In the midst of life

After a better night's sleep with a pillow under my pelvis, I woke up to somewhat less discomfort than over the past few days. By a process of cautious experiment, I found a comfortable position in which I could relax and sleep, and this helped the displaced vertebrae to resume their natural place. As long as I'm careful, the soreness should go in a few days. I was glad about this, as I had an invite from Jasmine, a member of the Llanos congregation to a coffee morning at her home in the campo three quarters of an hour's drive from Mojácar to the west of Huercal Overa.

The house is set in open rolling countryside between the village of Sta Maria de Nieva and the hamlet of El Gor. The village built an ermita on top of a low hill in the early eighteenth century, then a church, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 1863 and took twenty years to rebuild. It has twin towers and a dome. It stands out because its exterior is clad in red sandstone, and it's the only large building in a village whose houses stretch along the main road from Huercal Overa, evidence perhaps of a certain prosperity in the area a hundred and fifty years ago. It wasn't open however, so I didn't stop to take a closer look.

About two dozen people came from far and wide to the coffee morning. There were a bric-a-brac and book stalls, and one devoted varieties of home made preserves and marmalade. One member had cooked a fresh batch of big traditional pasties before coming. I was lucky to get the penultimate one to take home for lunch. All this, plus the raffle, always a raffle, was in aid of church funds. It's an impressive amount of effort which this, like many other churches, invest in what I like to call the 'voluntary economy'. It's great how traditional recipes and home cooking, whether inherited British or acquired Spanish are at the heart of community food culture. It helps that many ex-pats have fruit trees on their fincas and enjoy their produce. I returned with a bag of freshly picked mandarins, to top up the fast reducing bowl of freshly picked ones I was given last Sunday.

Just as I arrived, the chaplaincy phone received a call from a Spanish undertaker asking if I was Hywel Davies. Hywel is a colleague and friend in Llandaff diocese. He was here on locum duty in March and April this year, so this didn't surprise me, and I was able to explain who I was, and then conducted the full conversation with him in Spanish. He texted me the phone number of the widow, and so I drove straight from the coffee morning to the apartment in Vera Playa, where Christine's husband had died suddenly the day before, six years younger than me.

I found my way to the area where I knew the urbanización was, but then Google Maps started to be most unhelpful, failing to acknowledge the name of the place I was looking for, and redirecting me to an urbanización with a similar name several kilometres away. Large areas of the coastal plain through which the Almanzora river runs are drained wetlands, intersected by modern infrastructure but still waiting for housing in-fill, covered with bushes and cane forests. No houses, no signage, much confusion.

After another phone call to the family, I was met by the son's father-in-law at the roadside overlooking the salinas lake nature reserve which I visited for the first time last Sunday afternoon. I learned that the couple had only made the permanent move from Lancashire to Spain in April of this year, after years of visits, staying in their son's apartment. Without warning, the future no longer has shape or prospects that make sense for them. I have the weekend to prepare a funeral service, to at least help the family face up to this untimely, unwanted farewell.