Palm Sunday overtime

A lovely sunny morning, if cold, just right for my first proper outing in a fortnight, to celebrate Mass at St German's. We started the Palm Procession with the blessing ceremony in the church garden, which looks great at the moment, clean and well cared for. There were twenty seven of us and a revised version of the Passion Gospel according to St Luke prepared by James involved a third of the congregation as readers. It was one of those 'bonding' experiences which really brings out the best in a church community, whether it's a small number, or tens of thousands. For me it's the same experience as standing in the street among the crowds watching Semana Santa processions in Malaga.

After lunch, I did another two hours work to complete the visuals for Good Friday before going for a walk. I noticed the Snoopy statue near Cafe Castan was missing, with a note on the empty plinth saying it had been taken away for repairs. That's after three days in the wild. It's too tempting for the idle handed youth who like to hang near the cafe to take advantage of its free wi-fi at night.

Ukrainian workers report that over twelve hundred dead civilians have been counted in areas around Kyiv which Russian troops invaded fought over and then retreated from. Moscow denies everything. An army general has been appointed to lead the forces aiming to annexe the Donbass region who was instrumental in the devastating siege of Aleppo and all the war crimes committed there.  Boris Johnson has paid a visit to Ukraine this weekend. Archbishop Rowan goes with a group of church leaders this week. 

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Austria is going to visit Mr Putin in the Kremlin. Since Cold War, Austria has been not only a neutral country, but strictly non-aligned, in a deal to ward off the Soviet threat. This means there are channels of communication with Russia uniquely open to Austria. Switzerland, while also neutral, has by its sanctions policy and support for human rights concerns, is in effect aligned to the West, though not closed to Russia, as witnessed by the Russian citizens and their wealth domiciled there. But can anything be done to stop the onslaught on Ukraine without conflict escalating dangerously?

There was nothing of interest on telly this evening, and I try not to spend too much time glue to 24/7 news as it's not good for the soul. So, after supper I got on with work on the audio side of the Good Friday service, finding hymns on-line making recordings and editing for length, seventeen minutes worth of use in between readings. It took three hours. It wasn't very easy, and it was only when I went up to bed that I remembered an occasion when I'd used the Twisted Wave app on my Chromebook and produced a much better quality of sound file than was possible by the convoluted method I was using - partly as a consequence of my not being able to configure Audacity properly. I don't know why I failed on a new more powerful machine, but it may have something to do with the hardware that I don't understand. Much work done today, and a fair amont of progress, which is pleasing.

Saturday surprises

Weekend late lie-in, followed by pancake breakfast then a surprise present from Clare, a new Remington Electric shaver to replace the one I bought in a Chinese emporium in Nerja back in 2013, now incapable of holding a charge for much longer than it takes to do a rough shave. I'm delighted. It's so sophisticated compared to ones I've had in the past.

Before lunch, I edited next week's Morning Prayer sound files, recorded in bed last night. I decided to add a suitable short music clip to the end of the recording and went through the routine I normally follow, using YouTube and Audacity. For some reason I couldn't figure out, the sound quality was awful. After several fails, I did the same on my Chromebook but using the Chrome sound editing on line plug-in called 'Twisted Wave', which worked perfectly first go. 

The app was already attached to my Chrome browser ecosystem (reproduced on each Chrome using device), but I hadn't used it since installing it in Ibiza, where I used it very little, as the Chromebook I has with me was old and not really powerful enough. On the new Chromebook it works a treat, and transferring the sound file captured to Google Drive made it easy to send to any other operating platform.

After lunch, a walk into the city centre, busy and crowded with shoppers, more so than metropolitan media reports were alleging. Will there be added restrictions in the next few days avoid a catastrophic spread of omicron covid overwhelming hospitals? The German tavern and eaterie among the Christmas Market stalls were crowded, but more people were wearing masks on the street and in the shops than  previously. I took a few photos, bought some more Christmas cards, a new pair of shoes and Clare's Christmas present before catching a surprisingly empty 66 bus home.

Lord Frost, the government's chief negotiator with the EU has resigned, openly distancing himself from Boris Johnson's leadership on policy grounds, yet more evidence of loss of confidence in his leadership. This isn't the best of times for such a crisis, though I believe the country is better off without such a hard line anti-EU libertarian at the front line in relationships with our nearest continental neighbours.

Although Jasmine isn't coming over now, Clare is still diligently practicing piano accompaniment to the recordings Jas made for her, so this evening I joined in on guitar. For the moment my hands aren't too afflicted with rheumatic pains interfering with the physical recall of correct chord shapes when I play. It was fun. I miss playing, but for ages have been deterred from making the effort. But all is not lost.

In the evening, some preparatory work on a Christmastide audio reflection, then an hour trying to catch up on a Danish crime drama 'When the dust settles' about what happens before and after  a terrorist attack on a restaurant. It's very complex with eight (I think) overlapping story lines which observe a range of social issues that reflect contemporary society at close range. Not sure I can cope with this!

Conservation Art

Another bright day to delight in, with a walk in the park before cooking lunch. I've got a little learning project going at the moment, taking photos of the spire of Llandaff Cathedral from the far end of the park with three different cameras and five telephoto lenses. I'm curious about what lenses 'see' in both similar and different lighting conditions, how colour and sharpness vary. There's much I can learn best by doing and diligent observation, I think it's worth the effort.

After a post lunch siesta I walked down to Cardiff Castle to take a look at the huge shiny sculpture by Sarah Wardlaw of a red kite exhibited outside the main gate. It's a symbol representing RSPB Cymru, and is placed there at the launch of a conservation campaign entitled 'Revive our World'. In the run up to the Senedd elections in two weeks time, RSPB Cymru is calling upon the next Welsh government to implement a green recovery plan, in response to the climate and ecosystem crisis the world faces. 

The red kite symbolises what becomes possible when people really care about nature. Over the past thirty years, this kingpin species of raptor has gone from near extinction to 2,500 breeding pairs in Wales, thanks to the initial passion of one mid Wales farmer whose kite feeding program caught the imagination of many and ended up becoming a local visitor attraction. East Anglia has seen significant growth in the numbers of breeding avocets, which had suffered for centuries due to draining of coastal saline ecosystems. Work to restore these in designated conservation areas has resulted in a reversal of decline. The avocet with its long legs and turned up bill is the English RSPB totem species.

