Food Awards and Racing Cars

Wednesday evening I had the privilege of being at the BBC's Food and Farming awards. It was wonderful to hear about all the good and innovative things that have been happening agriculture & the food industry. A number of "ordinary" or rather "extra-ordinary" were honoured for their contributions by all sorts of celebrities. I was encouraged by all the good things that are happening to help reconnect food producers with the customers.

By way of a contrast on Friday I had a trip round the Red Bull Racing Factory, where they design, develop and build Formula 1 cars. The technology involved is fascinating. Good luck to the team and I hope they start winning soon.

Direct Line They must be joking!!!

I have two dogs, and since they were puppies they have been insured with DirectLine. As the dogs have got older the premiums have gone up and up, and the excess has got higher and higher.
One of the dogs now has epilepsy and dementia. DirectLine won't pay for the treatment of the epilepsy. They say we should have claimed when he first started showing mild signs a couple of years ago. We did not, so tough luck on us.
As for the dementia, they will pay for that but every time we get more pills from the vet we need to fill in another claim form telling them what they already know and even then they won't pay unless we get the vet to fill in a fresh form each time as well. What a bureaucratic nonsense! They know what's the matter with the dog. They know what treatment the vet has advised. They know we're buying the pills from the vet - we can produce receipts. So why on earth they need to have everyone waste their time with a new form very month is a complete nonsense. The vet has got better things to do with his time. So have I. You would think that DirectLine would have as well.

Reactions to pilgrims

Something I noticed when walking to Santiago & Finnisterre was that there were perhaps three different ways that people responded to a pilgrim.

As I was walking out of Porto there was an elderly woman who was clearly evidently thrilled that I was on my way to Santiago. Her total lack of English and my not much better Portuguese couldn't stop her conveying her pleasure that here was someone walking from her country to Santiago. That same reaction occurred later in the walk. A group of men working on the road were clearly thrilled. The presence of my rucksack protected my back from the over exuberant pats on the back they used to express their delight. Somehow my walking through their country was important to them and meant that they mattered.

At the other end of the scale of reactions was that of a market trader in Padron. By the time I arrived the market was over and they were packing up to go home. Among all the mess was a long cardboard tube - it had probably had a roll of cloth on it. The trader picked it up, used it like a pilgrim staff, and limped along with words that sounded like "So perigrino" - "I'm a pilgrim". It's probably a good job that my Spanish is nowhere near good enough to respond to the mickey taking. I would have liked to respond "Yes you are, from birth to death. How's your pilgrimage going?!" Just as well my Spanish is virtually non-existent!

A third response I encountered was a look of incredulity and non-comprehension - this particularly from people for whom life appeared to be hard. The look on their faces seemed to be saying "Life is hard enough as it is, why make it more difficult???" I found myself wondering whether they might not be right. The last time I saw people sleeping in bunks as in the hostels was years ago when I did a placement as a volunteer in an approved school for young criminals! Is going on a pilgrimage a self indulgent way for the comfortable to rough it for a week or so. Looking at the register in one hostel I saw the professions listed by the users as "Teachers", "Professors" (but they were French so probably only teachers anyway) "Lawyers", "Ships Captain", and of course "Chaplain". I saw no sign of "bricklayers", "labourers" or "carpenters". Perhaps pilgrimage is a whim of the comfortable.

Am I (becoming) a grumpy old man?

I've just come back from doing the Porto to Santiago camino, followed by on to Finisterre and all in all it was an excellent experience, BUT I found myself wondering whether the welcome of the church(es) to pilgrims was as it might be.

In my mind I found myself contrasting the welcome that visitors get to cathedrals I know in the UK with that offered by the cathedral in Santiago. UK cathedrals frequently have "welcomers" - lay people, often retired, whose role is to greet people arriving and offer them a little basic information or answer straightforward questions. There was no such welcome In Santiago the building was left to speak for itself - which is fine for those who know what they're seeing & where they're going but not so good for those who are less informed. And the only notices in the cathedrals we a list of "NO"s, NO flash photography, No use of tripods (why ever not - they're hardly going to disturb someone's prayer?!?) NO mobile phones, NO...

And in the Pilgrim Office (why on earth is it UPSTAIRS - after people have walked 200+km, why not make it easier for them and have it downstairs?) when I found it - I didn't know which door of the cathedral it was next to - there seemed little or no interest in whether I had had a good journey, why I'd done the journey... It was just fill the form in and leave a donation. I had been going to ask whether I, as a non-catholic, could receive Communion at the pilgrim mass the next day but didn't bother to ask as I doubted that the girl in the office could cope with the question. I hoped to see someone in the Cathedral that I could ask, but in spite of spending a lot of time in it, saw no one I felt confident to ask. The only option would have been to ask at one of the confessionals but that's not what they're there for.

On further reflection I found myself thinking about the churches along the camino. The vast majority were firmly locked & so no opportunity to go in to pray/look. It seemed ironic as a number seemed to have been built along the camino for the use of pilgrims, but the pilgrims are locked out. In Tui I arrived at siesta time and so the Cathedral was closed - that would be unthinkable in the UK.

I found myself contrasting all that with the welcome given to walkers by one church in this country where there is tea, coffee and a kettle left out for visitors to use.

So does the church need to up its game and think about the needs of pilgrims, or am I (becoming) a grumpy old man?