13th November 2009

A Chaplain’s Diary

 

Monday 2^nd November

 

The first year we were there it was quite a strange experience.  One day there were bodies on the beach, the restaurants were full to overflowing, the sun was shining and the car park was full.  Overnight on the last Saturday in October, Camp de Mar became a ghost town.  The restaurants were locked and bolted, the sun beds had disappeared and the hotels were emptying their pools.  Even the little drawbridge to the restaurant on the island had been removed.  It was the first year that we had a holiday place there, so it was a new experience for us – in Palma things had always quietened down much more slowly and certainly not as dramatically.  At Camp de Mar it all happened overnight.  From the beginning of the month there was no more early morning warm bread from the bakery and the resort doctor had disappeared so I could have died for all she cared.  The season had obviously ended but nobody had told me.  Oh yes!  The golfers were still there in the big swanky hotel, whizzing around on their buggies, and the holiday bond complex up the hill was still open but Camp de Mar was empty – apart from me, the seagulls and hopefully Claudia Schiffer (in your dreams Robert!).  It was like an empty theatre with no actors.

 

Tuesday 3^rd November

 

The sudden end of the season did have a plus side.  I didn’t need to squeeze my car into my single parking space – I could sweep in and sprawl across two spaces at a rakish angle rather than nudging the car backwards and forwards between a pillar and a yellow line.  The place was ours.  We didn’t need to worry about noise and clattering around on the marble floors, we didn’t need to draw the curtains and I was king of all I surveyed at Camp de Mar.  The swimming pool may have turned green but so what – it was too cold to swim anyway. It has been exactly the same this year although the authorities have tried to soften the blow, no doubt in an attempt to cheer us up….they have been and put the Christmas street lights up. I say street lights actually there are just six little illuminations………….a Father Christmas,  a holly one, some mixed coloured lights and a reindeer tableau….that’s our lot. Camp de Mar is the last of the big spenders.

 

Remembrance Sunday 8^th November

 

The Second World War had ended but my grandmother still had yards and yards of the ubiquitous black-out material left over on a huge roll. It was the stuff she had used to cover the windows so that not a ray of light escaped from the house to guide the German bombers in. The material was thick, shiny and black. It sat on top of the wardrobe in one of the bedrooms for years. It wasn’t naturally a material that one would have thought of for running up a Davy Crocket hat or a Robin Hood outfit. At least that would be true in most households but not ours. “You want a Davy Crocket Hat – no problem. Do you want it in black or black? Of course you can have a Robin Hood outfit, green is very passé but you can have a black one.”  Somehow to my childish innocence a fur hat or a Lincoln green outfit seemed more appropriate but no, out came the sewing machine – voila! One hat and one Robin Hood outfit in black. But it wasn’t only the play things that were produced out of the black-out material. You name it, it always came in black – black plimsoll bags for school, black shorts and black kit bags for camping, they were invariably home-made and always came in black.

 

And of course meals were a nightmare. We were so conditioned that I’m sure on occasions I even tried to mop up the pattern on the plate with my bread. There was no way that food could be wasted after the years of rationing and deprivation. The whole garden which had been turned over to vegetables was only slowly returning to flowers and grass. The eggs from our hens were still preserved in some very strange liquid called water glass, which kept them fresh for at least six months, and Camp Coffee was a treat….and I’m talking 1953 here.

 

 

Monday 9^th November

 

They’re back. It’s strange the way that Majorca gets its claws into people. The Reverend Paul Southern has been coming to Majorca for years and both last year and this year has taken a long-term let on a flat in Palma Nova. It’s quite nice having someone to help out in Palma. In January I was really glad of him. My wife had gone back to Manchester to be with my daughter whilst she had her baby. There was great excitement when Zakaria eventually arrived and the plan was that I would fly back after my Sunday Service to go and see my new grandson. He arrived on a Friday so it wasn’t too long to wait. The problem was I couldn’t settle to anything, couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t get down to any work and kept wandering around from one coffee cup to another. Eventually I gave in, “Paul, can you stand in for me on Sunday?” and I was on the next plane back to the UK. So I’ve always been particularly grateful to him for filling the gap when I left my post.

 

Tuesday 10^th November

 

Our Church is slowly filling up – not with people but with stuff for our annual Christmas Fair on 21^st November. We’re sinking under books, treading carefully around bottles and wondering what’s in the numerous boxes that keep appearing. Lynne is our organiser this year, it’s the first time that she has arranged our bazaar and she’s slowly learning our funny little ways – who has to have their stall where and what’s possible and what’s not possible. She seems to have the patience of Job but she’s an old hand at organising folk because for years she has been organising amateur dramatic productions and if my information is correct “actors” can be as temperamental as church people! I always dread the weather being foul on Christmas Fair Day because in all honesty I just don’t know what we’d do but I’m told that it’s never happened up to now and has certainly not happened in my nine years here. I felt so sorry for the Cricket Club whose event last Saturday had to be cancelled because of the wind.

 

Thursday 12^th November

 

Chicken and ice cream were the treats for Sunday dinner when I was a lad – otherwise it was the same old boring topside or ribs of beef – the sort of stuff you have to mortgage the house to buy these days whilst you sit stuffing yourself with frozen chicken and two litres of ice cream out of the freezer.

 

Actually it’s the sort of change – we don’t mind one way or the other – but that’s not true for all change and how we hate it.  We’re much happier as commuters going backwards and forwards

in the same old groove, where we know the scenery and the unexpected rarely happens.

 

However, it’d be daft to assume that all change is for the best – though I suppose even changes for the worse are preferable to no change at all.  To believe in a static society is to believe in a static God. Christians believe in change as a continual necessity both for us and for the society to which we belong – and change sometimes has to be dramatic, despite lots of people’s love of making haste slowly – that’s usually just a thinly disguised plea for hanging on to the status quo.

 

I’m afraid God can be seen in the rapids just as surely as he can be seen in the still small voice.

 

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: 0034 971 737279

E Mail: anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org