My guilty pleasure on Sunday mornings is Radio 2 Love Songs. While the children watch Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles ( I have a feeling that letting them do that should be on my guilt list too?) I clear up or put the washing on and turn the dial from R4 and sing. l love the combination of cheesy tunes and heartfelt messages. Everything I would have sneered at in my pre children, arty world seems really valuable and valid. 'To my darling wife. I love you so very much.' To my loving husband you are a great dad and a wonderful husband.' 'Through the ups and downs, through thick and thin we have made it together.'
Well done. I think. Well done. Like listening to shiny medals of courageous love.
I don't even think I have envy, I just appreciate the possibility, the 'proof' of a solid thing, a celebrated partnership. Care and kindness at the core.
Afterwards, the boys and I play playmobil - creating an expedition to rescue endangered species from a far flung land. Though, somehow there is a restaurant for monkeys to eat bananas with the money they made from selling the provisions for the voyage and a king who drives a police car with his friend the squirrel.
Exexdh arrives to take over because I have made the arrangement to slip out to go to the Guard's Chapel. I have broken my own rules and checked on the website, though it gave me no detail beyond a rather vague instruction that there is a service every sunday at 11am and sometimes at midday too. Though imagine my relief that the public are welcome. Otherwise I would have had to try and muscle my way in on a soldiers church!
The day is beautiful. Blue crisp sky, autumn light. A treat to be out, on my own, doing something I want to do. I enjoy this feeling briefly before remembering that this rarely won treat might be better spent reading a book with a delicious cup of coffee, or going to an exhibition, not dreading getting into a church.
Have you ever been to St James's Park? It is the most ludicrously pretty park in London. Squirrels sit on the railings and nuzzle nuts from your fingers ( not mine - I'm too hesitant - but the boys love it), there are really beautiful and thoughtfully planted flowerbeds, a bridge that crosses the man made lake, with views of the war office that look like a grown up Disney land ( tricky to imagine, but true! Go!) and ( I feel there should be a drum roll.........) Pelicans. Yes Pelicans! They are so completely bonkers a species. But here. Being photographed, ( or even weirder to imagine - asleep, in the dark , sitting on a nest, or still on the water) as you read this. In central london! Finally, a playground where you can push your kid in a swing and look to see if the flag is flying on Buckingham Palace, and wonder if the queen is lonely, and watching you, from her bedroom window.
However, I walk around the side of the park, by now, hesitant. I hope I can find the church easily for I never walk this way, have never actually seen it, only know it to exist from my compulsive map reading, for as early as my 1869 map it says 'Garrison chapel'. But it is easy - set back behind the railings a beautiful simple, unexpectedly-concrete building with a cross on it. Then posters that advertise the guardsmen's museum, and also a soldiers shop for children, and tanks at the gate.
On the steps of the chapel is a soldier in a kilt with bagpipes talking on his mobile. He says as I near, ' I better go, I will be playing shortly.' But remains chatting on his phone. I am trying to peer through the glass of the entrance, I can hear music but it looks dark within. Suddenly I realise it is packed. Men in the thick weave of uniform, stood, so close to the glass they cause the dark. I keep peering in, moving along the glass to work out the space, I catch a glimpse of the nave and a golden altar area, and then a door is pushed open from inside in invitation, an order of service is pushed into my hand and a handsome black guy in uniform has stepped aside to let me have a chair.
I am in a service!
The church is packed. The music is beautiful. Everyone is singing a hymn. There are dense pockets of only soldiers but many dignitaries too, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder. I am so amazed to come out of my own life to this, to this solidarity, and high soaring choir and strong men singing that I nearly cry, but I don't, unexpectedly I join in.
The chapel is beautiful. The main structure is plain smooth concrete, high walls up to a wooden ceiling and flags hanging down. At the end, is an amazing old, golden, painted apse, which doesn't make sense in this sixties building but looks beautiful. We are into the National Anthem. Everyone straight backed. Then:
O Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour:
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoeer they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
Sung with such resolute demand.
