I went to the GP surgery after breakfast this morning for an 'official' blood pressure check. It's still higher than it should be though not as bad as it was last time I attended three or four months ago. Then I drove to Thornhill for the bi-lingual funeral I've been preparing for the past few days, after rehearsing Welsh texts a few times, to be sure to get the flow and emphasis right when reading to a congregation. I just don't get the amount of practice I need with liturgical Welsh to really develop me confidence, so I was glad to agree to take on this assignment. There were eighteen mourners and thankfully, I didn't stumble or mumble my words. I had an appreciative text message from the chief mourner later in the day.
I went out walking after lunch while Clare was having her little siesta. About an hour later, we met on the Taffside path and walked home together. I watched this week's episode of 'New Amsterdam' on More Four catchup. I thought number ten might be the last episode but there are another eight to come in series two. On US networks and streaming services series three is running, episodes made in the age of Coronavirus. Each week seems to spotlight different social and moral issues a big NYC public hospital has to deal with, so many of them poverty related. It isn't shy about portraying medical heroes as 'wounded healers'. It's my Friday tea-time treat now.
This evening I learned about WOW (Wales One World) festival of international movies an annual fiesta that been running for some time. Clare heard about an award winning Argentinian film called 'Delfin' that she was keen to watch, and as it was available to stream from the festival website we watched it together. I didn't succeed in finding how to display the stream on our 'smart' telly, so we watched on a Chromebook.
On my seven year old one with 2GB memory the display stuttered, so we changed to the two year old one with 4GB and that worked fine. Strangely enough the old one streams most stuff from iPlayer or other TV channel streaming services without stuttering, and just occasionally latency at peak demand times. These must be designed to run on low specification devices. The WOW streaming applet needs more hardware resources to run properly. What can be streamed with average broadband these days is truly remarkable, but such variations in performance are inevitable.
Delfin is the name of the eleven year old boy who is the the subject of the story. He wants to learn how to play a wind instrument and improvises for himself a French horn, using a plastic hose and a funnel. For a local town fiesta he borrows the school's French horn and acquits himself well accompanying the singing of what we think is the national anthem. He sets his heart on auditioning for a regional youth orchestra in the regional capital 30 miles away.
His widowed father lets him down so he hitch-hikes to the audition. He doesn't realise he needs to be able to read music to play in an orchestra, and fails the audition. He lives in a rural area where there are no instrument teachers and no music teachers. There's a glimmer of hope at the end when his father decides they should move to a city where maybe there will be some opportunity. It will be up to Delfin to make something happen for himself, his father doesn't have the same determination as he does.
The story is a beautifully told moving portrayal of rural poverty and what it means. It evokes admiration rather than pity for people whose lives lack security and stability. Best of all, for me this was an encouraging experience with a Spanish language move. Rural Latin American Spanish is spoken clearly and not nearly as fast as in the Iberian peninsula, so I could enjoy understanding fairly well what was said, and not being so dependent on the subtitles. So my Spanish comprehension getting almost as good as my French and this make viewing movies in those languages more pleasant and attractive.
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