Getting out and about

Up with the sun, but after a chilly night and a few gusts of wind the air warms quickly to around 15C and even more for a while mid-afternoon. Time to inspect the car and give it a trial run. It has just one locking door. The rest unlock and lock automatically with the drivers door. It's a smallish Dacia Sendero Stepway four seat hatchback with a diesel engine, which is comparatively noisy and not terribly powerful, but it's good enough to get around in. First I drove up to Mijas Pueblo and back down into the centre of Fuengirola to experience demanding hill driving and urban traffic conditions. I felt a lot better for having done that. I put it off yesterday to avoid overstressing my dodgy ankle, but it was fine today.

I returned and reheated yesterday's remaining pasta and sauce with chorizo picante sliced into it. In apple crumble was waiting for me in the freezer, along with a cauliflower cheese bake when I arrived. The cauli can wait until someone comes to join me who does eat cheese. The crumble I microwaved, and made up some custard with oat milk, as my secret chef had kindly included a portion of custard powder to use. That was enjoyable, and I certainly needed a good walk to digest it all. Clare and I talked before she went for her siesta. 

I also had a surprise call from John Duncan. He and I were colleagues together in Birmingham University Chaplaincy work fifty years ago. He decided to respond to my Christmas newsletter by ringing me up on his mobile, delighting in free wi-fi calls! He still plays golf twice a week and still has an active interest in good things. He didn't know I'm in Spain, and was quite surprised when I told him. That made my day!

Having finally completed my Sunday sermon, it was time to try out the chaplaincy house printer, hoping that it would behave for me and not force me to visit the office and print it off there. The last time I had used my laptop with a new printer was Estepona last supper. Windows recognised their Epson with ease and it was still set as the default printer. Within a minute or so of attaching a little Samsung lazer printer (a good choice for longevity sake), the laptop recognised it and all worked perfectly. When I think back over the decades, and recall what a task it used to be downloading and installing printer software, and now the whole process has been radically simplified, and made printing a lot less haphazard for all.

Job done, I went for that much needed walk, taking my time, along the road that runs beneath and beside the Metro, all the way to the terminus in Fuengirola. Nine years ago, I bought my Tarjeta Dorada 40% discount rail card there, I had hoped to do it again, but alas the ticket office is long gone. I need to go to Malaga's Maria Zambrano main station to find a ticket office. The terminus has had a makeover, and is equipped with ticket gates, that allows you to tap and pay for your fare, or use your phone, or a paper ticket from the usual machine. And there's a ticketing app for your phone as well. Just like in London. Ah well, at least I know. It's not a priority to get one for the moment.

While I was down that part of time, I found the only branded Banco Santander ATM in town. You can do everything with your account in their centre there, at an on-line terminal. I wonder if they have real people to talk to as well. One day I must go in office hours and find out. The ATM took my card and greeted me as an English client automatically. It only gave me the option of withdrawing €140, unless I missed something on the screen display. It was a maximum of €200 I could withdraw last time I tried in the summer. I paid £133 for this, but there's no exchange fee but a set rate of €1.05 to the pound, which is less than the current €1.11 rate on the street, but banks can add transaction fees which ends up costing just as much. 

Owain says it's cheaper to tap and pay for everything, as it's on the cumulative spend in a banking cycle that the currency conversion is worked and one's account is charged. It means that we're being charged more for using physical money than digital. Covid drove the change to cashless purchase in Britain. Other EU countries and Scandinavia have been way ahead of us. For better or for worse? We'll see.

I walked back along the beach promenade, visited the little shrine of our Lady of Fatima beside the storm drain that runs down into the sea. It's strange that it's quite close to the large statue of Our Lady Star of the Sea. There must be a story behind these local devotions. I'd walked over eleven kilometres by the time I reached Casa de Esperanza. I haven't walked that far for a good while, and my ankle didn't really complain.

A light supper after a big lunch, then photo uploading, and writing this cloaked in a large counterpane I found upstairs, just about enough to enable me to sit and write without being unbearably cold. And now to early bed to be sure that I'm on my best form when I drive to Calahonda for tomorrow's first service.

