over decades of under-investment and poor regulation. Sadly, much responsibility for this state of affairs stems from government policy. Reform is overdue. Will it happen as the country recovers from this pandemic, I wonder? 

Video hassles

Sunday worship on Radio Four first thing was from Brecon Cathedral, in honour of tomorrow's St David's Day. Archbishop John Davies preached, referring to his own call to ministry and reflecting his impending retirement. I remember meeting him first when he arrived as curate of Bulwark in Chepstow Parish, in the late 1980s where we lived during my time working for USPG as Area Secretary for Wales. I wonder what he plans to do in retirement? It seems strange to have been around long enough in ministry to see eight Archbishops of Wales come and go - Glyn, Gwilym, Derek, George, Alwyn, Rowan, Barry and now John.

What a delightful blessing to walk to church in sunlight under a clear bright blue sky in crisp morning air! There were thirty of us celebrating the Eucharist together again in St Catherine's. We're still hemmed in by 'no socialising' policy, even if we're careful to maintain social distance. No hanging around in the church grounds, go to the supermarket instead, or talk in the street with two metres (?) between you, if you want brief interaction or company of sorts. As if we weren't going to be careful, having survived this far!

It was warm enough to have lunch in the garden again today. I edited and wrote some of this week's parish WhatsApp Reflections before going out for a walk up to the Cathedral, and then to Llandaff Weir. It's the first time in many weeks that the footpath up to the weir has dried out enough not to feel treacherous underfoot.

After tea I set about recording tomorrow's St David's Day reflection, with a brief video introduction, a photo of Fran's icon and an audio commentary. I hadn't forgotten what I learned from recording my sister's eulogy last summer, and soon found out how to produce a viable video, which ran correctly on a PC, but not on a smartphone, producing only a perfect miniscule version. I tried every trick I could think of to get the video to display properly full screen without success. 

Fortunately a conversation with Kath proved to be helpful. I re-recorded the little video introduction in landscape mode, and replaced it in the file editor, then rendered it as a 720p video. The whole thing only looked best on a phone in landscape mode. There's a problem I cannot resolve with mixed portrait and landscape display. If I could have done the whole thing on my phone without resort to an internal video editor, maybe this problem would not exist, but my phone doesn't have a video editor I know of. Kath has developed expertise at video editing on her Mac, and on a smartphone in the course of work this past few years. Rhiannon, doing video projects at home for drama college uses only a smartphone, and produces some impressive sophisticated results. Ah! These digital natives!

A remarkable twenty million vaccinations have done in Britain in the first three months of deployment. It's a logistic triumph for thousands of people working together. All deserve a medal of honour. Six new cases of the Brazilian covid variant have been detected among passengers travelling from there on a flight via Zurich, thanks to rapid genome sequencing of test samples. Five of the six people infected have been tracked and traced, A sixth didn't give sufficient detail on their form to make tracing possible, potentially sowing infection chaos, so a high speed hunt is on to detect the potential super spreader. 

If only people weren't so careless about giving their details or neurotic enough to want to obscure them in the interests of personal privacy. In a village, it's not unusual for everyone to know each others' business. Now we're in a global village. While there are many good reasons for safeguarding personal privacy on a host of different issues, matters of who we are, where we've come from and going need to be known for the sake of the common good, and such doesn't have to be broadcasted or exploited to this end. Nobody is exempt from the risk of being a carrier or a victim of this plague.

Spring clean in church

Another blue sky sunny day, warm enough to eat lunch in the garden. Amazing! After our Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast we went to St Catherine's and took part in the sweeping and polishing to ready the church to welcome back worshippers tomorrow. The walls exude mineral salts over time, maybe due to humidity when unheated, or due to lack of a damp course, but unattended, every flat surface gets covered in something more than just dust. Flakes of salt and stone need brushing off the walls to optimise the big sweep up before being hoovered and mopped over, and the pews polished back to life.

It was lovely to see people in church, and work with them. There were a dozen of us with the youngsters, and more men than women, surprisingly. Gareth, Hilary and Clive have been clearing up the church garden too, and Hilary's internet order of veggie seeds arrived this week, just at a time when when the weather is being kinder to us. At the end of the session, once the church was quiet, I shot my little prayer video in the church sanctuary, delighted to get a good result in just one take.

When I walked late afternoon, I stopped to take a photo of the sun casting shadows across Llandaff Fields, as I often do, as it always looks that little bit different through the seasons. A young woman stood beside me taking a picture with her phone. She turned and said "Are you Keith Kimber?" We had met briefly just once in the sacristy at St German's, just as she was starting there as an ordinand on placement. We had a lovely chat about the church and the change over to the Ministry Area, with Fr Phelim taking on the role of Team Leader. I also heard that finally an appointment has been made to Grangetown Parish, vacant for two years. Fr Edward Owen, now at Margam Abbey is returning to the city where he served his title at the Cathedral. Great to know they'll be in safe hands. 

Finally the gas engineers, working overtime on a Saturday, have reached us. I had to move our car this afternoon so they could start digging a hole to access the junction with the street gas supply. I think they'll be working through the weekend to get the job done.