I don't know about anything. But inside that church there is a certaintity and I think it is this: We are brave. We have survived in great adversity. Not everyone does. We give thanks. (I sometimes feel all of those things but I haven't been to war and even I can see it sounds trite.) This was a homecoming for the London Regiment of the Territorial army, back from Afghanistan. Men from all walks of life - estate agents, postmen, business consultants, who have gone on a tour of duty.
I found these quotes from people setting out:
Lance Corporal George Anderson- An estate agent working for Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward who described civilian life as “mincing around London making money for someone else”. and “The most exciting thing that happens all week is getting a parking ticket.”
Lieutenant Pete Quentin, 26, a Cambridge graduate and former research fellow at the think-tank Civitas, said the threat gave him a better perspective on life and made him appreciate his family and friends.
As if there is an evolutionary dead end to being safe. As if there is a sense of 'real' in these extremes. These men have been to the edge of that safety, to the rough terrain, to the skirmishes of life and death and returned. Here they are safe with their families and singing in this church. Their war carrying on a long, long way a way - a hazy, incomprehensible distance from us.
My favourite anti war story is seeing a sloaney middle-aged woman with a head scarf and a harvest festival-style, good-works basket on the tube years ago when I was a student. Pinned to her cardigan was a homemade badge, biro-scrawled, wonky writing on feint lined paper, and then wrapped in shiny sellotape wound round and round it said 'I don't like the armed forces.' Just that. It seemed an unlikely and mildly ridiculous protest but utterly heartfelt.
And when London stopped still and the estimated 2 million marched against going into war in Iraq, h and me went with our new tiny baby to Hyde Park and stood with a Picasso dove placard in the crowd. Though, beyond a lazy, ' I don't really like war ' and perhaps 'I don't think the truth is being told about the motives for this.' I didn't exactly know what I felt, and worried that it had been more of photo opportunity for a much photographed new baby and it's proud parents, though later we realised with disappointment that we hadn't put a film in the camera and there were no pictures.
We lived then, in the small peabody flat, near Chelsea Barracks, and witnessed one night, craning our heads, in the dark, above street lights, the military departing. Traffic lights stop-starting the column of camouflaged tanks, trucks, light guns, landrovers that rumbled on and and on, for a very, very long time. I imagined somebody, their head out of a window in Iraq watching their arrival with true fear. My own slightly sentimental anxieties for this world and my baby son, felt rather luxurious that night.
I am not certain what I think. The power in that church was incredible. It was like a world I had never known. True belief, belted out. Though what was being believed in I wasn't sure.
Later I discover Guard's Chapel, initially built in 1838 was bombed in the blitz and then again on 18th June 1944, later rebuilt in 1963. I have got used to these phrases, almost got used to how much was bombed around here. But, and I think there should be a careful pause here. I discover in 1944 it was bombed on a sunday morning, just after the service had started at 11 o'clock when the church was packed. A distant buzzing was heard by the congregation that grew louder and turned into a roar, drowning out the hymn. Then the engine cut out and the V1 glided down and exploded on the roof of the chapel. The whole roof collapsed. 121 military and civilians were killed and 141 seriously injured. Only the Bishop of Maidstone conducting the service was totally unhurt for the altar was covered by a portico (the one still in the church today,)and it had sheltered him from the blast. It was said that after the explosion the alter candles were still burning.
It took 2 days to dig the dead and injured out of the devastation. News of this awful tragedy was suppressed although rumours of the disaster soon spread across London.
I meant to write with grave concern about David Cameron, his cuts, the businesses already closing around here and the tense faces of the civil servants on their way to work but unexpectedly this, this terrible tale was provided, almost ready made.
Amen
Sunday 24 October 2010
Monday 18 October 2010
St Peter's Eaton Square
These are things I do to cheer myself up, to get back on track, to put the wind in my sails when all the puff has gone: I make fresh minestrone soup, bake bread and meditate. But I have done them all this evening and I'm only treading water. Sitting here, eating hot soup, cheese melting into the rich stock, I feel better but not good.
I am working all week and haven't been to a church yet, not even sure what my plan is. On an AZ I mark all the nearby churches. Then realise that I have reached the outskirts of 'just walking past'. As if the stone I threw tentatively when I started this project has just reached the second widening circle.
