Surprise supper

A quiet morning spent reading responses to the news about the Law Lords' conclusion that Parliament has to be consulted, not informed about Brexit proposals. The more the decision to leave the EU and its ensuing consequences come under scrutiny, the more likely it is that those who voted in favour of it may realise they were duped by lies and un-deliverable promises, and start demanding a way out. Already, before any strategic plan for withdrawal negotiations has been formulated, let alone debated or agreed upon, discussion on limiting the impact damage from Brexit is being aired. You could say that an early attitude of bullishness among our leaders is turning into sheepishness.

I walked to the Mercadona to buy some chicken to cook for lunch, for a change. Afterwards I chatted with Rachel and Jasmine over in Phoenix using Viber, and then with Clare in Cardiff. I was glad to learn that she's now been given a firm January date for the operation on her other eye. It's good to have something to plan everything else around. She's expecting a weekend visit from Ann tomorrow, when it will be a year to the day since Eddie was laid to rest. How quickly that year has sped by. Living at opposite ends of the country, we didn't see a great deal of each other except for family gatherings and holiday visits, but an abiding sense of his quiet, untroubled, thoughtful, assuring presence makes it hard to absorb the fact that he's no longer with us.

Just as I was thinking about having supper I had a phone call from Pam and Alwyn inviting me to join them for supper in a restaurant with Archdeacon Geoff and his wife Carol, who'd spent the afternoon with them on their week long whistle stop pastoral tour of Costa Chaplaincy visits. Such a welcome surprise! It's a couple of years since I last saw Geoff of Carol in the course of looking after Nerja on locum duty. Though Geoff and I skype each other and exchange emails from time to time, there's nothing as good as catching up face to face. And great to see them both looking so well. The Derbyshire country air is doing them good.

We went to the Bella Vista restaurant, one of Mojácar's most recommended eateries. The food was very good and the price for a very varied set menu most reasonable. I had sopa de mariscos and sardinas. The waitress laughed as she corrected me saying sopa de marineros - literally - seaman soup, instead of fish soup, but nevertheless expressed appreciation for my effort at ordering in Spanish. How kind! It was a lovely convivial evening, with friends old and new.

      

Flamenco de noche

Another hot sunny day today, and a busy day at the office back in Cardiff, with the arrival of news confirming the next stage in our developing work. There were things for me to do here as well, a sermon to write, a document to prepare for the board meeting.  Where work is concerned, I'm still hindered by the limitations imposed on roaming network connection by Orange ES, despite promises made by BT back home. My workaround solutions don't always succeed, being very much depended on local phone network traffic.

Also, for reasons I don't understand , a Blackberry update a while back killed my Skype app, and when I needed it lately, it wasn't there. After a web search, I found the free app on Amazon web store, which I'd never used before. When I downloaded it, I got a message to say it was already installed, and was able to log into my account and use it, although with on Skype icon. I returned to AWS and was offered a Skype update and this restored the necessary icon. It's taken me ages to get around to doing this, but it's invaluable for staying in touch with home.

Something I am grateful for and that's the internet radio site and app 'rad.io', which works on Andriod and Blackberry. Is there a Windows app? I've not got around to checking yet. It sometimes stutters if the Blackberry network attachment is busy, but gets there eventually. It's been invaluable for following the twists and turns of Helen's trial on the Archers this week. And I understand there's an hour long edition in with the jury this Sunday night. Can it be true? It's certainly been attracting a lot of attention recently.

It was late when I finally took my daily paseo, walking along the coast path as far as Benagalbón. This stretch of beach has fewer hotels, fewer beach restaurants or chirungitos and many more private houses. At the point when I turned around to walk back, there was a restaurant with bar, hosting a flamenco guitarist and singer, and they were in the midst of a performance. I had to resist the impulse to enter an spend an hour or so listening, as I knew I needed sleep before an early start to get to Fuengirola to take the funeral.

There were few street lights in this locality, so the half moon shone  brightly and was reflected in the sea. The beach was shrouded in darkness, save for the tell-tale blue lights atop fishing rods along the shore. Some stars were visible, and on the horizon were the lights of a cruise liner, probably sailing up the coast from Málaga to Valencia overnight. The singer's powerful voice in lamentful nocturnal mood was audible for two hundred metres, as I walked away. Flamenco singing truly is the original european blues music. It was a delightful moment after a busy day of brain work. No fear of insomnia after a 5km walk before bed.

   

Surviving Sunday

Saturday I spent resting as much as my back injury would allow me. The past few days have been very tiring. The pain gradually diminishes, spasms and the threat of spasm are fewer and far between, but sitting for long is still uncomfortable, and when I get up, it takes a while to get moving. All of this makes sustained rest difficult to achieve. I just have to be patient with myself, and stay as loose as I can.

