Monday 6 April 2020

State of Alarm - day twenty two

It was sunny again and slightly warmer for much of the day. I got the evening's address off to Dave, and worked on Tuesday's address later in the day. Since I've been here, walking around the garden to the accompaniment of music on my phone, I have discovered some of it doesn't play because it's in the Microsoft proprietary .wma file format, so it needs converting. The software is cloud based and works fairly well, but it's fiddly and time consuming a job I've been putting off. I've converted three albums since I've been here, and there are more. Kath sent me a download link to stuff in her music software library, and some of those files are in an assortment of formats which will need converting so at least when I have time to spare, I can do this and enjoy listening to the result on my daily 10k.

When I joined the Zoom prayer group this evening, I couldn't get the sound to work, and I have no idea if anyone could hear me. I tried everything I could think of to remedy this but without success, so in the end I just sat and prayed in silence for the forty minute duration. Everyone disappeared from the at the forty minute cut off except me! Very odd, and no idea how or why.

I was sad to learn this evening that the Costa Azahar Chaplaincy is closing down in the summer as its numbers and finances no longer make it possible to pay to support  a part time priest and all the other costs of offering services, where there's no place of worship which is owned. I think this is a scenario which will be repeated in France as well as Spain, where brexit is impacting on ex-pat life as well as the huge economic blow inflicted by covid-19. I feel sure that church life won't just die, but will mutate into new forms that won't look quite so Anglican, but will be both lay led and local.

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