New music

A cold bright sunny day waking from a relaxed night's sleep, though not as long as I'd like with the usual disruptions. I felt light headed after taking my morning meds. Rachel wondered whether this might be due somehow to taking statins and Losartan at the same time. I now seem to be more sensitive to drugs I take. I'm either light headed or thick headed in the morning. Fresh air and exercise give some relief thankfully. Imade next Wednesday's Morning Prayer video after breakfast, uploaded it to YouTube and then went for a walk before lunch.

Clare Rachel and I went into town on the bus after we'd eaten. Rachel wanted to buy Welsh souvenir tea towels. My mission was to exchange the duplicate Kanneh-Mason CD I bought Clare for Christmas with one she doesn't already have. When we got home, I wrapped up Clare's present before giving it to her with a kiss. I also emptied the Post Office Money Card I'm unlikely to use again and then uninstalled the app from my phone. I'll keep the card rather than cancelling and cutting it up, in case I find a need to use it again. The euros on it were refunded in pounds sterling. Nineteen of them. If I were to go to Europe again, I'd use a Santander debit or credit instead and withdraw euros from an ATM.

We had a drink in John Lewis' Benugo cafe before returning home as it got dark. Navigating my way through crowded streets with contrasting levels of light intensity, dark shadows and people moving about in different directions was difficult. I bumped into other pedestrians twice, my field of vision impairment is really manifest in these conditions. I was tired when we got home but all in all, coped quite well with being in a busy shopping centre without bewilderment from over-stimulation.

After supper I updated my Linux workstation and decided to digitize the Rosalia CD 'Motomami' I bought before Christmas. It's been so long since I last did this I needed to find and install an app which would do the job. 'Sound Juicer' was the name of the app I'd forgotten. It's simple and easy to use, if a little slow. As its tracks had been copied to the Rhythmbox music player, I listened while the ripper worked. It's a strange strange album, which won Album of the Year in 2022 described as 'experimental pop' 

Rosalia questions and probes the complexities of female identity in a compressed distorted childlike voice. The backing music is complex, rhythmically heavy using percussive sounds, described as 'Reggaeton', a blend of hip hop, Latin American and Caribbean rhythms originating in Panama, popularised by Puerto Rican artists. Rosalia herself is Catalan. It's intriguing, not easy listening perhaps because it's different, completely different.