U,OL after the initial brief flurry of intense e mails has retreated to stories of his father's lawnmower and slight misunderstandings that feel almost like a bicker from e mail to e mail. Perhaps we have disappointed each other? Despite believing quite clearly at the time that I loved him but we had missed the boat, run out of time, I now feel cheated. I would like to see him and make him laugh. He should love me enough to want this too. Is that a reasonable demand? Off a married man? Though ( and I'm not sure I've mentioned this, he had already embarked on an extra curricular affair in answer to his wife's many infidelities.) I feel bleak writing all this. Like holding a new map. A map where the the x marks the spot treasure that was always believed to be very valuable but lost, out of reach, buried, is found, but dulled with time, not polished, a slightly different currency.
I went on a photo shoot for work. The magazine I work part time for has very little budget and a tiny amount of staff. We don't normally do shoots. We don't normally attend them if we do. Normally we send a photographer to squash a white back drop into the lounge of the person being photographed. But, the subject is an ex-celebrity-jungle, glamour girl (but not THAT one, not the most famous, not the one Martin Amis has written about) but she is represented by the ex agency of THAT one, the most famous one) I promise you I have very little interest in this stuff but I KNOW it, I know all of it. This agency are the most controlling, and once powerful machine, their power fading slightly since the departure of THAT one, making them more aggressive, more keen to hold onto what they have. They make you sign copy approval, photo approval, caption approval, they make deals with publications to get the placement they want. Their over air brushed celebrities beam glassily from magazines with an ! at the end. Anyhow, and I'm not sure if we think we have tricked them or they think that they have tricked us, but they allow us a shoot with this girl at their HQ.
The girl is a little tiny tinkerbell, fluffed hair, implacable blue eyes, massive, boob-job boobs, a footballer husband, a raucous voice and two young sons. I am a size 10 but she is half the size of me. I couldn't imagine where she fitted her actual organs into such a tiny space. I couldn't imagine how she had a baby only six months earlier. Occasionally for the camera she looks completely beautiful, more beautiful that then shows in the pictures, more Hollywood glow and glamour than expected.
When the fashion pictures we wanted to do are finished it appears after all it is they who have the upper hand, (how could I have thought otherwise?) because they draw the curtains of the 'games room' with pulled back shag pile carpet, and drop their voices in front of me to discuss the topless shots that will be taken for other magazines. I am trying to leave but as this girl poses she talks with love and care and sweetness of her sons. And the photographers assistant chips in with some tale of a small child melt down he had witnessed, and how he felt sorry for the mother who tried everything.
The thing is, she says, and her voice is certain, categorical, almost strident, 'That is just bad parenting. I have read all the parenting books there are and that is just bad parenting. If you cannot give a child safe boundaries to their rage it is bad parenting.' I am overwhelmed by her good sense and then by my own sadness for my eldest son and his terrible and violent outbursts. Once, with the lollipop lady watching from beady and slightly unforgiving eyes he swung the scooter over his head to hurt me in the street, then threw it, then picked it back up above his head. Though that morning I coolly and continually calmed him while the rage built and retreated, built and retreated and finally left. I believe I have been doing a good job in difficult circumstances ( and indeed he has been turning those rages round, we have worked together to turn those rages round) but somewhere along the line I helped cause them and so I think she is right but I also think, and it is a tiny voice, that I have not let myself use, 'it isn't fair.' I have worked and worked and cared and cared and loved and loved those children but I don't seem to have stopped the damage. Though perhaps I just didn't need a glamour model WAG to inadvertently point it out to me?
In a flurry this morning I decide to take a Boris bike after dropping the boys off at school up to St Peter's in Eaton Square. Parking the bike I feel a shift in my sense of scale. Everything is just a little bit bigger. The Boris Bikes are always big and make me feel small and slightly-doll like, but now the buildings are super sized too. Doors and steps are grand. Windows bigger. Buildings imposing. I try briefly to imagine what it must feel like to only know this world. I imagine that you would know so little. But maybe it isn't true, maybe you just know different things and are almost certainly tall.
