A second day with rain, yesterday, albeit more intermittent. I spent several hours finishing off the preparation for the planned Quiet Day at Cortijo Carranque tomorrow. Then, after lunch, we went to the big El Corte Ingles to look for a few small kitchen items, a sieve, some wooden spoons, a peeler, plus a plastic spatula, a fish slice. We have some excellent stainless steel pans spatulas and fish slice. We also have two fine non-stick frying pans. These would be ruined very quickly if used with any metallic implements. We were't all that successful, but we had tea there to make a fruitless search seem more worthwhile. We would have been better off going to one of the many Chinese hardware supermarkets, which seem to stock everything you can think of, even if the quality may sometimes leave something to be desired. I was amazed to receive a phone call from the Telefonica engineer enquiring if we'd yet acquired a key to the local telecoms distribution box. Sadly the answer was no. Tracking one down is the problem and contacting the keyholder is the problem.
Today started with driving Clare down to Mogens Dahl, the chiropracter who has worked wonders on my back this past month. She fell and hurt her shoulder a couple of days ago. We were fairly certain it wasn't broken, but out of alignment in its socket. I succeeded in getting an emergency appointment, and the delay wasn't a disadvantage as the initial injury trauma subsided, making the joint a little easier to work on. It meant I had delay departure for Cortijo Carranque for an hour and arrive late, after dropping Clare off in Los Boliches to go on a Chinese supermarket shopping expedition.
Being late hardly mattered however. It turned out nobody had booked in to attend the quiet day. I enjoyed doing the preparation for this as well as the poorly attended Lent Course. It kept my mind active and focussed on things that matter to me. If few were interested in the offer to share these things, inshallah. I still made the hour's trip up into the Rio Grande Valley for lunch in the open air, with a warm breeze fragrant with orange blossom, and enjoyed good conversation with Angela and Martin, followed by a siesta. We then strolled down through the orchards to the river, plucked some roots of wild mint from the water's edge, to carry back for potting and eventual installation in the yet to be created chaplaincy house garden. Angela picked some orange blossom and half a dozen oranges for me to take home to Clare. The fragrance of the spring sierras now fills our dining room, and fresh oranges were served up for pudding.
And yes, the Telefonica man, bless him, phoned again in the morning to ask about the key. I had to tell him that I expected to obtain a contact number later in day, but couldn't say when that would mean I'd have a key. I hope he understood my careful slow English. Indeed when I got back to Los Boliches, just before six, I tried ringing the contact numbers received during the day, but only found office answering machine messages, barely decipherable. The resident key holder's house, just down the street still appears as if the occupants are away.
Ah well, the world still has the Chaplaincy mobile phone number, but few callers seem to let it ring for long enough for me to find and unlock it to take the call. Then the auto answering service cuts in with a series of nags and a robotic voice in Spanish which is simply too fast (and often too crackly) for a learner to decipher. Still, I am much comforted by the diligence of the engineer who calls daily for a progress report so that he can get on with hooking us up. I can't imagine getting that quality of service from British Telecom.
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