Geneva in lockdown

A good night's sleep, waking up clear headed and refreshed to sunshine and warmer weather. After breakfast and taking the meds my head went foggy again. Is it something to do with the combined effect of the different drugs? I went to St Catherine's for the Parish Eucharist, while Clare and Kath went into town to check out a venue to hold our Diamond Wedding anniversary family feast. 

This afternoon, we had a phone call from our dear friend Gill Howie in Geneva to tell us she's moved into a retirement home in Grand Sacconnex. It's the first time we've spoken for a year. She couldn't get through to exchange greetings with us last Christmas because of the mess TalkTalk made of transferring our phone number to British Telecom. She said there'd only been an on-line service at Holy Trinity Geneva today as Geneva is on lock-down due to Trump's visit with the expectation of potentially violent protest against the war. 

Just as the cease fire was due to be signed between America and Iran in Geneva, Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon again despite the ceasefire supposed to be in effect there. Inevitably this will delay the conclusion of the negotiations Trump has been touting for months. Trump has openly urged Netanyahu  not to attack Lebanon at this pivotal moment, but is he being listened to? A former Israeli ambassador to the USA expressed the view that Trump's annoyance with Israel reveals his recognition that Netanyahu is trying to undermine him. Whether it's true or not, it suggests he's not taking Trump seriously and misled him into making an alliance against Iran that has not delivered the success anticipated. Iran has emerged from the war stronger and more emboldened, while Israel now faces a less favourable regional balance It sounds to me like a retired diplomat speaking who disapproves of his country's leadership.

Kath left us for Kenilworth after lunch. Clare and I went to the Co-op to buy some coffee and kefir as we'd run out of both this morning. Then I walked in Llandaff Fields until supper time and resisting the temptation to watch telly, I got ready for bed early. 

On the twelfth day of Christmas ....

Such a pleasure to wake up to a blue sky rainless sunny day. By the time I surfaced, Clare had prepared our Saturday pancake breakfast, and started cooking the second batch of marmalade. It was midday by the time another eight jars were filled and cooling ready for storage. We drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for our first visit since last April. We used to go three or four times a year, and last year downgraded our family membership, as the grandchildren are no longer young enough to enjoy it as an adventure playground and not yet old enough to enjoy a historic building and landscape. 

Only recently we decided to cancel our annual subscription, now over a hundred pounds, and not without justification, given that one visit a year for the two of us costs only twenty five pounds. Well, the National Trust benefited from our subscription for the last fourteen years anyway, but we've not used it by visiting any other property in the last five years. We don't do that kind of leisure travel often nowadays. Clare finds long car journeys more and endurance than an enjoyment. Our horizons are shrinking with age. It saddens me. I don't mind travelling on my own if I have work to do, but leisure travel is for enjoyment shared.

Both the regular and overflow car parks were full of cars. There are a few charging points for electric cars near the garden entrance, and the place was busy with families, as well as old folk like us. Scaffolding has been taken down from the building, now that weatherproofing has been completed, but the main rooms of the house have yet to re-open. Only a day room looking on to the garden is open at the moment and used to showcase latest restoration works. Snowdrops are already in full bloom, and early daffodil shoots above ground. Some, though not all of the flower beds have been tidied and made ready for planting. On such a bright day, the leafless trees look striking against the green of the lawns. Leaf buds are appearing earlier than usual, the trees are ready in their own way for the surge of new life to come.

Clare had a drink and a sandwich, but I didn't feel like eating, absorbed with taking pictures with my Sony Alpha 68. I wanted to take my Olympus and/or my new Panasonic TZ95 with me, but found the batteries in both needed charging. I've used them very little in the past three months, a reflection of how little there is that's new and catching my attention in my unchanging daily routine. I'm not bored with photography as much as bored with the sameness of it all, but not yet restless enough to do anything about it.

We were home again before sunset, so I went out and walked again for an hour, to complete my daily round. Clare thawed out and heated what was left of the chestnuts in red wine casserole from Christmas dinner for supper, enough for the two of us with brown rice and brussels sprouts. Still tasting good! Our dear friend Gill called us from Geneva, and we enjoyed a half hour chat with her. She told us about the costly building development project being undertaken at Holy Trinity Church. Phase one was an interior refurbishment of the worship space, phase two is the excavation of another suite of rooms beneath the present basement level church hall. This is apparently justified by the recent expansion in youth ministry. 