It's just occurred to me, this is the first time in several years that I've posted a photo to this blog. I used to add photos often, especially when I was abroad on locum duty, and I had time to spare to download, edit and re-size a photo to the correct size for this purpose. The process could be rather fiddly if I had first to edit and transfer a picture from another device, and did it less frequently when I was busy, and then got out of the habit altogether. I don't exactly know know when it happened, but only recently have I noticed a change in the file management user interface which the Chromebook uses to display photos. There used to be basic editing tools as part of it, but if needs be, it was better to use a proper web app like Pixlr to re-size a photo accurately. I've just discovered that this can be done using what Chrome itself provides, this makes adding photos to a Blogger post smooth and seamless. It's a much appreciated improvement to workflow.

Admiration for the poor

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.

Losing a grip on contagion

This morning I worked on the second of the four offices of Morning Prayer that I have to prepare for the week before Christmas. I'd just completed it at half past eleven when my Chromebook froze on me. Both Google Docs and Drive were inaccessible. I had no idea whether it was a fault in the device or on-line, but soon enough my newsfeed was reporting a global Google services outage, which made the afternoon news broadcasts, but by that time it had been fixed and I was able to access the document in question and it was undamaged, just as it had been when I finished it.

On reflection I thought how foolish it was to rely so heavily on Cloud storage. No matter how good and generally glitch free it can be, the bottom line is that I'm not in full control of my own work. All that's needed is to start a document and save it to the memory of the device itself or better still to its SD card extension, as the card can be removed and used on another device instead. I must change working habits to this effect, as it would be possible to work on a document stored on the device, even when off-line, even given the high web dependency of a Chromebook.

Yesterday evening before settling down to watch telly, I finally got around to putting cards and letters in the envelopes labelled last week to finish the job. After lunch I took them to Canton Post Office. Outside eight people were queuing. The prospect of a long wait to be served pushed me to walk half a mile up the road to Victoria Park Post Office, where only four people were queuing. I bought stamps for the fifty odd cards I had to send, five to Switzerland and forty five to UK addresses, but had to put the stamps on the envelopes outside as there was no room to do this inside. 

I used the top of a telephone relay cabinet next to the building as a work surface, and popped them in the posting box in batches as I proceeded, grateful that it was dry and not windy. By the time I'd finished, the queue outside had eight people waiting, and when I walked back past Canton Post Office fifteen people were waiting. I was lucky to have gone out before most people had finished their lunch.

Now there's the digital greetings to do, and a cross-checking interrogation from Clare to ensure that I have registered this year's changes of address. There are always a few.

Then, a quick visit to Tesco's for some wine, and after taking it home, as circuit of the park past the crab apple trees, as Clare reported that apples were beginning to fall from the tree which hadn't been stripped bare. I took my Reacher device along to help me grab hold of branches and pull them down to get at high level fruit. It wasn't that good, but I did gather about 250 grams worth, so now we have 400 grams to  turn into jelly and puree. And now I feel stiff all over from all the athletic effort of stretching up to grab branches. I hate being old.

More surges in infection rates locally and particularly in the South East of England, and probably easing of restrictions over Christmas may get cut back nationally as the heath services are already getting over-stretched in a worrying way. Early closure of schools and reverting to on-line learning is being ordered in England, and was already put in place in Wales last week. Would that schooling was better geared up to this change, and that everyone had equal access to digital equipment and service provision, but they don't. 

The country is not being well served by reactive policies. Our leaders are quite nervous about imposing proactive stricter measures for fear of push-back from the public. No measures are really adequate to address the complexity of the problems we're facing right now. This is a long a steep learning curve for people at every level of society, leaders and the led.

 

Home and dry, nevertheless

After the torrential rain and flooded roads a few days ago, and prospect of more rain to come, we were left feeling uncertain about travelling home on Tuesday morning. As there were no extreme weather warnings for today, we decided to leave today instead, and packed after breakfast. Then the sun came out, so we walked on the beach and through the dunes for a couple of hours before lunch and then headed for home. There were only a few light showers all day! 

Clare was happy to return early as she has extra preparations to make for school this week. I did the shopping, then uploaded to Google Photos 290-odd pictures from our Oxwich stay, and edited them on-line. In the absence of a wi-fi connection, there was no point squandering mobile phone data allowance, especially given the flaky signal we had there. I tried old-school editing on the Linux laptop I took with me, but although the software is good, the poor resolution display on a machine nearly ten years old delivered misleading colour rendering, especially with large high quality photos.

I indulged myself by taking four cameras with me and using them in different situations, just for interest, as taking them by car wasn't a burden. With a poor display screen, comparing them was unsatisfactory, so I transferred the entire folder of these photos to the SD card on my Blackberry, for viewing purposes. As this is a modern sharp high resolution screen on a powerful device, the viewing experience was impressive, despite being small. It revealed mistakes I had made in trying to adjust photos using a screen not really fit for purpose, and that convinced me to leave editing until I could do so at home using a better screen. 

The laptop is OK for writing but not for editing photos. I still regret losing to a beer spillage while working a similarly aged Dell XPS a few years ago, which had a high res screen and ran Windows and Linux well. In most ways a Chromebook fits the bill. It's designed for 'always online' use, and can be used off-line, although differences between modes of use are a limitation, especially when it comes to saving a copy of work on a USB device for transfer. It's do-able, but calls for vigilance. 

Although 'always online' is the new normal with Windows, files created by use of the device's own apps are saved first to the device, easy to copy for transfer, and then  sync'd if/when it's on-line. For Chromebooks, it's the opposite way around. Normally this does not matter, but this difference becomes a noticeable irritant if working offline is inevitable.

Still, it's back to digital normal again now. It was noticeable that after powering up the router and signal booster on arriving home, that we were attached to the internet again within minutes, while the EE signal booster, which runs via the router, and normally runs very well, took several hours to settle down and deliver the usual service. Again, it's one of these things you don't notice, if you neither send nor receive mobile phone calls or texts in the house while the network sorts itself out and re-attaches the device. 

