Memorable Magdalene's Day

This morning, Bishop June Osborne was being enthroned in Llandaff Cathedral, and remembering her with thanksgiving prayer was a duty happily done. Later, it was good to see photos on social media and quotes from her address. I'd really like to read the whole thing, but haven't been able to find it on-line so far. It's great that she chose the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles for this landmark occasion in Llandaff diocesan history. Celebration of Mary Magdalene's feast day disappeared from the Book of Common Prayer in 1552, only to reappear in subsequent 19th and 20th century revisions across the Anglican Communion. Recently the Pope has upgraded the festive status of Mary Madgalene to the same rank as that of the Apostles, and the Roman Church has adopted her Orthodox title 'Apostle to the Apostles'. About time too, and the same about the ministry and leadership of women in the church. 'In Christ there is no male nor female'. Funny how that has been ignored for so long.

I was amused to see that a small group of fans camped on the pavement overnight outside the Plaza de Toros, in anticipation of this evening's concert by Vanessa Martin. I wondered where they came from for this ordeal, and why. It's something I've seen often enough outside the Cardiff Motorpoint Arena before a celebrity gig, and it's hard to see the point of it. From mid morning, the sound and stage crew were in evidence, along with some members of the band, testing and balancing their equipment. Occasionally there's be a burst of song, whether live or rehearsed, it was hard to tell. It was just loud. By the time I went for a walk around town, the fast food stalls were setting up to feed people queuing to be let in.

I walked to the far side of the old town, and took some photographs of the barrio where the church of Nuestra Señora de la Peña is located, closest to the Rio Guadalmedina (which our guide at the Flamenco Museum told me means 'City River' in Arabic. What's left of the northern aspect of the mediaeval town wall is in the sector also. In this barrio there's an interesting number of modern buildings, discrete, minimalist in their appearance, some apartments, others business or artistic workshops by the looks of it. Some remaining older tenement buildings are ripe for renovation, some being worked on to retain the facades and make entirely new interiors.

It's as if there's an architectural debate going on about here what can be done to make something different of a decaying area. There are some striking contrasts between plain modern facades and those which are a century or two older. It's different from the nearby Lagunas barrio where a rearguard action seems to be taking place between grass roots conservationists and enterprising modernisers.. Well, that's my impression. How it all holds together in the grand city centre plan I have no idea. So much depends on who owns what, and who in power can be persuaded to do what.

On this excursion, I took some photos of the Interactive Music and Flamenco Museums that I failed to get on the day we visited them. Before returning to the apartment, I walked up the Gibralfaro to the mirador to get a few photos of stage arrangements in the Plaza de Toros. The music was audible loud and clear from on high. Concert goers were filing into the arena to grab their places as I called in at SuperSol for a few last minute weekend purchases.

I noticed in the arena bull-pen a couple of dozen back-clad security officials assembled for a briefing before the action started. At this point, all was quiet, preparations concluded. Shortly after sunset the support band struck up. An hour later the main act began. It wasn't as loud as the Queen concert, and it was only as loud as anticipated, until just after midnight, when the volume was turned down. Soon after this, it was all over, and by then I was nearly asleep, thankfully.

The irritating part for me was that the star singer wasn't, to my ear, pitch accurate against the backing band. This could be due to the acoustic impact of being in a circular building framed by tower blocs affecting the sound emanating from the building, as opposed to what's heard on stage. But, it's not unusual at really loud concerts, or in a studio setting, where performers can hear each other is through ear pieces, channelling their microphone output through a mixing desk. It's a distressing experience for a performer to listen to a recording of themselves in these conditions after the event. Anyway, glad it's all over now. It could have been worse.

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.

Symphonic Rhapsody at the Bullring

A quiet uneventful day for us, until the eaerly afternoon, when I received a call about officiating at a funeral in Fuengirola Municipal Cementerio on Monday, through Gloria of Lux Mundi, the ecumenical body based there, who'd been approached to help find someone, as the St Andrew's Chaplain is away. Co-incidentally, the same thing happened when I was here last September. The bereaved family live in Torreblanca, in an area I remember from my previous long sojourn as locum Chaplain, living in neighbouring Fuengirola. The last time Gloria and I spoke, we used English. This time, Spanish. She's a capable linguist, but appreciative of my progress, willing to converse slowly and clearly, enabling me to find the right words. I'll make a pastoral visit tomorrow.

Later, we began to hear noises signifying the testing of a large sound system penetrating the usual traffic roar on the Paseo de Reding, emanating from the Plaza de Toros across the road. Later the sound of a drummer rehearsing was added to the mix. As we were preparing to go out for supper, we heard the sound of Prog Rock on a grand scale in rehearsal, and this finally prompted a little on-line research into what was going on across the road.

I discovered there's a special live performance of Queen's 'Symphonic Rhapsody' taking place there tomorrow evening, starting at 9.30pm, and finishing at heaven knows what time, with an orchestra, a rock band and star soloists, so the streets will be busy and noisy until the small hours.

We had a marvellous meal at the El Cachalote Chiruguito, where Owain and I ate two weeks ago, with an almost full moon rising above the horizon across the bay during the meal. I had sardinas again, and Clare had a huge dorada, some of which I shared as it was more than she could manage on her own. Then, back to another hour of loud rehearsal music from across the road before bed, but thankfully, quiet was restored before Friday turned into Saturday.