Quarantine Cymru - day Three

It rained for most of the day, confining me again to pacing around the house for exercise until mid afternoon when I stopped and dried out so that I could walk in the fresh air. Such a relief!

Clare brings me meals upstairs. I'm still trying to find the most comfortable and convenient spot in which to eat. That may sound daft, but sometimes, wound discomfort obliges me to eat standing up, and having a chair and table at the right height for sitting and eating isn't easy in the confined space of an attic bedroom.

I thought I should make contact with our GPs and find out what it takes to get examined and tested to make sure the infection has gone, and to see what can be done about blood pressure fluctuations and slow heartbeat. I don't feel unwell, but better safe than sorry. I rang the surgery and was asked to send a a photo of the wound, and a request for a phone call from a GP. 

Dr Dyban rang me at tea time, and the outcome of the conversation is that I'll do swab test at home Monday morning. I will also receive a visit from one of their team who will do an ECG at home and check my vital signs. I'm not sure how that will work, but it's impressive that despite covid-19 they are working away at resuming their usual high standard of care.

I completed work on next Sunday's service, with the exception of adding music. Having installed Audacity on my Windows PC yesterday, I was disappointed to discover I couldn't directly record YouTube audio clips with it, the audio input device wasn't activated by default, as there's no built in microphone. Digging down into the software layer to change that is something I haven't needed to do for years and calls for research. I vaguely recalled that I could do this with the Chromebook, but was unable to remember how. Rather than waste time, I emailed service files without music this week.

State of Alarm - day nineteen

Having made a little video for YouTube of the blessing of palms for Sunday, and done the full audio of the Ministry of the Word with Passion Gospel reading, I  felt this would be long enough to absorb in the morning and so haven't prepared a homily to go with it. Each evening this week, until Friday I am going to offer an audio reflection on the scripture readings of the day. 

I don't therefore be doing a Tuesday Bible Study audio as well this week, so why not do a Sunday evening reflection on the scriptures set for Palm Sunday Evening Prayer, as they have the unfruitful Vine of Israel theme running through them? This proved to be an interesting little project, although it took up more time than I expected, and I was completing my daily 10k as the sun disappeared over the horizon in a clear pink sky at the end of a pleasant but still coolish day.

I joined the chaplaincy on-line prayer group using the Zoom app for the first time. It took me a little time to get my head around the way it works initially, but it's quite simple and user friendly. There were nine users on-line, eleven people, as there were two couples, one of them in the Canton de Vaud at the moment - such a small world! I forgot about the 40 minute time limit, and we were cut off unceremoniously, which made me wonder if I'd done something wrong, as the firs tone to log in. Hopefully someone will tell me if I did!

When I tried to load the the BCP 1662 MP3 audio files into Audacity for editing I received a rude awakening, as there was something different about the file encoding which rendered each one in a micro-second, sounding like a loud scratch or a blip. Very odd. File opened and played perfectly in the Windows app provided. 

Then I re-discovered the ability Audacity has to record audio played internally on the PC, as well as from an external microphone. This enabled me to recover editable files which were then easy to stitch together, tidy up and turn into an MP3 file with less hassle than usual. It means I can record audio straight from the web to incorporate in edits I'm making, very much easier than what I ended up doing the other night.

All I have to do tomorrow is record the Sunday evening bible study I've prepared, and then all is prepared to start Holy Week in the best way possible. 

State of Alarm - Day Twelve

After breakfast, a phone call from Solveig, to say my clean 'Certificado de Penales Antecendetes' had arrived in her mailbox - under a fortnight since we visited Ibiza Puerto to arrange it. This is such a relief! Later, a photo of the document arrived, to be going on with, which meant that I could email it to Laura the Safeguarding officer dealing with it, and Emma who looks after us Locums - I understand that London HQ staff are home working now. As Bishop David and Archdeacon David are both aware of this little saga, I copied the email to them as well. Within the day I had responses from them. One small issue less to be fretting over in this time of major crisis for the diocese.

Rosi called by with some domestic rubber gloves for me. She was on her way back from taking a sick and injured hedgehog to the 'Hedgehog Hospital' not far from here. I've walked past the house a few times it seems. These creatures are an endangered species on the island, many have been lost in recent years, run over by the increasing number of cars frequenting the narrow country roads. Rosi is a keen island wildlife conservationist, also busy and active in animal welfare.

She stood outside the gate wearing a mask just in case, and we chatted for a while. It seemed so bizarre. As she left, drops of rain fell. In minutes the ground was covered with a layer of hailstones! It's that time of year. Still lots of cold air around.

After daily exercise, I recorded the pieces of my sermon and stitched them together with the audio files Sarah recorded using Audacity on the office PC. The entire Ministry of the Word was half an hour's length, ten minutes longer than usual, but the MP3 file size was just under the website limit. The Ministry of the Sacrament was under twenty minutes, and needed additional edits to include the Passiontide variable parts. All was read ready to send off tomorrow before sunset this week.

While I was working, the PC started to give off a loud noise, not through speakers but from the cooling fan, which came on for no reason I can think of. Audacity is rarely processor intensive, and only when there's some demanding activity like gaming does one ever hear the fan. It this a Windows system update glitch I wonder? Or some hidden process running otherwise undetected? Next time it happens I need to inspect what processes are actually running at the time.

I've been listening to Cuban music today for a change, during my walk. It's very danceable, so some of my steps were a little salsa-ish. Glad to have such a variety of music on the SD card in my phone. Another busy day, nodding off already by bed time, but such a cold damp night. The dehumidifier is
as essential as a heater in this climate, all year round, it seems.