We watched a fascinating Michael Palin travel programme this evening. He was in the eastern Himalayas - starting in western China. After that I decided to do some work on next week's batch of reflections, rather than get stuck into the new Finnish crimmie of BBC Four. I can do that on catch up some time. 

Bridge returns to life

I slept for nearly nine hours and woke up to bright sunshine. Lately I've not been waking early, or if I do, I go back to sleep while waiting for 'Thought for the Day' on Radio 4. I make a point of listening on BBC Sounds catch-up before I get up. It's useful to be able to roll back a live broadcast, and it works well.

I learned from a local news item today that Blackweir Bridge repairs are nearly complete and it will re-open next week. I also learned that the bridge isn't part of the City Council's estate, but the University which funded construction and maintains it. It wasn't closed due to the pandemic, as I presumed, but due to minor structural damage that made it unsafe. Repairs took couple of weeks, but the best part of a year to agree to get done, though there's been no hurry to complete. The public is much better informed and prepared to be cautious crossing the bridge now, socially distanced, in single file - hopefully!

I was pleased to see a photo of Fran's icon of St David appear in this week's Parish Sway newsletter. I've written Monday's reflection on the icon and a discursive prayer which I'd like to record in St Catherine's if I get an opportunity when we go to church tomorrow to join in the pre-reopening spring-clean.

For the second day running I've taken my Sony Alpha 68 DSLR camera out walking with me. It's such a lovely camera to use, I find that I take far more photos with it when I'm out in good shooting conditions. Its weight with a long lens is the only disadvantage, three times as heavy as the Olympus. If I had a long and a broad lens for the Olympus that were together as good as my versatile Alpha mount telephoto, the Olympus would be a match in terms of photo quality, and much lighter by design. The equivalent lenses, even second hand are pretty pricey on a low budget. Clare keeps asking what I am going to do with all the pictures I take. If I could decide on interesting themes to select, I could compose photo books to use as gifts or even for sale as coffee table items. Trouble is, I'm no better with the idea of seeking a market than I am seeking an audience for my writing. Fear of failure? Fear of not being noticed? I wonder why?

Another interesting episode of 'New Amsterdam' to watch on catch-up tonight, with an interesting little vignette of what happens when a medic pursues a concern about the health of drug addicts and provision of safe managed injection places in a world where doing this is against the law. The forces of law and order are unable to punish adequately or eliminate the international chain of illegal drug suppliers. Drug addiction is a major global public health issue. Why drive users underground and into crime when with the right support they can be helped to get lives and health in order and weaned off drugs? 

This approach has been shown to work in places where licensed supervised clinics have been set up. It's hard to understand why advocates of law enforcement are reluctant to change strategy, unless they are addicted to playing 'cops and crooks' never really succeeding in winning. Addicts are in a way victims of the consumer culture the world has created, but treated as perpetrators. It doesn't have to be like this.  

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.

Church to re-open

Another mild cloudy day to help the ground dry out a bit more. More reports coming in about the high degree of efficacy of various vaccines now in use, plus the first delivery of vaccines to Ghana as part of the WHO's global collaboration by countries which are producing vaccines to share them with countries which are not. More media discussion about the stages in which lock-down will end in the four nations of Britain - all are mostly similar, but vary in detail given circumstances in different health authorities. Not everyone is happy with the plans set out, as so many businesses are struggling not to collapse.

Before lunch, I collected this week's organic veggies from Conway Road, and afterwards walked into town to look around and take photos of the Central Square construction site. The city centre shops are all shuttered, some shops have been emptied out and the trading signage over the window removed. It's hard to imagine how the city's reputation as South Wales' go-to retail destination can be regained post-covid. For so many shop workers there will be no return, only redundancy.

Finally a date has been set for the funeral I was asked to do three weeks ago which had to be postponed as the Coroner's work had not yet been done. It'll now take place a week tomorrow. Good news this afternoon in the form of an email from Mthr Emma to say that Parish Eucharist will resume in church next Sunday. I'm so relieved the church's reason to exist as a people for God's praise has been restored in our community. A review of the closure decision was taken as promised after five Sundays. 

So many, if not most of the older demographic of church members are far less at risk after vaccination. Younger members are geared to take precautions and act with consideration for others in church, so the risk is less than it was. Some parishes chose not to shut down Sunday worship. I believe closing is the rule in some dioceses. Such decisions weigh heavily on those who make them in a situation where there is scant detailed local knowledge and statistics to inform decisions. 

Averagely at the moment, Cardiff infection rate is higher than the Welsh (and UK) average. One outer suburb has double the infection rate of anywhere else. Areas where there's a large proportion of students in the population have a lower than average infection rate. Now infection numbers generally are lower a small localised outbreak skews the statistics. I suppose we'll never know if any Anglican parish congregation was an infection hot spot. If we have lost members to covid, they'll pretty certainly be older, sicker and in a care home. However the local situation is adjudged, we must all be grateful that we have survived thus far, and never presume that we're safe from the next nasty surprise nature has for us.

Parks and parking

A cloudy day without rain with a mild wind to dry out the sodden soil. We need more days like this given the broadening mud slicks alongside all the park footpaths. With so many people out and about every day, socialising without socialising strolling along and hogging the path, overtaking walkers and cyclists drives more and more people on to the grass. Heaven knows how the park management teams are going to repair and restore the greensward to its usual healthy condition. 

