Tuesday 28 December 2010

Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm St. Happy 2011.

I have few things I would boast about but I would say I had a good sense of direction. That I know London very well. I always think the children take it for granted that I pretty much know where I am going. If you said - let's go to Isleworth or Bow, or Catford or Tottenham - I could think briefly, and set off and get there pretty directly with no trouble. Even elsewhere, I can check a map and hold a route in my head. Though once going to Wales, meeting friends for our Bardsey holiday - the rain like fat, wet carwash brushes obstructing vision, I took a turning too soon off the motorway, but realised pretty quickly and turned the car round. Though it was one of those things, the bank had stopped letting me have any money, I had spent my last 25 quid on petrol and was already looking obsessively at the petrol needle - thinking jeez - I am only just about going to make it -all the food stowed in bags, everything we needed planned and measured for a weeks trip on an island - and here I was on a wrong turning that even though I had turned around, seemed to be sending me miles out of my way. The boys, sensing all was not well, began panicking 'Mum! You are not going the right way. Mum! You are not going the right way.' The rain lashing down. It was the day I shouted 'SHUT UP!' Which they still thought was a swear word. Though hours later, ten miles from our destination, on winding welsh roads, the petrol on reserve but not empty, the eldest was sick out of the window and after I cleaned the poor boy up I shut my finger in the car door and shouted the F word. But only once. Almost too high and pained to be heard. Though I think that is the second time I have said it in this blog.

Anyhow, I think of all this today when I go up to Mayfair - I am thinking about direction, about choosing a route, the paths in my life. I am thinking about hurt and forgiveness and love and telling absolute truth. Of not caring anymore about protecting myself behind indifference or wit. The church I have seen on the a- z is a christian scientist reading room but is not open. I thought it would be the one I saw briefly from the bus on Park Lane, but it isn't, and I haven't brought the a- z with me, but I think if I set off and just wiggle round these streets I will find it. Oh, but this area is beautiful. It isn't just wealth ( though it is superhuman wealth) but elegance and grace. These are the houses that I read about being built, like palaces at the edge of fields, these make look Belgravia look like dull doll's houses. I have never ever been or seen this area before - I have been once to Claridges, a couple of times to Berkley Square, but not here, not these huge elegant residences, with secret walled gardens, - some are offices, but quite a few are just massive, huge, elegant homes. This is beyond rich but graceful, beautiful and historic. I think you would feel pleased to live in these houses but awed by the beauty and history. Though who knows. and today, the day after the day after boxing day, it is so quiet you could film a period drama without a permit, without being bothered. Eventually, I find the church I had seen. Next door to an incredible glass shop - life sized baby elephants in the window in beautiful milky glass - I love luxury, love beautiful things, though I can just admire them not have them, I can love a postcard or a beautiful stone as much - but this shop looks bonkers - and I have never ever heard of it. A tacky gift store for the super rich. And the church is not open. Remember those days, when I turned away from the slightest set back - terrified of entering a church:

St Matthews http://i-sit-in-churches-to-think-amen.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html /
Emmanuel centre http://i-sit-in-churches-to-think-amen.blogspot.com/2010/05/emmanuel-church-marsham-st.html

But here I am peering through a key hole, walking all around the building, finding a side entrance, also shut. Then it is slightly magical - like the bit in a film when soft music plays - for there is a public garden at the side of this church - walled in by railings, and at the end of this garden that I have never ever seen but was once the burial ground for St George's church Hanover Square, there is what looks like the windows of another church. Dreamily, I walk through, to an open door.

I suspect I can't explain how beautiful this church is. It is ( though I have only been to a couple and one of those having hurt my eye, so it would not stop weeping ) like a mini french cathedral but tucked away almost hidden in these wealthy streets, though once it was, at the edge of everything, squeezed in by the stables, on the site of the Hay Hill Farm that extended from the present Hill stree and out towards Berkeley Square.

