Awake at sunrise again. It's pleasant to lie there and look on days when the sky is bright and clear. After breakfast, I put a load of clothes through the washing machine and hung them out to dry on in the sun on the balcony, then decided to go into Nerja to visit the church shop, and get those few items I needed but failed to find or remember on previous shopping trips, namely small kitchen knives, hair shampoo and bars of soap. I walked as far as the nearest bus stop, about a mile from the house, but missed hourly Line 3 bus to the town centre. As I could walk all the way before the next one came, I walked along the beach instead, with a pleasant cooling breeze in my face.
The shop was quite busy, both with bargain hunting customers and staff busy with sorting out new clothes donations in a crowded space, I felt I was getting in the way, but the team were pleased that I'd come to check in with them. Nerja's church shop is a long standing ex-pat institution, which recycles a huge range of garments and accessories from top designer dresses down to kiddies clothes.
It's been going as long as the chaplaincy has and survived the pandemic. It draws ex-pat volunteers from outside church circles too. When I was here before, there was a midweek Eucharist before the shop opened. During covid, a streamed service took its place, but since then, attendance dwindled, and there's been nothing midweek since the retirement of Fr Nigel last year. All the more reason a pastor to turn up on a Wednesday and loiter with intent in the shop. Inevitably books get donated as well. Holidaymakers come in, buy or donate. Sometimes the latest thing bought in an airport bookshop arrives, gets snapped up and exchanged among initiates, gaining even more readers than booksellers ever imagine!
Ninety percent of the books donated are in English. I checked the foreign book shelf to see what I could find. Ninety five percent were in Scandinavian languages or German! Nevertheless, I came away with two books in Spanish; one a novel by Umberto Eco, the other a story woven around exposing the sordid side of the lives of political leaders during the Second World War by Juan Eslava Galan. Reading these over the next nine weeks will be quite a challenge. They are too think and heavy to fit into my tightly packed travel bags.
I bought the small kitchen knives I needed in a labyrinthine Chinese emporium, and soaps from the Mercadona whose entrance I didn't find yesterday. When I got to the bus station, it turned out that I had missed the returning Line 3 bus and would have to wait three quarters of an hour, so I walked back. Although it was midday, the cooling breeze made walking the extra miles tolerable, and I was back at the house cooking lunch by two.
On the way, I took a photo of the Line 3 timetable at the bus stop, to study in detail, and memorise the times in order to plan better my next trip into town. I reckon it's a half hour walk to the nearest bus stop to be certain of not missing one. Much to my surprise, I learned that Line 3 first point of departure in town is not actually at the bus station but at the bottom of the street in which the church shop is located. If only I'd realised this before!
I spent the afternoon making the video slide show for next week's Morning Prayer and uploading it to YouTube. The sun casts a long shadow down the middle of the valley from mid afternoon onwards so I went for a walk down the hill at tea time in the sunlight that remained, just for the pleasure of it.
In the chaplain's office downstairs is the 17" Acer laptop I remember using when I was last here. Since then it's been 'upgraded' to Windows 10, and now runs so slowly you need a lot of time, patience and confidence that it's not dead, when it's simply loading an app and processing data. A couple of days ago, I nursed it through a major update. When it finally became responsive I found its Google Chrome housed the memorized credentials for the Chaplaincy website, and editing app. I was concerned when I looked at the site a couple of months ago to discover it hadn't been updated in the past three years. Finding the means to update the site gave me a job to do I wasn't expecting, but I feel happier to think now that potential Sunday visitors for worship won't now give up in despair on the Parish website.
After supper I chatted with Clare. She already has boarding passes for her trip. I tried to obtain mine but couldn't, as I can't be allocated a seat until the week before the flight as I chose the low cost no baggage option for a short trip home. Discrimination against those with less money to spend. What else can you expect from a system destined to destroy this world?
So ends my 79th year on earth.
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