A double loss

Another mild sunny day with high clouds decorating the sky. I had a message from Clare to tell me that Marion Barnes, wife of Oswald, who died a couple of weeks ago, has also died. It's not surprising really with them both being in their nineties and together for over seventy years I think. Inseparable in death as in life. The possibilities of a joint funeral are now under consideration. God bless her. May she too rest in peace.

After breakfast, I swept the floor and put a load of washing through the machine and put it to dry on a rack in the sun on the patio. Then I recorded and edited next week's Morning Prayer and completed my Sunday sermon. Lunch was a convenient second portion of the veggie pasta dish, cooked yesterday. 

On the first Friday evening of Lent when I was here nine years ago there was a big Via Crucis procession through the streets of Los Boliches. I wondered if there'd be anything going on tonight, and it took me a while to find information, tucked away on one of the local cofradia websites. Yes indeed, a procession was scheduled starting after dark at eight o'clock, not locally, but at the Iglesia de San Jose on the av de Mijas in the barrio de Boquetillo not far from the train station. It seems all the cofradias of area join together for this event and it rotates from parish to parish. It may have been like that nine years ago, as it was such a big event, which I came across accidentally. I know better where to look for this kind of information now, tucked away in Facebook pages.

While it's possible to take the train and walk the short distance from there to San Jose, it would mean returning quite late. I thought about it, but realised that I don't have enough energy for that kind of extra outing. Self preservation is more a priority nowadays, so I'm fit for the purpose I came here for. Sad to miss this, but sensing my own vulnerability means accepting limits that come with ageing. Instead, I took an afternoon walk to Torreblanca and back along the Paseo Maritime. 

Clare emailed me a copy of  our digital tickets for the 2023-24 WNO operas, and complained that when she tried to print them the embedded QR codes weren't reproduced, as the information was embedded and not attached separately to the email. It's a quirk of the WNO booking system yet to be remedied. The system is geared up for the Apple Wallet app but not Google Wallet. Very remiss of them, not that I use Google Wallet! When I called Clare to say I'd extract the ticket images via a screenshot and send them back, she was in the Royal Welsh College waiting for 'Amser Jazz' to start. I listened to some of it on YouTube later, but that was after she'd left, unimpressed by the loud funk band in the second half.

After supper I settled down with my new novela 'Soldados de Salamina'. I've discovered a film based on the book was made in 2003, with a female rather than the male protagonist who narrates the story in the book. I must keep a lookout for this eventually.