Everything is beautiful, but very slightly smaller than normal. The shiny pews have the surprise of infant school hall chairs, a forgotten size that used to fit, leaving you feeling big and slightly clumsy in size. There are a couple of other people moving around inside the hush and peace of the space, but it feels like walking in on something holy, slightly mysterious and precious. At the altar, under glowing stained glass is a delicately carved altarpiece centred with a palm sized jesus on the cross. In the adjacent chapel a nativity is laid out in straw a picture frame balanced around the scene. Mary is dewy skinned and though I have to lean in, really peer I look into the little manger and there is a small, beautiful chubby baby smiling in delight.
The review of the building written by a reporter for the Morning Post 1849 when it was completed describes what I see perfectly, better than I could manage, for the language is so transparent and modern:
'The church is of the decorated English style of architecture and reminds one of some of the earlier English churches....You enter at the very end of the church, and at once appreciate the merit of the design. The whole building is taken in at a glance; nothing distracts the eye or breaks the effect. You have the organ loft immediately overhead on entering. In front blazes the high altar under the great arched window, which is a masterpiece of stained and figured glass...There is no rood-screen. Nothing separates the eyes of the people from the solemnities of the sanctuary which they desire to behold. Turning from the 'dim religious light' of the church and the shadowy recesses of the aisles, the eye seeks the roof which is painted in blue and gold, and has the effect as it were of stars. Tracing ones way back the glance rests absorbed on the beautiful, flamboyant window above the organ-loft. On the right and left of the high altar, and in either side is a chapel - the one of the Blessed Sacrament, the other of St Ignatius ( the founder of the Order)...The sanctuary itself is a marvel of decoration, both graphic and coloured. The altar and attached brass work is by Pugin.'

Built in 1844 as a Jesuit church after Catholic freedom was granted in 1829. Jesuits had come to London as early as 1580, initially in disguise, but later more openly, practising with relative freedom - though with the 1688 Revolution toleration ended and the custom of referring to Catholic Churches in London by their street names grew as public places of worship were not allowed for 'dissenters'.

Chapels like pockets, glass domed cupoles letting in dull light, a book of prayers to be offered - the last entry in neat biro says
'For the courage to respond appropriately to every situation' Aha! I think. I am looking for omens. There is also a box with slots for money, each designated for different things in engraved script - candles, guide books, poor. I put a pound for the guide book and a pound for the poor.

I had felt on this quiet, questioning day that I needed to find something. That I needed to find wonder. That I needed wonder confirmed. Surprisingly here in this 'dim religious light' it is just there. But no more than the crepuscular vibration of beautiful things and a feeling of peace and warmth.

I walk and walk and walk. The children went on boxing day to exexdh's brothers and there has been a row about how long they are going for, and I lost. I feel tricked and angry and lonely, and redundant without them at christmas time. Though christmas was brilliant. Exexdh, my mum and dad and the boys on christmas day - everyone behaving beautifully, the food delicious, everyone happy and grateful with their gifts. I went the night before this day again to Winter Wonderland with U,OL and his velvet drape ex housemate, and we sat in the Spiegel bar laughing, all pleased to see each other again.

Exexdh walking past glancing at the screen has grumbled that he doesn't like his moniker. That it lacks respect. I will try exh if it seems better, if it seems like enough time has past. U,OL has got a new title too. And hold onto your hats it seems, amazingly, rather fabulously just to be L. Wish us well. There is a long way to go. But no rush. A lot to cover, a lot of people to consider. Happy New Year. Happy 2011 to all.

Wednesday 22 December 2010

I sit in churches to think. The Christmas Special.

But like a favourite tv programme at Christmas it can, despite all the right elements, ( drama, religion, snow, romance, royalty, christmas ) go wrong.

