... and Rest!

One of the facets of the working life that I'm a little bit sorry to lose is 'knocking-off time'.  Even with such an unpredictable working life as mine was, there was always a point when the van was parked and the engine switched off.  These days, I can sit at my desk from the end of morning prayers until bedtime ... meal preparations apart.  That's anything up to fifteen hours a day, if I should choose, with no one to tell me off and no one - like a certain dear man who died recently and who, some years ago, did just that - to see the lights on and come and tell me, "Go home, Brian; you don't have to be here at 10:30 at night!"

So, it's been a busy week; a week of endings, beginnings and plans for the future.

Many hours a week have been spent lately on family history; not my own exactly, but that of an old lady who died last October.  Her great-uncle was my great-grandmother's brother-in-law, so she was not related to me. However, I'm in touch with a friend in Canada who is her second cousin once removed (I think!) and, he having confessed that some of the information he'd given me several years ago might contain errors, I decided to carry out a major exercise into this family to see just what is and what is not correct.

This exercise is nearing completion and, for a couple of weeks now, I've been saying, 'one more push and it's done' only to find another little puzzle that takes hours rather than minutes to resolve.  This afternoon, however, I metaphorically 'pulled the plug' on it.  There's now no more data to add, and all that remains is to determine just how to present the results in a form that can be transmitted by e-mail and overcome the absence of all the links that won't be passed on once the files leave my computer.  While I dare not make any actual promises, I firmly believe that by this time next week this will all have happened.

So that's one major ending.  A minor one to keep it company has been the final completion of lesson twelve of the Welsh course.  It culminated in the longest translation exercise I've faced so far, and out of 33 sentences, 29 were either completely correct or contained only minor vocabulary variations, things like 'small' for 'little', 'not any' for 'no', and so on.  I'm beginning to feel that I'm really making headway there.

And the beginnings?  Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that most of these are church connected.  Wednesday saw the first of a series of supper discussions, at which about forty of us shared a meal in the church hall, and were then joined by a handful of others who weren't able to make the meal, but wanted to take part in the discussion.  Unlike last year, I was able to go along slightly earlier and help make the place ready.  To complement this during Lent our prayer gatherings, which usually take place at 7.0, 1.0 and 7.0 on the last Friday of the month, are happening every Friday beginning today.

Yesterday's post brought me the long-awaited cheque from the insurers of my lately-lamented work van.  Fortunately, the brokers had placed cover with one of the very few companies who are prepared to refund unused premiums on a day-for-day basis so, with less than two months having elapsed, the sum was not inconsiderable, albeit I had had to wait over two months for it to arrive!  Perhaps rashly - I hope not - I decided to treat myself to a few pleasures on the back of it.  I've booked a trip to London in a couple of weeks to attend a pair of (free) family history talks, and a seat at the play 'Crosslight', which will be performed later next month by a national company who have included a church in Letchworth in a country-wide tour.

I've also started thinking about where to take the motorhome later in the year, but that's all speculation at the moment, so more news on that front when things begin to take shape.  Roll on summer!