The thing I like about the wintry weather here on the Costa del Sol at the moment is that when there are clouds about, they rarely cover the entire sky at low level, as they do back home. It's one of the few things I don't like about my home city. There were clouds when I woke up at eight, just before sunrise, and they were around in large formations, moving under the power of a cold breeze from the east. Interesting sky from a photographer's point of view. Because of the time difference, I was eating breakfast while 'Thought for the Day was broadcasting, rather than just woken up. It takes me a week or so to adapt to such a small time zone difference. It's lovely to have the extra hour of afternoon daylight.
After breakfast, I checked next Sunday's Eucharist readings and some ideas emerged, so I got to work on a sermon straight away. I heard from Jen that both the car's front tyre and the spare had to be replaced. A new spare had to be ordered and will arrive tomorrow. John has to ferry Jen to a rendezvous with the other chaplaincy delegates who are bound for the four day Archdeaconry Synod in Calpe tomorrow, and finish the tyre replacement chore, and then get the car back to the house here. Quite a logistic challenge, and I can do nothing useful to help with this. Fortunately managing without the car isn't a problem as I can walk anywhere I need to, or catch a bus if I really need to.
After a couple of hours writing, I walked down to Mercadona to get some chicken, fruit, nuts, seeds and sunflower oil for cooking, and then improvised a lunch with yesterday's veggie leftovers and rice. When I was out visiting the local shrine of the Virgin of Fatima on Saturday, I took a photo of a tile on the wall with a poetic verse on it. I decided to make a translation of it for interest, and then sent photos and my small effort to Mother Frances for interest. Nice to have time to be able to do odd things like this on a passing fancy.
I then took my Olympus camera out for a walk to photograph the clouds. I also walked down Avenida Los Boliches, the local main shopping street which has a variety of small shops, bars and restaurants. Calling it an avenue sounds pretentious, as it's not very wide and traffic goes one way. Its retail diversity reminds me of Canton High Street or Canton Cross, as it's called (instead of the official Cowbridge Road East). You have to go to the west end of Fuengirola to find posher shopping streets and hotels.
It's interesting to consider how the Los Boliches barrio may have evolved. Its houses were originally one or two storeys, but almost all have been converted to, or replaced by three or four storey dwellings since first built. There's one section of forty dwellings nearby in a conventional street design, which on closer inspection turn out to be upper and lower storey apartments, similar in design to traditional fisherfolk cottages I saw in Estepona last summer. I'd guess they were all built in 1950s or 1960s.
The east wind picked up, and the sea across entire bay was piled high with two metre waves. As I walked beside the storm drain next to the Stella Maris statue flock and flock of tiny birds flew over my head weaving evasively in cloud shaped formation, heading towards a grove of large evergreen trees by the roadside, where they settled to roost for the night. At first I thought they were swifts because of their aerial agility, but their flight pattern was more coherent. When I'd seen maybe more than a thousand birds go by I could tell they were smaller. I have no idea what they were, and once they landed they were invisible in the tree canopy. The noise they made conversing within was amazingly loud. They may have just been house sparrow, but if they were, I've never seen a series of big family groups gather to roost together in the evening like that before.
By the time I reached the house, it was already getting. Clare and I talked for half an hour before it was time to listen to 'The Archers' - interesting this past week because episodes have been centred around the reaction of family members and villagers to the death of one of the original Archer siblings, Jennifer. Her character first appeared in the long lasting radio soap opera in 1951, and the dramatic study in reactions to sudden bereavement are interesting and well portrayed.
After that, photo uploading and writing for an hour and a half until bed time.
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