9th - 16th June 2009

A Chaplain’s Diary

 

Tuesday, 9^th June

It’s a big ship but we were soon edging out of our berth in Palma this evening as the sun began to set over Magaluf. This is the third annual cruise tour that the Georgie Insull Singers have done. Previous years have seen them performing in Rome, Naples and Florence but this year they’re heading for Nice on the Cote d’Azur to sing in the Anglican Church there. Cabins have been allocated; suitcases loaded and as we waved “goodbye” glasses were filled. Everyone has their music and choir dresses and my job will be to sit around looking benign and trying to ensure that everyone is in the right place at the right time and certainly in the right cabin… it’s not that sort of trip thank you!

Wednesday, 10^th June

Last night we had the usual safety drill and welcome talk by the Captain. Very sensibly he has warned us about the dangers of salt air whilst at sea. He emphasised that “the extreme heat mixed with the high humidity and sea air could make some of our clothes shrink as the cruise progresses.” Everyone laughed but I still haven’t worked out why. It struck me as a very sensible warning from an old salt who was trying to prevent dismay, dissatisfaction and consternation amongst his passengers. It is something that has happened to me in the past and I’ve always wondered why my trousers have felt much tighter as the cruise progressed and my belt had to be let out a notch or two. I had never questioned it or mentioned it to anyone but now I know why – it’s all to do with the salt air!

 

Thursday, 11^th June

If it’s Thursday it’s Tunisia, if it’s Friday it’s Naples and if it’s Saturday then it’s Livorno, the port for Pisa and Florence.

 

Friday, 12^th June

Whilst the energetic amongst our party headed up Mount Vesuvius to peer down into the crater of the old volcano which smothered Pompeii, others took in the delights of shopping in Naples whilst others headed for Sorrento and the Amalfi coast or a sail across to the island of Capri to the music of Gracie Fields who lived there and is now buried on the island. But we were free spirits - no coach and guide escorted tours for us thank you! Well actually we’re not only free spirits but tight as well so we headed for the railway station for the train to Herculaneum. It’s an excavated town that, unlike Pompeii which was devastated and covered by volcanic ash and lava, was buried by thick mud after Versuvius erupted in AD79. The ancient town has slowly been excavated and the Roman mosaics and frescos are gradually being uncovered. It was a fascinating trip and a great experience and I can now claim that I have been into a brothel – although if that is what brothels are like it was extremely boring indeed, with not a female or madam in sight and just a painted fresco of a young lady on the wall. Well that’s the Romans for you!

 

Sunday, 14^th June

Today the Georgie Insull Singers are performing at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Nice. The ship is docked at Villefranche and we were all tendered ashore to meet our coach which after a short tour of the coast dropped us all at the church door. At one stage the Cote d’Azur was riddled with wealthy Englishmen and women who had escaped the rigours of Britain to winter in the Mediterranean. It was the heyday of the Anglican Church on the Riviera with busy packed churches in Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, Eze, Beaulieu and Menton. Those days are past and people now head for the Seychelles, Spain and the Caribbean. The idle rich no longer teeter to church on a Sunday morning with their parasols in one hand, the poodle in the other and a bottle of gin in their handbag. The churches in Eze, Beaulieu and Menton just about keep going with tiny congregations and retired clergy whilst Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo have a new found life about them with tourists and young executives filling the pews.

 

There was a fairly full congregation in Nice this morning with people visiting from all over the world. As usual the choir performed beautifully and afterwards we all adjourned to the church garden cum churchyard for refreshments under the shade of the trees. It’s a fascinating old English churchyard popular with visitors because the writer of the hymn “Abide with me” is buried there. Henry Lyte was vicar of Brixham in Devon and after retiring he headed for Italy but only got as far as Nice before falling grievously ill and dying. His grave is on the tourist route for visitors to Nice whilst meanwhile back in Brixham, where he was once Rector, the church clock plays a verse of “Abide with me” on the hour every hour.  

 

Monday 15th June

The port of Ajaccio on Corsica is both beautiful and French. On the little trolley train, which scuttles around the city carrying gawping tourists, we passed the little Anglican Church surrounded by a beautiful garden. Afterwards we walked back to have a look inside. Yes, it was the Anglican Church but a few years ago it was leased to a dancing school and instead of pews it was now filled with ballerinas and tutus. It was built at the end of the nineteenth century when British visitors started visiting in greater numbers. Thomasina Campbell, an intrepid Scots traveller, to whom many attribute the growth of Ajaccio as a tourist destination, arranged the building of the little church, and its still there looking incongruous. She wrote the first English guide to Corsica dedicated “to those who seek health and pleasure.”  For my part I just wanted to break into song with Sydney Carter’s well known modern hymn “I danced in the morning when the world was begun” with the chorus

 “Dance then wherever you may be;

  I am the Lord of the Dance said he,

  and I’ll lead you all,

  wherever you may be,

  and I’ll lead you all

  in the dance, said he.”

It would have been quite fitting really.

 

 

Tuesday, 16^th June

There is a slight smell of death about things this morning. Last night we had to leave our suitcases outside the cabin door, which left us with what clothes we stood up in. People were partying like mad to make the most of their last few hours of freedom on the ship. So it was with a slight feeling of anti-climax that we went to bed last night. This morning I pulled back the curtains to see, in the early morning mist, Palma in the distance. It’s bad enough docking in Majorca at 7 o’clock knowing your holiday is over but it’s not half as bad as waking up to a grey dismal day in Southampton. I walked around the promenade deck to watch the ship slowly being manoeuvred into its berth. I’m still intrigued by the delicacy with which the Captain edges the huge Leviathan against the quayside before tying up. After breakfast I fetched my car from the Club de Mar car park where I had been able to park all week and after taking home some of the choir members I went back to collect my wife and luggage. After the last few day’s heat wave a gush of hot air hit me in the face as I opened the front door of the Chaplaincy House, all the windows had been closed and the inside of the house was like an oven. I arrived back in the office to over a hundred e-mails to deal with, only to be interrupted by wife who discovered that she had left a whole load of clothing in one of her cabin drawers. So she went back to the ship and one of the shoreside staff obligingly went and rescued the jeans, shirt and shorts without a murmur of irritation – she had seen and heard it all before and she probably knew better than most that holiday makers leave their brains behind when they go abroad. For me it’s back to work and back to reality. I have just 73 more e mails to deal with and then I can start looking at next year’s cruise brochures.

 

Father Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip and St James Church

Nunez de Balboa, 6

Son Armadans, Palma 07014

Tel: 971 737279

e-mail: anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org