I had it all planned. I had exexdh organised to come on Sunday morning so that I could go to the service at a chapel in St James's Palace. There is no other way in as far as I can see. It is a royal chapel, within the security of the palace. Though they say the public are welcome for services. Afterwards I intended to rush to House of Fraser to buy PSM's son a birthday present ( why had I not done this before?) get the boys with their shoes on - SHOES! SHOES! SHOES! and then to The Nightmare before Christmas in 3D at the BFI for PSM's youngest son's birthday celebration.

But. My Indonesian friend phoned up early morning crying. She managed to gulp out - would I be in this morning? Could she come round? I said yes. And phoned exexdh to say I would stay put, wait for her to come, not go to a royal chapel. I have known for ages that something is wrong. I have nearly written about it. But it seems something bigger than I can manage or understand. Something sinister and scary. I take her son to school quite often, when her husband does not come back from his nightshifts in time ( for she works full time now ) and her son ( who I love - his beautiful curly eyelashes like disney ink drawings, and his cheeky manly chats with my eldest, (though he is the same age as the youngest) are hilarious. And like my older son he has great balance and bravery and the pair of them dare each other further on skateboards and bikes. Though the lollipop lady looks at me as if I am mad - three boisterous boys barely controlled. But my friend's son told me one morning putting on his shoes by our front door - that someone had broken into their 'house' and messed up their things but he wasn't allowed to tell anyone. That his Dad slept under the bed when they came. I felt like he thought I was the grown up and that I might be able to do something about it. I would like to think I was. But there wasn't anything I could think to do. If it was me I would ring the police. But it isn't my choice. I texted and texted my friend saying I hoped she was ok. But I kept it neutral. I didn't want to get her son into trouble. But something very serious is up. I think they are being threatened.
I didn't meet her Yemenese husband for a long time and then when I did I didn't think I liked him. I see her as a rare flower - intelligent, kind and funny and strong, open to all. Which is so rare. Though she has to do what her husband says and runs out to buy gym vitamin supplements when he wants. Though she said he was a kind man for an arab husband. I felt from the way she said it that she meant he didn't hit her. He is a short, boyish and handsome. But I also felt he disapproved of me and our friendship and he never looks me in the eye. But increasingly I have noticed his unfriendliness is anxiety and the other morning he shook my hand, which seemed a mark of acceptance, though he still averted his gaze.

On this Sunday when she phones crying, they are meant to fly to Yemen either that evening or the next day - (I can't quite remember) - though because they don't have a credit card I helped book the tickets - my friend brought the money round to give me while I tried to put it on my card. But I wasn't allowed to do it. The name on the card had to be the name on the tickets they said when we phoned them up. Though writing this I bet my name has been stored as someone who tried to buy tickets for another to Yemen.

I can't explain my sense of trust. But I trust her implicitly though not him. Not him at all. I think he has charm but is very insecure. It is a weak combination.

Anyhow. I waited for her but she didn't come. And when I texted her to say I would love to see her, to know she was ok, but I had to leave for a birthday party at 12.30 she texted back don't worry, have a lovely holiday. A day later she texted to say, that because of the snow they were still waiting for their flight, but they were at Stansted now not Heathrow. They would be boarding in 15 mins.

Insyaallah. She texted. 'God willing' in brackets.

The snow had come the day before, on the Saturday. Great big flakes, hundreds, thousands, a brief blizzard that blanketed the ground. Me and the boys came back from a school project morning, mouths open, tasting the snow - then made a snowman in our courtyard.
That night I met U,OL in a pub near the flat. I ran out, excited to see him. The snow had made our arrangements complicated. But for the first time he was there. Not the angry, anxious person tucked in a shell of himself. Just himself. His face smiling. We went on the 148 bus that said 'White City' which was where I lived when I knew him, a bus into a happier time. We went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Like a christmas mini break, it is an over the top, finely-detailed, fairy-tale fun fair, sinister and romantic at the same time. He said as we got off the bus it looked like Gorky Park from a distance. And I winced, unexpectedly, ludicrously jealous. After all, I had wanted to go to Gorky Park, had wanted to share his adventures. But I wasn't allowed to go. And here, across the snow, these beautiful lights twinkling in the park - were magical, but something I had missed out on.

