A lot of high cloud when I woke up this morning and a persistent strong wind from the south east. When I walked down Tamango Hill for the nine fifty one bus a distinctly cooling wind was in my face all the way. Waves on the sea were large and white crested, a spectacular sight. When I arrived at the Torrecilla parada, I had an hour to spare, so I popped into the church shop and had a chat with the volunteers on duty. Then I went to the Hotel de Balcon to meet with church warden John, Patricia a wedding planner and a couple whose wedding is due to be blessed in September for an initial briefing and discussion about their choices for the ceremony.
Yesterday evening I heard from John about another couple with a wedding booked for next month whose civil ceremony is booked for after their church wedding blessing. A major disaster for them. I felt sure that blessing ceremony couldn't go ahead and suggested John contact Archdeacon David to confirm this, which he did. To keep their celebration bookings here, the couple will have to find some way of rearranging the civil ceremony booking urgently. They still have several weeks, and will need to act efficiently to resolve this. The question is, how did this happen? Was there a miscommunication by the wedding planner or a misunderstanding by couple.
When I thought this through, it seemed likely to me that the couple were thinking about a CofE wedding in Britain, where the officiating minister signs the register with the couple and gives them their certificate at the end of the service, because the minister is a recognised registrar in church and civil law. In Europe, this is the exception not the rule. Couples register their marriage with civil authorities and then go to church to be blessed. It's the same for Anglican marriages.
Having a civil wedding certificate is a precondition for an Anglican blessing of a civil marriage to take place. No matter how often you ask and explain this, the packaging of wedding arrangements abroad by a third party professional involves so many different choices that a couple can get distracted from the essential civil wedding priority booking, or worse still think it's no different from getting married in a Parish Church back home. Although I won't be officiating at the service for the couple I met today, I was pleased to learn that their civil wedding is booked for a month before they arrive here. I hope the other couple will succeed in changing their civil marriage date, as that's a wedding I am booked to take.
A caught the bus back at a quarter to one, as there was nothing else I wanted to do in town. I cooked fish with rice and veg for lunch, and for the first time in days felt like drinking wine with it. Left over from Kath's visit, was a bottle of red from Castilla y León made of the Mencía varietal, that's slowly making a come-back in its own right, having been used for flavour, blended with other more productive grapes, as often happens in Spain where traditionally several grapes are either brewed together, or blended after fermentation.
It's an unusual flavour, strongly tannic at first with its flavours developing over time, best left open for a good while I suspect. It reminded me of a Piedmonte red I tasted a few years ago, using the Nebbiolo grape I think. Good for the digestion I found. After the meal, I lay down on the sofa, slept for more than an hour, and woke up feeling refreshed. I slept quite well last night, but not enough to recover from my active week of sunny walks and chats with Kath. She told me she'd done an Ancestry.com DNA analysis test a couple of weeks ago, curious about her genetic mix. I think she may have discussed with with her cousin Jules, at some time, as he's done this, curious about his father's side of the family, which he knew less about than our side, already well documented by our late cousin Lindsay years before he died. She and I would love to know is we have anything more than love for Spain in common. Genetic origins as well, possibly?
After a light supper, I went for an uphill walk on to the track above the urbanizacion where Kath and I walked earlier this week. Fortunately the wind had abated but the sky was mostly covered with cloud at different levels, making it difficult to figure out exactly where the sun was going to set, as no cloud was tinged with evening pink. Very strange conditions.
When I got back, thinking about Kath's quest, I had a fresh look at our family tree document, wondering about ancestral siblings about whom we've learned little, perhaps because they moved away from their origins or died with nobody recalling when. What must it be like to see the whole picture of generations past?
With that in mind, time to call it a day.
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