New book

Awake before the reminder from my phone and posting the link to WhatsApp for today's Morning Prayer video. Another clear and sunny start to the day, and a morning mostly spent preparing text for next week's prayer offering. Then, a walk to Mercadona and back for fresh fruit and veg before cooking lunch. There are no shortages here, but British news is full of accounts of supermarket empty shelves and rationing as the regular fresh food supply chain from Spain has been disrupted by the strong cold winds earlier in the growing season, reducing the abundance of exportable fruit and veg the UK has come to rely on in years past. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for government money to back an increase in domestic fresh food production to make Britain more self sustaining, and reduce the carbon footprint from food imports.

There were service sheets and collection money to take to the church office on my afternoon walk which took me down av. Los Boliches past the book-shop which was open so I went in and browsed for something new to read. A rotating display stand full of paperback novels by Spanish authors, ten or eleven euros each got my attention. I picked up one by Gabriel Garcia Marques to look at, and realised I read it already but had forgotten. It was my first attempt to read a novel in Spanish four years ago. How time flies! 

The novel by Carola Ruiz Zafon I finished a couple of nights ago was also on display, along with others of his. I bought a book by Javier Cercas, about an strange incident in the Spanish Civil War which comes to light and is investigated by an unsuccessful novelist seventy years later. It promises to be interesting.  I then walked along the Paseo Maritime to the town centre. The sea was like a millpond. When I was passing Playa San Francisco I spotted a procession of four paddle boarders crossing the width of that surfistas paradise, which had four metre waves not so many dyas ago. 

The temperature began to drop well before the sun set, as a light chilly breeze sprang up, and clouds started gathering on the eastern horizon over the sea, heralding the return of more wind and rain soon. After dark the sound of wind gusting through the urbanizacion was audible again after a respite of more than a week.

Clare and I chatted before the Archers. Priority booking for the next season of WNO operas has opened and she's already on the case, after tickets for Ainadamar and La Traviata for this coming September. Kath and Anto will come down and join us for the former, and Ann for the latter. In order to come here, I've missed two operas this season. I felt this was an opportunity not to be missed. The lengthy vacancy could well be filled later this year, so I won't get a chance to return again. 

It's amazing it happened at all, nine years on from the first time. I'm coping well here on my own, and if I'm more nervous than I was before, that's because I'm ageing, slowing down, and the trauma of the sprained ankle has certainly made me more cautious. I don't honestly know if I'll be able to do a two month locum next year at this stage. I've had a good run and I'm most grateful for the enrichment of my retirement through the experiences I've had. Whether on not it's time to call it a day, remains to be seen. Funny, I remember thinking the same after Ibiza three years ago!