Missed Assumption

The feast of the Assumption today. It's strange to be in a place in Spain where there's no sound of church bells carried on the breeze. Apparently Mercadona closes its stores for the fiesta as it's owned by a Christian family/company. I've yet to find the historic main parish church of this town. I wonder if there was a street procession of Our Lady somewhere in town today. I noticed nothing in the public realm to suggest there would be. Maybe I just looked in the wrong places.

A comfortably cool night, although the wind moaned around the house until the early hours, and started with renewed vigour as the sun rose. In between work spells, finishing this week's Morning Prayer YouTube upload and drafting next week's ready to record, I did a batch of bed linen washing, two lines full, which dried very rapidly. I received a nice long email from Ann and Paul, about their trip to the Orkneys, and in return told them all about life in Beverly Hills - or is it Beverly Hill?

Although it was 30C and clear skies mid afternoon, the blustery wind was thankfully cooling, so I walked to Carrefour and stocked up on fresh fruit, muesli and coconut milk for Clare> I emailed Peter Hammond and arranged to drop in and see Linda and himself in La Cala de Mijas on my way to the airport to collect Clare tomorrow afternoon. It'll be my first journey away from Estepona outside of work since I've been here, having resolved only to use the car for work, as if I was at home, If Clare fancies a trip somewhere, I'm willing to drive, but I've made an effort to renounce solo tourism. It's no pleasure anyway.

This evening, I went through the wedding anniversary and funeral service lined up for next weekend. Both require streamed YouTube music. Putting together a playlist is one thing. Having control over the content when music is punctuated with promotional material is another. Maybe I was more patient with what I was doing than is often the case, but I had a valuable minor success. 

I've used Audacity for at least a decade to edit sound files. In Ibiza, I did it kit which wasn't mine, using Audacity to record music streamed from YouTube, for one off audio services. Since then I've not been able to reproduce the feat, and it's been most frustrating. This time, as I had time to spare, I explored the options Audacity gives for controlling the laptop hardware, and found the right set of options to record a stream. Making an MP3 file from the digital file is simple. Now I have two sets of MP3 files ready to play, tucked away on the SD card of my Blackberry. I'll be able to play these through the new church Bluetooth sound system with ease and not need to risk using YouTube directly - although I'd prefer to have a hardwired cable naturally!

I went for an invigorating sunset walk in the wind along the senda litoral before switch on the telly and wasting an hour watching another improbable episode of 'Blacklist' on 5USA. Perpetually hard to make any sense of, this series.