Fond memories of Switzerland

Overcast again but no rain. It's Rhiannon's 22nd birthday today. I sent her the photo video I made of pictures taken over the course of her life so far, with Stevie Wonder singing 'Happy Birthday to you' as the sound track. It was hard work with a fuzzy head going through the family photo archive to select photos and build a timeline, but fun to make.

The clot dispersal drugs provoked diarrhea without warning as I was washing and shaving. What a mess. The usual sleepy light headedness followed from taking the blood pressure meds, but a brisk walk to St Catherine's to get to the Eucharist just on time did clear the toxic fog to a degree. Clare didn't come with me as there's a Welsh Eucharist to attend this afternoon. No children in church as it's the second weekend of half term. There were about forty of us. Mother Sue celebrated and preached, Fr Sion is away this weekend.

After lunch and an armchair siesta, I walked in Llandaff Fields for two hours. I was aware of being mildly breathless. My pulse wasn't racing and I didn't need to stop to recover. If I stopped to take a photo or sit for a moment to view an incoming phone message my breathing settled down quickly and naturally. When I reflected for a few moments, fond memories of cross country skiing at 1,200 metres in the Swiss Jura returned to me, and the healthy breathlessness brought on by aerobic exercise. I remembered ascending Mont Blanc by cable car and mild breathlessness at 3,000 metres waiting for the gondola to arrive. Then I remembered the ten minute ascent to from Le Chable (820+ metres) and Verbier (1,500 metres) and the same sensation on arrival. Llandaff Fields is hardly 50 metres above sea level! I've never had this before when out walking in the park, except after increasing my pace for aerobic exercise, going up the slope up to the main road. I'll mention this to the medication specialist when he calls me on Tuesday.

After supper I prepared the text for Wednesday's Morning Prayer next week and wrote a reflection to go with it. As I can't be sure of how well I'll feel, it's important to make the effort in advance, rather than post a last minute apology if I can't make it. I was certainly ready for bed by the time I was satisfied with what I had written.

Wedding in the clouds

Back on the train to Le Chable for the wedding this morning. The Saturday timetable for the Car Postal differs from the weekday, and I was faced with a long wait to make the ascent to Verbier, in the rain with little or no public shelter available at the building site of a station. So I bought a ticket for the téléfériqueCHF13 allez retour, rather than trust my return to a sub standard bus service, and reach Church House hours later than I needed to.

I was met by the wedding arranger outside the téléférique arrival area and taken up to Le Hameau in good time to meet the couple who were hired to play and sing for the wedding, and arrange points for their contribution during the service. Sadly, it was even more overcast than yesterday and it was raining intermittently, although the cloud began to life after the ceremony. There were sixteen family and friends, four of whom were children under two, including the bride and groom's own child Chester. It was an advantage that the chapel was only a third full, as it allowed parents minding their offspring to move around.

As guests arrived they were given a glass of champagne at the door. With the weather there was no question of hanging around long outdoors, so people sat in the chapel to drink and chat relaxedly until the bride arrived. In such an intimate space, everyone was very attentive during the service, and only once for a short while did Chester come into the sanctuary and climb on to his dad's knee. I had been exercised by the thought of what I could say in my wedding homily, and woke up at six thirty this morning to write down what was going through my head. I was pleased with the result, and just hope that it made sense to the audience. I may have gone on too long.

We finished just before three, and as the guests made ready to be ferried to the reception, I was given a lift back to the téléférique with enough time to have a late lunch of coffee and a pain aux raisins before riding down to Le Chable for the 16.11 train, both pleased and relieved that it had all worked without a hitch or an embarrassing moment for me, leaving the couple and their family with a memorable experience to treasure.

In the evening Clare and I were taken to a supper party in the village of Jongny on the mountainside above Vevey, hosted by Caroline, St John's sacristan, a long standing member of the congregation, for church members. It was an evening of splendid food and conversation, with white wine from the fields around the house being served - a Chardonnay. I'm not keen on Chardonnays I have tasted from elsewhere, but this one was drier, not quite so rich, reflecting the character of the stony soil, an unexpected and agreeable difference. Caroline is the daughter of novelist Graham Greene, who died in the nearby village of Corsier and is buried there. She inherited many of his memorabilia, and from her mother, a collector of doll's houses with a museum dedicated to them, a magnificent century old family doll's house, containing even older artifacts. It's in the hallway, and unfailingly attracts visitor curiosity.

It was such a comfort to enjoy the convivial hospitality of a family home after a day of confusing frustrating experiences in empty places largely managed by user friendly robotic devices which are still operating on the presumption that you know more than you do, at first use. We travelled back to Territet with Walter, who runs the Youth Hostel, just off the lakeside promenade on the south side of the port, tucked behind and beneath the railway line. It must be a noisy place, but is undoubtedly a popular destination for budget travellers to this area. Walter's a Swiss German, fluent in several languages, and St John's has been his spiritual home during his twenty years working here. During his previous twenty years, he worked in places all over Asia, so he's a well travelled man, typical of many people of different nationalities and faith backgrounds who find St John's and make it part of their life of discipleship.

We arrived at Church House just in time for this week's episode of 'Inspector Montalbano' on BBC Four. Whilst the story, about the death of a loan shark contained a few comic moments and exchanges of dialogue, the mood was a little different from usual. The tale wasn't about the victims of monetary injustice, but about the victims of a loan shark who was a sexual predator on young women, with an incestuous relationship with his daughter which drove his wife to suicide. His son decides to kill him to avoid dis-inheritance in favour of his father's latest paramour. The daughter decides to kill him out of jealousy. She succeeds with poison, but her brother turns up shortly after and doesn't realise he's dead, and shoots him.