It's confusing if you find you cannot make a mobile call, and confusion is compounded nowadays as we can make WhatsApp or Skype calls via wi-fi as well as direct mobile phone calls. It's easy enough to forget or confuse what medium you're using, when not looking at the phone. That's if you've bothered to register the difference between the two services anyway.

I managed to get another couple of hours writing my latest story, which continues to grow in a way which keeps me interested and motivated. I had no idea when I started where this would take me. It's a story about a traveller, and while I have ideas about how it will end, I'm still not sure how long it will take or how to close the circle. What an adventure!

Chrome undersold?

Although it was another overcast day, it remained warm enough to be out doors with just a jacket, and later in the day, without a pullover. A good day for walking. I did the weekly shop before lunch and after lunch a walk through the park to town along the river. I was amazed to see large several family groups of ducks, broods of six to eight growing flight plumage now, Mallards, Mergansers, gulls as all out on the water foraging, establishing their territories. I must have counted altogether about fifty new birds in half a dozen families, and few good photos out of many taken. I took my HX300 with me as well as my HX90, needing its longer range. I'm more used to it and get better photos in the long zoom range. The HX90 is just a bit lighter and smaller than its predecessor and I haven't yet got the steadiness of hand with it as I had with the old HX50.

Being grounded by my aliment here in Cardiff over the past nine months has been very frustrating for someone with euro-wanderlust like me, but being out and about in the park with a camera most days has reaped a certain rewarding satisfaction. Looking back over three seasons photographs of familiar scenes is a pleasure in its own right. I'm not a great fan of any place where mountains are distant and hardly visible. It's been a matter of coming to terms with living in an ancient flood plain with just meadows and trees. 

I'll never love my nieghbourhood environment as much as the Valleys, the Beacons, Snowdonia or our Jurassic coastline, but with the passage of time, more beautiful aspects of low lying lands reveal themselves. I suppose that's what learning to contemplate is about, watching, waiting, being open, learning to receive, to notice and appreciate.

In town I popped into John Lewis', aware that the summer sale was starting from my Friday visit. This is the time, I find, to pick up overstocked tech clearance bargains. I was disappointed not to see any Chromebooks discounted before, but today, there was an array of bargains, from entry level up to high spec ones. The prices may still be a bit high and come down later towards the end of sale time.  

Looking at the labels on the boxes, often shows they've been 'returned unwanted' - meaning, I suspect that they have been bought by people who are attracted by their good looks, but can't understand it's not the Windows machine they're used to, and don't have the patience to learn how to benefit from it. 

In my opinion, Chromebook marketing and promotion across Europe generally is poor. No attempt is made to educate potential new users in the benefits of using Chrome OS, how fast, and simple it is, how easy it is to get used to it. When you visit Currys/PC World and examine product labels for their Chromebooks on offer, you find they speak about Chromebooks having 'built-in anti-virus'. This is misleading. Chrome OS is resistant to viruses designed to exploit Windows or Mac vulnerabilities. 

A malware laden file wouldn't trigger an attack, but, forwarded to a third party, it would still be toxic. It's possible the system's Chrome browser, although generally very secure, could be compromised to deliver spam in an uncontrolled way. This can either be remedied by restarting Chrome browser, or Chromebook, or in extremis, restoring to its pristine condition by a 'Powerwash' - the equivalent of a Windows system reset. The former takes minutes, the latter can take hours. 

All too often the way Windows works gets in the user's way, with too much distracting information imposing itself on work in progress. It's possible to switch off many of the notification routines, but it's unclear how once you get started and come across new ones. Users should be given a choice from the outset to reverse the always-on default. I still live in hope of converting my sister June to Chromebook use. It would take away so many of her annoyances and anxieties about computer use.

    

Techy day

A clinic visit Friday morning, then bag packing and loading up the car for our late afternoon drive to Kenilworth for the weekend. In the afternoon, I went about resetting my Windows 10 laptop for use by Rhiannon, as she's not been getting on well with the little HP laptop I gave her a few years ago. This innocuous task proved to be something of a nightmare, taking five hours for a scrupulous date file wipe and re-installation of the operating system. I could have set up four Linux devices from scratch in that amount of time. I hadn't suspected, and was reluctant to abort the process in case this would leave me with an unusable Windows machine. So we left two hours late, much to Clare's exasperation, unfortunately.

The roads were quiet all the way there, but I drove less than half the distance, as I couldn't settle comfortably (and therefore safely) in the driving seat for a sustainable length of time. It happens like this occasionally, and it's difficult to work out the reason for it. Thankfully, Clare is still confident driving on familiar routes. We arrived just as 'The Archers' ended on the radio, and soon sat down to a delicious risotto supper and a couple of superb bottles of 'Easter' wine - a Rioja and a Primitivo. There was lots of catch up on, with Kath, Anto and Rhiannon back from Sta Pola the previous day, with photos to show, and grumbles about the horrid wet and windy weather they had there, in contrast to the hot and sunny weather here in the UK, a reversal of usual conditions this time of year.

I had a message from Sheila's son John to tell me she had died early this morning in Holme Tower. The funeral is proposed for 9th May. I wrote and told Laura, feeling sad for her that her dear friend didn't live to see her one last time, and that she will have to return to Romania before Sheila can be last to rest. They'd known each other for fourteen years, since Laura met her during a specialist placement in geriatric medicine at Llandough Hospital. They became firm friends, despite the age difference between them, and had been part of the reason for her annual return trips to Cardiff.

I spent a good deal of Saturday setting up Rhiannon's account on her new computer, and trying to figure out what the problem was with her previous one. I found that her OneDrive account was full, mostly with videos she'd taken, so there was no room for scores of folders containing photos she'd taken in recent years, over sixty gigabytes in fact. These were only on the laptop drive. I decanted all these, plus documents on to a portable storage drive and transferred them to the new device. 

Then there was another little Acer laptop to update and reclaim, which I loaned Kath last year when her own laptop keyboard started malfunctioning. She doesn't need it any longer, as she's converted all her work flow entirely to Mac, with a desktop Mac Mini and a Macbook Air. Good luck to her. I was tempted to buy a classic second hand Macbook a couple of weeks ago, but relented. For me it's not worth the expense, with so little written work coming my way these days, and little else that needs more than a Chromebook to get done. I maintain Windows and Linux devices to keep my skill set alive, for when I get asked for techy type help.

