Lost and found again

I woke up early and posted today's Morning Prayer YouTube link to WhatsApp, dozed for a while longer then got up and prepared breakfast. Fog persisted until well after nightfall, then the temperature dropped and the sky cleared slowly, as there wasn't much wind. When we got up this morning the sun was shining brightly through eastward moving clouds. A promising start to the day, such a contrast to yesterday. After breakfast, Clare's daily dip in the pool. A fire alarm sounded just after she got into the water. No smell of smoke nor dramatic sound from the building so we continued. Then the alarm stopped. A man came by to reassure us it was just a test. No pasa nada.

I realised that I lost a lens cap off my Olympus Pen 7 yesterday. Looking at dates and time of photos taken with it in the past 36 hours suggest a rough search area to check later. It's so small, it may have remained lying unnoticed in a gutter. It happened to me once before on the road by the stables in Pontcanna Fields. Let's see if I am lucky a second time.

While Clare was showering and washing her hair I took the opportunity of quiet in the lounge-diner area to record and edit audio for Morning Prayer on All Hallows Eve aka Martin Luther or Reformation Day. It was time to cook lunch by the time Clare appeared declaring her hunger, so a made an impromptu pasta dish with an assortment of veggies and a can of tuna fish. It turned out better than expected at short notice.

After lunch while Clare was having a siesta, I added another page to the semi fictional story I'm writing about my Grandpa - the days when he arrives and gets his first job, as a waiter in the NYC Yacht Club. Then we walked into town and I started to retrace my steps to the places where I'd recently stopped to take photos. There were fewer of them than I thought in fact. I noticed an advertisement for a local craft fair at the De Valence Pavilion in Upper Frog Street.  It's an events venue run by the town Council, quite near to the municipal market, so we went there and saw the range of local handmade potential gift items on sale. We came away with a beautifully made pastry rolling pin with an inlaid decorative spiral in contrasting dark wood, and a weighing scale decoratively painted in barge ware style colours. 

Rather than carry it with us, I walked straight back to Bryn y More with the components of the scales in two separate plastic bags, weighing about five kilos, hoping they wouldn't break, and left them in the car. No sooner than I set out, a shower of rain began and lasted for the quarter of an hour my uphill journey took. That was the only rain we had all afternoon. I hadn't bothered to wear a top coat and was pretty damp by the time Clare and I were reunited in the market hall vestibule. We walked the length of Upper and Lower Frog Streets, then along the Esplanade above South Beach, before retracing our steps through the town centre and returning for tea. One place where I may have lost the lens cap was the Old Chapel, but it had closed by the time we passed by.

When we got back, Clare started on packing up the content of the kitchen cupboards ready to put in the car, excluding remaining supplies for supper and breakfast. We must be out by ten thirty in the morning. I looked around the apartment once more to see if there was any place I'd not checked just in case, and there was. The foggy morning I woke up, I reached for my fleece to wear over my pyjamas when I went on to the terrace to take a picture, out of interest. And the fleece pocket was where I found the lens cap. Not lost at all, only forgotten, thank heavens.

After supper, I made a sketch of one past of the harbour with the life boat stations and the hill on which the remnants of Tenby Castle's keep still stand, along with a statue of Prince Albert the Good, who is very tiny in my poor landscape. A satisfying conclusion to my artistic challenge of the week with six drawings completed over six days. Another unexpected adventure in noticing the detail of how the world around me looks and is put together. I look forward to doing more!

And now, all my kit accounted for and packed away, time for an early night to conclude and enjoyable if sometimes tiring week.

Fog

We woke up this morning to find the whole of Tenby enveloped in fog with an air temperature of 16C. Visibility about 200 yards. It's about ten years since I last recall being in this kind of weather, and that was in Nerja, where it was possible from a mile inland on higher ground to watch fog banks roll in over the sea, and then recede, emulating the movement of the waves breaking onshore. There's no wind here today, just intermittent showers of light rain. 