Start the week housekeeping

Slightly cooler today but quite humid. After breakfast, I worked on my Sunday sermon and then on this Thursday's prayer video, which I finished and uploaded to YouTube before having lunch. Then I went and did my big weekly grocery shopping trip to Mercadona, as it wasn't too hot. Tomorrow afternoon is going to be 35C, time to hunker down. 

Before supper, I walked to the Marina to draw euros from the Santander ATM. The transaction fee is under five euros, but the current exchange rate is £189 for €200, the pound is so weak at the moment. I thought the limit was €300 but wasn't offer that amount, unless I missed it. But never mind, I can cover all my costs one way or another. My travel money card has been useful, and the app on my smartphone worth the memory it occupies.

I hadn't walked my full quota by the time I returned, and decided not to bother, as I was feeling footsore, perhaps due to the humidity. There were document to print out for Lew's funeral, and then early to bed, for a nine fifteen start. Putting out the rubbish and re-cycling can wait until tomorrow evening.

State of Alarm - day Fifty Six

Lovely warm weather again today, but I needed to make an early start on a sermon for next Sunday's service, as co-incidentally this week's bible study is on the same passage Acts 17, set for the first lesson, Paul in Athens. There's a lot to say about this and I'd rather not repeat myself, so it will need extra thought to make it edifying for those who listened to the bible study and those who didn't. It's an unusual challenge.

Just before I was about to break for lunch I received a text message from British Airways to say that my flight to Heathrow on 1st June was cancelled. It referred me to their re-booking web page to go through the same rigmarole as I went through a week ago, to secure another flight. Except that this time the page refused to load. I tried it on a couple of different devices and got the same result. No point in phoning up as the waiting time for a response with a long queue of distressed disappointed passengers could be many expensive hours of waiting. 

I chatted with Kath about this. She tried the re-booking service using my flight booking reference and got the same result. She looked up alternative flights, and found a Jet2 to Birmingham on the 17th or 18th June, if all else failed, but promised that she would attempt to contact BA using Twitter and their Direct Messaging service tomorrow. 

This turn of events really upset me. So many people to inform, here there and everywhre. It's been hard enough to map out the end of my ministry time here and prepare to run the contagion gauntlet of air travel in order to get home to a less active future, then suddenly all this is in the air again, and a different set of plans have to be thought out. After lunch, I decided to abandon work and walk to St Antoni's Banco Santander ATM and withdraw some euros to pay my debts with. Unfortunately I underestimated the distance. I thought it was 4km when it's 7km from here. It was probably a good idea to tire myself out so I'd have no energy left to worry with. 

In the evening I didn't get much done. I found myself thinking of people down the ages displaced by war or plague, or economic migration not knowing how they were going to reach the place of safety or secure life prospects they were hoping for. I'm so used to life going according to plan with only a few minor setbacks along the way, flights delayed, bus services not running to time, major traffic congestion delays, all with limited consequences. 

Last year, waiting for minor surgical operations which never seemed to happen quite when intended, being nearly forgotten by hospital admin, was bad enough. It taught me how to be a patient, and to be patient, and wait many weeks not knowing for the first time in my life. Now I have a rough idea of how to come to terms with big disruptions if I have to. At the moment, so many unknowns and such a climate of uncertainty mean that things you thought you could rely on you may not be able to. Everything feels like a game of chance. 

For most of my life I believe I have been risk-averse. It took a finance consultant quizzing me about retirement investment ten years ago to help me to see this about myself. I've been way out of my comfort zone since leaving home this time, far more than I could have expected or wanted to risk. There was a call to minister here and once I'd said yes, there was no turning back, especially as the risk of doing so accelerated by the day when there was still widespread denial or ignorance of the nature of the pandemic threat. There's no escape from uncertainty if I do get home eventually, as it's far less safe in UK than it is on Ibiza. Not knowing how long I have to remain here, in order simply to get used to the thought is hardest to live with tonight.