Surprise birthday party and an unexpected bill shock

I celebrated and preached at St Catherine's this morning. There were over forty adults and twenty children present, several of the adults joining the children to receive a blessing at the altar, not just sending them up with another parent at ease with the practice. Good to see this happening.

For the second Sunday running we drove to Newport to have lunch with Martin. All his extended household have returned home now. Karim from Afghanistan, Chris and the lads from visiting family in Canada. It was Chris' birthday, and we only found out when we arrived. His Uncle and partner plus several friends also came. It was a delightful occasion with good food and conversation, even if I did eat a bit more than was good for me. My present condition requires me to eat carefully and moderately all the time or I can guarantee I will suffer if I don't. So serves me right.

Late evening I had an email from Neil, one of the churchwardens at St John's Montreux to say that a bill had been received addressed to me from the medical centre where I was operated upon some six weeks ago. He agreed to open it and send me a scan. It turned out to be a list of treatment charges not covered by the bill I'd already paid before leaving. I had forgotten that the timing of the Swiss admin cycle is different from ours. I had paid the surgeon in full, but not the other things. Worse still I went ahead and made my insurance claim on the mistaken assumption that it covered everything. I wanted to clear things up and just focus on recovery, but acted too quickly in submitting the claim. I doubt if the insurers will revisit this. I'm very upset about this. As a French speaking foreigner, the staff presumed I was more acquainted with their health system than I now am. Seventeen years have passed since I last lived in Switzerland, and much has been forgotten. And I'm now paying for this particular memory lapse.

  

  

Perspectives from on high

We went to the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Emma preached in cheerleader mode (a role I know well from locum duties), encouraging people to continue working together in the way they've found they can under Fr Mark's leadership. I guess we rely on inspiration being given a voice rather than coming from a set of raw ideas, so it's natural for people to feel uncertain about how they will continue without a beloved pastor and guide. What harder to notice, however, is the momentum generated by effective ideas and ways of working together in a community. Cheerleading in this sense, is about acknowledging and affirming who we are, what we've become on the journey being made together. 

After the service, I went straight home to cook lunch, while Clare went down to the Riverside Market on Taff Embankment, as it's the 20th anniversary of its foundation. It's rare that we go there together nowadays, as we get a bag of organic veggies delivered by the Farmers Market to Chapter Arts Centre for us to collect every Wednesday and any special cheeses we can get from a new stall that's now going strong in Cardiff Market. 

I had an unexpected email from Fr Mark after lunch, asking if I could step in urgently and officiate at St John's monthly Evensong, as something unexpected had come up. How nice! I don't remember when I last officiated at an Evensong - oh yes I do. It was the end of August last year at the chapel of St Michael in Caux, 600m above Lac Leman. The service is an annual event in a beautiful turn of the 20th century Anglican building subsequently taken on by the local Vaudois protestant parish. Sadly it was impossible to organise this again during my recent locum stay. I was quite sad about that, as it's a wonderful venue for Evensong, with the setting sun streaming in over the Savoyard Alpes across the lake, bathing the interior in golden light. You just have to sing the Phos Hilaron.

Anyway, apart from the organist, I had a congregation of two, with a long OT passage from Joshua delineating the boundaries of the tribal territories to be occupied after crossing the Jordan. It's full of hard to pronounce place names, so the man who usually enjoys reading asked if he could read the NT lesson instead. As I read, that long inventory of locations, I found myself imagining flying over the terrain in a helicopter, and shared this thought with the faithful few subsequently. It occurred to me that today's mapping technology privileges us to get an overview of any place on earth in ways not available to our forebears, and thereby able to bring alive for us a passage of scripture which in times past would have been excruciatingly dull and unprofitable to listen to.

Afterwards the other attendee asked if I'd seen a recent programme about the Lebanon in which the presenter had gone up in a hot air balloon to view an historic landscape, as part of explaining the geography behind the politics and sociology. Yes, privileged we are indeed today! But will all these new perspectives and information about the world we live in help us better to answer the problems we face, I wonder?

    

Going East to see old friends

There were two dozen at St John's for the Sunday Eucharist. When all but the Church Wardens had departed, Church Warden Neil, took the Church House router and attached it to a socket in the wall of the meeting room next door, to check this was an operational fibre-optic connection, which it is. He's very pleased with this, as it'll be possible to have a wireless router there and use the signal in the church social area to stream UK video broadcasts to a TV or projector on special occasions of interest, as well as hold film nights using Netflix. Properly promoted, this could attract members of the wider community to visit and socialise in Church, and kindle interest in worship.