After breakfast I went with Clare to the pool for her daily dip. Then, after coffee I had a phone call from sister in law Ann to say she's received a notification in the post about the death of John Muir, a cousin of Clare and Eddie's. Since the death of Dorothy his wife in 2017, he's been living in an alms house in Halifax, slowly declining with Alzheimer's. The last time we saw him was in 2019 when he visited us for a weekend and we went to the opera together. In their youth they were missionaries in Zambia, and John was a Presbyterian Minister, but when he returned to the UK, he became an Anglican priest and served in rural parishes in Wakefield diocese. The death notification is probably waiting at home for us when we return. The funeral is on Tuesday next. There's not enough time to plan the 200 mile journey. Whether by car or train with several changes, it would involve an overnight stay, and be very taxing on us. We have commitments in the week as well, so attending the service, except for on-line is all that we can manage.

We walked into town for the midday Eucharist at St Mary's. It gave us an opportunity to remember John in prayer, and entrust him to God. There were about eighteen in the congregation, double the size of St Catherine's midweek service, as may be expected with a congregation of double the size on a Sunday. Fr Steve the Vicar told me that the Old Chapel ministry team was pastored by a husband and wife couple. The enterprise has gone down well in the community and he said he was impressed by what had been achieved, starting as they did from scratch.

We had lunch at the Harbwr Inn not far from the church, proudly promoting its own range of home brewed ales. I had a superior sort of hot dog and chips dish, with lamb sausages which really were spicy hot with a caramelised onion chutney, salad and a big bread roll made using strong white flour. Very tasty. Clare had red mullet fillets with new potatoes. The food on offer in Tenby is high quality, the restaurants and pubs are well maintained and interesting to look at, each in their own ways, evidence that two and a half million visitors a year earns enough in revenue to keep them looking good.

Then we had a few items of grocery shopping to buy from Tesco's and hunted streets nearby for a bakery Clare remembered seeing but couldn't remember where. I found it on Upper Frog Street, and bought a small wholemeal sourdough loaf to last the rest of our stay. Mist still swirled in the streets, lifting very little, so we walked back to Bryn y Mor, by which time we could just see the spire of St Mary's emerging out of the cloud covering the town. Beautifully atmospheric.

I needed a snooze when I got back, then I walked back to town to find Sainsbury's on the east side of town beyond the town walls, near the bus station, to buy a bottle of wine. Fog still clung to the streets and the bay, only slowly emerging as there's little or no wind to blow it away. Further east there's been torrential rain, I heard this afternoon. At least we've been spared that, and have been able to get out and walk.

For supper, I cooked canelli beans, with garlic, onions and mushrooms, with chorizo and tomato puree added to my portion, a flavoursome lift on a dank foggy day. I had a go at making a sketch based on a foggy photo taken of the harbour while I was out. It was incredibly difficult. I'd have done better to make a simple pencil sketch rather than use colours, but never mind. Finally, another episode of 'The Chateau Murders' from last Friday, then bed.

Old Chapel Tenby Initiative

Another overcast day, waking up just in time for 'Thought of the Day'. After breakfast I went with Clare to the pool for her daily dip. Yesterday evening I took photos of my recent drawings and discovered that with Google Photos editing facility it's possible to intensify the lines and to some extent the colours drawn on paper. It would take a lot longer to do this by hand, assuming I had the right quality of coloured pencils to use. Admittedly it's possible to allege this is cheating, but it's my art work, I'm free to do whatever I like with it. If I wanted to make prints this would make for a better quality image in the end. It's all part of the creative learning process after all. And great holiday fun as well.

Neither of us felt like going out this morning. We had an early lunch and then went out, with the intention of walking on South Beach, after exploring side streets behind the town wall, but there were strong gusts of wind and this deterred us from going further. We made our way back along Upper Frog Street, a name which sticks in my memory as one of my contemporaries at St Mike's lived in this exotic location when he was sent to Tenby to serve his first Curacy. My attention was caught by a church building with a hanging sign outside saying 'The Old Chapel', a Christian bookshop and coffee shop. There are several eye catching notice boards on the wall either side of the entrance ,indicating that it's still a place of worship as well, but presenting itself as a far from conventional religious building. 