The task of keeping the park rubbish free has become a seven day week job, as rubbish bins fill very quickly to overflowing with takeaway cups, pizza boxes, sandwich wrappers and plastic bottles. If a day is missed, the place looks terrible, and more rubbish gets dropped than when it looks clean and tidy. No doubt we'll pay for this with Council Tax rate increases eventually, but such excellent civic amenities as we enjoy are worth paying for.

Talking about the Council - a consultation document dropped through our letterbox this afternoon relating to traffic management and parking locally. A bus lane is proposed for Penhill Road, robbing one side of the road of car parking bays, displacing vehicles into overnight parking down by Cafe Castan. It looks as if we won't be able to avoid a residents' car parking permit scheme for the whole of neighbourhood. There are already too many cars competing for too little space on the street, too many two car households. Will each household be restricted to one permit only? I love our little car, but have thought a lot recently about giving it up, as we used it so little, regardless of lock-downs, we'd be better off hiring for occasional travel needs that can't be met by public transport.

At lunchtime I had a call postponing the telephone consultation I was due to have with a pharmacology expert at Llandough who is said to be off sick. Well I've waited four months for this, and am not dead while waiting. Meanwhile, I'll just keep experimenting with the doxazosin dosage to see if I can minimise the side effects and get my blood pressure nearer to normal.

Now that schools are open again to the youngest children, Clare has decided to resume her regular Thursday visit to the Steiner kindergarten to do eurythmy with the little ones, so she's spent quite a lot of time on the phone discussing and planning this today. It means a lot to her, but she's confident that staff are going to be working with high safety standards, and infection risk is far lower with the under sevens in any case. 

An article I read this morning about kids returning to school stated that 12-14 year olds are the most likely to catch covid and transmit it. It also stated that a much under estimated preventative measure is classroom ventilation, leaving windows open and wrapping up warm. Or, classes outdoors. It's something new to get used to, and not easy for generations raised in centrally heated houses and schools whose standard of clothing is geared to 22-24 degrees indoors, rather than 18. 

Birthday girls

Not quite such a damp day today, cloudy, but with occasional sunny breaks, the parks filling up again with people out walking, running, cycling wheeling prams and chatting and generally looking cheerier. I bumped into Janie, one of the St John's City Parish Church members who used to work in Debenhams in the St David's centre, alas now closing down for good.

We're into the third week of gas pipe upgrading going on in the street. The crew are digging individual holes at the point where each house is supplied from the branch main and working their way up towards our house. Much use is made of bright yellow plastic warning fences around working areas so the street is more colourful than usual at the moment. At the same time, a house opposite is having its downstairs brick partition wall removed to create one long room, a noisy duty process, bringing in an additional truck to cart away the brick rubble. The house was recently sold. Work started immediately, before the next occupant moves in. 

Today is Rhiannon's 17th birthday, also that of Mother Frances, so WhatsApp family and church streams have been flooded with greeting messages today. Kath and Anto made a surprise greeting video, secretly contacting family and friends inviting them to contribute a greeting video clip. The result was delightful and hilarious. All the birthday greetings were framed within an artfully constructed 24/7 news programme format. A smartly groomed Anto was presenter and Kath was a roving reporter. Video footage of places around Kenilworth was used as a backdrop for Kath to stand in front of and introduce greeting contributors. All thanks to iPhone apps she's mastered in the course of her promotional work for Wriggledance. Clare and I each contributed our limericks, and a greeting using the Beatles song 'I saw her standing there'. Much fun was had all round, though we didn't get to speak to her in person. She must have been on the phone to friends all day!

Encouraged by the speed of the vaccine roll-out and signs that infection and death rates are dropping as a result, the prime minister has introduced his four stage plan for a (provisional) return to normality over the next four months. The early report from Israel that around 80% of people vaccinated aren't getting re-infected by covid-19 or acting as infection carriers seems now to be echoed by early findings here and that's a relief. Work is already in progress on an oral vaccine equivalent, which would be so much easier to distribute. By this autumn the majority of the UK population will have been vaccinated with 10-20% remaining who can't or won't be vaccinated.  Phenomenal progress has been made in the past year,

Early years schooling re-starts in Wales today, with a phased return envisaged for all the rest. Full return is proposed over the border in England in early March, but again it's provisional on there being no more nasty infection statistics. Westminster pronouncements are more cautious these days, the cheerleader approach of Boris to these matters last year did more harm than good. The thought that coronavirus, like 'flu cannot be eliminated totally and that we'll have to learn to live with it, is now being fed into public discussion. Likewise the idea of a vaccination passport. But it's still a long road back, even to whatever the 'new normal' is going to look like, still full of unknowns and surprises we may not welcome.

In the wilderness

I woke up this morning in time to listen to BBC Radio Four Sunday worship, which during Lent is taking an unusual form. It explores the scripture theme and readings set for the day in the manner of an Ignatian retreat. There's music and select prayers, but explanations of the texts and reflection upon them are woven together in a way that encourages the listener to imagine understand and dig deep into their meaning. It worked very well I thought, and look forward to the rest of the series. I read through Morning prayer before breakfast and the Eucharist of the day afterwards, then went out for a walk in the rain down to the weir. 