The church too is huge - handsome and really beautifully proportioned from the outside, with huge ionic columns and portico and steps up. Though climbing the steps, I am unsure if I will be able to get in or not. But the Jack and the Beanstalk giant wooden doors are open, to the sight of modern etched glass doors that I imagine to be locked. However they too swing open. Inside the interior is light and airy but plush, with anonymously modern fittings like a really good quality but not over designed hotel. At the end, behind the altar piece is a beautiful shaped and smoothed gold mosaic apse, like a cutaway domed, recessed arch, that gives a lovely peace to the room, as if it is somehow a continuous, revealing space. The statues of Mary and Jesus at either side of the neutral nave and pews and the huge cross with Jesus in pain, hanging from the ceiling are super-sized- life-size, but with real human qualities and they look like they don't quite belong in the plush neutrals of this space, almost too kitsch, too emotional, too pious. Though these qualities are framed by the rest of the interior, as if the humanity is allowed to breathe.
The church, built initially in 1827 by Henry Hakewill was burnt down in 1987 by an anti catholic arsonist who mistook this church for a catholic one. I find this piece of history surprising. I was at art school around the corner by then and I don't remember anti papism as much of a movement in the 80s. But the beautiful Georgian facade survived and an architect husband and wife team who had lived nearby and watched the church burn, redesigned the structure and the interior of the church. I think they have been allowed to do something extraordinary - in the beauty of a georgian church to redesign the space of worship into a more modern world. But, and it may be a surprise after all that praise, for there is much to admire, I don't like it. Or don't like all of it. The plush is too wealthy, too comfortable, too devoid of history.
Coming away from the St Peter's, towards Victoria, I see a man sat against the railings, bike propped alongside, his calf exposed, his expression homeless. His leg has a terrible, liver-coloured, flat, open wound about the size of a bag of sugar but shaped like a kidney. I stop around the corner and search my bag for the antiseptic cream I always carry. ( a handy distraction to playground scratches.) I dither. Then go back and hand the man the cream. Only as I pass him the tube do I think, would you have done this without just having been to a church, wondering perhaps if I am stage managing a story for this blog? Though I believe my instinct is true, I would have done it anyhow, but I can't really know. The man who is sat resting, jumps to his feet with such violence and just for a minute I wonder if he is going to kiss or hit me. But he doesn't. He hurls the cream as high and as far as he can over the railings into the scrap of park behind him, next to Victoria station.
'It is just cream for your leg.' I point out, almost piously.
'I trust no one. No one.' Nothing. He says in a thick east european accent. Then approaching, 'Give me money.'
'But you just threw my cream over the railings.'
'Lady,' He says. 'I trust no one. You do not know what my mother did to me.'
'No. I don't.' I say finding a pound and giving it to him.
'Thank you. Thank you. I will get you your cream.' He leaps to the top of the sharp railings, a cloth bag dragging. I am terrified he will hurt himelf, impale himself, catch the bag on the sharp spikes and fall badly. Though in the exchange, we have moved slightly into the tight squeeze of the pavement, the railings and the commuters at the bus stop. I cannot see them but I know they are behind me. Watching. Perched at the top of the fence, like a large dirty and worn out bird, this big man, bright eyed, rants while he balances himself to jump down the other side. 'Trust no one. Not the government, not the people with money, most certainly not the people with the money.' He smiles inside his beard, drily. 'I could not trust my mother. Now I do not trust my own criminal mind' He smiles. Then jumps down.
When he return over the sharp fence with the tube of cream, he stops again at the top, his piercing intelligent eyes, briefly rational.
'Lady,' he says, 'Shall I keep it covered or free?'
'Let the air get to it first.' I say. 'Keep it dry and clean if you can.'
'I can only trust my body.' He says.
'Take the cream.' I say.
'I trust no one.'
'Get help from the churches.' I say.
Then he holds his arm with his fist above his head, like a learnt salute. 'I salute the terrorists.'
I retreat into the swarm of packed commuters.
Amen.
