Train outing for a kids' show

After breakfast we walked to Cardiff Central Statio to take a train to Birmingham New Street, then a connecting train to Leamington Spa, a journey of almost three hours, to watch a performance of Kath, Lucy and Anto's Wriggledance Theatre company, as part of a children's arts festival set in the lovely parkland of the town's Jephson's Gardens. Their current touring show 'Out of this World' is a 45 minute fantasy trip into space for under fives. Thus far, it's been done successfully in libraries or community arts venues. 

Tomorrow, the three final shows will take place in the foyer of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Today's was a unique challenge, taking place in a large marquee in daylight, where none of the usual lighting effects would work, and noises off from other events in the vicinity could have been a distraction. In any case, it went very well indeed with about thirty children and a dozen or so adults taking part. I'm so glad we got to see it at last, having learned about the show's development at each stage since its conception as, as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first man to set foot on the moon.

It was well worth the travelling, although I found this a bit stressful, as the train seats were narrow and uncomfortable, largely due to wear and tear. It proved very difficult to settle and the effort was a drain on my physical energy. British trains are no match for their European counterparts. As we travelled out of Cardiff to Severn Tunnel Junction, it was interesting to see the extent of progress made on installing the equipment for electrifying the line from Paddington to Cardiff. 

It was gone half past eight when we arrived back in Cardiff. Rather than wait for a bus, we walked home via the 'Rock & Malt' the local chip shop, where we bought what we thought was a small bag of chips for supper, which turned out to be big enough for three of us! It was just the right remedy for tiredness after six hours of train travel.

I often complain about the terrible litter problem we have in our streets, Council workers can never keep up with the task of clearing the mess, except in the city centre, for appearances sake. Little is done to expand the number of strategically placed litter bins either, but extra bins would require more workers to empty, and public spending cut-backs rule this out. I noticed that on Birmingham New Street station, there were no litter bins to be seen anywhere. Plenty of shops selling take away food, however. 

The station is kept clean by a patrolling squad of workers, so passengers discard the cup or sandwich box they have just finished with anywhere they fancy, including perching them on seats which other might want to use. They stay there until collected by the patrolling cleaners, but how long is that in practice? At peak travel times, or shift changeover times? Far more seriously it takes away from travellers a sense of obligation to clear up after themselves. It promotes a culture of dependency on 'the travel system' created by smart modern management. I don't imagine that urban architects conceived of their shiny new icons of progress, with rubbish strewn around their elegant spaces as an adornment. The gulf between the ideal and the reality is immense. No wonder urban society is in such a mess.

Tuesday in Holy Week

It's been interesting to follow today's news stories in the aftermath of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire - with half a billion euros for restoration funding pledged by big corporations, some in the construction industry. They have an eye on investing in skills training for historic conservation projects by the sound of it, although it seems France is already well blessed in this employment sector.

This crisis offers a public opportunity to celebrate the bravery and persistence of firefighters whose untiring efforts prevented total destruction of the building. It's astonishing that the ancient organ has survived, despite the deluge of water and molten lead. It's damaged no doubt, but hopefully it can be restored. How good to hear different voices expressing what this sacred edifice means to them, even if they never darken its doors to worship God. Interesting to hear commentators speaking about people grieving at the loss of a building. 

Photos of the fire damaged interior are remarkable - the cross suspended in the sanctuary over the high altar defiantly still in place. And people again out on the streets, singing and praying, city church bells tolling, acts of public witness by the faithful minority in a secular society, where many ancient church buildings are now monuments to a Christian past, museums of cultural history.

Interesting too, how this has awakened memories of the York Minister fire, and the Windsor Castle fire, affording an opportunity to review the fruit of post inferno restoration work, and speak to some of those responsible. It's raised discussion about the Houses of Parliament, needing restoration after only 150 years of life, subject to the same vulnerabilities, before restoration and eventually during the process. There doesn't need to be a lightning strike to start a fire. A faulty electrical connection will do, either in permanent or temporary lighting, not to mention neglected gas powered appliances. Nothing can be taken for granted when working in these conditions. 