We went in and were delighted to discover a welcoming colourful decorated interior, whose south wall is lined with bookshelves, and other walls are lined with a variety of posters, banners and bric a brac. Near the door is a counter laden with delicious looking cakes, serving coffee and tea. The floor space is given over to sofas and armchairs in circles, like a collection of colourful comfortable domestic sitting rooms, arranged for relaxing and conversation. Above this warm and welcoming place of hospitality is a worship space, where a communion service is held on a Sunday morning and a preaching service in the evening, plus a ministry to children and bible classes, branded as 'The Upper Room'. 

A community of missionary entrepreneurs running this initiative describes itself thus: "We are a non-denominational, independent gathering of evangelical Christian believers who have received grace from God, and who aim to show grace to one another." Who they are and where they come from is another story to be discovered another time. I learned from chatting to a few people that the chapel was originally sold on for use as a children's soft play centre. When this didn't work out, it was sold to a small group of believers who wanted to reclaim its Christian identity, but in a fresh imaginative way. 

Whoever had the vision certainly has design and marketing skill to place at the service of the Gospel. This is such a lovely people friendly place. Volunteers are a mixture of believers and non-disciples of all ages. Apart from worship, teaching and hospitality, there's a ministry to children and a food bank operating at Old Chapel. Such a refreshing and engaging offer of Christian service, not bound by historical institutionalised norms but by desire to be authentic and creatively free according the the values of early Christian fellowship and mission.

As an Anglican missionary priest, with rare exceptions, I dedicated my life in ministry to work within an historic church in an effort to reform and renew its offer to the world. It doesn't seem to have worked, but I still don't believe it can be dispensed with. Its witness to stability, orthodox doctrine with high standards of disciplined critical thinking about the meaning, purpose and value of life together as human beings on planet earth, thanks to the teaching and self sacrificial life of Jesus of Nazareth, are indispensable as far as I'm concerned even if its institutions leave much to be desired. The Gospel message of Jesus offers space to return to biblical essentials and re-think in creative ways the way the call to faith in God is made. 

In the beginning the church was no more than a collection of self supporting groups sharing a new found faith in God. The Apostles helped these groups to network with one another and develop shared teaching and values, and a heritage of organisational structures evolved from those simple beginnings, adapting to different cultures as it developed. But this has not been the only way in which Christian community and organisation has developed. 

From early on there were independent thinking groups regarded as sectarian, heretical, toxic. Monastic and missionary communities developed with a life of their own without becoming disconnected from the mainstream of institutional life. In reality, the church evolved into an eco-system of communities sharing similar values and purpose. Not always good at recognising each other's authenticity however. 20th century ecumenism encouraged Christian groups to think differently about each other. Unity now doesn't mean uniformity, but demands respect and celebrating diversity. And how lovely it is to have come across one local creative expression of church in mission to rejoice in, not simply more of the same in disguise.

We walked back to Bryn y Mor after our visit, as Clare was feeling out of sorts. I needed to walk further, so I went in the opposite direction to the junction where we turned into the road where our apartment is located, then turned left and went downhill to reach the town centre by another route, making a circuit of a couple of miles to bring me back to where I started. I now have a better sense of the town's overall layout as a result.

After supper I made another sketch based on a photo I took of the view from up the hill behind Bryn y Mor with Caldey Island  in the distance. It wasn't easy are there was too much dark green in the scene and it was hard to emulate with the pencils I have to work with. But never mind, I enjoyed  making the effort again. First I must build confidence in having a go at a subject, regardless of how difficult it might be with so little technique to rely on. You can learn by doing, and accept with gratitude any advice you get along the way. I remember grammar school art classes, and learning to resent a teacher who was only interested in the few who had a flare for it and were quick learners. It was discouraging to have ones efforts ignored and never to receive comment, favourable or otherwise. It put me off doing any kind of visual art until I was old enough to take an interest in photography, thanks to my sister June's passion for it. In latter years I have spent hours scanning negatives and slides, building a digital library of lifetime's worth of her holiday pictures before she bought a digital camera. 