It was an unusually dark story, reflecting the exposure of such dysfunctional family goings-on over recent years. What was impressive to me was the considerate treatment Montalbano showed as the investigating officer. Luca Zingaretti is a fine actor, and the acting of a succession of abused women which he had to interview was remarkably, well observed, a cut above the more stylised portrayal of wronged women of episodes made twenty years ago. Yet again, more food for thought on a Saturday night.

     

Verbier wedding preparation

Another train journey this morning, to the Val de Bagnes for a wedding preparation session in the ski resort of Verbier, meeting Gary and Nicola, the bride and groom, for the first time, following a long series of email exchanges over the past three months, which has certainly reduced the number of explanations needed to be made about the whole event. We planned to meet at the Telepherique station in Verbier, and continue in a nearby restaurant.

My carefully timed journey nearly came to grief. I crossed the road to Territet gare with half an hour to spare before the Train Regional took me to Montreux gare for the InterRegio to Martigny. Yet again, I was unable to make sense of the information presented by the automatic ticket machine, which presented me with four Verbier destinations and connection details. I didn't know which to choose. Also the touch screen search mechanism seemed not to be functioning adequately to give what I needed when I returned to the beginning and repeated my search. Perhaps the network was busy, but I didn't know what to do, and panicked. 

Rather than travel one stop without a ticket and have a repeat performance by another machine at Montreux gare, I decided I still had enough time to make the fifteen minute walk to the booking office there, and gamble on there not being much of a queue. I reached there with ten minutes to spare before the Martigny train arrived, queued for five minutes and made it on to the platform a few minnutes before it appeared. The marked destination was Verbier, with none of the local options offered by the machine At Martigny, it's a two minute walk through the underpass to branch line platform 50 beyond the main station building where the Train Regional to Le Chable was waiting. 

An hour and ten minutes after leaving Montreux I stepped off the train in Le Chable on to a wooden temporary platform. The station area is a building site at the moment, with a huge trench excavated beside the railway line, I imagine, to house a car park for those who drive up the Val de Bagnes and then take the téléférique to Verbier. There was a yellow Car Postal waiting for passengers in the car park, and as it was conveniently there, I got on it, rather than waste time finding out how to access the téléférique. The fare is included in the ticket.

The bus climbs up from 850m to 1,530m over 7km from Le Chable to Verbier on a very good alpine road. The journey is fifteen minutes, twice as long as the téléférique, when the roads are empty of visitors. I can see it taking much longer in the ski season when people drive up laden with ski equipment and passengers. I fooled myself into believing the bus station would be in much the same location as the téléférique. No such luck. First, I had to ask directions, then walk uphill half a kilometre to reach our meeting place. I hardly recognised the town, as I was last here in the summer of 1999, on a week's study leave to prepare for the trip I was about to make to Mongolia. It's changed a lot. So it was like being a first time visitor, unfamiliar with the town layout and how things work.

Gary found me at the téléférique and took me to a nearby restaurant he'd mentioned. I'd not been able to find it for myself as it was in among several shops and its signage didn't stand out enough to make it recognisable from a distance. I discovered it was the couple's first Verbier visit also, so they were unfamiliar with the town plan, and thus unable to give clear directions for finding it. Anyway after introductions, I gave them a full briefing on the wedding service procedure, and then we drove a kilometre uphill to the ski village of Le Hameau at the foot of a nursery ski slope, which is a section of a golf course most of the year.

We had difficulty finding the chapel, and Gary called the local wedding arranger who came to join us. It took her a while to find the place. I got the impression this wasn't a venue she'd used before, and hadn't visited it, only seen it on the internet, like the bride and groom. It was in a courtyard with modern chalets of wood and stone in the style of Valais houses with a restaurant, all around the courtyard. The entire complex was deserted, possibly having few or no permanent residents, but could be accessed most easily by driving into an underground car park. Summer holidaymakers had already gone, so the place won't see many people coming to stay until autumn half term, or until December, when the nursery slopes are once more snow clad.

At one end of the courtyard stand La Chapelle du Hameau built in wood and stone, matching the chalets. It's of the same age as is surroundings, also in traditional alpine style re-imagined, with some lovely stained glass panels, a full sized glass window overlooking a small enclosed rock garden, with the sculpted image of the Crucified One strikingly suspended in mid-air, over an altar table made from a granite boulder. It's designated as an Ecumenical chapel, dedicated to Our Lady, represented by a life sized image on a wooden panel on the north wall of the sanctuary, said to date from the 13th century, brought from elsewhere. Its pews hold up to fifty people.

A stone embedded in the church's threshold is engraved with a mason's mark and dated 1903, suggesting there was a previous chapel sited here, as the present one, like the housing complex, dates from 1990. A lovely place for a wedding, though the shuttered buildings and the absence of local occupants made it feel somewhat folorn, under low cloud and spitting rain. But, a far better place to be than a thousand meters further up the mountainside in the outdoor venue originally planned.

With the day's preparations completed, I was driven back to the téléférique, where I discovered the hard way that my train ticket didn't extend to a cable car ride as well. SBB/CFF rail travel booking app and timetable gives timings which include this way of getting to the top, when there is no bus, but doesn't mention that you have to pay extra. I went up in the left to the departure platform only to find an automated access gate which scans bar coded tickets. Mine had no bar code, so I returned to the entrance area and found ticket machines which again offered me all kinds of travel options in the Quatre Vallées region ski lifts, none of which made sense. There was no single button to press for an aller simple to Le Chable.

In frustration, I stomped down the main street to the station Car Postal only to find I'd just missed the bus on which my train ticket was valid, leaving me 55 minutes to wait, so I stomped back up the hill to find a booking office open with a real human being to pay nine francs to ride the cable car back to the Le Chable station, in good time to catch the 16.11 train to Martigny, and soon life went back to being normal, smooth and predictable.