I am working all week and haven't been to a church yet, not even sure what my plan is. On an AZ I mark all the nearby churches. Then realise that I have reached the outskirts of 'just walking past'. As if the stone I threw tentatively when I started this project has just reached the second widening circle.
U,OL after the initial brief flurry of intense e mails has retreated to stories of his father's lawnmower and slight misunderstandings that feel almost like a bicker from e mail to e mail. Perhaps we have disappointed each other? Despite believing quite clearly at the time that I loved him but we had missed the boat, run out of time, I now feel cheated. I would like to see him and make him laugh. He should love me enough to want this too. Is that a reasonable demand? Off a married man? Though ( and I'm not sure I've mentioned this, he had already embarked on an extra curricular affair in answer to his wife's many infidelities.) I feel bleak writing all this. Like holding a new map. A map where the the x marks the spot treasure that was always believed to be very valuable but lost, out of reach, buried, is found, but dulled with time, not polished, a slightly different currency.
I went on a photo shoot for work. The magazine I work part time for has very little budget and a tiny amount of staff. We don't normally do shoots. We don't normally attend them if we do. Normally we send a photographer to squash a white back drop into the lounge of the person being photographed. But, the subject is an ex-celebrity-jungle, glamour girl (but not THAT one, not the most famous, not the one Martin Amis has written about) but she is represented by the ex agency of THAT one, the most famous one) I promise you I have very little interest in this stuff but I KNOW it, I know all of it. This agency are the most controlling, and once powerful machine, their power fading slightly since the departure of THAT one, making them more aggressive, more keen to hold onto what they have. They make you sign copy approval, photo approval, caption approval, they make deals with publications to get the placement they want. Their over air brushed celebrities beam glassily from magazines with an ! at the end. Anyhow, and I'm not sure if we think we have tricked them or they think that they have tricked us, but they allow us a shoot with this girl at their HQ.
The girl is a little tiny tinkerbell, fluffed hair, implacable blue eyes, massive, boob-job boobs, a footballer husband, a raucous voice and two young sons. I am a size 10 but she is half the size of me. I couldn't imagine where she fitted her actual organs into such a tiny space. I couldn't imagine how she had a baby only six months earlier. Occasionally for the camera she looks completely beautiful, more beautiful that then shows in the pictures, more Hollywood glow and glamour than expected.
When the fashion pictures we wanted to do are finished it appears after all it is they who have the upper hand, (how could I have thought otherwise?) because they draw the curtains of the 'games room' with pulled back shag pile carpet, and drop their voices in front of me to discuss the topless shots that will be taken for other magazines. I am trying to leave but as this girl poses she talks with love and care and sweetness of her sons. And the photographers assistant chips in with some tale of a small child melt down he had witnessed, and how he felt sorry for the mother who tried everything.
The thing is, she says, and her voice is certain, categorical, almost strident, 'That is just bad parenting. I have read all the parenting books there are and that is just bad parenting. If you cannot give a child safe boundaries to their rage it is bad parenting.' I am overwhelmed by her good sense and then by my own sadness for my eldest son and his terrible and violent outbursts. Once, with the lollipop lady watching from beady and slightly unforgiving eyes he swung the scooter over his head to hurt me in the street, then threw it, then picked it back up above his head. Though that morning I coolly and continually calmed him while the rage built and retreated, built and retreated and finally left. I believe I have been doing a good job in difficult circumstances ( and indeed he has been turning those rages round, we have worked together to turn those rages round) but somewhere along the line I helped cause them and so I think she is right but I also think, and it is a tiny voice, that I have not let myself use, 'it isn't fair.' I have worked and worked and cared and cared and loved and loved those children but I don't seem to have stopped the damage. Though perhaps I just didn't need a glamour model WAG to inadvertently point it out to me?
In a flurry this morning I decide to take a Boris bike after dropping the boys off at school up to St Peter's in Eaton Square. Parking the bike I feel a shift in my sense of scale. Everything is just a little bit bigger. The Boris Bikes are always big and make me feel small and slightly-doll like, but now the buildings are super sized too. Doors and steps are grand. Windows bigger. Buildings imposing. I try briefly to imagine what it must feel like to only know this world. I imagine that you would know so little. But maybe it isn't true, maybe you just know different things and are almost certainly tall.