But. We had a brilliant time. I don't know what it means. I have no idea. But to stand alongside someone you love that had vanished from you. And know without touching and in a very fundamental way that they love you too. Is so peaceful. Whatever that can or mainly cannot mean. I worry about writing this. But I feel it is true.

When we sat and had drinks in the Spiegel tent - a velvet draped structure with 1930's glass, slightly random event chairs, leather sofas and a couple of incongruous bean bags - a future x factor boot camp (but no further) contestant singing - 'don't stop believing' infront of a twinkly star background - it felt like a dream. A really happy dream. It doesn't sound it but it was beautiful. I noticed a good looking double-date of married partners on the opposite leather sofa observe our annimation - as if we were breaking the rules of our age group. Looking at the velvet drapes U,OL told me a story of his old house mate that I knew and really loved who had constructed as part of a perfomance that took place on a walk around the east end of London, a velvet draped theatre in the foyer of an office block, which was designed to be taken down in ten minutes. The plan was that the performance was seen, then the audience led again on the east end walk, and then ten minutes later pass by the modern foyer perhaps ( and all that effort for only a perhaps ) observing the illusion of a place so beautiful that no longer existed. But, and I can't remember or couldn't understand the reason, the organizers decided that it would take too long to walk the audience back again to see this sleight of hand, so the masterpiece of transformation and memory was not observed. Perhaps it doesn't matter. It was possible. It could happen.

Hurtling towards christmas, living on lists of stocking fillers still to buy, food to cook and cleaning to do I try again to go to a church. On a boris bike, attempting to order a turkey on Lupus Street ( butcher's closed, Maria's gone) - St Saviour's Pimlico's lights are on. But the door is shut. Then I plan to go up to the edge of Mayfair and buy my friend's girlfriend pickled walnuts at Fortnum and Mason's and visit a church I have glimpsed from a bus on Park Lane. But I run out of time and realise I won't see them until after christmas, so I'll go up afterwards.

Desperate, I think I will listen to the carol service on Radio 4 and approximate, fob you off with a service at home. But I miss it queueing in Sainsbury's - food lists and present lists nearly all neatly crossed out.

My Christmas Special, like many tv spectaculars has something missing, doesn't quite hit the mark but it is the central thing not there - like an xmas day Dr Who without Dr Who - I didn't reach a church.


However I still wish you a Merry Christmas. And Peace on Earth.

Amen

Monday 13 December 2010

St James's Piccadilly

Today, even more than a week ago, the narrow side-streets round here are packed with police vans. Strength hidden, tucked into old streets. At St James's Park tube station there are loads of them, grilles above their windows, stretching as far as the eye can see. Even on the street where I live, there are three, squeezed into the narrow bit where men hide to piss or deal drugs. Metal barriers armour the sides of roads and office workers, out to buy sandwiches, weave around battalions of coppers. It is like the preparation for an urban battle but everyone is attempting to carry on regardless. Later it appears that there is no demonstration. Though I find something on the internet that says there will be a gathering outside New Scotland Yard to protest against the serious head injuries suffered by one student last week. I think with all those police vans there won't be room for many.

Last week I watched on the TV at work as our coalition government voted for higher student fees and winced as the violence gathered momentum. When I got off the tube and walked home that night I walked up to where I had seen the pope and there at the end of Victoria Street and the edge of Parliament Square in the dark, people milled around, but beyond, there was a dense black wall of police. I don't know if you have ever seen that Hitchcock film - Marnie - but I always remember very clearly the street where Marnie lived, and the two terraces of houses shown, with the sea at one end with a huge liner blocking the small space but visually it just looked like a small gap filled with something monumental and dark. This felt like that too. Though as I walked away I could hear kettled student's cheering.

