Sunday encounters

A cool and cloudy day, considering we're only a week away from the longest day. Even on sunny days this past week or so, there's been a pleasant cooling breeze off the sea when you're outdoors, though the sun really does warm up the houses and they stay like that until late evening. But so far. not warm enough to justify using air conditioning. The car is another matter, and I'm thankful that it has air conditioning, as otherwise journeys from morning until evening would be uncomfortable.

I noticed more traffic on the Autovia during my run up to Almuñecár for the first Eucharist of the day. Now that schools are out in many European countries, it's not surprising that families are now making their ways to the coast for the summer. More traffic in Nerja on the return trip, although I was very lucky to get a parking place just around the corner from the church as soon as I arrived.

As we were singing the 'Alleluia' to welcome the Gospel, a small child about two years old, stood in the open doorway with her grandmother behind her. The child was joining in the Alleluia, with help from grandma. When I announced the Gospel, I saw grandma gently take the child's hand and help her to trace the sign of the cross on her forehead, mouth and chest. How many grandparents have helped a grandchild learn to pray and participate in worship like that down the ages? I wondered. How many will do the same in the future? A moment to treasure.

Among visitors to San Miguel was a folk dance acquaintance of our friend Gail from Worcestershire, who'd been recommended seek out the Nerja Anglican service and say Hello. Also there was a young man, out for a weekend with friends, who found us. As an RAF IT specialist and an active Christian, he said how he enjoyed 'Church hopping' when away from his home base, and found the experience of worshipping in different places and ways an encouragement to his own faith. I enjoyed a spell of techie talk with him over a beer in Bar Cuñaos after the Eucharist. It's not often I get the chance to chat with someone who's worked in Helman Province on providing essential IT network services to all the 'boots on the ground'. It's wonderful, the variety of people you meet on locum duty.

After lunch and a dozy start to the afternoon, I found that 'Happy Feet' was playing on ITV2, a film I've heard mentioned, but never seen, although it's nine years since it first came out, so I watched it, with great pleasure. It's a well intended narrative, with messages about the impact on wildlife of pollution and over-fishing polar seas, but quirky in requiring a penguin survivor to wash up on a foreign shore thousands of miles from home, and end up in a zoo, from whence its ticket home is earned by tap dancing for a human audience.

A tap dancing penguin is an amusing enough device to drive a fantasy musical plot in the best Disney tradition, but the idea that such a bizarre media storming phenomenon generates a research project supplying the penguin hero with a ticket back to Antartica is less worthy of suspension of disbelief. Real science is always way ahead of media attentiveness. To imply science merely follows popular acclaim borders on insult. Like it or not, front line fundamental scientific research, driven by testable theory and data, insight and intuition, still carries the banner of real prophetic witness for this era. All other big opinions struggle to catch up.