This morning I drove out to Abersychan up in the valley between Pontypool and Blaenafon to visit Rufus one of my St Mike's students and his wife Daria. Our venerable VW Golf felt quite heavy to handle after the lightness and power of the Citroen C4 in Spain, and took my quite a while to get used to, more so than changing to driving on the 'wrong' side of the road.
Rufus is now happily installed as Curate in his diaconal year and enjoying life and ministry in a place that's gone from mining community to commuter dormitory in the past two decades. It's now a quiet rural backwater with a variety of prestige houses being constructed to attract the right kind of people to contribute to local economic 'uplift'. It's something of a challenge to know how to re-generate neighbourly relationships in a place occupied more and more by incoming strangers. It was lovely to catch up with them and share their joy at the new life they've started there.
I then drove down to Newport to eat succulent roast duck with plum sauce and cucumber for lunch and catch up with my old friend Martin before heading home for tea. As I was leaving his place a red light started flashing on the car dashboard. It's never happened before and I didn't know whether it symbolised oil or water deficit. A radiator system check revealed that the header reservoir needed a litre and a half of water to top it up. Then I noticed for the first time that there was an electrical sensor attached to the reservoir rim. Hence the flashing light. Once it was filled up, no more flashing light. Thank goodness.
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