Full Sunday

On Sundays, I need to set an alarm, to make sure I have enough time to be out of the house by nine. This gets me out of bed at sunrise with everything ready to leave on time. Not my usual leisurely start to the day! I collected Patricia from the bus stop near her home and by twenty to ten we arrived at church. Most people already knew about Lew's unexpected death, and naturally needed to talk abut it. 

Just after we'd started Thea's mobile phone rang. She's the sort of person who'd never leave her phone on in church, but since early morning she'd been waiting for a call from the funeral directors about the precise timing of the service on Tuesday. She took the call very quietly. I think many people knew what was going on, and most wanted to know, but we waited until the end to inform everyone that the funeral would be at ten om Tuesday in Estepona's Tanatorium (aka crem.) I made reference to Lew in the sermon, and the lady leading the intercessions was prayed tearfully for Lew, and she wasn't the only one with tears in her eyes, He was much loved.

There were thirty of us in church, including five children. We finished just within the hour and by five past eleven I was on my way to Sotogrande for the midday service, but not before I dropped my reading glasses in the courtyard and both lenses popped out. I couldn't stop to fix them. It was the first time for me to drive the regular route to Sotogrande from San Pedro. It took just under forty minutes. Having done the journey and found the church two days running, the uncertainty about travel timing and finding my way on the last stretch is now alleviated. 

I had no success in fixing my proper glasses when I arrived and had to use my spare pair of cheap specs instead, and they weren't as good as they needed to be for customary reading text at arms length. While Geoff the churchwarden is away for the summer, the church reverts to using hymn books and service sheets, rather than projected slides as inn  San Pedro. This changes things, and I didn't have a complete service text to work from in a decently readable size, and they weren't words I knew by heart, to busk my way through. I got through OK, although I suspect my voice quality dropped when I was obliged to look down to read. It's one of the few times when impaired vision has been a factor undermining my ability to lead a service to my own satisfaction. This won't happen next time. I'll be better prepared.

There were seventeen of us for the Eucharist. Many are on holiday, some are self isolating because of covid contact or illness. A man I spoke to afterwards remembered I'd been a locum priest at St Andrew's Fuengirola, eight years ago, when both Costa del Sol chaplaincies had no priest. He'd been a church warden at the time and approached me to do a couple of wedding blessings down here. I was also asked to take a funeral at Manilva Tanatorio around the same time, but the next of kin lived beyond Málaga, and arranged for the service to take place near where the the deceased had spent her life.

I was back at the house by two, noticing when driving into the urbanización that it's not called 'Beverley Hills', but 'Beverly Hill'. Ooops! There was a lump meat in the freezer, but I couldn't tell what it was until it was defrosted. It turned out to be beef, something I've not eaten in the past three years, if not longer. I diced half of it up and stewed it with some vegetables alubia beans and a glass of Rioja to make my own version of a cazuelo. I was quite pleased at the result.

At four I had a visit from Thea and Patricia, to plan Lew's funeral service. When they took their leave I set about editing together the requisite sets of words, and an MP3 of a slow movement from a Mozart Piano concerto, for exit music. I'm not yet sure how this is all going to work out but one way or another it will. A pity that it's such short notice.

I left it until sunset to walk along the sender litoral, but it was cooler and refreshing after another humid hot day. I caught part of a crimmie on ITV set in the South of France. It's made entirely in English, and this seems so odd, a characterless throwback to long gone decades of movie making. By way of contrast 'The Archers' has gone bi-lingual with the birth of Tom and Natasha's twin daughters. Our Mam has come to stay, and there's Welsh conversation between them, oh so correct, with no borrowed English words, not really that true to life, but so nice to hear on national radio. I bet there's be complaints.