At last, a return to a sunny blue sky day with a temperature of twenty degrees from mid morning to early evening. I had Sunday's ministry of the Word to complete with files of recorded readings to add to the assortment of variables that string together to give an audio version of the liturgical text. What is so easy and natural to do standing in front of a congregation requires attention to detail to produce an acceptable final version.
Late yesterday my idea of making another short video of reflective discursive praying - example not instruction - bore fruit in a text I felt able to record. Last time I used the improvised altar set up in the dining room. This time I wanted to use the Taize Icon of Friendship, a Coptic rendering of the icon of Christ with St Menas, one of the Desert Fathers. I found a photo image on the internet that I could display on my Chromebook with the sides curtained off and a cloth over the keyboard. Then it was possible to position my Sony HX90 to focus on the image and fill most of the screen.
With this arrangement it was a matter of pressing the camera video button and praying from behind it. This worked quite well until it came to turn off the camera. I couldn't see it clearly enough in the semi darkness to turn off without shaking the camera. This left me with a video needing the shaky silent bits trimmed off. I uploaded it to YouTube in the mistaken hope that there would be a simple video edit facility on the site. If there was, I couldn't find it. All you could edit was the information aka metadata. So I had to give up, as it was almost midnight.
I noticed an email had just come in from sister June. Earlier she'd written to tell me that her Tesco on-line shopping order would not now be delayed several weeks as there were late night delivery slots available and she'd secured one for tonight. She wrote to let me know all was well and that friendly neighbours had helped her to take the groceries into her flat and dispose of the delivery crates. That was a nice note to go to bed on.
This morning I installed PiTiV video editor on the Linux laptop. It worked just about worked, being far too under powered for heavy duty processing. That's always the problem with video. Anyway on the powerful office PC I found a simple video editing app to use, so simple that it took me a while to figure out how to operate it and do the simple thing I wanted, which was to trim the shaky bits of the video I'd made. Eventually it gave me what I wanted, and I ended up with a three minute video clip which was half the size of the original MP4 from the camera, so it took half the time to upload. After this, I had a link to email to Dave for posting on the church website. Pleased that I was able to get this done before completing the assembly of Sunday's Ministry of the Word.
I had long WhatsApp chats with Clare, with sister in law Ann and with Mother Frances, who called to check me out. It was lovely to talk 'shop' with her and hear about the Parish. I'm also lucky that I hear from several congregation members as well, all coping with social isolation in different ways and places, and interested to know how each other is getting on. Nobody is taking community for granted. This immense threat which we're now living with is teaching us to appreciate better people around us day by day, and that is doing wonders for social health. We've all be so preoccupied and driven by pressures of work and keeping up with entertainment and social demands in recent years that a period of time out makes us realise how superficial life has become under meaningless kinds of pressure.
Maaret came by mid afternoon, as I'd asked her to fill my empty containers of filtered drinking water at the filling station she goes to in San Josep. Why don't we go together, but in two cars, she suggested brilliantly. It was just what I needed, to drive out on a familiar road on a bright sunny day, to be shown how to find and use the municipal filtered water supply filling station on the outskirts of the pueblo.
The water station used by many people from further east on the island is on the outskirts of San Rafael, three times the distance away and tucked behind a gas station. The payment system is the same in both places, but the water supply in San Rafael is uncontrollable as water pipes have no tap attached, so juggling with water containers has to be practiced. I wasn't looking forward to doing that on my own. The San Josep pipes do have taps so filling is orderly and controllable.
The place was empty when we arrived. In fact, the town was deserted. It was at a sunny siesta time too. We stood and chatted standing by our cars at a safe social distance for ten minutes. I noticed a big sign over the water station saying it was under CCTV surveillance. That made me feel a little nervous, but I guess it was siesta time after all ... I drove home, my morale much boosted, and we had an interesting chat about the coping strategies people develop for meeting surreptitiously with friends, maintaining social distancing, chatting from inside cars in adjacent parking spaces.
Things seem to be a bit more relaxed now, less tense. It's been days since any new cases have been reported on Ibiza nor have there been any deaths. Maybe some relaxing of restrictions for children to go outdoors will be put in place next week, and more later if that has no adverse effects. So there is mild optimism after six weeks of total lock-down. As for international travel prospects, nothing on the horizon I suspect, until June, if not longer. Life may get easier. A return to public ministry may even be possible later in May, and that would be welcome. As for home-coming, I try not to think too much about it. I'm just grateful to be alive and well. For now.
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