Early Candlemass

I was asked if we could celebrate Candlemass early this Sunday, and it seemed a good idea ' Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... etc', as it's my last Sunday on this tour of duty. So we started with a simple blessing of candles, used the relevant readings, and concluded with 'Faithful Vigil Ended. It all fitted nicely. I could have done without the round of applause after Neil's words of thanks at the end. I'm just happy to be still working, able to travel and feel a bit useful sometimes.

Talking of travel, I had a Communion service to celebrate in Villars in the evening. I walked into Montreux gare in time to catch a train to Aigle which arrived twenty minutes before my connecting bus at five. I was glad of this as I needed time to find the bus stop. Now Aigle has a couple of narrow gauge lines running up into the mountains, side of the valley behind the town. One goes to Leysin and the other to Les Diablerets. This is run by Transports Publiques du Chablais, so these trains and the buses have their own special grass green livery, and platforms on the town side of the main line. 

There's an hourly TPC bus service which climbs up through Ollon to Villars at 1,300m on a road which I drove a couple of times back in the summer, and was glad not to have to in either direction today, given the amount of ski resort traffic. There were plenty of skiers coming off the bus and a few laden with luggage going up to stay. There was a relaxed and cheery mood among the mostly young people coming and going at the bus stop.

The surrounding snow capped mountain peak looked exquisite while the sun was setting during the ascent, and I got some fairly decent photos from inside the bus, whenever I could avoid reflections from the bus interior. This changed continuously with the light changing each time we went through a hairpin bend. At the hamlet of Gryon, Guy got on the bus carrying the Jack Russel terrier he takes everywhere with him in a rucksack. The dog is at ease with this. It's safer on mountain roads where it's impractical to keep him on a lead. Guy's a congregational worship leader in Villars, and works in Aiglon College. He's a renowned butterfly expert in this part of the world. It was good to meet him again.

There were ten of us for the service, and afterwards, by pre-arrangement Guy took me through the darkened streets of the village to visit a couple made housebound when one of them broke a limb just after arriving for their winter break from the UK before Christmas. Given the bus timetable it couldn't be a long visit, but the essential purpose was to take them Holy Communion. I was glad to do this, even though time was short and we had to walk very briskly to the bus stop afterwards to be sure not to get left behind, otherwise it would be another hour before the last bus of the day, and near zero temperatures to wait around in.

Arriving half an hour later in Aigle, I was on a train for Montreux within a few minutes. Inevitably there were skiers going home,  but also a number of young soldiers, smartly dressed in uniform. I'm not sure if they were heading back to barracks after a weekend at home, or heading home after a weekend of training. Conscription is still the norm in Switzerland, and once basic training is finished there may be options for completing the two years required. Also conscripts get called back for a refresher course every so often, and I believe that can happen into middle age, unless you have some kind of exemption. 

The non stop train takes just eleven minutes to get to Montreux, and I was able to take a bus back to Territet, as the aller-retour ticket issued to me was actually a multi-zone carte journalière that works out at the same price if not slightly cheaper, especially with my demi-tarif fare card for the month. It's certainly saved money for the church and for me. I could have used it more, but in a place as pleasant to stay as this, you don't always fancy going far. Still, a last outing tomorrow, for pleasure not duty, before getting down to bag packing and cleaning up.

After supper, I watched another episode of McMafia, which I still find slow moving, and not entirely convincing. There's a lot of conversation in Russian with subtitles. To me the actors seem impassive if not wooden, with their different Slavonic manner of self-presentation. I always feel as if I am about to lose interest in the storyline. Interestingly enough critical opinion is divided. The Telegraph's Michael Hogan is fulsome with praise. The New Statesman's Rachel Cooke has some sharp comments to make: "McMafia’s slick tedium is born of the fact the series has no heart" and  ".. as a drama the feeling persists that the actors and director are trying to pass an electric current through a jelly." Slick tedium. I like that.