A change of worship venue

This morning the small chaplaincy team of lay worship leaders came to the house to review the service schedule for the next couple of months and discuss related matters. It's not yet been confirmed who will follow me in January, so it's necessary to ensure the regular routine of worship is maintained. So few regulars will be around for the Christmas holiday week that it won't be possible to offer worship. How good it is that local Catholic clergy have expressed a willingness to welcome the few Anglicans who will be around and want to attend church, to join their congregations for Communion. 

After the meeting Paul and I drove into town to meet Michael and Fr Cristobel the Vinaros Parish Priest at the Capilla Virgen del Carmen (aka Fishermen's chapel) to have a look around and meet Maria the caretaker.

They showed us around a building recently refurbished after a break-in with vandalism last year. Now it's got brand new re-enforced steel doors and an ramped entrance.

Hymn books and furniture were burned in a bonfire, leaving a terrible mess. Now, its walls and ceiling are bright and clean with new flooring to replace the area fire damaged, new chairs, a new altar adorned with a ship's helm carving and a new lectern with an anchor carving, making it unmistakably a Capilla de los Marineros. 

Our Sunday service moves here this coming weekend. It'll be good for the congregation as there's an off road car park opposite, making it much more convenient a place to be than the town centre.

When we'd finished, Michael announced that we'd be calling at the garage on the way back, to pick up car, now repaired after recent misadventures. I was most grateful for this as it enabled me to do some heavy shopping later on in the afternoon.

Quite apart from listening to the Today programme over the internet on my phone when I get up in the morning, I make a point of listening to 'The Archers' in the evening. The drama has been ramped up recently with Brookfield Farm, the family home, up for sale with David and Ruth Archer planning to move up north for a fresh cattle farming start as the new by-pass road threatens to break up their family land held over the past sixty years. Several celebrity listeners are protesting at the threatened affront to the historic soap opera's plot. More drama tonight with Tony Archer being crushed and trampled by his prize bull, flown off to hospital for an emergency operation, threatened with a future in a wheelchair if surgery is unsuccessful. And all this on his mother Peggy's 90th birthday! It's quite something.

   

Settling in

I slept well, noticing the cacophany of barking dogs dispersed around this neighbourhood. It is a lot quieter here, out of holiday season. The sound of barking isn't quite as persistent as the background roar of traffic from the N340-A7 was back in Fuengirola. The same N340 passes through Vinaros, 800km further north, but it runs nearly a kilometre away from the house. It's audible as a distant rumble. The sea is 300m in the opposite direction, and when the wind is in the right direction you can hear it breaking on the pebbled shore. 

I walked into town to visit 'El Portico' the local church drop-in centre, and catch up with the crew looking after it on one of its two open days during this week. I also needed to do some some food shopping. The fridge was generously stocked for my arrival, but I needed fresh vegetables, so a trip to the Mercadona was necessary. 

On the way home, I was struck by the presence of several large flocks of starlings, wheeling around, roosting in pine trees and chattering among themselves. On the Costa del Sol, there were hordes of swifts and swallows, always in the air or roosting on power cables, and small families of noisy parakeets inhabiting palm trees. Here it's starlings that make their presence felt.

After lunch I drove out to the Carrefour hypermarket in search of a few items I'd not succeeded in remembering in the morning, just to familiarise myself once more with getting around the town. I also went out looking for the Fishermens' Chapel, aka Nuestra Senora del Carmen, the patroness of fisher folk, but failed to find it, with insufficient information about where it was. It's been used in the past for occasional services, and recently the parish priest has offered the chaplaincy an opportunity for regular use. This means that for an experimental period, services will relocate there from 'Portico', and will take place at six in the evening. It'll mean the chaplain doesn't have to rush off to another assignment at the end of a service and can spend more time getting to know church members. It's a great initiative