It was good to hear that the Chaplaincy now has a half time curate, who is also a half time representative of the Anglican Communion with UN agencies in the city. He served his title at St Andrew's Moscow, but had to leave when Putin declared war on Ukraine. Having a young married priest is apparently going down well. HTC like most other chaplaincies tends to have an experienced cleric in mid-life ministry. HTC will benefit from having the best of both worlds. 

On BBC Four this evening the 2021 move 'Parallel Mothers' from Pedro Almodóvar. An great unmissable story beautifully told by one of the greatest film makers of our age. It combines the story of two mothers which give birth on the same day, whose babies are swapped while undergoing post natal observation. It's something which has been known to happen. The one mother is young enough to be the daughter of the other, and they become friends. 

One child suffers cot death, and it's many months before the truth comes out. But that's only half the story. The other is about a village which has ten of its men murdered in the first weeks of the Spanish civil war, and how an investigation relying on the detailed memories of village elders enables their mass grave to be uncovered. The stories are linked by a fleeting encounter by the older mother with a forensic archaeologist who fathers her child. Both narrative threads are emotionally powerful. It's about identity, memory and the way truth comes out eventually, no matter how much it's resisted. 

Best of all, once I'd tuned in to the way the Spanish was spoken, I found that the vocabulary and language used was more accessible than I expected. Subtitles confirmed what I heard and understood, rather than substituting for my lack of comprehension. That gave me as much pleasure as the stories told.

Royal spectacular

A cloudy start to the day, but the clouds were driven away by a strong cold east wind in the middle of the day. After a pancake breakfast, I started the preparatory work for a wedding blessing in Sotogrande in my first week there by writing an email to ask the bride what I needed to know to help them prepare an order of service leaflet. Then I went for an hour's walk while Clare made lunch. We went for a walk together after we'd eaten for a cup of tea at the Secret Garden cafe. A lot of walking for one day over fourteen kilometres. On the way back Clare bought some strawberries in the Co-op and made several pots of jam, as last year's strawberry jam is almost finished.

I also bought a bereavement card to send to Jill Robinson, whose husband David died recently. Both were in the Holy Trinity Geneva choir when we there there, and he retired from the World Health Organisation around the time we left for Monaco. David had a life changing car accident after they settled in Devon, which disabled him. I'm amazed he's lasted into his eighties. 

I'll never forget David arriving at church one Sunday morning having just arrived from a visit to the Goma refugee camp in Eastern Zaire, one of several in the Great Lakes region sheltering two million refugees fleeing the Rwandan genocide. Rwandan soldiers came over the border to attack and loot the camp, killing many. The inability of the UN to protect camps it set up was regarded as a monumental humanitarian failure at the time. Churchgoers learned about it in the news. I can't remember if David was scheduled to preach that morning, or if he was offered a chance to speak instead of the sermon, but I recall the sense of shock and outrage he conveyed. He dared pose the question - where is God in all this? But at that moment was unable to propose an answer. 

In that same period of our time in Geneva the war in Bosnia was also going on, with the siege of Sarajevo, and the massacre of 8,000 at Srebrenica. Some of the peace negotiations took place in Geneva and for a couple of years the city's security measures were ramped up, with barbed wire and soldiers on guard outside key international organisation buildings - a surreal experience, so far from the horrendous violence which blighted both Africa and Europe at that time. Until that time in my life I think I could call myself a liberal optimist about the world as I knew it. These events troubled me greatly, and made me more pessimistic about human progress in the face of Islamist fundamentalism and the steep decline of western Christianity, not to mention the environmental crisis of which I was aware, creeping up on the world, largely unheeded.

We watched the Jubilee concert from Buckingham Palace this evening, thankfully from the very start, so we we joined the nation enjoying the complete surprise of an opening comic sequence featuring Paddington Bear taking tea with the Queen, in which he produces a marmalade sandwich from his hat, and she produces one from her royal handbag. It don't know how this was done, but it was hilarious as it was playful. 

