Traveller's tales

Only a few days now before we set out for Spain, and another spell of locum duty in Fuengirola for me, so it's been a busy few days in the office, with lots to achieve and preparation to make to make remote working easy and effective. Preparations for the NATO summit continue, and the high steel fence down the middle of the road in front of the Castle, and the temporary armoured barriers across the entrance to Queen Street and across St John's Street impose an unpleasant atmosphere which has everyone talking about this imposition from outside.

Tuesday morning I had a parting acupuncture treatment, before making my way out to Gabalfa Vicarage where Area Dean Bob Capper and his wife Roz offered retired clergy a very pleasant and sociable lunch as a thankyou for all the locum duty help given during the year. It was good to catch up with old friend and mentor David Lee, whom I haven't seen for a couple of years.

Wednesday morning I celebrated the midweek Eucharist in St Catherine's, reflecting on the life of St Bernard of Clairvaux, and then walked very briskly to the far end of Canton for an Ignatian meditation group and lunch. We heard stories over lunch about the founding and development of a South Wales branch of the British Emmaus community, which originated in France from the work among the homeless poor of the celebrated Abbé Pierre, who only died seven years ago at 95, and was active in ministry right into old age. A great inspiration to all of us in retirement.

This morning I celebrated the midweek Eucharist at St John's. We remembered the Diocese of Freetown Sierra Leone in our intercessions, very timely in view of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa at the moment. Over a cup of tea afterwards, the only man in the congregation, one of the regulars, thanked me for this mention. "I was there at the end of the War, when I was just twenty." he said, and then proceeded to tell us of how he'd enlisted with the Royal Army service Corps, and sailed in a troop ship, a converted captured German merchantman, sleeping in hammocks, getting seasick on the way. It was, to his mind a chaotic insanitary place. He came home early, having caught TB. "Better than Ebola." he said  with a wry grin, pleased to have survived to eighty nine.

And now, off to the airport.