Remembrance Sunday

I drove west on the N340 in good time to find my way to Calahonda for the first Remembrance Sunday Eucharist. It's a drive of about fifteen kilometres from where I'm staying, another five from Peter and Linda's nearest junction, so I was venturing into unfamiliar territory, looking out for the correct turning. It wasn't too hard to spot, but on a first visit with a time deadline I was nervous about over-running the turning, until I saw it and made it. 

The parish church of San Miguel is set just above the highway junction in the middle of a big roundabout. It's an attractive modern building with rooms behind where a Sunday school can meet.

I noted from the noticeboard that an English speaking evangelical church meets here in the afternoon, so the local Catholic community is ecumenically generous. There were thirty adults and five children present, and some enthusiastic singing from a choir of half a dozen. When I arrived before the service, the choir was rehearsing Christmas music for the first time this autumn.

As the service included the Act of Remembrance and lengthy notices, it went on longer than usual, so I was unable to stop for a coffee and chat before taking the fifteen minute drive back to Los Boliches for the eleven thirty Eucharist. Thankfully I found a convenient parking place near St Andrew's, and that left me plenty of time to prepare.

This morning during both observances of the Two Minutes Silence, my mind was back at St John's Cardiff, remembering Bill John reciting the allocution - "They shall not grow old ...", no longer with the voice of the stern History teacher of my adolescence, but the frailer gentler voice that comes with great age, charged with recollection and insight from the hidden days of his youth - sixty-odd years after his return from Burma. As a schoolboy, I don't ever recall any of our masters speaking of their war-time service. In fact, I only learned of Bill's participation in the Burma campaign when I went to St John's.

We will remember them.