The flood water did rise a bit more last night and washed over the footpath, leaving some fresh silt in the puddles, but the water level had dropped half a metre by mid morning. The force of yesterday's torrent washed a heavy tree stump off the top of the fish trap, where it's been stranded for several months. Heaven knows how much further downstream it's travelled now. The river level needs to drop another half a metre before we can see how the islands of stones in the river bed have been re-shaped, and what other big debris has been caught up with them. How the river bed looks changes over the years, sculpted by the water.

After lunch we went out again down to the weir, and walked up the riverside track to Western Avenue. It was very muddy and unpleasantly slippery to negotiate, and left me feeling quite tired when we got back, Clare baked a bara brith for tea for the first time in a while - good cheer to come home to.

This Tuesday I have a long overdue telephone consultation with pharmacology expert about blood pressure medication as I was having such problems keeping it under control with the additional dosing of doxazosin at various strengths before the last operation. Since then my blood pressure has been less high. It seemed nevertheless that the extra medication was making me feel slightly faint and dizzy. 

Then I remembered that such symptoms could also be due to inner ear blockage and mis-alignment of neck vertebrae and pelvis, due to the presence of the open wound. Muscles instinctually adjust to shield it from painful pressure. It's possible to mitigate these conditions with simple physical exercises to compensate when needed, so I was able to get rid of the headache and dizzyness. I thought I would drop the doxazosin and see how I got on without it, but stopped checking my blood pressure occasionally. So, I thought I should do so before taking to the consultant, and was horrified to find that it was sky high again, which perhaps explains why I have been rather short tempered lately. So, I have resumed taking the dozazosin, starting with a low dose, to see what impact it has, and increase it if needs be. I have spare pills to be going on with. I'll be interested to hear what the specialist has to offer when I tell him all this.

In all other respects, I'm fit and well, except for this wound, which is a fundamental source of stress, as it's so close to the vagus nerve that runs through the central nervous system. Living with this must have something to do with the difficulty of keeping blood pressure near to normal. Long ago I stopped being anxious about the unending wait for another round of treatment. 

The pandemic has added to the wait and that's accepted, cannot be fought against. I've survived a stressful year of infection risk, to reach the point of being vaccinated. I don't find it that difficult to live under restrictions, as two years worth of surgery has obliged me to come to terms with this, and be grateful to be alive. Normalising my blood pressure relies on completing the surgical process and healing. It's a matter of how it can be made less worse in the meanwhile. Just think - there are thousands of people made vulnerable by forced delays in their treatment regime, thousands hoping that they won't become collateral damage in the battle against this pandemic.

Clare watched an episode of the highly acclaimed series about the AIDS pandemic 'It's a sin', with some powerful acting and a deeply distressing story exposing people's range of reactions when the nature of a then incurable disease is uncovered and linked exclusively at the start to gay people enjoying new found freedoms in the seventies and eighties. As we've moved on so far in forty years, I find it hard to revisit and decided I didn't want to watch when the series started. Tonight the telly was on and I was sitting in the room uploading photos. I couldn't avoid getting the general drift of the episode, but what I did find disturbing was what I consider to be pornographic portrayals of gay sex on mainstream TV. 'If it can be seen it must be seen' is the contemporary maxim, interpreted as if we can shove it in your face and shock you, we'll do it for the sake of it.

Later we watched the final episode of 'Finding Alice'. A superb talented cast saddled with interpreting a bizarre if slightly believable tragic plot in a slightly comic way. A realistic look at the impact of bereavement on a family not expecting it? Or just playing about with it? Nothing shocking here, unless you're shocked that nice middle class ladies swear with the same disregard for grammar or context as football hooligans. Relieved that it's all over at last.

On the Sunday when the church thinks about Jesus in the desert, I feel that we're also in the stuck out in a cultural wilderness, a dearth of dignity and meaning, marked by hunger for sensation and excitement. Or perhaps it's just me coming to realise that old age is just one long desert, where you have to search diligently for oases that nourish and sustain.

Self emptying time

Another Saturday lie-in and pancakes for breakfast. Again, overcast with intermittent rain. Clare's new phone has started giving her trouble, with the SIM and SD occasionally not being recognised and then registering but leaving error messages. Is there something wrong with the way the cards are seated on the tiny flimsy tray on which they sit inside the phone, or is the contact fault something to do with phone itself? We can fiddle about with it - and it is fiddly because it's so small, and neither Clare's eyes nor mine are really good enough. 

Perhaps the cards themselves are worn at the edges and now a poor fit? It needs to be examined, which means taking it to a Currys store near us, to start with to get help. Phone shops are allowed to open, but the hours and procedures for engaging with them aren't normal. I had to dredge up the half a dozen emails sent to me from the time I ordered on-line until it was delivered on 5th January in order to find a helpline number, and the place to take the phone to get it looked at. It's the worst possible time, just when we're both so very reliant on using our phones to maintain all our regular contacts. Clare can re-instate her old phone, but that's a big hassle. It's taking her long enough to get used to a new one. 

