Time to Go

Sunday 20th December 2009.

It's time to go and let Bielva return to it's own sense of normality. After a late breakfast we made our way to Mass, responding to an invitiation made earlier in the week. Our cast were all there. Nucu and Yolanda singing in the choir, Chello passing round the collection, Lola, Carmen, Cesare and many of our other friends in the congregation. Afterwards we're joined by Luis, who prefers to take his dog for a walk on Sunday mornings - his own time for communion in beautiful fields surrounding the village. Soon the first flowers of a new year will push up through the soil.

It was a gentle landing as one by one the villagers left church kissing each of us as they went. The choir high on the balcony above the nave sang their own farewell and waved. Carmen was the last to go. She wished us health and we told her how honoured we'd been to spend a week in the company of the grandest actress in Cantabria. She thwacked at this and left.

Cars loaded we headed of for a short hour on the sea front at Santander. It felt glorious, but we're all perhaps too tired, emotional and caught between two worlds to really appreicate it...

... and also the goodbyes to Spiral, which are less easy to bare each time and only possible in the knowledge that it won't be long until we see each other again!

And so we flew home.

.