Thinking about 'building grief', it seems to me that destruction of heritage architecture awakens more of a sense of loss nowadays than it did fifty years ago. Modernising our cities led to redevelopment plans that sacrificed many ancient buildings in those days, perhaps because they were too expensive to conserve or find a place in new grand urban schemes. Much was lost due to wartime bombing, but not always rebuilt from old plans, as happened across Europe, but rather replaced. The emphasis was 'out with the old, in with the new'. It gave us Basil Spence's masterpiece Coventry Cathedral, but also an ugly unappealing neighbouring town centre with few reminders of what had been lost.

Apart from walking to the wound clinic, and walking to church this evening, I didn't do much. I don't know why, but I lacked energy. I'm waking earlier as the days lengthen, and getting to bed earlier to compensate, though not always successful in getting off to sleep, and some days miss out on a siesta. I need a total of 7-8 hours daily one way or another, and if I don't, I can expect to pay for it. There were seventeen of us for this evening's Benefice Eucharist at St John's. It was quite late when I got around to looking at today's Málaga Semana Santa photos and video on the Diario Sur website, plus my own from last year. I'll pay for it tomorrow, no doubt.

Post op day one

I thought I'd drop off to sleep naturally last night, tired after a long and eventual day, but I lay in bed wide awake, quite relaxed, enjoying being comfortable and warm, listening to the quiet music of the wind and rain outside. After three hours, I switched on my tablet, wrote emails reporting the op to a few people I'd not got around to sending last night. Some time after four I dropped off and slept until a quarter to eight, in time for Thought for the Day. 

Jasbir Singh was talking about cultural vandalism of historic buildings associated with their religion in the Sikh homeland, due to modernisation which wasn't conservation minded. Co-incidentally last night I read an article on the Spain's 'Politico' news blog, that was a withering attack on the long standing Alcalde de Malaga, alleged responsible for the destruction of 18th-19th century streets and buildings over his nineteen years in office, in the name of modernisation and redevelopment. 

Spain still suffers greatly for municipal corruption, but in the past half century of tourism has grown from a poor, rather decrepit historic city into an expanding place of welcome to international travellers, dominated by hotel and holiday apartments and suffering from a decline in urban native population as citizens move out into the suburbs and travel in to work and play. 

It's a familiar pattern in other parts of Europe and other parts of the the world, where redevelopment ambition clashes with social and architectural conservation. A hundred thousand people may take part in forthcoming Semana Santa activities, but ten times that number will visit the city to watch, creating huge challenges for transport, both public and private, disrupting regular activity. There may be a net benefit to the city's economy, but this begs questions about quality of life, and there are varying opinions as to what this consists of. Slower, more considered controlled growth, would make a difference, but the temptation to make bigger profits has a tendency to hinder this. 

We've seen the same in Cardiff too, where parts of the Victorian street plan and buildings have been obliterated not once but twice since the Luftwaffe's wartime raids. We have conserved some of the facades but lost interesting interiors when buildings have been gutted for internal modernisation. The great Post Office building on Westgate Street has been unused for many years, and is now to be turned into an hotel. Only its imposing entrance hall is scheduled for conservation, the entire internal layout is likely to be gutted apart from this, I learned from my recent chat with Ashley. I wonder when that work is due to start?

My clinic visit was mid afternoon and by that time the schedule was running half an hour late, not that I minded waiting, with not much else to do, and not that uncomfortable after yesterday's op, and not really so tired after a night with so little sleep, but I made an effort to rest. Finally I got around to finishing the Gabriel Garcia Marques novela 'Crónica de un muerte anunciada' which I received from Kath on 10th January. The Latin American vocabulary and literary style made it hard work but mainly worth the effort. It describes in detail the same set of tragic events as experienced by each of the people who were in some way connected to them, circling around the core of this story of an honour killing in a small rural tropical riverside town. Having to pick over the detailed vocabulary to get the richness of the storytelling was slow, and towards the end a bit tedious, but I go there in the end. I'll pick something a bit easier for my next excursion into Spanish literature, I think.

Art to make you think

My fourth weekend here, a new month, and today is Owain's 39th birthday. It's hard to believe that my youngest child was born that long ago, at home in St Agnes Vicarage, Badminton Road in those days, just a bit to the east of the St Paul's Area 'front line' in Bristol. A little over half a lifetime ago. I was fortunate to have him here with me last weekend. Tonight he'll be in Cardiff with Clare, Kath, Anto and Rhiannon for his birthday celebration, and then we'll talk as best we can for a while over any VOIP connection we can establish.

