Afflicted, coping

Since Sunday my lower back has been giving me grief. The trouble which developed after tripping and falling in the dark at Montreux a couple of months ago is recurring, despite being sorted out by osteomyologist Kay when I returned to Cardiff. Maybe I didn't have enough recovery time at home. Although the discomfort hasn't stopped me walking 5-6 kilometres daily this week. 

Exercise is essential as the affliction makes sitting for any length of time painful. I just have to keep moving, which is tiring in its own right. Getting comfortable at night also isn't easy, so the last few days have been spent avoiding doing anything that makes things worse. Just as well I have had no duty assignments. I am having to learn to be patient with myself, and manage this with what I learned from Kay.

On Halloween afternoon I walked to Garrucha and found the 19th century Capilla de Nuestra Señora del Carmen in that part of the town centre which houses the ayuntamiento buildings. In the absence of any midweek Anglican celebration, I'd intended to go to Mass there on Todos Santos and the Dia de los Muertos, but was not capable of doing this when the time came. I had to settle for praying in solitude on one of the church's great feast days.

Yesterday, All Saints' day the charco was graced with a visit from around fifty egrets, which settled for a few hours during the day, upstream of the bridge. But, they didn't stay. I heard from another bird watcher not long after my arrival that a flock of egrets had been sighted up-river, but apparently this was not a regular occurrence. This is just a fraction of the numbers of egrets that roosted regularly here this time last year. It must be something to do with their food supply hereabouts.

I learned from Clare about the death of our former neighbour Mike Creighton Griffiths in Queen Anne Square. The news has taken this long to reach us, largely because I have been away so  much. I used to meet his daughter Cindy at Tai Chi classes, but the last time I saw her was six months ago, perhaps just before he died. When I was Rector of Central Cardiff, he and his wife Valé would ask us in for drinks before supper and we'd enjoy hours arguing, setting the world to rights. His working life was spent as a public relations organiser, and although a nominal Anglican, he was appointed to manage the Papal visit of John-Paul II to Cardiff back in 1982. A larger than life character who took great pleasure in offering hospitality. May he rest in peace.

Word memory

Gradually, the weather becomes more autumnal. It's still quite mild with daytime temperatures in the low twenties, but occasionally with stiff breezes which draw kite surfers out to offshore waters. Today started with overcast skies, and it rained before sunrise. With Sunday's sermon complete, I walked to Mercadona for weekend groceries, then visited the bridge over the charco,  (a word I'm training myself to repeat before I forget it again), to describe the local nature reserve with my camera, to see what there was to be seen early evening. 

I was fascinated to observe a purple swamp hen using its strong red clawed non-webbed feet to pull shoots from a clump of reeds, then proceed to strip the pith from its core to feed on. I obtained a few good photographs, including this one.

Several shots I took in what I must remember to call 'burst mode'. It's a setting I use so rarely I'd forgotten where it's located, so resorted to downloading the HX300 pdf manual to find out. It's not the most user-friendly of texts, so this took me a while. Mind you, it didn't help that I was unclear about the name of the rapid fire facility. All I could remember was the slang French photographic term for this, mitrailler, which means 'machine gun' after the noise made by a rapidly firing shutter.

Everyone complains about memory lapses as they get older, recall may still be there but isn't quite as efficient as it used to be, sometimes more erratic. If you use words rarely, it becomes an effort to find them when you need them. For me, writing this blog as often as I have something to tell about life in retirement, helps me remember the sequence of life's events when it threatens to blur, and acquires gaps from neglect. More than that though, the very varied act of narration is a fine way of exercising language memory, although I wouldn't dare to try writing in anything other than English. I admire those who do. 

Language has been a fascination to me since I was young. Poor teaching in Grammar School sadly sapped my speaking confidence in a way that took decades to recover from. With a little help from encounters with linguistic philosophy through Clare at University, however, curiosity never left me and exploring language still affords much pleasure.

Caring for the watercourse

After a good long sleep, Monday began with a walk to Mercadona to shop for groceries. Then came a call about a funeral on Friday, another bereavement in the hamlet of Los Corrascos outside Arboleas, in the early 1990s urbanizacion I was called on to visit about a funeral last week. My tea time bird watching walk was interrupted by a call from Ashley. We spent a long time on the phone which led to me drafting a statement for publication about recent BCRP changes for emailing by Julie to the CBS user base not long before I went to bed. 

Today it's been mainly cloudy and cool, good walking weather. First I went to the nature reserve and saw an egret for the first time this year. Curiously, it was roosting in a waterside reed bed a couple of metres away from the one grey heron I've now seen a couple of times.

I continued walking up the north side track along the bank of rio Aguas. Where the river bed bends at the top of the valley, a large tracked vehicle with a mowing arm was attacking the tall thick forest of reeds and cane that has taken over the surface of the river bed where water runs underground. Last time I walked up here, I noticed that extensive clearance of the watercourse had recently taken place. 

Further up towards the pueblo, the dry river bed seems free of this kind of vegetation. Gravel bedding whether natural or artificial, I don't know, seems only to permit a scattering of small bushes there. It may be that subterranean water runs under bedrock or at least too deep for reed and cane to flourish in that section. It makes sense to clear the watercourse, as dense vegetation would impede the immense if occasional flow of storm water and cause a low lying area to floor. Prevention is better than cure. The marine wetland area will suffer damage any time there's a huge amount of storm water but as I've seen, following last winter's coastal floods, the ecosystem is indeed resilient.

I climbed up to the top of Mojácar Pueblo, right to the mirador on the site of the mediaeval castillo. The imposing 1970s hotel El Moresco dominating the north face of the hill on which the town stands has been 'closed for repairs' for the past seven years, its glass front entrance doors and walls have graffiti on them now. An early victim of recession, refurbishment fund-raising or investment beyond reach, it's slowly turning into an eyesore, in contrast to the rest of the pueblo, which looks well kept and prosperous.

When I was here mid November last, I arrived to find that the huge north facing mirador terrace had been closed and was being excavated. I believe the condition of the car parks underneath the terrace was the reason for this unexpected activity, at the end of the autumn holiday season. Sure enough, the terrace had been restored, and its neighboring restaurants were open for business. It looked, however, as if the car park restoration is still a work in progress. More parking nightmares for locals, sadly.

The walk back down to the apartment took another hour despite taking a shortcut on tracks away from the main road to Mojácar Playa, and I made it before twilight. A walk of about 10km in all. I'll sleep well tonight.

Finally, I got around to remembering to look back at blog entries made during my stay here last year, in an effort to recover the forgotten local Spanish word used to describe the nature reserve's water enclosure. It's charco which translates as 'puddle' rather than pool or pond, perhaps because by nature it may grow or shrink according to weather conditions, so its boundaries may be somewhat fluid. A nice little linguistic curiosity.