In the evening, I watched 'Follow the Money' using the tidies and updated little HP laptop, as others wanted to watch something different on telly.

Post surgical briefing

We drove to UHW Heath hospital this morning to meet colorectal consultant surgeon Mrs Cornish during her day on Duthie Ward. We had a good question and answer session before she examined me, thoroughly and with surprising vigour, which left me feeling a little bruised. At least, she was satisfied with progress so far, and now I know much better where I stand. Although she's pleased, the process isn't going to be as straightforward as I originally thought. I may need several more minor ops over this year for complete success in healing, because of the complexity of the condition when finally treated properly. It depends on what hidden pockets of infection the next MRI scan reveals, following the op expected in 4 weeks time. This will modify if not remove the two Seton's sutures in place. For some poor folk such hidden sources of nastiness don't show, and they have to endure with further occasional outbreaks for life. 

Completely successful treatment without recurrence it seems is a challenge, and that's where FIAT 500 comes in. Not the car, but a collaborative international surgical research programme on fistula treatment. If I got the story right, I think it stands for Fistula Intervention Alternative Treatments. 500 is the number of patients being followed, with four strategies for dealing surgically with fistula damage assessed to ascertain which treatment path offers the best outcome. This shows the determination and effort going into dealing with what seems to have become a common chronic ailment soaking up medical resources. Finding the most effective approach will benefit patients and the economics of medical care. 

Although I am stuck with the sutures for the time being, the next op will make them more easy to manage and liveable with. So, travel afar may be possible and even insurable later on this year. if it's a 'managed condition'. Apparently, that's an acceptable risk to insurers, something I never needed to know before! I was reassured that the next op wouldn't call for any change in scheduled duties. Just like last time in fact. It's good to know. I'd be very sad not to able to play an active part in Parish observances of Passiontide and Easter, a favourite time of year for me. 

This was a good meeting. I feel that for the first time I have gained an understanding of the process of this treatment. I can accept the uncertainties, possible reasons for things not going according to plan, and what I need to continue doing to optimise the path to healing. This makes me cheerful, in spite of the fact that it may take much longer than I hoped.

After lunch, it was Clare's turn to be driven by me back to UHW for an eye appointment, fitted in to a schedule already overcrowded by the cancellation of a previous clinic. I drove  from the hospital down to Newport Road retail park to visit the big Currys PC World superstore there to see what's new and what's on offer. I was interested to see some HP Chromebooks on sale there, as well as Acer and Asus offerings, though no sign of Lenovo or Dell Chromebook models. I've only seen the stylish Acer and Asus models in the city centre store. Sadly consumer demand for Chromebooks seems to be poor in this country, despite them being far more hassle free than Windows devices.

Talking of poor demand, the company which acquired Staples business supplies stores and rebranded them 'Office Outlet' stores has gone into liquidation. I thought their prices too were high and range of product choices too low to be worth the effort when on-line bulk buying is so convenient, as long as you have someone available to await delivery. So I'm not surprised this business failed.

This consumer digital superstore was almost empty. Maybe it's busier at weekends or evenings. As is being said often these day, retail businesses have becoming like real world showrooms as more trade is done on-line. I wonder if Currys-PC World digital sales cover the cost of maintaining such huge retail outlets? Will this be a next casualty of the digital shopping revolution? After an hour or so of mooching around a store with lots of bright snazzy new products, none of which I was tempted to buy, Clare called me to return and collect her from UHW, after her long wait to be seen. We got back in time for her to sort herself out and leave for choir rehearsal.

Homeward bound

Thanks to having booked an afternoon flight, I had the leisure of a whole morning to pack, strip the bed, take the recycling and rubbish out to the collecting point nearby, before walking to Montreux gare. I got there and booked my ticket early enough to catch the through train to Geneva airport, but found this had been cancelled, and replaced by a stopping train as far as Lausanne, where a choice of trains would to get me there would be possible. I think there are at least four every hour. I didn't need to catch this, but thought - what if the train 20 minutes later I planned to catch was cancelled as well? Whatever the reason for one cancellation, there's no guarantee it won't be followed by another, so I took the stopping train.

As far as Vevey, I chatted to a lady whom I had met while queueing to buy a ticket. She asked me if the ticket office did a money changing service, and I said that I thought not. She boarded the train at the same time as I did, and needed reassurance about when the train reached Vevey. I think she had not travelled on this line before. She was on the way to visit a friend, and had come from Germany. If she came via Basel and Lausanne, she may have missed her stop and needed to double back. We spoke in French and she told me she was from South America. I couldn't resist speaking a few words of Spanish as we parted company, and this raised a smile.

In Lausanne, I had to change platforms, then ten minutes later, the train arrived which I had intended to catch, and by two o'clock, three quarters of an hour later, I was queueing at the EasyJet bag drop with the returning skiers, many looking tired or hung over. Already a hundred people were waiting, but the staff managed the increasing numbers checking in so well that I only waited fifteen minutes. There were no queues at all at the security clearance gates. I guess people checked in ahead of me may have chose to eat lunch or drink before going through. I'd eaten on the train, so went into the departures area to wait the hour until the boarding gate was announced, time which quickly passed doing my Duolingo French and Spanish drills for the day, and sending messages.

You're told to allow twenty minutes to walk from the Departures area to the gate 'island' EasyJet uses for departing flights. This includes time for passport control, where there can be queues, but all four 

duty officers were unoccupied when I passed through. Time seemed to pass quickly and boarding began ten minutes early, which is understandable, as the flight was full, and many passengers had brought bulky hand baggage on board, some of which had to be relegated to the hold, adding time to the departure process. 

Even so, we left on time and flew all the way to Bristol over continuous cloud cover as the sun was setting. The pilot told us that the aircraft would turn west north of Gatwick and roughly follow the M4 most of the rest of the way. Watching the sun move from the window I was sitting beside, to the window ahead of me, was the only time in the flight I had a rough idea of journey progress. 

When we landed, we were delayed from disembarkation by some problem with the mobile stairs, which approached the aircraft and stopped short, where attempts were make to get the height of approach and ramp extension correct. It made me wonder if the person driving the machine was uncertain of what they were doing. This had the pilot call for another set of steps to be fetched for disembarking from the rear door. It was an amusing episode, which at least gave some passengers time to get their coats on, and cabin bags out ready to move.