After an extra long walk yesterday, quite tired today, so early bed.

Fish fresh from the quay

A good long night's sleep but waking up to light rain and low cloud. Thankfully the sea reflects more light than any urban landscape, so it's not nearly as gloomy. As 'Bryn y Mor' has its own swimming pool, Clare booked herself a slot for herself at ten, after breakfast.  Not that she's allowed to exercise for several weeks apart from walking after her eye operation, but she can walk around in the water for the variety of muscle activity to mitigate the deterioration that comes with not being able to do vigorous exercise. Having said that, we walked seven miles yesterday, with no ill effect. The pool is in a modern annexe to the building with glass walls, and a sauna. It's uniformly four feet deep and twenty five feet long. Not an athlete's pool, but just right for old people and children learning to swim. I went with her and sat beside the pool and read the news on my phone. Half an hour was enough to start with, so a slot for each of the three days we have left was booked before we returned for coffee.

We walked into town and climbed up on to the promontory overlooking the harbour, where there's a statue of Prince Albert the Good as it says on the base, Queen Victoria's Consort. There's a great view from there of St Catherine's Island and Caldey Island, as well as the full extent of North Beach and Carmarthen Bay. It's got the town museum and the old Coastguard's house too. A lovely place to take photos too. We went to the fishmonger's small shop above the quary, with every kind of fresh fish caught in the area on display and labelled colourfully with the prices. 

Clare bought a couple of Dab fillets and a couple of pieces of sewin - sea trout fished near the river mouths along this coast. The back to Bryn y Mor for lunch: rice and veg with the Dab fillets. They are like a small version plaice, light and delicate, needing nothing added for just about any herb or garlic would spoil the taste. You'd really need a lot of them to make a full meal, but it was lovely to try something neither of us have had before. It's been an age since either of us have had trout, let alone sea trout, but that's for tomorrow.

Clare had a snooze while I uploaded and edited the photos I'd taken, then we went for a walk uphill on the old Amroth Road which runs under a canopy of trees and lined with hedges, parallel to the path into the cemetery. It then continues in a straight up to the top, in a gently winding way until it joins a newer metalled road at a bend. Next to the bend a new housing estate of luxury dwellings, perhaps on a piece of farmland sold for housing development to finance the family business. Who knows? It was a stiff climb but rewarding for its hidden beauty.

After supper, I took one of the photos from earlier in the day and made an attempt to draw it.The detail was even harder to reproduce than in the picture I drew yesterday, but it was great fun just to try. Then I got around to watching the final forty minutes of 'Bordertown' which had its happy resolve, but then an inconclusive ending, begging the question of whether there's another series in the pipeline. It became hard to follow in the end as there were several sets of complex relationships connecting different people to the perpetrator of several murders, requiring the viewer to remember a lot of strange names and their context, a story of who was who among the victims. Hard going with too much time dwelling on the sleuth in charge pondering with a puzzled vacant look on his face. 

Tenby's own brew

Colder and cloudy for most of the day, but no rain. I woke up to another nosebleed in the night with blood slowly trickling down the back of my throat, so I was able to get to the bathroom without making a mess everywhere. A repeat of last Monday. I don't understand what triggers this, but it might be writing late in the day, and yesterday I spent extra time drawing, lots pf 'brain' work with not enough physical activity to balance. These bursts don't last as long as they used to as my diastolic blood pressure is averagely lower nowadays, but the systolic pressure does go up with effort, and prolonged concentration. I may get tired, but not necessarily relaxed enough to mitigate the effects of too much 'brain' work.

