Hope for America declared at last

The weather was bright to start with today, but deteriorated later, so I pottered around this morning, chatted with Ashley on the phone for an hour, then cooked lunch before going out to post a few more cards and then for a walk. It was almost dark by the time I got back. The tall tree at the entrance to our side street has been decorated for the festal season with huge pom-poms made by some of the kids from shredded plastic bags, strings of fake lanterns - I don't think they meant to glow, plus a string of white lights which do light up, spiralled around the tree. I saw them lit up for the first time this evening. 

Several houses in the street have decorated their front garden fences with lights, and curtains are being left open to reveal Christmas trees within. I think more people are making an effort this year, not just as a cheer-up measure, but because they may not be able to travel away to be with family at Christmas. Even though relaxed restrictions are meant to come into force in a week's time, concern is rising about the wisdom of this, given the rapid rise in cases in the South East, and in Wales, experiencing now what the North went through a couple of months back. Present restrictions may end up not being relaxed at all.

Last night Joe Biden was formally declared to be the next US President by state by state appointed members of an Electoral College. This will be confirmed by Congress in the run-up to the Inauguration in January. Trump has refused to concede that he has lost, many Republicans are silent or voice agreement with him, but some have acknowledged that his election was free, un-corrupt and fair. Trump's last ditch attempt to subvert the democratic process will be to produce his own alternative panel of state appointees, to declare him the winner, and insist that Congress examine his claim, although his lawyers have produced no concrete evident in support of his claims. 

In his last month as President he has approved the execution of several prisoners on death row for years, and plans to issue pardons for himself and some of his cronies. He has behaved consistently as a fantasizing megalomaniac ignoring deadly reality, fomenting racial and social divisions, denying climate change and America has suffered grievously as a result The fact that he now denies his decisive rejection by the majority of voters, poses serious questions about his mental health. Will he use an insanity plea in future to evade the long arm of the law when he's faced with a series of indictments, I wonder?  So glad he's going, even if the lame duck is acting strangely and savagely. The world will be a safer place with a practicing Catholic in the White House, with a record as a reconciler, and a declared re-unifying agenda.

After supper I continued preparing texts for Morning Prayer in the days before Christmas completing one started yesterday but interrupted by the Google server outage, then completing another, and saving a copy of the three done so far on the SD card attached to my Chromebook, so it can be taken away and edited in a standalone device if needs be. Better safe than sorry from now on. 

Tech reports today indicate the Google outage lasted only fifty minutes, although there have been knock-on effects in latency of function with some apps. My sister June was complaining about typing and words being slow to appear. Not an uncommon phenomenon in my experience, with Windows updates and scans usually seeming to hinder normal functioning, either because the background process hogs bandwidth, or processing power is consumed by security scans on the device. Grand scale server outages also part of the Google ecosystem too, if less frequently than Microsoft, and yesterday's outage was a prime example of this nerve wracking failure. 

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.

 

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.