This was a first for me. This evening I attended a 90th Birthday Party for a Masonic friend. He had invited his family, Friends, and even a table of S.R.I.A. people.

It was a very enjoyable evening, that kicked off with a concert by the Chester Male Voice Choir, who sang normal choir songs, along with songs from musicals, and even the Beatles!. 

Afterwards there was a great buffet, drinks, and a paper aeroplane competition, which was the best activity for a party ever! You had people drinking, which led to the air being full of all kinds of aeroplanes flying in all directions, making any movement a fun exercise.

I suggest everyone place a load of paper and pencils on every table at all future parties.

I have been a Freemason in the Province of North Wales for a couple of decades and have been a member of the North Wales Association for Masonic Study (NWAMS) for quite a while. It has taken me well over a decade to discover that the Association had previously released a few small booklets over the years. It has taken even longer to try and start to track down copies of those books, and I am not even 100% sure I have managed to track them all down.

Due to the lack of knowledge about these interesting and historical books among the Brethren of North Wales, along with the North Wales Association for Masonic Study celebrating its 60th anniversary, not to mention the Province of North Wales being just a few years away from celebrating its 300th anniversary. I decided it would be a good idea to ask for permission to update, modernise, and republish those old books to prevent them from being lost to time, and to enable them to be available for the use of future Masonic researchers.

Thankfully I was granted permission.

The first book in the series contains the booklet “The Background to the Rise of Freemasonry in North Wales in the 18th and 19th Centuries” by Harold Senogles, which was first published in 1972. This booklet itself builds off the Bicentenary Souvenir of The Province of North Wales 1727 – 1927 which was produced by R. H. Gough Smallwoood for the 200th anniversary of the Province of North Wales.

I hope this book will be a valuable resource for anyone wishing to research the Freemasonry in North Wales.

Enjoy your daily advancement in Masonic Knowledge with this look back into the history of the Province of North Wales.

Every so often I like to dip my toe into the world of IT Support, to remind myself how glad I am that I do not work in that field.

I recently checked the support departments ticketing system and spotted someone with email issues. I checked into the issue and found the following.

Company has two domains, one with us and one with someone else. Now one person at that company is trying to send emails from Domain 1 (Not with us) using Domain 2 (with us) domain servers.  I let them know, and sat back happy to have done my good dead for the year.

Only the Company did not understand, so emailed back asking for more information, I explained again using smaller words. They still did not understand, so they got their IT company to contact us. (I get to play now). Now their IT person simply demanded that we reset everything how it used to be when it just worked.

I explained that nothing had changed our end, we do not support their email client setup, and again stated what the error was.  This confused their IT person who then over 12 emails kept stating he understood but there was an email issue now that did not used to exist, so I needed to reset it back to how it used to be.

I looked up the IT guy, and he worked for an actual IT Company that advertises that they are experts in all fields of IT, and especially in cyber attacks, fighting off hackers, recovery from hacks, everything. So I tried again and used really small words. that the customer was sending emails from a domain we have nothing to do with through our servers which does not work. They need to send emails from the server associated with their domain. I then spent the next half hour laughing loudly when this super qualified IT expert responded.

“To clarify my customer does not have to use an email server as they using 365”

I had to explain to an IT expert that 365 setup on outlook still uses servers, Microsoft email servers. And if they send the emails with the Microsoft 365 servers, and not ours then the emails will work.

Do modern day IT experts get their knowledge and qualifications in the bottom of a cereal box, like we older ones got our Cap’n Crunch whistles?

​This evening I attended Wrexhamian Royal Arch Chapter at the Maesgwyn Hall, to give a talk.

The Chapter had nothing planned for the evening, so Scribe Ezra contacted me a couple of weeks ago to ask if I could arrange something for the evening. I of course said yes, since we should all be getting a daily advancement in Masonic Knowledge. I asked if they had anything in particular that they would like a talk on, and I was informed it was my choice.

I considered multiple options for a topic, before discussing it with the Sunday Evening Beer club, and finally settling for “The Missing Word on the Plate of Gold”.

The talk was about what used to be on the plate of gold, and the meaning and symbolism behind it all, and when it changed to what we have today, and more importantly, why it had to change.