Right through the day until just before sunset it's been overcast, cool and quite humid, an unusual variant on Costa weather. I had another much needed long night's sleep and then a rush to feed myself and get ready to drive into town by ten for a meeting with Ian's daughters to plan tomorrow's funeral. I was almost on time, a couple of minutes late. We talked for over an hour and assembled an order of service. After we parted company I went to the Church Shop to chat with the volunteers on duty.
While I was there I wrote up my notes from the meeting and sent them to Elizabeth and Helena. I also needed to contact the funeral arranger, as he had not contacted me. The only tend to call a cleric to engage their services. If they know who is taking the funeral they don't bother. I couldn't call him as the funeral arranger's phone only responds to written WhatsApp messages. I wrote a message in Spanish confirming my attendance, and enquiring about facilities for attaching to the crem's audio-visual resources for a video slide show and playing the digital music we'd selected. It turns out there's an extra charge for this and as ever with digital infrastructure, no guarantee of compatibility or that it will work anyhow. So we declined the offer, and will make do with music played from a phone through a bluetooth speaker.
When the shop shut at one thirty, I went to Biznaga, treated myself to a tapas lunch again, and relaxed for the hour until it was time to prepare for the wedding. I sat in a quiet corner of the San Salvador church and spent time praying. A group of several girls aged about ten who were looking around the church accosted me, and asked if I was the priest of this church. I explained that I was an Anglican visitor, come to officiate at a wedding. They said thank you politely and went on their way, having understood me, I think!
A concert violinist was engaged to provide the wedding music, a Japanese man. He used a bluetooth speaker attached to his phone to play backing tracks for each of the pieces he played, and on his violin he had a bluetooth microphone feeding into his sound system. Sophisticated kit.
There were about thirty for the wedding with more than half a dozen bridesmaids and maids of honour, coached by the wedding arranger to walk tall in a stately fashion as they each proceeded slowly down the aisle and separately, before the bride appeared on her father's arm. It was a relaxed and happy event with smiles and much laughter once the formal walking part was over. Everyone seemed to enjoy being there and I enjoyed playing my part. It's the first wedding I've done since I was in Montreux in summer 2018, when the anal abscess started to effect me painfully and make me feel ill.. How I got through the two weddings I had to do, I don't know. Thank God I'm a lot fitter nowadays.
Having said that, I was so tired when the wedding was over, and glad to slip away and drive back to the Church House, but already preoccupied with the music for tomorrow's funeral. Sure the internet is that much more stable and ubiquitous these days, but I still don't trust a phone or a YouTube server not to halt in middle of the play list and not start up again. So, I found the chosen tracks and streamed them to Audacity to create a file which I would make into an MP3, to work independently of the internet as a one-off backup system. Helena got in touch to say they had acquired a bluetooth speaker to use at the funeral, attached to a phone with the playlist or the stored selected tracks. We're all set up now, and I won't have to worry any more.
I cooked a chicken veggie and pasta dish for supper, then went for a walk up the hill for half an hour, definitely too tired to complete my daily target step quota. Never mind. The sky was clear again, and the large tailed nightjar was upon the TV antenna at three minutes past ten, sound like it was taping out Morse Code. Instead of sounding for a minute tonight, it went on for about fifteen. It must be something to do with there being a clear sky again. And now bed, achingly tired.
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