Local bus, first use

Another day of blue sky and bright sunshine with an assortment of birthday greetings coming in from family and friends by email and WhatsApp. Clare posted a card, but if it has arrived it hasn't yet been retrieved from the urbanizacion mailbox at the bottom of the hill. The key has yet to be returned to John the Churchwarden by whoever it was last looked after chaplaincy mail retrieval. Ah well never mind, we did talk at length later in the day.

I couldn't go out as I had work to do this morning, a sermon to write for Sunday, and the weekly pew sheet to finish off, prepared by John and emailed to me to tweak the page format before printing on the parish's network lazer printer. It's a nice piece of kit, attached by network cable to the ancient office laptop. It's very slow to start up, but the software on it still works as intended without any fuss once I got the hang of it, and was able to print off the sheets for use on Sunday.

I cooked a spicy vegetable sauce with spuds for lunch, and mid afternoon walked down to the nearest bus stop serving the neighbouring Ladera del Mar II urbanizacion, whose luxury houses are served by a road that winds its way up a steep valley overlooking the sea. There's no bus shelter or formal place for the bus to pull in at this final stop and turning point for the Linea 3 service. The large urban service bus timetable is printed on a large panel affixed to the base of the cliff overlooking the road. It took me a quarter of an hour to reach the stop from the house. The single ticket fare is just one euro, and the bus speeds you into the town centre to the parada on a street above the beach from which it starts and finishes. Very useful, as it's just a couple of minutes walk from there to the church shop, and it saves on using the car and having to park it.

I wandered the town centre streets, reassembling my mental map of the layout a bit like putting a jigsaw together. I found a small municipal art gallery which is currently hosting the work of two local women painters. One focused on painting people, mostly woman of Asiatic origin, the other portraying mostly women of European origin, with characterful bold stares - the sitter interrogating the one who's looking, whereas the Asian women portrayed are more inward and subjective in their gaze. Fascinating.

I called in to the Iglesia del Salvador to pray, and after a while was enlisted by the organist to help free her instrument's power cable which had got trapped in one of its its wheels. Then I returned to the bus stop to catch the six fortyfive bus return bus, but it didn't arrive until seven. After supper I chatted with Kath about meeting her at the airport tomorrow evening, then walked up the hill and back to complete my exercise quota for the day, before heading for bed.