We both found this mini crisis a distressing experience, exposing our digital dependency and helplessness when it comes to fixing anything that goes wrong. In years past, when all electronic systems were simpler, I learned how to fix lots of things. Now complexity and vendor lock-in makes it much harder, even down to finding the right path to obtaining a fix that won't violate the phone warranty.

I went out for a walk after lunch when the rain stopped for a while. The river Taff at Blackweir was almost up to path level again by the bridge, and huge volumes of spuming water tumbled loudly over the weir at great speed. It's been far wetter up in the Beacons than down on the coast, and there's more rain to come, so will the water rise another 15-30cm and flood the footpath and adjacent field overnight?

I met Jan and Peter watching the water while walking their dogs. Twice in one week? I asked Jan if she'd had any funerals delayed due to the Coroner's office not releasing the body in time, as I have this week with Wednesday's funeral postponed a second time. It seems from what she'd heard that there's a change in protocol involving coronavirus testing of all deaths referred to the Coroner, and this is bound to put extra pressure on the labs, already burdened with dealing with 'surge testing' in areas where new virus variants are detected. 

It's just as well the excess death rate is still dropping, or it would be impossible for the system to deal with the demand for funerals. Inevitably, families are having to wait longer to make arrangements because of the pandemic. Many local authorities have set up temporary mortuary facilities in industrial storage units to deal with the backlog. Public emergency management planning requires this, and municipal land earmarked for mass graves. At least we haven't got to the stage of needing to bury people in in this way, as happened in centuries past, and in some poor countries in our time, overwhelmed and unable to manage in any other way.  What we're going through is terrible, but it could be so much worse.

In one of my old notebooks, I started transcribing the travel journal I wrote when Clare and I visited Jordan in 1998. It's fascinating to make the trip again through my own words at the time. I digitized the photos I took a decade ago. Words fill in detain the photos missed.

This evening I came across a podcast on an American Jesuit website, geared to a young Catholic audience. Franciscan spiritual guide and teacher Fr Richard Rohr gave an hour long interview, in which he spoke of the different characteristics of Jesuit and Franciscan spiritualities, and about the observance of Lent. He makes the challenging observation that our Lenten efforts at self-mastery run the risk of nurturing the ego, rather than emulating Christ's own self-emptying. 

Letting go of everything, recognising and understanding our weaknesses and failures, transcending them rather than thinking we can master or suppress them is better for our spiritual health, he reckons. This stands the traditional 'spirit of discipline' on its head. It isn't by our own efforts that we can 'triumph over evil and grow in grace', but by saving grace alone. I loved it. Listening to this was just what I needed tonight, as I'm tired with watching telly programmes that are only mildly interesting or entertaining. 

Beware the air we breathe

Back to thick grey clouds and intermittent rain today, with more to come in the next few days, and threats of flooding. At least I didn't get too wet, walking before and after lunch. I cooked rice and Brussels sprouts with boil-in-the-bag mussels again, tastes to cheer us on another miserable day.

Official covid infection statistics released today show continued downward progression. In three weeks time phased re-introduction of children to classes in school will begin. Groups of four people from just two households will be able to meet again outdoors from this weekend - but judging from what I observe on my daily walks in the parks, this has been taking place already for weeks, few are even an arm's length away from others, let alone properly socially distanced. There's no sign of enforcement taking place, except in car parks. 

It's good to hear more being said about the risk from airborne infection. The existence of more contagious new variants calls for this to be emphasised, outdoors as well as indoors. I find it strange that early research nearly a year ago revealed the likely role of airborne transmission, yet only in the past three months when the contagion risk had been observed to be much higher has it been given increased prominence in public health advisory videos. 

Drivers of taxis, buses, and above all, ambulance drivers have suffered disproportionately high infection rates due to the amount of time they spend in enclosed spaces transporting, then waiting with patients, and treating them. Their standard of personal protection equipment needs to be much higher than in reality it is. I'm not sure we're hearing much from either unions or the government on what's being done to reduce the risks to health and safety in a crisis. Who cares for the carers here?

The Parish weekly notices are now being delivered by means of Microsoft's Sway, one of the apps that is part of Microsoft Office. The diocese also uses Sway to circulate its weekly info round-robin. An Office user can bring together text, images, web-links, audio and video into a presentation hosted on One Drive and accessible via a URL It can even be used to create a website. In effect, each week's round-robin is a little website of its own. Sway has been around for seven years but like video conferencing apps has seen new uses and users during the pandemic. It's rather passed me by, as I'm no longer delivering 'content' to anyone. I wonder if it will supplant the Christmas newsletter pdf in years to come?

This afternoon I watched this week's episode of 'New Amsterdam' on catch-up, and later in the evening the last episode of 'Rebecka Martinson - Arctic Murders'. Not for the first time in this series, a presumed murder turns out to be an accidental death whose circumstances cause others to lie about it. Tragedy in life can have many layers to it.

