A lunch date, but not when expected

I woke up early enough to listen to 'Thought for the Day' and then dozed off again for another hour. After a late breakfast, Monday housework. I was just finishing an email to a local councillor with a suggestion about providing an extra large container at strategic sites in the parks for collecting the sacks of rubbish generated whenever there's a big barbecue or picnic, to prevent them getting dumped alongside ordinary bins and getting torn open and blown apart by the wind. Then my phone rang. 

Rufus was calling to ask if was was about to arrive at the restaurant in town where we agreed to meet with Philip for lunch. For no good reason I believed we were meeting Thursday this week, so I apologised to Clare, having just agreed to cook lunch, and left in haste. I caught a 61 bus and arrived not long after they had started with a drink. It's more than five years since we last met for a pub lunch, so there were lots of stories to tell. They've both been in full time ministry now for ten eventful and difficult years with the church in catastrophic decline, and both wondering what their future ministries in their final ten years of full time work are going to look like. 

Both of them were mature ordinands, one coming from a senior job in local government and the other from a senior training job in industry, both with so much to give, and both deserving of more serious recognition than they've had from the church's hierarchy, which seems error prone and panic stricken in trying to manage its way out of decline in a way that alienates many faithful people. I admire their courage in persisting with their respective pastoral vocations in the face of great discouragement.

After we parted company, I had a look around John Lewis', and then on impulse visited Waterstones, where I bought a paperback copy of Anthony Beevor's magisterial account of the Spanish civil war, 'The Battle for Spain', which I started reading when I found a hardback copy on the hall bookshelf in Casa de la Esperanza in Fuengirola. Now I have my own, I can share it with Anto once I've read it, as he too takes an interest in Spain's Civil War history.

I walked home from there through Bute Park. The rubbish strewn site on the edge of Pontcanna Fields that was the subject of this morning's email was totally clean, since earlier in the day so I tweeted a message of thanks to the Council's Waste Management team when I got home. 

I read Beevor's book for an hour before supper, and afterwards returned to Watching episodes of Finnish crimmie 'Enemy of the People' that I started yesterday. The journalistic investigation that follows a murder has turned into an enquiry into a bitcoin pyramid selling scam with laundering of public funds thrown in, and all sorts of people in public positions being conned into suspect dealings. Though it's a fictional story it describes in a clear way how such schemes actually work in real life. Quite educative really. I'm keeping the final episode until tomorrow, and heading for bed now.