Lovely warm weather again today, but I needed to make an early start on a sermon for next Sunday's service, as co-incidentally this week's bible study is on the same passage Acts 17, set for the first lesson, Paul in Athens. There's a lot to say about this and I'd rather not repeat myself, so it will need extra thought to make it edifying for those who listened to the bible study and those who didn't. It's an unusual challenge.
Just before I was about to break for lunch I received a text message from British Airways to say that my flight to Heathrow on 1st June was cancelled. It referred me to their re-booking web page to go through the same rigmarole as I went through a week ago, to secure another flight. Except that this time the page refused to load. I tried it on a couple of different devices and got the same result. No point in phoning up as the waiting time for a response with a long queue of distressed disappointed passengers could be many expensive hours of waiting.
I chatted with Kath about this. She tried the re-booking service using my flight booking reference and got the same result. She looked up alternative flights, and found a Jet2 to Birmingham on the 17th or 18th June, if all else failed, but promised that she would attempt to contact BA using Twitter and their Direct Messaging service tomorrow.
This turn of events really upset me. So many people to inform, here there and everywhre. It's been hard enough to map out the end of my ministry time here and prepare to run the contagion gauntlet of air travel in order to get home to a less active future, then suddenly all this is in the air again, and a different set of plans have to be thought out. After lunch, I decided to abandon work and walk to St Antoni's Banco Santander ATM and withdraw some euros to pay my debts with. Unfortunately I underestimated the distance. I thought it was 4km when it's 7km from here. It was probably a good idea to tire myself out so I'd have no energy left to worry with.
In the evening I didn't get much done. I found myself thinking of people down the ages displaced by war or plague, or economic migration not knowing how they were going to reach the place of safety or secure life prospects they were hoping for. I'm so used to life going according to plan with only a few minor setbacks along the way, flights delayed, bus services not running to time, major traffic congestion delays, all with limited consequences.
Last year, waiting for minor surgical operations which never seemed to happen quite when intended, being nearly forgotten by hospital admin, was bad enough. It taught me how to be a patient, and to be patient, and wait many weeks not knowing for the first time in my life. Now I have a rough idea of how to come to terms with big disruptions if I have to. At the moment, so many unknowns and such a climate of uncertainty mean that things you thought you could rely on you may not be able to. Everything feels like a game of chance.
For most of my life I believe I have been risk-averse. It took a finance consultant quizzing me about retirement investment ten years ago to help me to see this about myself. I've been way out of my comfort zone since leaving home this time, far more than I could have expected or wanted to risk. There was a call to minister here and once I'd said yes, there was no turning back, especially as the risk of doing so accelerated by the day when there was still widespread denial or ignorance of the nature of the pandemic threat. There's no escape from uncertainty if I do get home eventually, as it's far less safe in UK than it is on Ibiza. Not knowing how long I have to remain here, in order simply to get used to the thought is hardest to live with tonight.
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