Sombre prospects

A merciful return to sunshine, blue skies with fluffy clouds today. What a difference it makes after the penitential grey skies and rain of yesterday! Before and after lunch, walks in different parks filled with kids letting off steam and mums with pushchairs chatting socially distanced (sort of), displacing walkers into the still rain saturated grass. It's quite treacherous in many places, to walk on turf whose surface is suffering badly from lack of drainage - there's a lot of clay subsoil around here. It's like walking on a layer of thick soap. Carefree boys at the end of a park outing are often caked with mud below the waist. Heaven help their mothers!

When our weekly delivery of groceries from Beanfreaks arrived this morning, there was a fine looking organic lettuce tucked in with the order which we hadn't ordered, but wished we had. Clare rang the store and reported this, and ten minutes later, Simon the delivery man returned and collected it. Someone had mistakenly added it to our order. It happens occasionally with our home deliveries, inevitably when you consider how complex a task it is to deal with scores of items for scores of customers a day. 

At tea-time Clare and I rehearsed together our version on the Beatles' song 'I saw her standing there', and then recorded it with a birthday greeting for Rhiannon who'll be seventeen next Monday. Kath has asked for video greetings from family and friends to edit together and show during their home celebration. Clare learned to play a basic piano accompaniment by heart, part of her jazz piano learning, so she can still keep playing when she can no longer sight read. 

She's also got the hang of recording videos as well, though she gets very annoyed with her new phone, which she thinks is fussier and more complex than the previous one with an earlier version of Android. Both of us composed 'Rhiannon' limericks to record and send as well, just for fun. Clare had the idea and that spurred me to creativity for a change. Apart from taking photos I haven't done much that's creative recently, so this little effort has done me good.

Today's news again reports reduction in the rate of infections and deaths, and discussion on the easing of lock-down restrictions which are still the main factor driving down the numbers. The mortality rate among elderly people has dropped sharply and this is the first indication that vaccination is having an impact. It's not surprising that infection rates among children, teens and young adults are still high, even if they tend to recover quickly from covid19, have mild symptoms or none at all. 

The trouble is, they can transmit the virus to older and more vulnerable people in the general population, so re-opening schools, even in a phased way with regular testing regimes in place is still a risky business. Observing the way children and teenagers behave outdoors with few wearing masks and little or no distancing makes me wonder just how the transmission of the virus can be reduced to the point where the general risk is very low.

Testing for the virus and population sampling for variants is going to become even more important as a result of the ability of covid19 not only to produce new ones, but also to combine variants that have survived into even more effective versions that are more efficient at spreading and vaccine resistant. This may happen randomly. Most 'recombinants' may not survive to spread, until one does and wreaks havoc. 

Preventing the spread of new forms depends on continuing to do what is already recommended to be done: mask wearing in enclosed spaces, social distancing, hand hygiene etc., even for the vaccinated. This is going to be tough for everyone, but we'll run the risk of promoting our own extinction as a species if we don't. Global warming is not only melting ice-caps but producing conditions favourable to the evolution of many more kinds of virus we may not be able to prevent from harming us and robbing us of our future.

Going through this Lent, reading scripture, reading the unfolding story of this pandemic and the world's heroic efforts through medicine and scientific research to see an end to this plague, is going to be the stuff of my spiritual endeavour. Would that there was something more practical that I could do.

Ash Wednesday

After an unusually good night's sleep, only having to get up twice in the night instead of four tines I had breakfast, then read Morning Prayer, Litany and Eucharist. Clare met Emma returning from her walk and was given a special Ash Wednesday prayer card with cross drawn in ashes on it. A nice gesture on the part of the clergy team. 

I received a delivery of fish for freezing from Ashtons while Clare was out. The bones filleted out of the salmon get turned into a fabulous soup. The house smells of fish soup during into the evening. And there's a treat of laver bread with bacon for supper. Not exactly abstinence, but certainly something to give extra thanks for. The must be extra room for praise and gratitude in a season of penitence.

Clare asked me to pay for the order using our secure on-line banking set up. It's not something I do often and in between times forget exactly how it works. The action buttons menu is clear enough when you know where it is and what you're looking for. I didn't, and tapped something that ende up in an endless maze of information pages with no route back. I had to log out and start again, which rather uoset me. My suspicion that inconsistent web behaviour, is a result of accidentally running into a malicious intervention runs very high, even on a site with high security entrance protocols. A glitch in data flow is usually the cause of anomalies, or else poorly designed pages using esoteric terms, but these also happen with malicious sites. It all feels to me like hostile territory nowadays. Perhaps I know too much about web security issues to trust and rely on cyber things.

I spent the morning trying to get Linux to work on an old Netbook having reinstalled it and then found the hard drive wasn't recognised. A hardware fault? Or an Installation error due to the hateful early UEFI firmware being improperly configured? I had to physically remove the drive and check it on another device using a hard drive caddy. No hardware errors, found. I downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint and used it mounted on a USB card to do a fresh netbook install. This time it was bootable despite throwing a system boot error first. Something to do with UEFI.

The system functioned but couldn't be updated. It wouldn't accept root password I'd assigned to it. It's so frustrating, I'll have to reinstall and reset, if I can figure out where I've gone wrong. Something to do when I'm not busy.