Sunday morning, having had a decent amount of sleep in two hour snatches,  Della kindly drove me to the service in Calahonda in the chaplaincy car. I realised I could have difficulties getting into the car without risking a spasm and was grateful for her support. Indeed, I found that getting into the car as a passenger was something of a challenge. It was nice to have someone there saying "Don´t worry, take your time" when you're conscious of the shortening gap between the end of one service and the start of another.

I was relieved to find I coped well with celebrating and preaching at Calahonda, though conscious of how tiring it was on the return journey. At St Andrew's I was fine too, although I could feel the beginning of a spasm towards the end of preaching, a symptom of tiredness. As any sitting arrangement posed problems I had to stay on my feet for both services, altogether two and a half hours. I couldn't have done that easily when I was much younger, but the training of Tai Chi and Chi Gung has been a blessing this past decade.

After Skyping the family, gathered in Kenilworth for this weekend's tenth birthday celebration for Rhiannon, I was certainly ready for an early night.

 

Shopping and walking

I had to do some food shopping this morning and on my way there decided to follow the signs pointing the way to 'Hypercor' the large local branch of El Corte Ingles, which combines an ordinary supermarket with a multi-level department store in the heart of the built-up Las Lagunas area of Fuengirola. Free underground parking is offered with immediate access to car wash facilities and an escalator ramp up to a large scale shopping area and cinema. 

It was interesting to compare this with the Miramar shopping mall near Castello Sohail, a few kilometres away. It spreads out over an area of land the size of four football pitches. But here where land is scarcer, the building goes upwards five storeys with balconies looking out on to a spacious glass atrium. The building stands higher than surrounding six storey apartment blocks, and isn't attractive on the outside. In fact it sits in amongst several other ugly warehouse buildings. The design emphasis is entirely on a congenial indoor experience, no doubt beneficial in the extreme heat of summer. I had a brief look around, bought a bargain CD of Christmas Flamenco music, and was given a very cheery Christmas plastic shopping bag advertising the store to take it home in, at no extra cost.

I went to the local Mercadonna supermarket for food shopping, instead of exploring the vastness of Hypercor, as I know my way around then and it wastes less time. I spotted Advent Calendars for sale at the checkout, and thought it would be nice to take one home as a souvenir. Before lunch I went for a walk up the ridge ridge beyond our urbanizacion. It runs through the foothills of the Sierra de Mijas and gives good views of this rugged landscape, now dotted with luxury housing developments, and valley which leads down to the sea at La Cala de Mijas, linking the village 300 metres up with the small port which has been there since the time of the Phoenicians.

After a walk of an hour and a half, I had lunch, then went into the church office for a routine session of Skyping Clare and Owain and write some emails. It's good to have such means to keep in touch regularly with family and friends.

Sunny pleasures

Yesterday I started thinking at last about my trip to Spain. I renewed my EHIC+ travel insurance policy for the year and printed off my EasyJet boarding pass I was I little annoyed some fifteen hours later to receive a nagging email from EasyJet urging me to check in on-line. Confusing to say the least, but as EasyJet in the drive for better efficiency move exclusively to on-line check-in, so that all you need to do is drop off your bags when you arrive at the airport, there are bound to be teething troubles. This time I've opted to take only hand luggage with me, as last summer in Spain I found that I didn't need nearly as much as I took with me, as it was so easy to wash and dry clothes. So, I've had a practice run at packing what I need already. Now that the weather is more consistently warm and sunny, the trip to far hotter Spain looks more like the work it is and not just an excuse to escape from the British climate.

Before dining out at Stefanos with Clare and Owain, I spent the afternoon in the CBS office, making sure that communication from afar will be hassle free. Since Ashley's hard disk crisis last year, Skype hadn't been  re-installed on his computer, so that needed to be fixed. We'd used it when I was working in Costa Azahar, but not when I was in Sicily and it had just been forgotten. It's silly really not to use it when we're calling each other from offices, not least because of the ease with which exchange of documents can be effected while a conversation is going on, and then discussed. Must try harder to use more common sense. There was also the list of chronic debtors to be revised prior to taking recovery action - thankfully dad debt is small now compared toa couple of years ago, but we'd be better off with little or none.

This morning we enjoyed our sunny garden, uploaded Clare's Arizona photos to the web, and after lunch outdoors, went to Dyffryn Gardens to have tea, walk around the arboretum and sample the virtues of the Leica's wide angle lens in my new Lumix DMC-LX5 in shooting close-ups of leaves and flowers in the bright afternoon light. Here's three examples:

I love the way the sunlight shines through the leaves in the one above, and how it makes the flowers glow in the one below.

And the one below makes me think of something extra-terrestrial, from the world of sci-fi.

I was struck by the volume and birdsong out there in the Vale, in comparison with our neighbourhood, which is definitely down on numbers of garden birds this year. And while other parts of the country are complaining at the dearth of buttercups, there are vast fields of grass, gold and green.