Life is, at times, very strange.
It throws up difficulties and challenges as well as opportunities and gifts.
Living with a chronic, life limiting condition, as the indoor critic has to, is not easy. But between us we manage to get about and on the whole find people to be helpful and supportive.
We always give easyjet five stars in feedback, because our experience of flying with them, between Newcastle and Malaga and Edinburgh and Milan, has been unfailingly excellent.
Equally, Virgin trains assistance service has also been excellent providing ramps and assistance on and off trains.
And these difficulties and challenges are almost always compensated for by the opportunities and gifts that come by way of the Locum Chaplaincies that I have been offered in the Diocese of Europe.
Not only a chance to assist on Sundays but also an opportunity to engage with the life of busy ex pat communities and the individuals that make them up.
They are not all tax exiles in Monaco.
Folk move away from the UK for a wide variety of reasons, the weather, the cafe society, the golf, the language or the culture.
Some remain within the relative safety of the English speaking community and some go native.
But all report the same sense that they have found in their new home something of a wider, deeper, more relaxed way of living that reflects something of the big society, in Spanish ´Gran sociedad` which sounds as though it is something for the older generation; but which is held up as the ideal to strive for both in Spain and in the UK.
Of course once established in a new country people fall in love, marry, have children and become so established in their new lives that distinctions of nationality become lost.
I am still very English but I am starting to enjoy the Spanish language.
Recently I had to officiate at the funeral of an elderly lady whose partner was in his nineties, they had met in Spain having both been widowed in their sixties, Gran sociedad!
When I was offered the paperwork to sign I noticed that their relationship was noted as: Companero Sentimentale, I remarked to the Funeral Director that I thought that was a lovely way to describe a relationship that had lasted over twenty five years.
It is, he replied, how we say it in Spain.
There are things said and described in Spanish that the language make to seem altogether more poetic.
However I am still learning.
Indeed if I was a stand up comedian I would by now have a great new routine.
The thing is that I had to buy an electric kettle.
My first attempts resulted in no kettle.
So I turned to my translation app on my iphone.
So I tried again in Spanish: hervidor electrico, por favor.
After a conversation with one shopkeeper, each with our iphone translators speaking to each other, I managed to buy a milk heater, i.e. hervidor leche, not a hervidor agua.
When I got home I realised my mistake, because a) there was no automatic off switch and b) it only heated to 90 degress.
After a restless night wondering how I was going to deal with my mistake I decided that I had to gather my courage in both hands and take it back.
Pointing to the box I said: este hervidor de leche? hervidor agua, por favor?
So with a smile and a shrug he changed it for a kettle and wrote out a new receipt.
Then I got home to find the kettle in the box, which was good, but with no base or plug, which was of course bad.
So I had to return for the missing base unit: la base es que faltan? I proffered.
Again he smiled and reaching behind him picked the missing base unit off the shelf.
So, After four trips to the shop and flattening my iphone battery, I finally got home and made a much needed cup of tea .
But if you ever need to buy a kettle in Spain you know who to ask ......
It throws up difficulties and challenges as well as opportunities and gifts.
Living with a chronic, life limiting condition, as the indoor critic has to, is not easy. But between us we manage to get about and on the whole find people to be helpful and supportive.
We always give easyjet five stars in feedback, because our experience of flying with them, between Newcastle and Malaga and Edinburgh and Milan, has been unfailingly excellent.
Equally, Virgin trains assistance service has also been excellent providing ramps and assistance on and off trains.
And these difficulties and challenges are almost always compensated for by the opportunities and gifts that come by way of the Locum Chaplaincies that I have been offered in the Diocese of Europe.
Not only a chance to assist on Sundays but also an opportunity to engage with the life of busy ex pat communities and the individuals that make them up.
They are not all tax exiles in Monaco.
Folk move away from the UK for a wide variety of reasons, the weather, the cafe society, the golf, the language or the culture.
Some remain within the relative safety of the English speaking community and some go native.
But all report the same sense that they have found in their new home something of a wider, deeper, more relaxed way of living that reflects something of the big society, in Spanish ´Gran sociedad` which sounds as though it is something for the older generation; but which is held up as the ideal to strive for both in Spain and in the UK.
Of course once established in a new country people fall in love, marry, have children and become so established in their new lives that distinctions of nationality become lost.
I am still very English but I am starting to enjoy the Spanish language.
Recently I had to officiate at the funeral of an elderly lady whose partner was in his nineties, they had met in Spain having both been widowed in their sixties, Gran sociedad!
When I was offered the paperwork to sign I noticed that their relationship was noted as: Companero Sentimentale, I remarked to the Funeral Director that I thought that was a lovely way to describe a relationship that had lasted over twenty five years.
It is, he replied, how we say it in Spain.
There are things said and described in Spanish that the language make to seem altogether more poetic.
However I am still learning.
Indeed if I was a stand up comedian I would by now have a great new routine.
The thing is that I had to buy an electric kettle.
My first attempts resulted in no kettle.
So I turned to my translation app on my iphone.
So I tried again in Spanish: hervidor electrico, por favor.
After a conversation with one shopkeeper, each with our iphone translators speaking to each other, I managed to buy a milk heater, i.e. hervidor leche, not a hervidor agua.
When I got home I realised my mistake, because a) there was no automatic off switch and b) it only heated to 90 degress.
After a restless night wondering how I was going to deal with my mistake I decided that I had to gather my courage in both hands and take it back.
Pointing to the box I said: este hervidor de leche? hervidor agua, por favor?
So with a smile and a shrug he changed it for a kettle and wrote out a new receipt.
Then I got home to find the kettle in the box, which was good, but with no base or plug, which was of course bad.
So I had to return for the missing base unit: la base es que faltan? I proffered.
Again he smiled and reaching behind him picked the missing base unit off the shelf.
So, After four trips to the shop and flattening my iphone battery, I finally got home and made a much needed cup of tea .
But if you ever need to buy a kettle in Spain you know who to ask ......
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