Referendum rhetoric risk revealed

I walked to the Thanatorio for today's funeral in good time, and was welcomed by the staff. Having prepared some specific functional Spanish phrases for the occasion, I was as keen to use them as the manager was to practice his English. We had a sympathetic exchange, which relaxed me and got us off to a good start.

The CD player provided worked, but wasn't all that powerful once the forty odd congregation were packed into the place. It also didn't prove to be easily controllable, and had to be abandoned for the first hymn. The unaccompanied singing I led was better than the bereaved husband had feared. When it came to Abide with me, the CD accompaniment at a good measured Anglican pace lagged behind the enthusiasm of the congregation, and it wasn't audible enough. Half of them were Spanish, having a good go at singing, with goodwill for a much loved departed friend.
  

Another time I will rely on by ability to lead unaccompanied singing rather than on flaky technology not really fit for purpose. It's not good to perform with children, dogs and devices not your own. You never know how it'll turn out.

We've had more gusty winds this last couple of days, which make the building howl. It's not that hot wind we had on Monday, however. It has a pleasant cooling effect that makes sleeping much easier at night. Before Franco re-branded this coastline the Costa del Sol, it was called the Costal del Viento, though that's not something one is aware of most of the time.

The murder of Jo Cox MP on a street in her own constituency came as an awful shock, just as we were getting ready to go out for an evening meal at one of Nerja's special restaurants, simply known as Number 34. We came here last year on an evening when a guitarist was playing classical and flamenco music. This time we were entertained by an excellent guitar duo playing romantic Latino music as well as flamenco. The food was superb also. We dined early and while we were these the place filled with young families, parents with babes in arms and toddlers, which was additionally charming.

I must confess, however, that my mind was much disturbed by thoughts of what happened earlier, and what consequences there might be, apart from a brief moratorium in referendum campaigning. So much poisonous fear and anger has been whipped up by referendum rhetoric on both sides. Just the kind of thing to provoke outrageous actions on the part of fools and madmen. There's a thought provoking article on the Spectator blog commenting on two outrageous events of this miserable day.

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.