Light rain came at the end of the morning and persisted non-stop into the evening. It was quite mild and there was no wind, but walking over to and then around Victoria Park, then crossing over to Llandaff Fields was a miserable wearing experience, as if I was carrying a heavy load. I was tired when I got back, and hadn't walked as far as I thought, but my rainwear was sodden. I went out again after supper when the rain had reduced to a drizzle, to complete my daily distance in the dark.

Later, we watched another interesting archaeological programme on More Four. In suburban Newcastle upon Tyne there once stood a Roman fort. The sight was partly excavated before the houses were built, and the site of its gatehouse was left exposed. An investigative team came to the area with a theoretical maps of the fort and the civilian settlement adjacent to it, with a view to digging exploratory trenches in people's back gardens to search for evidence to confirm the mapping. Local residents were happy to give permission and took a great interest in the findings. 

It brought to light the history of how in the couple of centuries after it was built and established as a garrison gateway in Hadrian's wall, the civilian settlement grew up and over time grew closer to the fort itself. The findings suggested a prosperous cosmopolitan community had flourished there until the Romans retreated from Britain in the third century. I wonder what will be left to show of our settlements in two thousand years from now, given the threats to existence from pandemics and global warming we now face?

A different kind of Lenten journey

I went to the GP surgery this morning to collect my three monthly medication prescription, then to Boots on Cowbridge Road to collect the pills. We needed some prawns and mushrooms for lunch, so I went on to Tesco's, but there was a queue of twenty people waiting for admission to the store, so I went on further to the Co-op, where I walked straight in, bought what a needed, plus a few other things, then headed for home. Our Shrove Tuesday special lunch was pancakes, with a savoury filling, Clare cooked the pancakes and I did the filling - fried mushrooms and an onion plus garlic, prawns and seasonings. Two each, filling a dinner plate. There were two thinner spare ones for sweet. Clare ate hers but I kept mine for supper and filled it with home made hummus, avocado slices and grated vegan cheese. A worthwhile experiment, to be repeated with variations another time! 

Although it rained a little in the morning, it was mild again, ten degrees. After lunch, when I went out for a walk the sun shone through the clouds. I did a few circuits of Thomson's Park then headed through the back streets up to the top end of Llandaff Fields, and then back home, enjoying the afternoon sunlight and shadows on the grass. Everyone out in the fresh air seemed to be smiling more and not so turned in on themselves as happens when it's cold wet and windy, which is all we seem to have had in January.

Lent starts tomorrow, and I understand the Bishops have issued instructions about how to perform the rite of Ashing, without physical contact with worshippers in church, and suggestions on how to do it on-line. I confess I haven't bothered to read up on this as I'm not taking a service, and in our parish there is not service to go to, just an on-line liturgy, but I understand it somehow involves self- administered sprinkling of ashes over the head. I find the idea surreal, and utterly disconnected from what is meant to be a visceral physical experience, of having one's forehead smeared with ash to the words remember 'you are but dust'. I think I can do without playing let's pretend games. 

I could jump ship so to speak, and go to a church where a Mass is happening live, but I am a parishioner here, first and a priest only when invited. I want to share the same experience of disappointment and deprivation at the reality of churches closed for worship when they needn't be. This experience isn't foreign to lay people at different times in life. It's easy to forget this when you've had the responsibilities and privileges of being a priest for over fifty years. The treasured rites and ceremonies of Catholic tradition have been part and parcel of my life and supported my faith journey for the past sixty years. This year will be different, stripped back to the foundation - scripture, tradition, reason, and the passage of time without add-ons. 'We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'.

At the moment I have no idea what Lenten exercises, if any, I am going to undertake. Much of the past eleven and a half months have felt like Lent, so much time in solitude, vigilant, exercising restraint and praying through the events of each day, though not without distractions, anxiety, boredom. Being back at home, secure and healthy with a degree of domestic routine stability is such a blessing. With far less to do in terms of ministry, it's more difficult to find a sense of meaning in life when I've been so fortunate to be active, even in retirement until now. I could do with a project or two, on which to focus me life creatively but opportunity and inspiration have so far escaped me. I'd rather do something to benefit others than just to satisfy my own needs. All I can do is wait and stay open who whatever emerges I guess.

Yesterday I ordered another batch of the sterile swabs I use for everyday wound dressing. Delivery takes two to three days, no need to pay for fast track 24 hour service. The delivery invoice said delivery will be tomorrow. We were both out walking when the courier van turned up a day early! Fortunately the firm has a local parcel collection point in a convenience store on Clare Road, ten minutes walk from home, and I was able to retrieve my ordered parcel at the end of the deliveryman's round. Impressive service from the supplier FirstAid4Less and the courier DPD.

In the evening, we watched a fascinating programme on BBC Four about excavations of stone age sites in the Orkneys. It's thought that British megalithic culture and stone circle sacred sites originated there and spread south into Scotland, Wales and England.  It's amazing the way current technologies and forensics are being applied to uncovering the past, supplying evidence that obliges us to re-think how civilization evolved in the British Isles. This was followed by a programme about Pluscarden Benedictine Monastery in Scotland, continuously in use as a monastery since its foundation in 1230. The monks wear the all white habit of Primitive Observance Benedictines, a sub-group of the family of Benedictines who live by the older more austere version of Benedict's rule which still involves routine subsistence manual labour. It was beautifully done, alluring to watch, but I quite after ten minute  and will view the series about monasteries on catch-up, rather than have a late night, and lose much of the morning as a result.