After breakfast we walked to St Mary's for the 10.00am Eucharist. It was pleasing to join a congregation of over seventy, including a choir of twenty, which sang a couple of anthems very nicely plus two clergy and a lay reader, who preached. It's a lovely church with three aisles. The high altar is elevated up twelve steps, and the Vicar Fr Steve Brett faced eastwards. It made sense in that physical setting. Everything was well ordered and harmonious. Just what a Parish Liturgy should be. When he greeted us after the service, he asked my first name and his eyes lit up when he pronounced my surname. "I thought I recognised you!" He said. I visited St John's when you were Vicar there." I think that was before he was ordained. What a unexpected surprise now that I'm getting to the age where I reckon few people remember me in the church apart from those in churches I have ministered to. Anyway we'll meet again for a chat after the Wednesday Midday Eucharist.

We had two hours to squander before our lunch date at the Hope and Anchor, most of wandering around parts of the old town, a half hour spent over an expensive coffee, a half hour in the quayside chapel dedicated to St Julian the Hospitaller, patron saint of ferrymen, innkeepers and circus artists before we arrived on time for lunch, only to discover that lobster wasn't on the lunchtime menu. And lobster was to be Clare's special treat. So we re-booked for supper with lobster at six. 

A third of the way back Clare realised she's lost a ring she was wearing, most likely in the toilet, so we went back to look for it, but to no avail. Sad, because it was one she made for herself. When we got back she had a light snack and then a siesta. I cooked Canelli beans with onion, tomato and chunks of chorizo, as I was feeling really hungry. With a couple of slices of home mead bread this was enough to keep me going until supper time. I then slept for an hour and a half, making up for what I missed last night. The 'Hope and Anchor' was far less crowded at six. Clare had half a lobster, I had a gammon steak with pineapple, salad and pembrokeshire new potatoes, washed down with a pint of Tenby Best Bitter, brewed somewhere within the very town itself. Nice and malty, a good ale very locally sourced!

We got back just before eight, and I made another attempt to draw a view of the end of South Beach of which I had taken a photo earlier, something straightforward I thought, until I realised it wasn't. It was a challenge, but worth the effort for three quarters of an hour, before writing this and making proper time to decompress before going to bed...

Back to the drawing

A blue sky sunny day to wake up to with the added backdrop of the sea behind the town below us. After breakfast we walked down into the old town and explored shops and the main street in which St Mary's Parish church the jewel in the crown. It's one of Wales's largest parish churches with a 152ft spire. It was built between the 13th and 15th centuries, beautifully designed to produce a well lit interior, noticeable on a sunny day. We'll be here again for the Eucharist tomorrow morning. 

There's a delightful market hall on the same street with a superb organic wholefood shop at the main entrance in addition to the range of craft stalls including one that sells a variety of unusual jams and chutneys. At some stage, the hall roof has been renovated to admit as much light as possible and a light coloured wooden panelling ceiling surround adds to the interior brightness. It's a venerable old trading space which breathes variety and colour, a credit to its conservators. I had a chat with the man running the wholefood shop and expressed my delight at finding such an excellent retail offer, better than Beanfreaks, in fact. He seemed pleased to get such positive feedback.

When we started thinking about returning for lunch, we were standing outside a pub called 'The Hope and Anchor' opposite the house where Admiral Lord Nelson is said to have stayed when off duty I suppose, when his fleet was anchored in Milford Haven eighteen miles away by road, but probably quicker by boat two hundred years ago. The pub was busy, so Clare suggested lunch there tomorrow after church, and we booked a table. A lobster treat for her, hopefully. Heaven knows what for me, until I see the menu.

We walked back to Bryn y Mor and had sea bass for lunch. The, while Clare was having a siesta I sat in the sun outside and made a couple of efforts to sketch the most interesting part of the townscape that I could see in the distance. It's the first time I've done this since the turn of the century, I think. Challenging, but also satisfying. Then we walked down the hill to the place where the footpath to Amroth starts. It goes up the hill alongside a municipal cemetery dating back to the early 19th century. The old cemetery chapel has been converted into a dwelling. Some of the older monuments still remain, others have been laid flat or demolished, but the higher up the hill you go the graves start to be dated in the 20th century. One family grave had been reopened a few months ago for a 21st century burial. 