I had to spend a lot of time googling to find out about the multitude of performers appearing in a fast moving amazingly produced spectacle, celebrating the diversity of British life and culture as it has evolved over the past seventy years. Half of the performers I'd never heard of. Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers were among the star American imports, but it seemed to me that all other contributors were English, nobody Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Each of the Celtic fringe nations may have had a local concert equivalent of their own, but really was this a conscious policy decision or just unconscious bias?

Prince William and Prince Charles spoke eloquently about the Queen and both with a strong accent on conservation as a passionate concern inspired by her and Prince Philip's environmental interest. This is an important moment, making it clear the Queen's legacy will be found in continuing royal advocacy over the health of the planet.

As darkness fell much was made of innovative powerful lighting technology to project video on to the entire facade of the Palace, featuring the Queen's reign and the natural world. There was what I believe to have been an aerial display using a swarm of small drones carrying LED lights serving as pixels to build up colourful pictures in the sky. That's only a guess. This new tech' was used during the Tokyo Olympic and Chinese Winter Olympic ceremonies. I can't imagine how else it could have been done, 

A good time was surely had by all involved including a global TV audience. How long before someone does the sums and works out the total carbon footprint of mounting this spectacle, its performers and 22,000 strong audience included? That million trees pledged for planting as a royal Jubilee project are certainly going to be needed for carbon offset.

Pilgrim memories

I attended the Eucharist at St John's this morning, and after lunch walked around the park, enjoying the presence of many birds out feeding while I was passing with my camera at the ready. Redstarts, long tailed tits, a solitary cormorant in breeding plumage perched on a rock in the river Taff, and a jay that fed on the ground for a couple of minutes as I approached, though I wasn't quick enough to get a shot of it as it moved around. It's just lovely to see.

Then in the evening I continued scanning more old negatives from the year 2000, fascinated to learn where they had been taken. Today's batch was a roll of film taken in Haute Savioe in May 2000. One was of the annual pilgrimage by Holy Trinity Geneva to the Voirons massif where a community of about fifty Carthusian Sisters live work and pray at 1,700m on a ridge with a stunning view of the Mont Blanc range.

In the forest that's part of their domain, looking north towards Lac Leman and the Jura, is a chapel of 14th century origins with an adjacent accommodation building for workers. Each year on Ascension Day, the chaplaincy gathered there to celebrate the Eucharist, using its huge boulder-like ancient altar stone. The chapel is dedicated to Notre Dame des Voirons, and it may have been a local pilgrimage sanctuary many centuries ago. It was a wonderful and numinous occasion, even if it was in shadow and chilly there. Sometimes it snowed while we were there. The photos I took were of our group of two dozen arriving and being welcomed by the Sister guest-mistress. I wonder where the youngsters in the photos are now? Some of the older people are still alive, others of them I laid to rest or have died since.

Another first rate episode of New Amsterdam tonight. It did prompt me to wonder how long it will be before I get my appointment letter from UHW.
  

Geneva reunion (2)

After an unhurried morning, we set out by car with Yvette to visit and have lunch with Alec and Ann-Marie still living close to the French border at the edge of Meyrin. Long ago I memorised the route to their place on back roads. Little has changed in their immediate area, but we missed the crucial turning and got a little lost. One significant change was unexpected. Memorised instruction from decades ago were to turn left on to Chemin Vert by the large white corner house. Since our last visit five years ago, it's been painted bright yellow, making this look like a different place, as most domestic dwellings hereabouts are white or grey.

Also invited to lunch were our friend Gill and another Yvette (Morris), plus the current Holy Trinity Chaplain Alex Gordon and his wife Geraldine. Alex and I have spoken on the phone, but it was good to enjoy their company. Inevitably we reminisced about people we'd known in times past. After all, it'll be 25 years this December since we went to live and work in Geneva. It occurred to me that so many of the remarkable people who were part of church and community life all those years ago, Alex may never have heard of, since he's only been there three years. It was an amazing adventure in ministry for me, not so much because of the place, but due to those who were the Body of Christ there, with great breadth of vision and high ideas, and memories reaching back to World War Two, and the start of the international organisations that make Geneva what it is today. I could only be a keen spectator on the scene, but a grateful and privileged one.

