Lying low

Wednesday morning at the midweek BCP Communion service with me were Geoff and Poppy his dog and Bethany-Ann with her youngest daughter, rising five, wearing a toutou over her skirt. Her mother is teaching her how to help out at the altar, so she puts the candles out and tidies things away in the right place. It's not often I'm served in the sanctuary by someone wearing a toutou!

At lunchtime, Collette arrived from Arlesheim to stay with us for a couple of days. We speak a mix of English and French between us, which is quite a mental exercise. There's always lots to discuss, especially with Clare, as they were Steiner School colleagues together in Geneva.

In the afternoon I was visited by an elderly British expat who has lived in Montreux half the year and half the year in Florida for ages, but has now decided to re-establish himself in Britain. He came to ask if I could visit an even older British expat who lives near the Casino in town, so I promised I would do this and arranged to see him today. He's ninety nine and was widowed a few years ago. He lives in a fine apartment overlooking the lake, cared for by daily visits from a home nursing team. His mobility is limited, but he's alert and reads the Financial Times daily, having spent a lifetime in the global shipping business. When I arrived a very loud intruder alarm was sounding. Instead of pressing the entry button, the nurse pressed the alarm button. It took twenty minutes to find the system code and restore tranquility. An unusual way to start a pastoral visit!

Apart from this, I've spent the last couple of days mostly in the house, despite the dreadful humidity, leaving the girls to walk and talk without me. I did some cooking, and we ate lunch and supper together. I've not felt much like going out and walking since returned from Grabs, as my haemorrhoid pain problem has worsened and I've had to focus on pain control, using anti-inflammatory and anti-spasm medication. It's hard working out the most effective dosage rhythm, as intensity varies through the day, from day to day. I am well used to getting up at night, so I manage somehow not to suffer from sleep loss. Having said that, I've been sleeping extra hours this week, and resting in the afternoon, as it seems to make a difference.

We're noticing how much more expensive medication is in Swiss pharmacies. It's just as well I have additional income in Swiss Francs to cover the cost, especially if I am required to get a consultation at the local medical centre. Even if this is a nominal cost with an EHIC card, any special remedy is likely to be expensive. So far, I haven't felt that this resort has been necessary.

Talking of weddings, Saturday's couple have communicated with us only minimally, so apart from an agreed order of service, there's a lot to be done before and during the rehearsal scheduled tomorrow afternoon.

Travel plans

At last! An email with an apology and a copy of the certificate arrived this morning. Apart from the rehearsal meeting with the couple, liturgical preparations for the wedding were done and approved two weeks ago. Now I can concentrate on preparing a wedding taking place the following Saturday. That one calls for a recorded mix of western classical and Bulgarian Orthodox liturgical music for use at a wedding. This is rather out of the ordinary, but something I shall enjoy.

Each afternoon this week, apart from walking into town for shopping, we've walked to the plage by the Chateau de Chillon so that Clare can swim. The water offshore is really warm at the moment after weeks of hot weather, although there lots of small pieces vegetation to be negotiated, blown from the trees on occasional stormy days. Even by Swiss standards it's been a long hot summer.

Because of the heat, we've not felt like venturing far up to now, but on Sunday, after church, we go by train to Grabs on the border with Lichtenstein to see our old friends Heinz and Marie-Luisa. As we both now have abonnements-demi tarif,  we were able to benefit from discount fare offers. It's costing  us CHF202 for the both of us to travel there and back - a four and a half hour journey. What this would cost in the UK doesn't bear thinking about.

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.

  

  

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.