16th October 2009

A Chaplain’s Diary

Minorca Revisited

 

Regional Managers Meeting

 

Once a year the Anglican chaplains who work on the Balearic Islands get together for two days to discuss mutual business and matters of interest.  I suppose it’s the equivalent of a regional managers meeting.  So on one Monday morning I was winging my way on a tiny Fokker aeroplane (why is it that that name still appeals to my schoolboy humour?) on the hop from Majorca to Minorca.  As you can imagine subjects ranged over the two days from weddings to conditions of service, funny funeral stories to “what will you have to drink” and a session that the educational world describes as “bring and show” but which for clergy always turns into a “bring and brag” session.

 

We stayed at the chaplain’s flat in Es Castell but for supper were feted royally at a beautiful old restored Minorca farmhouse which in the season is used as an upmarket small hotel.  It was a good meeting and not having been on the island for over two years I was surprised to see how all the old sign and name plates had been replaced so quickly by Catalan.  Some of the names I found difficult to recognise but otherwise the old place hasn’t changed much at all.  Yet it really does feel very different to Majorca.  The landscape, in places, is straight out of an English rural pastoral scene with its marked out fields, stonewalls, undulating hills and Friesian cows. 

 

Spiced Bananas

 

But things had changed.  Sadly one of the owners of a favourite restaurant, which had repeatedly won awards, had committed suicide earlier that year.  He had been a great friend to many on the island and he had allowed his restaurant to be used for numerous charitable and church events over the years.  He would not have known or recognised us from Adam but we, as a family, knew him and would have recognised him anywhere.  Little would he have known of the pleasure he brought us with his spiced bananas dessert. How we would go back to the UK and try to ape the recipe with little success. How we travelled miles for his fish and chips or lamb shank with real mint sauce. We travelled miles because of him and he for his part jumped in the sea for reasons that his friends will never know or understand. My children will be really upset when they hear and what can you say?

 

Trying to look for a rational explanation of an irrational act is silly but natural. No one will ever know because as yet, thank God, we haven’t visited that yawning black hole that can call people on. There was a time when the Church was very “iffy” about the funerals of those who had taken their own lives but like many things that the Church has got wrong over the ages we’re slowly getting there and discovering that things are not quite as simple as we once thought. Yet they are still one of the saddest sorts of funeral to conduct. So many questions, so many “if onlys” and so many “what ifs?”

 

Morose and Maudlin

 

I must be getting a big old sentimental softy. I was determined to do what we did when we were on holiday there. So I drove over to Son Parc to the Es Jardins complex of apartments we used to stay in, to have a walk and a look round. I wanted to see the place when it wasn’t seething with holidaymakers and get the feel of what it was like out of season.  The man with the beard was no longer sitting there in his deckchair claiming territorial rights on the corner of the terrace, the pool was empty, the balconies were desolate and the place belonged to a hoopoe and myself. I had all on to stop myself getting morose and maudlin. I thought of the years I had watched the kids growing up and how they were now grown up and have flown the nest. I thought of some of the daft games we had played to fill the time – a swim in every pool in the whole resort. I thought of the 10 pesetas I used to offer for every discarded old English newspaper they could find for me to read, the same dickie bird song at the children’s disco year in year out and their utter embarrassment at the 100 lengths I did every day with a snorkel and mask in the pool because that is the only way I can swim.

 

The balcony sat empty

 

So what did I do? I paddled for an hour on the beach trying not to let the melancholy take over. The balcony of which we have 100’s of photos sat empty with no buckets and spades, wet costumes or sandy towels. I thought of the numerous times I’d yelled at the kids not to tread sand in or to insist they tidy up their lilos. The times we have sat there and had family bets about when the setting sun would die behind the hills of Fornells in the west. This place, these 24 square metres of terrace was not only part of my family photo album it was part of my life. So I paddled with my memories and, as the sun set, dried my feet and sentimental tears on my handkerchief.

 

Moving on and letting go is not easy. If only we could have another crack at it, another run through so that this time we could savour it better and see it for what it is – the best time of your life! But that’s just as true for today as well, and tomorrow, and the day after that……. We need to live in the present and not wish time away in the hope that tomorrow will be better……. because we only pass this way once.

 

No allocated seating

 

The frenzied debate on cheap airlines continues apace. Whether its hand luggage, online check-in, running across the tarmac for a seat or credit card charges everyone has an opinion. So much so that a Letter to the Editor in the Daily Telegraph caught my eye last week (I know!...but someone has to read it!)  

“Dear Sir, We flew with Iberia many years ago when you could not pre-book seats. Instead of making a mad rush for the plane like everyone else, my mother used to sit her three children down next to unsuspecting individuals and explain to each of us in turn that when we were sick like the last time, the nice gentleman/lady beside us would help. Who needed allocated seating? We always ended up sitting together!” Nice one.

 

Fr Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip and St James Church

Calle Nunez de Balboa 6

Son Armadans, Palma 07014.

Tel: 971 737279 e-mail:anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org