The church too is huge - handsome and really beautifully proportioned from the outside, with huge ionic columns and portico and steps up. Though climbing the steps, I am unsure if I will be able to get in or not. But the Jack and the Beanstalk giant wooden doors are open, to the sight of modern etched glass doors that I imagine to be locked. However they too swing open. Inside the interior is light and airy but plush, with anonymously modern fittings like a really good quality but not over designed hotel. At the end, behind the altar piece is a beautiful shaped and smoothed gold mosaic apse, like a cutaway domed, recessed arch, that gives a lovely peace to the room, as if it is somehow a continuous, revealing space. The statues of Mary and Jesus at either side of the neutral nave and pews and the huge cross with Jesus in pain, hanging from the ceiling are super-sized- life-size, but with real human qualities and they look like they don't quite belong in the plush neutrals of this space, almost too kitsch, too emotional, too pious. Though these qualities are framed by the rest of the interior, as if the humanity is allowed to breathe.
The church, built initially in 1827 by Henry Hakewill was burnt down in 1987 by an anti catholic arsonist who mistook this church for a catholic one. I find this piece of history surprising. I was at art school around the corner by then and I don't remember anti papism as much of a movement in the 80s. But the beautiful Georgian facade survived and an architect husband and wife team who had lived nearby and watched the church burn, redesigned the structure and the interior of the church. I think they have been allowed to do something extraordinary - in the beauty of a georgian church to redesign the space of worship into a more modern world. But, and it may be a surprise after all that praise, for there is much to admire, I don't like it. Or don't like all of it. The plush is too wealthy, too comfortable, too devoid of history.
Coming away from the St Peter's, towards Victoria, I see a man sat against the railings, bike propped alongside, his calf exposed, his expression homeless. His leg has a terrible, liver-coloured, flat, open wound about the size of a bag of sugar but shaped like a kidney. I stop around the corner and search my bag for the antiseptic cream I always carry. ( a handy distraction to playground scratches.) I dither. Then go back and hand the man the cream. Only as I pass him the tube do I think, would you have done this without just having been to a church, wondering perhaps if I am stage managing a story for this blog? Though I believe my instinct is true, I would have done it anyhow, but I can't really know. The man who is sat resting, jumps to his feet with such violence and just for a minute I wonder if he is going to kiss or hit me. But he doesn't. He hurls the cream as high and as far as he can over the railings into the scrap of park behind him, next to Victoria station.
'It is just cream for your leg.' I point out, almost piously.
'I trust no one. No one.' Nothing. He says in a thick east european accent. Then approaching, 'Give me money.'
'But you just threw my cream over the railings.'
'Lady,' He says. 'I trust no one. You do not know what my mother did to me.'
'No. I don't.' I say finding a pound and giving it to him.
'Thank you. Thank you. I will get you your cream.' He leaps to the top of the sharp railings, a cloth bag dragging. I am terrified he will hurt himelf, impale himself, catch the bag on the sharp spikes and fall badly. Though in the exchange, we have moved slightly into the tight squeeze of the pavement, the railings and the commuters at the bus stop. I cannot see them but I know they are behind me. Watching. Perched at the top of the fence, like a large dirty and worn out bird, this big man, bright eyed, rants while he balances himself to jump down the other side. 'Trust no one. Not the government, not the people with money, most certainly not the people with the money.' He smiles inside his beard, drily. 'I could not trust my mother. Now I do not trust my own criminal mind' He smiles. Then jumps down.
When he return over the sharp fence with the tube of cream, he stops again at the top, his piercing intelligent eyes, briefly rational.
'Lady,' he says, 'Shall I keep it covered or free?'
'Let the air get to it first.' I say. 'Keep it dry and clean if you can.'
'I can only trust my body.' He says.
'Take the cream.' I say.
'I trust no one.'
'Get help from the churches.' I say.
Then he holds his arm with his fist above his head, like a learnt salute. 'I salute the terrorists.'
I retreat into the swarm of packed commuters.
Amen.
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