Final duty assignment, and winding up

Saturday was, as ever, a day for finishing a sermon, while coping with heat and humidity. At the end of the afternoon I walked into the Old Town, and saw many smartly dressed people on their way to or returning from a baptism or a wedding in one of other of the parish churches. The marvellous 'Genesis' photo exhibition by Sebastian Salgado has now gone from Plaza de la Constitucion. It now seems so empty and spacious in contrast.

When the Cathedral bells rang, I walked over and joined in the Sunday Vigil Mass. An elderly priest was assisted by an elderly server, and two much younger Sisters, who led the singing, and assisted with proceedings. A couple of hundred people were present, but didn't join in the singing. I made an effort, as well as I could, having still not memorised the Spanish Ordinary of the Mass. It wasn't as easy to follow on this occasion, as the priest's accent made it difficult for me, even though earlier I had rehearsed the same readings in my sermon preparation.  I still have a long way to go, moving beyond guesswork with the spoken language.

This morning, I drove to Velez Malaga to celebrate their 10.30 Eucharist. There were two dozen of us present, and there was Pat and Peter's 60th wedding anniversary with food and drink after the service. They came up last for Communion, and stayed behind so I could give a special anniversary blessing. I had a prayer in mind, on my tablet, and stupidly forgot to take it with me, so I had to pray ad extempore instead, which was probably better, in the joy and serenity of the moment. Somehow, the Spirit compensates for all we lack.

After a delicious lunch, I drove back and impulsively started gathering in my things from around the apartment and packing them. When I'd done as much as I could, I tackled the church computer, removing my working files from it, leaving it ready for the next locum. Then, I finished my end of stay report, and had supper. Tomorrow, apart from cleaning up, there's not much to do apart from wait for my 04.00am airport taxi. I hate have to leave so early. I'd rather be able to go by public transport,  but it doesn't leave early enough for me to check in without time pressure. 

If I come here again, I'll aim to take cabin baggage, so I don't have to queue half an hour for Bag Drop, and so can take the earliest RENFE Cercania train to the airport, clear security and walk straight through to the departure gate in good time, eliminating all my present worries over missing the flight. The older I get, the easier I want to passage from one country to another to be. 

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.