After Neil and Jane took their leave, it was time to lock the church and take the stopping train to Lausanne, from the station across the road, then the Inter-Regio to Zurich, another train to Sargans and finally the local train to Buchs, where our old friend Heinz met us at the station and walked  us back to the rooftop apartment where he and Maria-Luisa have made their home in retirement. It's just a year since we last made this journey to seen them, and it was marvellous to relax and catch up over an evening meal.

After a leisurely breakfast on Monday morning we went by train to Bad Ragaz, further south in the Rhine Valley towards Chur. The mountains to the east of the Rhine at this point are the setting for Johanna Spry's children's novel Heidi, so the region is well visited by foreign tourists for this reason alone. Bad Ragaz however, is an elite Swiss spa and golf hotel town, whose development dates from the Grand Tour era. Its 18 hole golf course hosts the annual Swiss Seniors Open Championship, but also a triennial open air Festival of Sculpture.

The area around the town and within contains permanent exhibits, but at festival time it claims to be Europe's largest sculpture park, occupying key sites on the golf course, as well as the town's streets and hotel precincts. The number of exhibits is said to rise to 400, attracting an international range of contributors. The walk around the course and into the village took an hour and a half, with frequent photographic stops. The majority of exhibits in the public domain are abstract, with just a few with human form. The placement of many of the sculptures has been chosen carefully, with colour and form in mind. I found that observing and photographing them was a stimulating mental exercise, as consideration of the meaning or theme of the piece was of minor importance to appreciating their form and setting. One of the values and purposes of art is to challenge viewers to look at everything from a different perspective. This, I felt was true for me. My photos are here.

We enjoyed a regional dish from nearby the Grisons region, eating lunch in the Central Restaurant in the main street, opposite a municipal building that started life as a spa. There's still a fountain in the porch opening on to the street, where warm spa water can be drunk, apparently good for one's health. Outside was an ice cream stall, with a 1.5m plastic ice cream cone advertising its wares on the pavement beside it. It's an everyday sight in many holiday resorts. For me, what comes to mind is the question of how to distinguish between a mass marketing artifact like this and an intentional sculpture which may use the same materials, shapes and colours even. Context counts a lot I guess.

We returned to Grabs to escape the intense afternoon heat, and only ventured out again as the sun was setting. We walked to the Alte Stadt, about half a kilometer away, a well preserved collection of mediaeval wooden houses, said to be the only one to have escaped being burned down over six centuries after supper on the terrace. This quiet corner is still a residential area, not holiday homes. It sits at the bottom of a rocky 50m outcrop, on top of which is the fine Schloss Grabs. Its slopes are covered in vineyards. Well, it's still the Rhineland, after all. It was dusk when we walked back around the small like next to the Alte Stadt. Enchanting! My photos are here.

Today, we bade farewell to Heinz and Mari-Luisa mid morining, making the return trip with the same itinerary, just enough time to make each of the four changes of train comfortably, without any delay. We got off in Montreux, did a lot of food shopping, then caught the trolley bus to Terriet, as we had a go-anywhere day ticket - CHF49 with the abonnement demi-tarif. What a bargain, and what a lovely outing! 

Goings, comings and not yet arrivals

A very early start Tuesday morning, with Ann and Clare up at five for a six thirty train to Geneva Airport. Clare will accompany her to the departure gate, and then head into the city to meet several old friends. After their departure I returned to bed for a couple of hours, before getting on with the usual domestic tasks of the day.

This past few days Jane and I have been worried at the lack of response to emails from the bride in Nigeria who has requested a wedding blessing, We've been waiting a week to see a digital copy of the civil wedding certificate, before we can proceed with arrangements. And we have to see the original as well, just before the wedding. Photos have appeared on Nigerian social media of the ceremony, so there's no good reason, having promised us to send a copy, that we shouldn't have received it.

So, we've been thinking today about sending a formal letter to her, with the approval of Archdeacon Adele, explaining the consequences of this inaction. Fortuitously Adele visited us yesterday afternoon and stayed for supper. She'd come to brief church council members about interviewing a prospective candidate for the job as Chaplain today. I'm so delighted to know that they have someone who is interested in the job. it's been a long wait, nearly two years. This church has continued to function well and pretty normally during the interregnum.

After breakfast we went off early into town to do some shipping leaving the house empty and tidy for the candidate's visit. The process seemed to have gone well, but it'll be a little while before the candidate's decision is made known, and then a lot longer until a name is announced publicly. It's all very hush-hush, to avoid gossip and politicking around the names of candidates. This time Bishop Robert has proposed someone, as advertising the post was unsuccessful. Supply of suitable priests falls far short of demand these days.