It's the second time in six months that I've flown out of and into Bristol, and had to use the ePassport gates. These are now so slick and quick, I didn't expect to be through so  quick. The technology used previously for the ePassport gates has been replaced, and the number of booths doubled. I'd hazard a guess that rather than a local face recognition scan being compared initially to the national passport database, it's linked to an airport server containing the passport details of all on the passenger list for the flight in question. All this information is available to take advantage of from the moment anyone checks in for their flight. But, it does require a huge amount of reliable computing resources. Fine it it works, chaos when it doesn't.

Bus then to Temple Meads Station and a convenient train to Cardiff and bus to Pontcanna. Home in time for the Archers, and supper at the usual time, with thankfully, no mail needing attention, just my Windows 10 PC's in need of updating. After a month or longer away, this is always an irksome task taking hours, or get caught out later when you really need to use one quickly. Thank heavens for instantly updating Chromebook, despite its few minor irritations. I'll sleep well tonight. 

   

Unexpected Windows wobbles

Late last night, we walked around the port and ended up again at 'Artsenal', where a 'Poetry Jam' was taking place. A succession of men and women of various ages came out of the audience, and spoke their own works, accompanied by two guitarists improvising a background accompaniment. It was pleasant to listen to, even if our understanding of the Spanish was limited. A gathering of this kind onm a hot summer evening, despite its contemporary setting, has a truly timeless dimension to it. This event could have occurred in any era over the past three thousand years. Wonderful.

Malaga was shrouded in sea mist with a topping of low cloud when we woke up this morning, so we made the effort to get out as soon as possible and climb up to the Gibralfaro Fortress before the sun appeared in full strength. Plenty of others were out with the same objective in mind. We toured the ramparts, and had a beer at the cafeteria before walking back down. In the largest open coutyard, a stage with sound system had been erected and couple of hundred black plastic chairs laid out, ready for a performance, probably this evening, although there was no information readily to hand to tell what this might be. 

It made me wonder if a lot more publicity, particular for nice performances here is done on line. If a ticked event was already fully booked, there'd be less need to advertise in a traditional way. This would also explain why little information in the form of posters about events is displayed in La Malagueta barrio about event in in the Plaza de Toros. Certainly any time I have sought information about the next event most likely to deliver us a reduced night's sleep, I've been directed to the ticketing website for bullring events, and more of a hunt is required to find a website delivering a full season's event diary. No information delivery system can avoid making assumptions about how best to serve its clientele, and that can lead to variations in difficulty when it comes to finding out what you need to know, when crossing boundaries of language and culture. Intriguing thought.

On our return from Gibralfaro, we walked to Mercadona to do our weekend shopping, then cooked lunch, and had a siesta. When I came to use the office computer to get my sermon printed off, it failed to start and went into repair mode. It stayed in repair mode for several hours, during which I went with Clare to the beach for her daily swim. The system seemed frozen in time, so I switched it off, a hard reset using the power button and re-started it, with the same result. I did the same again, pressing F8 at boot, to supply the various trouble shooting and repair menus. Same result each time, it was stuck somewhere in loading the Windows environment files, a repair job I could do nothing about without have possession of a Windows 7 system disk.

Having forgotten to make a copy to USB stick of my Sunday sermon, the original was inaccessible. So, I hunted down my digital toolkit, which currently includes a bootable copy of Ubuntu Studio on a Memory Stick. The PC booted this with ease. It was reassuring, as it meant the problem was not a hardware failure, but just a Windows 7 missing file. Then I was able copy the sermon file across to another flash drive, for transfer to my Chromebook. From there I could shift the file to my tablet, and read it from there tomorrow. The Bluetooth link on the Nexus 7 and Toshiba Chromebook both staid they were working, but refused to handshake properly after performing protocols correctly. If two Google devices have this kind of hassle, how useful is Bluetooth at any time. I emailed the file to myself, and got it to display satisfactorily, just before supper.

Later, I switched on the Windows 7 laptop again, and when it displayed the 'Repair' menu, I opted to go straight to normal Windows boot routine - much to  my surprise it worked normally. This meant I could print off my sermon after all, and take the machine through clean up and de-fragmentation routines, just in case.

Maybe the initialisation part of the boot routine threw up an error message calling up the 'Repair' menu because of some minute impact on the machine of heat and/or humidity. Maybe it's running too hot for its own good. It certainly gave me five hours of bother I could have done without on a Saturday. Amazing, nevertheless, how well the live boot version of Ubuntu Studio worked, to give me hope. Where it failed was in attaching the wi-fi module to the system, making it impossible to search for and download and install the Linux HPLIP driver package which so often delivers just what you need for a printer to work properly with no messing about. Ah well, nice try.

Glad that I had my little box of tricks with me to rescue the sermon file, even if, in the end, Windows 7 got around to working the way it was intended to.

View from above

Looking out from the balcony window this morning, I could see market stalls being set up on the opposite side of the road on the tree covered pavement. When I went out to do the weekend grocery shopping I discovered it's a Bio market - organic farmers selling their produce direct to the public. There were mostly fruit and vegetable stalls, with one bread and one cheese and one herb stall, almost a dozen altogether. The Asociación Guadalhorce Ecológico promotes a weekly farmers' market in a variety of locations in and around Malaga, advertising through its own Facebook page. I do hope the market returns to La Malagueta again while Clare is with me. She'll love it.

After lunch and a siesta, I walked up the steep winding well appointed footpath which mounts the hillside behind the Paseo de Reding to the summit of the Gibralfaro. The views across the city and port are glorious, and the path is constantly busy with tourists taking selfies, or athletes testing their stamina. It's a tough climb, but one which I'll be repeating when I run out of new places to satiate my curiosity and my camera.

Having taken photos from on high, I then walked down to the port to visit a large cruise ship stopping here this weekend. It's the Silver Spirit, registered in Nassau in the Bahamas, according to the Maritime Traffic website. It's docked, not out at Terminals A or B, but in the prestigious quay nearest the city, along which runs the Palmeria de Sopresas, rows of Palm trees enclosing the main cruise ship reception centre, several restaurants and gardens. The quayside is enclosed by glass walls, allowing for non cruising visitors to stand and stare safely at this giant of a seven story hotel afloat. I don't think I've been this close to such a huge ship since I was a child and visited HMS Vanguard with my father.

