This morning the small chaplaincy team of lay worship leaders came to the house to review the service schedule for the next couple of months and discuss related matters. It's not yet been confirmed who will follow me in January, so it's necessary to ensure the regular routine of worship is maintained. So few regulars will be around for the Christmas holiday week that it won't be possible to offer worship. How good it is that local Catholic clergy have expressed a willingness to welcome the few Anglicans who will be around and want to attend church, to join their congregations for Communion.
After the meeting Paul and I drove into town to meet Michael and Fr Cristobel the Vinaros Parish Priest at the Capilla Virgen del Carmen (aka Fishermen's chapel) to have a look around and meet Maria the caretaker.
They showed us around a building recently refurbished after a break-in with vandalism last year. Now it's got brand new re-enforced steel doors and an ramped entrance.
Hymn books and furniture were burned in a bonfire, leaving a terrible mess. Now, its walls and ceiling are bright and clean with new flooring to replace the area fire damaged, new chairs, a new altar adorned with a ship's helm carving and a new lectern with an anchor carving, making it unmistakably a Capilla de los Marineros.
Our Sunday service moves here this coming weekend. It'll be good for the congregation as there's an off road car park opposite, making it much more convenient a place to be than the town centre.
They showed us around a building recently refurbished after a break-in with vandalism last year. Now it's got brand new re-enforced steel doors and an ramped entrance.
When we'd finished, Michael announced that we'd be calling at the garage on the way back, to pick up car, now repaired after recent misadventures. I was most grateful for this as it enabled me to do some heavy shopping later on in the afternoon.
Quite apart from listening to the Today programme over the internet on my phone when I get up in the morning, I make a point of listening to 'The Archers' in the evening. The drama has been ramped up recently with Brookfield Farm, the family home, up for sale with David and Ruth Archer planning to move up north for a fresh cattle farming start as the new by-pass road threatens to break up their family land held over the past sixty years. Several celebrity listeners are protesting at the threatened affront to the historic soap opera's plot. More drama tonight with Tony Archer being crushed and trampled by his prize bull, flown off to hospital for an emergency operation, threatened with a future in a wheelchair if surgery is unsuccessful. And all this on his mother Peggy's 90th birthday! It's quite something.
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