After a long and delicious lunch with a double helping of two of Ann-Marie's legendary desserts, we parted company. Traffic congestion being what it is, there was no question of Yvette dropping me off at Cornavin station. She drove back to Chambesy station on the back roads, to take the shuttle train to Cornavin to connect with the Inter City to Brig. This stopped at Lausanne, then went on to Montreux, the journey taking just one hour. I left Clare standing on Chambesy station chatting with the two Yvettes as they waited for the outbound shuttle to take one of them back to Pont Ceard. I was sad that Clare had to return home early to resume work with a kindergarten class, but the time we had together was enjoyable and precious.

Now there are domestic tasks to continue with, and Sunday sermon preparation, plus a few visits of my own to plan in coming weeks.

   

Geneva reunion (1)

After lunch we took the stopping Train Regional to Lausanne, then the non-stop Intercity to Geneva. The latter part of the trip takes just over half an hour now that the third railway track is operational for most of the route. We'd been invited to stay with our friend Yvette in Chambesy, and this meant catching the Train Regional which shuttles between Geneve Cornavin and Coppet at the east end of Geneva Canton, back toward Lausanne. Chambesy station is currently a building site. It's  being remodelled to create along the station length an additional section of rail track, to enable trains on a single line to pass each other. Once done, four shuttle trains an hour will run on the single line.

Hopefully, this will help attract more commuters away from car use. Geneva has a wonderful public transport network, and one of the worst imaginable road traffic congestion problems, as the city has borders with France on either side of the lake, and the only way to pass from one side to the other, and not go the long way round using the motorway bypass, is through the town centre, using the Pont du Mont Blanc, near to Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Debate has gone on since the 1980s about driving a road tunnel under the lake, or possibly building another bridge. Progress has been made on every other possible transport improvement, but not this. 

Recently, agreement has been reached to investigate bridge building possibilities, though how this could be funded remains to be seen, as the cost would run into billions of Swiss Francs. Figuring out how to get a return on the investment is not going to be easy. Swiss railway networks are subsidised, and trains are well used, but revenue is not rising. Fares have risen to compensate, but this tends to drive travellers back into car usage. Not a good idea. Modern economies rely entirely on efficient transport infrastructure. Rarely is this really profitable. Infrastructure running costs are a big social investment, a burden on tax like the NHS, and tax is how we invest collectively in having things work as well as everyone wants to work. But how we resent this!

Yvette met us at the station and drove us to her house. It's all so familiar, it doesn't seem like five years since we were last here and staying with her. In the evening, our friend Manel came over to join us for dinner, full of excitement about a guided tour of her native Sri Lanka she's organised for a church group visit, leaving this week. Doing detailed background research for this trip has been an absorbing and interesting experience for her. She discovered that a Chaplain of Holy Trinity Geneva in the 1930s, W S Senior, had previously ministered in Sri Lanka. This led her to research his biography with great interest. I learned that Holy Trinity Archive material is now being assembled to deposit in Geneva's Cantonal archive. It's another interesting process of discovery, but well worthwhile, given that the origins of the chaplaincy as a Church of England entity reach back into the late eighteenth century. 

  

Precious reunions

Monday, Clare went on the Train Regional to have lunch with a former colleague living among the vineyards at Cully, between Vevey and Lausanne. Yesterday was so eventful that I decided to do as little as possible all day. I intended to go and do some food shopping, but inertia triumphed, and not because I was terribly tired, but I felt the need just to be inward, and digest such good experiences rather than go out and do something, even something as simple as a trip to the supermarket.

When Clare returned, we walked together to her favourite little beach again at Chillon, so that she could have a swim. The large Lemanique sailing boat which seems to live in Villeneuve Port, came by, close inshore, albeit under engine power, sails furled, deck crowded with passengers rather than crew by the looks of it,and passed in front of the Chateau, offering a gorgeous photo opportunity.

Today, we had visitors, old friends from our Holy Trinity Geneva days, Gill and Claudine. It's five years since we last met. Claudine had just signed up for an apartment yet to be built in Carouge. Now she's living there, when she's in the country. She spends most of the year in Myanmar, working there as a mediator on behalf of the Swiss Government. Gill has moved from Petit Sacconex out to Cartigny, close to her daughter and grandchildren in a village that's on Geneva Canton's Route de Vignoble. For us, it was a happy reunion, having shared so many special moments together over the past 20+ years. 