Then, back to the apartment for another quiet evening, writing and uploading photos. I am learning that Google Photos, though not as versatile as using desktop Picasa then uploading to the web,  now works better than Google Chromebook's basic photo editing function. This is prone to crash while editing large pictures, perhaps because it's under powered or lacking in usable spare memory. I am impressed by the upload speed for the chaplain's broadband connection, far quicker than anything I am used to in other places, or at home. It actually makes using on-line apps a congenial experience. I'd still prefer using a device that wasn't so totally dependent on internet connectivity. I fear that we may live to regret this strategic decision taken by the tech giants on our behalf.
   

Unrestful days

A few precious days at home to savour, though not without a visit to the CBS office late yesterday, as this is a time of year when our business taxes are due. Getting the details correct is vital, and for me nerve wracking, as any error will only make hassles for others to sort out later.

Already today I am packing and re-organising my luggage to make sure I have everything I need. On my next trip I will need to take my own PC, as a printer is supplied there but not a computer. I'd rather use my own, as long as I don't have printer problems as a result. If only I could just take my Chromebook I'd be fine, but getting documents printed out from a Chromebook is an uncertain process, whatever is claimed by Google. Just take a Windows PC, no matter how much extra maintenance they demand, and at least getting a (fairly modern) printer attached is less of a problem. 

Given the uncertainties about printing, today I have completed and printed off a Harvest Sunday sermon text - blind - given that I have no idea of the kind of audience or context I'll face. At least I have a start point to work from. Also among my tasks to get done while home was making a CD of all files relating to St John's City Parish Church guidebook, produced under my editorial hand in 2009. Sarah the current Vicar wants to do another print run, or ideally a route to producing a revised edition. 

Thankfully, I have an archive of all the material, editable or finalised pages, relating to the production version, 180mb of 'stuff', which I'm now able to pass on to her and her team to work on. It wasn't hard to find the relevant file folder, as I'd left it in a place where it couldn't easily get wiped.

Despite much hunting around town, I was unable to find a new battery for my Blackberry Q10. How soon this basic commodity passes from being a regular item to a specilialized variety to be hunted for on the internet. Upgrading to a new phone could be less hassle, regardless that the phone I use is more than fit for purpose; i.e. it suits me and my work pattern just fine. But all the time we are being pressured to adopt new devices we neither need or want, in ordeer to keep the system going. Surely, there is something wrong here?

  

Sunrise at the beach

Having woken at first light, I was too restless to doze for another hour, so I went out and walked eastwards along the beach towards Benalgobion. The sky was rich with red orange and yellow clouds,  precursor to an overcast day, but most spectacular as it changed.

The beach is oriented east southeast, so the sun emerging on the horizon at eight wasn't visible, but to be glimpsed through trees half an hour later. Already there were scores of walkers and joggers out enjoying the cool still fresh morning air.

Sand on the foreshore, up as far as the parasols and sun loungers, had been flattened by a plough similar to those used for making snow pistes. I guess it's a good way of trawling for rubbish, especially broken glass and cans, as well as giving a fresh impression to holidaymakers, although numbers are now starting to dwindle as high season finishes.

Offshore, half a dozen small fishing boats were out, either laying their pots or casting their nets or hauling them in. It was hard to tell in low light a hundred metres away. It was still too early for gulls and pigeons to be active when I set out, but on my way back, the starlings, sparrows, blackbirds and even noisy flocks of parakeets were on the move. There wee few signs of life in the restaurants or shops too. Most tend to open after nine, except the panaderos.

It was a delightful way to start the day.

After breakfast I looked at the photos taken earlier and edited them ready for upload when I next go to St George's, but not today. I have often started thinking about next Sunday's sermon on a Monday, and the discovery of a Common Worship app called Sunday Worship, which delivers just next Sunday's Anglican readings and collects is proving to be an asset, as you don't have to mess around with lectionaries, the necessary text is right there for you to ponder on. So, yet again this week, I'd made an early first draft before lunch.

The preliminary to this was searching for a stand alone Chromebook app which would enable me to do word processing and save files in a useable format without ever needing to be on line. Google Docs apps work well, albeit in a rather convoluted way with different file formats, offline as well as online, with the rigmarole of syncing between the two governed always by connection speed and reliability. But often I want to write and save a text to a flash drive not to the device or the web. This process is not straightforward enough, and I have lost material accidentally in doing so. An app that sits on the device and does offline only what you ask of it is desirable. But how to find the right one?

I wasted an hour trying apps called Writer and Ain't with no satisfaction and in the end resorted to performing the simple task of sermon writing on the office Windows 7 laptop. It's got a nag to update to Windows 10, but now it's too late. The connection speed is too low even to enable it to do Toshiba system updates, apart from pop up reminders. 'Everybody ought to have fast enough internet to run our software' is hardly a realistic design requirement. Consequently, there's a gulf between marketing expectation and mundane reality. Such foolishness.

I wondered what using just my beloved Chromebook for a month might be like, aware there might be risks of poor connectivity. Now I wish I'd brought the spare MS Surface RT along as well. Despite its many software limits, this works better offline. Even better would be a small portable with Linux Mint installed. That would cover my travel needs for offline work. Maybe I can find a second hand machine for a reasonable price, and convert it for another tour of duty.

Lunch, siesta, evening walk under an overcast sky, quite cool really. A surfing class going on down the end of the beach near Nuestra Señora del Carmen. Children youngsters and adults all wearing Malaga Bahia matching sweatshirts, out jogging, dozens of them, spread out over a kilometer of the paseo maritimo, with men on bikes at either end of the group shepherding them. Old people chatting with friends, strolling at a leisurely pace or sitting together in bars or on benches. Fewer visitors now, more space for locals to socialise, and enjoy the coming of autumn.

I have taken an old pair of dark blue 'cargo' shorts acquired a few years ago in Vinaros and now looking very tired, and soaked them in bleach overnight. The result is a rather interesting shade of red. Certainly a revival of fortunes for them. It's better than throwing them away. They are taking a long time to dry in this weather. I look forward to wearing them in their new guise.