Can mutuality survive?

Another grey damp day, with sun peering through the cloud cover, milder and potentially wetter as cold air from Siberia is replaced by warm Atlantic air. I heard from Pidgeon's just after breakfast that this Friday's funeral has been postponed until the following Wednesday, pending clearance by the Coroner's office. It's likely that they are very busy dealing with the increased death rate due to covid-19, especially if someone hasn't been hospitalised or seen a doctor lately. 

The morning news reported that the third highest death rate in the UK is in the neighbouring Borough of Rhondda Cynon Taff. Not surprising, since this is still one of the poorest areas of Wales, with high rate of unemployment across the generation, persisting since coal mining ended forty years ago. The region has not been fully redeveloped industrially since then, with not enough new jobs or sufficient training for new work skills to meet the need. Many qualified people move away to find work and settle, or else commute to jobs outside the area. The poorly qualified are left behind, with few opportunities of making a better lives for themselves locally. It's a story that's true in other de-industrialised areas of the country as well. 

Will the alleviation of chronic poverty and associated health conditions feature in strategic planning for the hoped for 'new normal' once the pandemic has been brought under control? Or will those in national government again suffer the kind of amnesia or obstructiveness that has hindered regional government for decades? I still feel very resentful about the refusal to back Severn Barrage and Tidal Lagoon electricity generation projects, which could have created tens of thousands of new jobs and developed new skill sets for a lost generation of workers in the South Wales Valleys. 

Like many a colony, Wales was plundered for its water and its coal. Only a fraction of the wealth accrued from these natural resources has benefited the local economy in the long term. The depth of inequality perpetuated ensures that Britain cannot become a truly healthy society until there's a deep change in values and priorities, a shared change in consciousness about what matters. We've become such an individualistic society under the dominance of consumerism. The pandemic has taught many the value to seeking the common good and self-sacrifice but will this last, once life gets easier again. Can 'mutuality' survive and prevail? Reading the Psalms as I do daily is a sane reminder of how we fail to learn or forget the lessons adversity teaches, once we have it easy again. 

God is easily pushed from the centre to the periphery of life, conscience likewise, when we're distracted by selfish pursuits. Lent starts this Wednesday. The world's second Lent in lock-down. Because infection and death rates are easily, looking forward and making plans for better times comes to the fore. Will this distract us from reflecting spiritually on the present situation we're in?

Walking in the park this afternoon I met Peter and Jan walking their dogs. They come regularly but this is the first time we've bumped into each other for eighteen months or longer. I was pleased to hear that Jan has kept the Church of the Resurrection open for Sunday worship when it's not been required to close by law. They've been having Sunday congregations of sixty, and live streaming  the Parish Eucharist with congregation for those who cannot come. I wish we could have done that here in Canton. She too has her worries about the rushed implementation of the new Ministry Area plan, in common with other clergy who have to live with the consequences. Good to know I'm not alone with my misgivings. 

Quinquagesima Valentine

The Anglican church calendar for the Sunday before Lent or Quinquagesima Sunday makes no mention of it being Saint Valentine's Day today. The old Roman calendar remembers a martyr of the early Christian era whose feast coincides with a pagan celebration of romantic love and desire, and that's what persists in contemporary social custom, thanks to commercial marketing as much as anything else. The Revised Common Lectionary theme is about Christ's Transfiguration. The old Church in Wales 1984 Prayer Book readings which I used when reading through the day's Eucharist focus on Jesus foretelling his passion, and is accompanied by 1 Corinthians 13, extolling self-giving sacrificial love rather than romance. This suits me better - love that endures in hope and trust, despite the odds. What the world needs right now. 

I woke up to the news that the US Senate voted not to impeach Trump, which putting on record personal and video testimony of the frightful events of January 6th and all that led up to it. Trump is already out of his self-imposed silence declaring he will run for president again. President Biden's administration is going to need all that the power of that love which endures in hope and trust over the next three years. Will the truth prevail? Will lies and duplicity in public life be defeated? We can only pray that good-will not ill-will prevails.

I cooked lunch again today and then walked up to Llandaff Cathedral, something I haven't done since the current lock-down started. I was delighted to find that it was open for private prayer, so I donned a mask went in and spent ten minutes savouring the atmosphere and praying. It's a place with memories going back sixty years for me. When I got back, I listened to Evensong from Clare College Cambridge on the BBC Sounds app. It's broadcast at three o'clock, but I'm never ready to listen to it at that time, so catch-up is much appreciated.

I found another French crimmie to watch on Walter Presents, called 'The Red Shadows'. It was set on the Cote d'Azure to the west of Marseilles, just like the last series I watched. The story-line is also a mix of family drama and flic movie, and even features some of the same actors, thought not in the same roles, thankfully. An audience winning formula or what? I wonder. Later on, another episode of 'Finding Alice', which I'm watching more out of curiosity about its handling of bereavement, rather than eager interest. Its pace now makes it border on the dull.