It was natural for us to celebrate the Eucharist together. We did it as we did on some special occasions in times past, only this time in the lounge of Church House rather than in the church. In a predominantly Buddhist country, though not without its indigenous Anglican presence, Claudine's work schedule doesn't always allow her to join the faithful at Yangon Cathedral, and as a former chorister at Holy Trinity Geneva, she misses part-singing English language traditional hymns. 

So, our English language Mass incorporated four of her/our favourites, sung in parts. I also invited Claudine to choose scripture readings scripture that especially spoke to her. 1 Corinthians 13, Matthew 5:1-16 and Psalm 25 were her choice. That made me wonder - if someone put me on the spot, and asked me what scripture readings I'd most like to hear at a Mass, after an involuntary absence from the sacraments, what would I long to hear read?  

After our celebration, we walked down to Territet Port and enjoyed lunch on the terrace overlooking the lake at Le Contretemps restaurant. It was a perfect setting for a relaxed hour or so, before we had to bid them farewell. Claudine returns to duties in Myanmar this Friday. We'll meet Gill again next week when we visit Geneva.

Re-unions happy and sad

We spent a cold wet Saturday morning in Geneva town centre, meeting friends at the Holy Trinity Church Spring Fayre - the 'Book and Marmalade sale', selling English marmalade, bri-ca-a-brac, and second hand books, and serving lunches to any who'd turn up. It was a lousy day for a fundraising event, yet the dogged perseverance and patience of a dozen or so people organising it, earned CHF4,400 for church and charity funds - that's £3,000 in our money. Fantastic.

We met up with our friends Keith who'd come down for the weekend from Yorkshire and Claudine who'd arrived from Yangon with a delegation of top officials from the Myanmar government  the previous week whom she was shepherding for a meeting with the Swiss government. We ended up at Claudine's pied a terre in Carouge, chatting to her while she packed for the return journey, with me setting up her awkward Swisscom mobile wi-fi dongle on her Macbook, iPhone and iPad, so that she'd have immediate access to internet on her next visit home.

We had a superb evening meal at the Auberge da la Bourse near where she lived. Clare and I shared a large Dorade (sea bream) and Claudine had a traditional Swiss dish 'tête de veau' with a parsley and horseradish sauce - something not on the menu over in S.E.Asia. Then we accompanied her by taxi to the airport to drop off her cases, so she could check in for her flight unencumbered early this morning, before parting company.

We attended the nine o'clock Eucharist this morning at HTC. Friends Brian and Beryl were celebrating their golden wedding with a glass of champagne to go with the crossants after a service which included a prayer of blessing over them. What a delight! So glad we chose this weekend. After the service, we went for a train, but it pulled out as we touched the door opening button, and gave us an hour to wait. So we walked down to the Pont du Mont Blanc to watch the local stage of the cyclists' Tour de Romandie, won by English rider Chris Froom, I learned later.

Eventually, we returned to Chambésy for lunch, which Yvette prepared - her first meal cooked on a new high tech stove, part of a kitchen makeover still in progress. She did us proud. While we were waiting for her to complete her lentil gratin and asparagus feast, I spotted two black squirrels cavorting in the neighbouring garden, bounding around like kangaroos in a way I've never seen British squirrels do. I got a photo of one of them using a huge fir tree next door as a vertical playground.

In the afternoon I drove out to Divonne-les Bains in Yvette's Saab to see Julia and Philippe. It's the first time I have ever driven a such a powerful turbocharged motor, so I was very careful. It was an enjoyable trip nevertheless. The night we arrived, I had a text from Julia to say her father had died the night before in Halifax, Yorkshire. We talked about the service and arrangements to return him to Whitchurch, Cardiff for the funeral. I ended up volunteering to take the service and liaising with people involved locally. Over the nearly twenty years we have known each other I have met all Julia's family, so I may be more of a familiar face to them than local clergy. What more could I do to support a valued colleague and friend?

In the evening we visited Ann-Marie and Alec Hester, who'd invited us and Yvette for supper. It was such a delight to see how their three year old gransdson Samuel, adopted by Dagmar and Guy has grown in the year since last we saw him.  It's wonderful that we still have such happy connexions with so many people in a place where I worked last thirteen years ago - something I am most grateful for.