An email to the bride setting a deadline for response, suitably approved by Authority, was sent off this evening. Meanwhile we wait and wonder what's going on out there.

  

  

Glion picnic

There we two dozen of us for yesterday morning's Sung Eucharist. Clare sang in the choir again. We welcomed worshippers from New Zealand, South Korea, Australia and the USA, as well as British and Swiss people. It's typical of St John's, so it's always worth asking someone unfamiliar where they come from.

After the service, Ann treated us to lunch at 'Le Contretemps' in Territet Port, then we went for a walk to the Chateau de Chillon, where she and Clare regretted not having brought their swimming costumes, but went for a paddle anyway. In the heavy rain began, and we woke up to the prospect of a day of heavy showers.

We rode up to Glion on the funicular railway behind the house for a picnic lunch. Fortunately the rain held off while we were there and the sun shone. We took Ann into the marvellous garden of the Hotel de Rigi Vaudois, overlooking the lake, and were surprised to find a ground floor restaurant open. Last summer, the place was shuttered, and had been for ages, due to bankruptcy. There's some external scaffolding, indicating that renovation work is in progress, but little accessible information on the web to say if the whole of this magnificent building is to re-open as a hotel.

We walked down to the Parish Church to eat our picnic lunch, as its lakeside exterior is wrapped around by a cloister with benches. At this stage, the sun was still shining and clouds were on the move. We descended to Territet, then caught the bus into town to do some shopping. I went to the railway station to buy my abonnement demi-tarif, which will last until the day I leave. Clare booked us discount tickets on-line to take us across Switzerland to visit Heinz and Mari-Luisa in Grabs in the coming week. I'm wondering where else we can go this time to benefit from half price fares.

Back to Montreux - yet again

Free at last to get on with packing, I had all of Wednesday and half of Thursday, to prepare and pack for my six week stint in Montreux, where it promises to be as hot, even hotter than Cardiff for several weeks to come. It's rare that I don't bother to think about packing a pullover - just in case! As ever I exercised myself over which cameras to take, and ended up eliminating my Alpha 68 and its lenses on the grounds of weight in my rucksack cabin bag. On the outbound journey, it would be necessary to carry a cool bag and a couple of freezer packs to keep the tubes of ointment prescribed by Lt Col Davies at fridge temperature, and this couldn't go in my hold baggage just in case it got lost in transit. The worry I had was about getting the cold package through security. It the event it turned out not to be a problem as the screening staff were very understanding.

Clare drove me to the station for the two o'clock train to Bristol, which was on time. However before it arrived, an announcement was made about the next train to arrive at platform two, which was for Manchester. If the Bristol train had been announced it was before I got on to the platform and before it came in. Most confusing. There's evidently no co-ordination between the team which manages the platform and the announcement broadcast. To compound the error, when the correct train arrived, in its shine new bright GWR green livery, it had no destination panel that I could see, or at least if it had one, it wasn't lit up. There wasn't even a quick printed out notice affixed to the train windscreen or side windows. It could have been going anywhere. How dumb is this!

Anyway I arrived at the airport in good time, and quickly checked in with the new automatic check in system working well. There were long summer queues passing through security clearance at fair pace, so within a quarter of an hour of getting off the buss, I was in the departure lounge. No long after, the phone's EasyJet app issued the first of two flight delay notifications. French air traffic controllers are at it again, unfortunately, holding Europe, not just France to ransom. In the end our flight was an hour delayed, which meant that my train from Geneva to Montreux got in at half past midnight.  

By the time I had something to eat and unpacked, it was two in the morning, and too hot to lie under covers, though not unpleasant. It was nearly ten by the time I surfaced for breakfast. Before lunch I walked to the shops in town to buy additional veggies and a few other food supplies to get start me off domestically speaking. Later in the afternoon I had a visit from the mother of the infant I am due to baptise tomorrow afternoon, to check out certain elements of the service. Her husband's parents and two brothers are driving from Italy where they've been on holiday, to attend the service. Her  family live in Lausanne. He's Swedish and she's Belgium, and all are fluent English speakers. The couple were married several years ago in St John's, so it's a pleasure to welcome them back.

Walking along the flower bedecked promenade this afternoon was such a delight, I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. This is my third visit in just a twelvemonth, to a region where I still feel very much at home and alive in spirit. I'm so grateful for the blessing of having so much pleasure in the performance of ministry duties in my old age.