Getting hooked up

We had a slow, quiet Saturday, soaking up the heat. Clare is enjoying swimming in the communal pool behind the house, and it's doing her shoulder injury a power of good. Eating outdoors in the shade is a must whenever possible, although we've both noticed how much more noisier the environment is that it seemed when we were here first at Easter. Then it occurred to me that there's bound to be a much higher volume of motorway traffic this weekend and next, with holidaymakers coming and going. It's not a mighty roar we hear, it's more like the sound of mountain river, some distance away. The highway runs past our housing estate about two hundred metres away down a deep steep embankment which filters out much of the noise. Only occasionally can one identify the sound of a heavy vehicle or the high pitched whine of a motorbike. 

Reflecting on the notion that the N340/A7 must be one of the busiest highways in southern Europe at this time of year gave me an idea for tomorrow's sermon - about St Bartholemew and other apostles going out along the trade routes of the ancient world to evangelise in far flung places.

We took our first late afternoon stroll along a beach that was still crowded, even though most of it was now in shadow. The sun masked by the high rise buildings only lit up the water's edge. Several generations of a family relaxing, reading, talking, playing games, playing with their mobile phones. This month is when Madrid empties, and takes up residence on the sea shore. The Brits, Germans and Scandinavians who spend much of the colder part of the year hereabouts tend to go home to enjoy a traditional summer up North, come rain or come shine.

In the evening I finally made an effort to get to grips with finding BBC4 to watch the 'Inspector Montalbano' series repeat. Since we were last here, a 'Minix' branded internet TV box has been installed. It's very small and has a small, minimalist remote control device, which had to be learned first. The system is driven by a fairly familiar Android based user interface. The broadband speed is good enough to avoid latency, but Minix itself works rather slowly when it comes to acquiring a selected TV channel, so if you press a wrong button it can take an age to figure out what's gone wrong. Several reboots were required in the course of getting the hang of it, but in the end it delivered on time as promised.