  

Connecting - mixed fortunes

I awoke at first light, despite retiring early. The building and surrounding apartment blocks were quiet until sunrise, around a quarter to eight. It'll take me a while to get used to being surrounded by a new palette of the sounds of human activity punctuating the day. Waking up early and hearing the changes reminded me of this.

Nerja chaplain's house had thin walls, and neighbours who were often absent, but when present, their noises were mainly nocturnal and early morning. In Vinaros, noises came from holidaying neighbours across the road, day and evening, but in the background. Silence dominated. Here sounds are more varied, remoter and occasionally sounds from apartments above and either side. Back in Meadow Street, it's mostly quiet. Neighbours either side are single women who are away a lot, and make little noise when at home. The differences add to life's interest.

Rosella collected me to go together to St George's in Malaga for the midweek Communion followed by a Chaplaincy Council meeting. Doreen, the Chaplaincy's self supporting priest celebrated Mass in honour of St Aidan. I enjoyed being there and receiving her ministry. That's a rarity for me these days. I didn't attend the Council, although I met members beforehand.

Instead, I stayed in the sacristy and took full advantage of a fast broadband office connection to upload photos from yesterday. This is impossible in the flat, given the limited connectivity a wifi mobile internet ( aka MID ) dongle provides. The device may not be working at its best in an apartment whose core metal frame may impede signal flow, but right now I am blogging from my Nexus tablet via this wifi MID.

As ever, the Blackberry Q10 does everything I ask of it.  It may be a bit small, but robustness and reliability count. I didn't swap it for a PRIV as I wasn't satisfied its design could take the same punishment as the Q10.

Last but not least, the Chaplain here, unlike my past two assignments, has a Huwawei Ascend P6 smart phone. It's a nice piece of kit and has a 4G sim, and like the Blackberry it works fine. Mobile devices win here. The chaplain's laptop and my Chromebook just don't work as expected even though they are so much easier to use.

 

Limits to Cloud confidence

This morning I wrote my Sunday sermon, tidied my office, and shredded some old documents. There are more to do, which no longer have relevance, as they are so old and not really interesting to anyone any longer. On a suggestion from Clare, I also started compiling a list of vital personal information on my digital life, and finances for others to use when I'm incapacitated or dead. Half way through, writing up this on my Chromebook, it occurred to me that, no matter how good Google Cloud security is, a digital document can still be found read by others, unless encrypted. The chances of this may be very remote, but there can be no such thing as 100% certain security, ever. Yet here was I, at the drafting stage, working on a computer with on-line storage, which, if my password was stolen could be found by someone else and my digital secrets hijacked. Not a good idea. 

I transferred to file to an external flash drive, then double deleted it from the Chromebook  system. When I went later to examine the file on an off-line computer, the data consisted only of information to connect to the deleted Cloud stored file. Caught out! Data lost. If only I'd first created a file on an off-line computer coupled to an external flash drive, this wouldn't have happened. Almost everything I do on computers I am prepared to entrust to secure on-line storage, except the digital keys to access it all. Putting everything on one piece of paper is the eventual answer, and making sure this is kept in a safe place to be found only on a need to know basis. Now I'll need to start again, though not today.

This afternoon I needed to go into the office again for a final planning session with Ashley before leaving for Spain. On the way there, I remembered I needed to buy some 'cargo shorts' and a dark short sleeved shirt. On impulse, I turned into the Edinbugh Woollen Mills shop on Working Street, and within minutes bought exactly what I needed. I don't much like shopping, as so often it involves agonising over an excessive variety of choices, so this was a fortunate impulse which saved me time and effort.  

Sea defences and the EU

I sent Kath and Anto a text message to congratulate them on their 24th wedding anniversary. This happened around the time when the job in Geneva first presented itself to me, and when Clare's mother died. It seems like only yesterday, and so much more has happened to the whole family in the years since then.

I'm rising early, trying to deal with routine emails and uploading photos to the internet, but progress is hindered by slow low capacity broadband. This takes the edge off using a Chromebook, usually so smooth and slick at doing everything. Here I seem to do a lot of waiting, get time outs and app crashes. There's been no real improvement since I was here in 2012. The big difference now is the dominance of Cloud storage and web apps, and this sort of internet service isn't fit to meet the demands of today's users. Web user interfaces are are attractive, except when screen refresh slows to a crawl because of the connection. These days, having several connected devices in UK is normal. Here they tick over, but work effectively only one at a time.

I started wondering how people cope, as hypermarkets here have phones, tables and PCs to sell. They get bought and used, but what's happened here is ruled by the widespread rapid uptake of 3G and 4G phone services. Many people no longer bother with having a landline, and the quality of mobile internet is good. My Blackberry behaves here much as it does at home, away from home wi-fi. Here, when connected to wi-fi preferentially, it's not as good. I suspect that in some regions, the old landline telephone and broadband service infrastructure is not being modernised. It may not even be profitable to do so if, mobile infrastructure is new and better.

This morning, I drove to Lidl's to do some grocery shopping and stock up for the week, did some washing, then went out a walk along the coast path of the urbanizacion Saldonar, where the church house is situated. Eighteen months ago, I was aware coastal erosion that was taking place and took photos of some of the damage. It seems to have got even worse just after I left, as sections of the path battered by stormy seas, collapsed. Since then, work has been done on new coastal defences and walkways, funded by the EU, half a million Euros worth of work on the hardest hit places over a kilometre of local shore-line. It's good to see this kind of economic solidarity in action. Britain needs it too, and will suffer as a result of brexit.

After supper, I went for another walk up the barranco forming the boundary with the neighbouring urbanizacion Boverals on the town side. Beyond the houses is a wooded part of the ravine, from which some interesting sounds of birdsong were rising as the sun began to set, but nothing I could identify, which is most intriguing.

Settling in

First, time to get acquainted with the chaplain's office again. A new HP Windows 10 computer, set up with an old school user interface. Getting started with wi-fi on my various devices proved to be a nightmare case of deja-vu. The 20 digit password seemed familiar from last time. My Blackberry just remembered it, the Samsung phone I was using here last time had amnesia. The Nexus wasn't with me last time, so it had to be entered manually, but wouldn't take. Eventually I came across an information page about office passwords, which showed that the 'O' was really a zero. I had quite forgotten this annoying little tripwire. The lettering on the underside of the Thomson router is so small it's impossible to distinguish between an 'O' and a zero. Fancy me forgetting! Will I remember next time? 