The older sections reveal an interesting array of names and professions of Parish residents. Many non-local people buried here were military men and their families retired from serving with colonial forces. This helps explain why there are so many fine residential buildings in the area above the harbour adjacent to the medieval town walls. In addition there are occasional tombstones of men from both World Wars. At the top end, there's a path through a boundary hedge to an all new section, with a garden area for cremated remains and a big area of uniform sized tombstones in black marble. Some parts of the older section are no longer fully maintained, where there are no longer relatives to visit or help with upkeep. These are now overgrown and provide a refuge for wildlife. Who could possibly object?

Clare want to return and recover from the half mile hill climb. I ventured further into town, to rediscover the area inside the medieval walls. It's been mostly taken over by restaurants, pubs, clubs and takeaways, and the town's young people and visitors were turning out in force as evening was approaching, for a night of festive fun and leisure. I turned for home and arrived just as the sun reached the horizon. Earlier the sky clouded over and there were a few light showers of rain but it didn't last long. As the clouds broke up, they turned pick in the sight of the setting sun. When I took a photo the waxing gibbous moon stood right over the spire of St Mary's church. A wond'rous sight.

Supper, then some writing, and then more 'Bordertown' to finish the day.

On holiday in Tenby

Nice to wake up to sunshine on a day when we're travelling westbound. Kath is even further west than we will be in Tenby. She flew to Dublin yesterday for a conference in Galway for those working with Early Years children in the Arts, and was travelling by coach to her destination into the setting sun, as we were having supper. 

After breakfast, a morning spent finding things and packing what I need to take with me - equipment and clothes. Clare started two days ago on personal baggage and food for the week, as we're self catering. It took us all morning to pack the car. Instead of taking a picnic we had lunch at home and left at one thirty. With one stop at Pont Abraham, we made it to Tenby and 'Bryn y Mor', our holiday apartment by four fifteen. It's spacious, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms on the ground floor of a four storey mansion, probably Edwardian, set on a hill, facing the sea, a mile from the town centre, facing south, so the terrace outside the lounge cum kitchen-diner benefits from sunshine most of the day.

The down side was unloading the car. Six trips up to the terrace from the assigned parking place. Aerobic exercise after nearly three hours driving! The other down side was the absence of toilet paper, with no BYO alert in the booking material. I left Clare to unpack food supplies, and walked a mile down the main  road to find the nearest shops, just before closing time at five. Tenby is far less busy at this time of year so there's less need to stay open late. It gets two and a half million visitors a year, and needs recovery time off-season. Not only did I acquire toilet paper, but a sketch pad and a couple of black pencils, as I propose to do some sketching while I'm here, and with this in mind, packed some coloured pencils, secreted in the bottom draw of my study.

While I was searching for an only sketch pad with unused sheets in it, I looked at a file folder of drawing made twenty five years ago, before I became obsessed with digital photography. I was surprised to find how many drawings I did, mostly in the years we were in Geneva, not only in Haute Savoie, but Greece and Ty Mawr convent. I'm certainly not tired of photography, but long to do something different, ring the changes a bit, and definitely develop better drawing technique. We'll see.

After supper, I watched another couple of episodes of 'Bordertown'. It's interesting in that it portrays the lead investigators in a serious crimes squad working across the Finnish Russian border as high functioning autistic, whose reasoning process is informed by his visual memory and attention to detail. It's very dark stuff, showing the really sordid side of organised crime and its dalliance with legitimate business. 

At first I was puzzled by the manner of storytelling in this series, in which the portrayal of the dramatic conclusion was compressed into a series of video vignettes in the last few minutes with only glimpses of violence and happy reunions after a rescue. Interestingly, this minimises the melodramatic character of unfolding events and emphasises the story told of an investigation with an unusual team of investigators. It's the first time I've really noticed this in crimmies I've watched over recent years.