State of alarm - Day six

I didn't need to go to the shops for anything today. I'll wait until Money and go to San Jose and check with the chemist what needs to be done to obtain medication when the tablets I brought with me run out. I'll have to buy them, if they'll let me have them. I may be able to obtain a prescription by email from King's Road surgery if this is a prerequisite. And I will have to pay. Goodness knows how much.

Counting the number of turns around the house for my daily walk gets mind numbing after a while, so I decided to play music off my phone SD card instead. I have 1.6gb of music MP3s on it, and so don;t need an internet connection to listen to music out of wi-fi range. I have all of Mozart's piano concertos there, rendered digitally from a set of tapes a keen audiophile made for me early in my time working for USPG. The tapes got much playing while I was driving to parish appointments all over Wales. Most of them are half an hour long. Four is sufficient to hear during the two hours it takes to cover my daily 10k target. It makes exercise refreshing quite a different way.   

This evening, I joined in the British ecumenical call to prayer about the pandemic, in which all who can are invited place a lighted candle in a window while they pray. As I did so, I saw, in the field the other side of the road that someone had lit a large bonfire and was piling branches on to it causing the flames to go high. Then I noticed a second fire further away, and wondered what was going on. 

I was somewhat concerned as the church car is parked on a patch of bare land opposite the house used for car parking, and wondered if I should move it, just in case it got out of control. Silhouetted against the flames however, I could see three men working in the dark, and one of them had a hosepipe and was spraying water around the fire. Tree and hedgerow pruning has been going on quietly over the road, and now dead vegetation and branches are being disposed of. 

On recent walks by day before the lock-down I noticed people outdoors working on their fincas. Some. if not many, would already have stopped work and were taking advantage of unexpected free time to tidy their land. When Sarah rang me later, I asked her about this and she said this was the natural time of year to do this. Fires are officially banned in the height of summer because so much of the early uncleared vegetation has died and dried out.

Another wedding blessing, and a new novel

Yesterday we took Rhiannon to the Chateau de Chillon. I was glad for another photo opportunity with a better camera. Back in January I took a camera but forgot to reload the memory card, so I had to use my Blackberry Q10, whose photos aren't nearly as good. It's such an interesting place. Clare and I were interested to observe how Rhiannon naturally gravitated to the interactive video screens telling aspects of the castle's story, rather than the wall and panel displays. A child of her era I suppose. We ate a late snack lunch on the terrace outside afterwards, and were amazed to see scores of tame sparrows chasing crumbs, and even occasionally trying boldly to snatch food from a person's hand. I enjoyed the walk, but it left me feeling uncomfortable and tired, so for the rest of the day, and most of today, I've been confined to the house, and managing my still draining wound.

I had to conserve energy to ensure I could carry out today's wedding blessing. It took me quite a while to make the final preparations, as I'd not really felt well enough to knuckle down and do the necessaries earlier in the week. In fact, I had to concentrate on making sure all the pieces of music I had downloaded and edited for the service would work. This proved to be a nightmare, because the wretched Google music app, and any app interface layered on top of it, refused to work with home made MP3s created using Audacity on a Windows machine. In contrast to last Saturday's wedding blessing, there were just fifteen people with the bride and groom. This made it relaxed and informal, so it was easy for me to officiant and be a digital deejay.

I don't know why an MP3 file should play on several devices and but not on every equivalent device, but I hate Google for this inconsistency. Their original 'don't be evil' policy no longer operates. Thankfully, I was able to get every type of file to play on my tablet, perhaps because its operating system is less up to date. It's hard to play music offline, now that's become the default for so many devices, and I couldn't risk staying online and streaming in an environment with a flaky connection. I succeeded, however and was able to relay music from the table to an old hifi system which sits in the church, redundant. Nobody thinks it works, but I succeeded in using it!

I knew I wouldn't feel like doing much except rest after the wedding, so Clare and Rhiannon went to Vevey on the paddle steamer without me. It was cool and overcast, but thankfully, it didn't rain, so they were able to enjoy the street market and visit the Nestle food museum, before returning with a generous supply of chocolate to take home.

Once I'd completed my sermon for tomorrow, I started to read Paula Hawkins' novel 'Girl on the Train'. It's very dense with intimate detail, drawing you right into the claustrophobic routine of suburban domestic life, too dense for my taste - although the detailed and intimate first person portrayal of an unemployed female alcoholic's domestic life offers an excellent study for anyone interested in addictive behaviour. All in all, it's an impressive portrayal of people whose lives are ruled by the lies they tell about themselves and to themselves.