Saturday surprises

Weekend late lie-in, followed by pancake breakfast then a surprise present from Clare, a new Remington Electric shaver to replace the one I bought in a Chinese emporium in Nerja back in 2013, now incapable of holding a charge for much longer than it takes to do a rough shave. I'm delighted. It's so sophisticated compared to ones I've had in the past.

Before lunch, I edited next week's Morning Prayer sound files, recorded in bed last night. I decided to add a suitable short music clip to the end of the recording and went through the routine I normally follow, using YouTube and Audacity. For some reason I couldn't figure out, the sound quality was awful. After several fails, I did the same on my Chromebook but using the Chrome sound editing on line plug-in called 'Twisted Wave', which worked perfectly first go. 

The app was already attached to my Chrome browser ecosystem (reproduced on each Chrome using device), but I hadn't used it since installing it in Ibiza, where I used it very little, as the Chromebook I has with me was old and not really powerful enough. On the new Chromebook it works a treat, and transferring the sound file captured to Google Drive made it easy to send to any other operating platform.

After lunch, a walk into the city centre, busy and crowded with shoppers, more so than metropolitan media reports were alleging. Will there be added restrictions in the next few days avoid a catastrophic spread of omicron covid overwhelming hospitals? The German tavern and eaterie among the Christmas Market stalls were crowded, but more people were wearing masks on the street and in the shops than  previously. I took a few photos, bought some more Christmas cards, a new pair of shoes and Clare's Christmas present before catching a surprisingly empty 66 bus home.

Lord Frost, the government's chief negotiator with the EU has resigned, openly distancing himself from Boris Johnson's leadership on policy grounds, yet more evidence of loss of confidence in his leadership. This isn't the best of times for such a crisis, though I believe the country is better off without such a hard line anti-EU libertarian at the front line in relationships with our nearest continental neighbours.

Although Jasmine isn't coming over now, Clare is still diligently practicing piano accompaniment to the recordings Jas made for her, so this evening I joined in on guitar. For the moment my hands aren't too afflicted with rheumatic pains interfering with the physical recall of correct chord shapes when I play. It was fun. I miss playing, but for ages have been deterred from making the effort. But all is not lost.

In the evening, some preparatory work on a Christmastide audio reflection, then an hour trying to catch up on a Danish crime drama 'When the dust settles' about what happens before and after  a terrorist attack on a restaurant. It's very complex with eight (I think) overlapping story lines which observe a range of social issues that reflect contemporary society at close range. Not sure I can cope with this!

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.