This afternoon, I went into the Old Town to hunt for a shop selling herbs, to find some nettle and mistletoe leaves, as requested by Clare. Quite close to the Cathedral I found a herbolaria called 'Escencias de Sevilla' selling a wide variety of herbal medicines, including the ortiga verde which I was after. No luck obtaining the muérdago, I also needed, although I was pleased to have conversed in Spanish and made myself understood without recourse to English - except for the one word that wouldn't stick in my memory - muérdago. Altogether I had to look it up using Google Translate no less than three times in a couple of hours. Annoyance was compounded by the fact that the phone I was carrying was down to its last 5% of battery, so I had to keep it switched off, just in case I really needed to call in an emergency. Vocabulary retention deficit is a rather humiliating crisis to keep on repeating.

I tracked down a Bio shop in the Old Town, but it was closed for siesta. Rather than return to the apartment, I used the hour and a half wait to revisit Lagunillas barrio up behind behind La Merced. Conservation measures have retained many features of the main Old Town area, with its rich architectural diversity of 17th to early 20th century dwellings. Further out, older humbler domestic and artisan dwellings have been obliterated to make way for modern apartment blocks of 5-6 stories. The ancient street plan, squares and churches are retained, but the rest has a uniformity of character, despite efforts at design variety. These dwellings haven't evolved, but were 'organised' for the good of the artisanal classes by urban planners and developers. Disappointingly.

Some older streets of Lagunillas barrio have so far survived in a state of delapidation and awaiting demolition, no doubt. Remarkable high quality artistic graffiti cover walls here and there, and there are signs of a grassroots resistance campaign to stop demolition and regenerate the older housing stock rather than destroy it. This makes a lot more sense to me now than during my visit last year, maybe because my Spanish is improving.

I also spent time in the Plaza de la Constitucion, with an open air photo exhibition entitled 'Genesis' by Sebastião Salgado, portraying some of earth's great and awesome wilderness spaces in 38 huge black and white photos, mounted in double sided iron frames. The aim is to raise environmental awareness, and to get the public to think about natural treasures we're in danger of losing for good. Quite apart from the excellent high quality photographic work and its production, the subject matter is indeed chosen to stimulate thought and reflection. For me it was an experience of the sacred right in the heart of a key public place in the city.

When the Bio shop I'd located finally opened, I had no success in obtaining muérdago. As a last resort I'll visit the Mercado de Atarazanas on Monday morning and see what hidden treasures there are among the stalls - another proper herbolaria, hopefully.

After supper I had a Viber conversation with the family, all in Meadow Street after a visit to The Conway pub for supper. I managed to give them a visual tour of the nearer reaches of the apartment using the front camera on the tablet, but it kept dropping out as the signal is poor beyond 10 metres. It's so annoying and frustrating. I thin I must splash out €30 on a wifi range extender for the place fairly soon.

  

St Peter's day, nearly

As well as preparing my Sunday sermon today, I found myself continuing to think about ministry and mission amongst expatriates, both its diversity and the common elements. This led me to start writing a paper for study and discussion, and that took up most of the day. I don't know who I can try it out on at the moment, but I enjoyed escaping the mental lethargy which extreme heat often produces. Today there were gusts of hot wind as well as high temperatures and bright sun. I walked for an hour or so, and for once returned feeling slightly singed - this is the opposite of wind chill factor!

My afternoon walk took me to the barrio of Perchel Norte just across the rio Guadalmedina, described as part of the old town, but mostly ravaged by 20th century urban redevelopment. It's still going on as a new metro line is created, with bridges and roads being re-arranged to improve traffic flow around the Old Town. Only old churches and Cofradia houses, of which there are several, are left as reminders of past history. One of them is dedicated to San Pedro, so I walked there in hopes of finding it open to look around on this his feast day, but it didn't re-open for another hour. It wasn't the kind of environment in which waiting for an hour would be a congenial experience, so I headed back to the apartment and out of the heat. The location resembled a bare deserted noisy traffic island at this stage of an urban makeover process which could last years. It'll look different when the work is finished and lots of greenery introduced once more.