Getting the Chromebook online, once I'd realised the problem, was quick and simple. I could then continue with the sermon preparation I began a couple of days ago. The completed file transferred to the Windows 10 machine for printing, but the Epson SX130 printer didn't work, complaining of both paper jam and ink cartridges either empty or not authenticated. Thankfully, Paul agreed to print the file for me for Vinaros, also Jenny for L'Ampolla, so I dind't need to go out in the extreme heat of day and hunt for a print shop, even before I'd done my weekend shopping.

Eventually, however, I did walk just up the road to the Spar convenience store, to get fruit and veg and a few other things, to allow me to make a meal that would do for Saturday and Sunday, thus avoiding the task of cooking Sunday lunch as soon as I returned from taking services. I really feel I have arrived when I sit down to a proper cooked meal that I've made in a new place.

Early evening I walked into the town along the coast path and the promenade, all the way down to the port before turning around. I was saddened to see the closed and still empty shop which had housed the chaplaincy's drop-in and worship centre. It had become no longer affordable, as custom for the shop dropped. Truth to tell, over the past few years, many first generation British settlers in this part of the world have slowly returned home, to be supplanted by French people, always high in the visitor demographic, but more now perhaps wanting to settle? Nothing stays the same for long. It's far too early to tell what impact the brexit result will have on UK expatriate communities. Tomorrow there's a Bishops' letter to be read out concerning the crisis.

After supper, it was time to get to grips with the telly, and the Skybox providing UK programmes. So many remote control devices to juggle with. There was another two hour Swedish crime drama on BBC Four, about a medical hypnotist working with the police on solving a crime. Interesting, if wee bit far fetched.

    

A day of preparations

Yesterday evening Judith called me with a funeral booking for this Thursday morning for a woman who'd died this morning. As usual, the time is short between death and funeral. I was fortunate to make contact with the bereaved husband straightaway, and visited his later in the evening, in their home just above La Torre de Capistrano restaurant, about fifteen minutes of a stiff climb uphill from the chaplain's residence. Being a cool evening the brisk walk there and back an hour later was welcome exercise, after moving slowly in the intense daytime heat. Not that I am complaining about the heat! I feel so much better for continuous warmth and blue skies. My eyes seem to work better and physical activity is not nearly so much hard work getting going as it is back in Wales.

I haven't timed walking down to the church shop to celebrate the midweek Eucharist, as I did again this morning, but it still takes me 20-25 minutes, and I arrive so much fresher in mind than if I had to drive in and find a parking place. There isn't a regular frequent bus route into town to tempt me to hop on and cut down journey times here as in Cardiff. The feel-good benefits are tangible.

There were seven of us for the Eucharist. After coffee at Rosi's, I had a meeting at the Balcon Hotel with Damian and Clodagh, here for a wedding blessing with their families from Galway and Sligo, West of Ireland. He's a sheep farmer, and horse breeder. She's been caring for her mother through two years of cancer treatment, now declared successful. This is an added element to their celebration. Her father died some years ago, and I was touched by ways they wanted to include him and other departed relatives in their fiesta. It's a wholesome ancient attitude to life, which Protestantism and Rationalism failed to destroy, a sense of continuity between this world and the next that's part of Celtic spirituality. We Celts are original European migrants, from the Indus basin all the way to the extreme fringes of continental Europe. In this present era of mobility, a wedding far from home is not so unexpected. Many of those whose weddings are blessed here are Irish.

After lunch at home, I prepared a bi-lingual funeral service leaflet with hymns in for tomorrow. Then, it took me ages to acquire accompaniment for two hymns from the Web. It's not something I do often, and the Windows software on the office Win 7 laptop was unhelpful or invisible to me. Amazingly my trusty Chromebook got me what I needed, and enabled me to edit the files in a web app called 'Twisted Wave'. It's simple, but impressive in what it delivered - a couple of files I could burn to CD to play on the Thanatorio CD player. But there were no spare discs to be found in the office, so I popped down to town to a small digital accessory retailer, selling burnable CD-Rs and printer inks. I place I've used before, with the same young woman in charge I recall from last year. For 60 cents, she sold me two CD-Rs. One to use, and another just in case... Much nicer than trawling supermarket shelves for a 'mini' pack of 25, I may not need. 

After burning the audio CD successfully, found a portable CD player in the office cupboard and tested what I'd made. It worked and sounded fine, but it all depends on what equipment the municipal Thanatorium has. I remember a disaster of this kind in Fuengirola Thanatorium where the state of the art sound system was dead, and in need of repair, and the little portable CD player offered was hardly audible in a huge chapel. At least the Nerja chapel is a quarter of the size, so fingers crossed.

  

Changing habits

A quiet uneventful start to the week, with a few hours in the office on Monday, but not on today. When I don't have anything much to do, I idle the evenings away watching missed programmes on TV catch up. Increasingly, I use the Nexus tablet, which is the slickest and most convenient portable device after the Chromebook. I have two Windows 10 machines, for work and personal purposes, but find I'm using these less and less. 

Only when I need to work using specific software employed by our office system, is it worth retreating to the workstation in my study upstairs. More often than not, I can examine and retrieve files from MS OneDrive for sending, on one of the Google devices or even my Blackberry wherever I am in the house. I was delighted, when I was in Spain to be able to access our business banking site, retrieve and file a statement on OneDrive from the Blackberry, so good is the connectivity it provides.

This evening I went to the Chi Gung class, but didn't stay for Tai Chi, as I didn't feel that I had the right level of energy and concentration for two sessions - something to do with lack of sleep. I can get by on six hours but function so much better with eight or nine hours. I suspect I spend too much time on line, reading, writing or editing photos. Too much time spent in the head can disconnect you from the body. In Spain I five or six miles a day, but here a couple of miles is more normal and that's not nearly enough to keep me rooted in my body. It's something I'm more aware of the need for as I get older, but I'm not really doing enough to change my habitual lifestyle, so I only have myself to blame.