That night Sparky escaped. I was icing xmas cookies for the school bazaar, watching the news, helicopters and sirens continual outside. I was worried that people were going to die just around the corner from me while I put silver balls on cinnamon flavoured snowmen and stars. Sparky watched with his intelligent gaze. He had been making plans. Already he could jump from his seesaw onto the bars of the cage's ceiling and gnaw and worry and shake them and I had grown accustomed to the evening noise of his determined efforts to be off and out and onto a better life. As a friend said after reading his introduction 'I love Sparky - he's got balls!' But that evening, there was a sudden quiet, which took me a few minutes to identify, and even then it was no more than an inkling that something was up, and I looked over and there he was on top of the cage, the lid sprung. As if in a tiny top hat and tails doing a tap dance, he was puffed up with pride. But then, even as I got near, walking very quietly and gently carrying an empty pringles tube, I could see him attempting to fathom the freedom he had won. What do I do now? I thought I saw him formulate. But the choice he made was to walk, nose sniffing, long whiskers guiding, into the pringle tube, and Sparky was again caged, surprised, staring up at the ceiling being secured with heavy books.

This morning I go to Piccadilly. I have started to notice now, with all the history of London I have been reading, that the buildings above shop branded facades are beautiful. Looking up, there is old London, almost untouched. In the churchyard of St James's is a bustling antique and craft market that spills into the porch of the church. I have to push my way through people buying christmas cards to get in through the door. Inside though it is still and quiet and very, very beautiful. Christopher Wren built it in 1684 and had wanted to pack them in - in his letter 'Upon the Building of National Churches' he wrote:

'The Churches therefore must be large; but still, in our reformed Religion, it should seem vain to make a Parish-church larger, than that all who are present can both hear and see. The Romanists, indeed, may build larger Churches, it is enough if they hear the Murmer of the Mass, and see the Elevation of the Host, but ours are to be fitted for Auditories. I can hardly think it practicable to make a single Room so capacious, with Pews and Galleries, as to hold above 2,000 Persons, and all to hear the Service, and both to hear distinctly, and see the Preacher. I endeavoured to effect this, in building the Parish Church of St. James's, Westminster, which, I presume, is the most capacious, with these Qualifications, that hath yet been built; and yet at a solemn Time, when the Church was much crowded, I could not discern from a Gallery that 2,000 were present. In this Church I mention, though very broad, and the middle Nave arched up, yet there are no Walls of a second Order, nor Lanterns, nor Buttresses, but the whole Roof rests upon the Pillars, as do also the Galleries; I think it may be found beautiful and convenient, and as such, the cheapest of any Form I could invent.'

There is lovely stained glass windows at the front and really, really beautiful carved garlands and flowers in draped shapes with a pelican in the centre and carved doves at the sides on the wall behind the altar piece. I spy the font, which looks really old, really unusual with the figures of Adam and Eve at the base and the stem, like a tree supporting a delicately carved bowl. I walk over to have a look at it, and it is a surprise, even a shock, to notice there are men tucked into the pews, behind pillars, as if attempting to be invisible, though one is laid out asleep on the bench at the back. They have beards and are wrapped in coats like parcels. On this bitterly cold day they have found shelter, a place to rest. But I feel I have disturbed their hidden sanctuary though they frighten me a little. I sit for a while. I can hear the man snoring. Then a lady comes in with community policewoman and they disappear round the corner to inspect the sleeping man. I slip out, I don't want to witness his removal. I wish they would leave him be. Though as I haggle with a woman at a stall in the churchyard for a brooch for my Mum's christmas present, I see the commy bobby leave on her own.

As I walk away my friend texts me to see if I would like to go to the carol service in St James's on wednesday evening. It is a strange coincidence since she lives in Streatham and doesn't go to Church. But unfortunately I am going to my office party that evening.

On the chuch's website the history is detailed and put together with love and care. Both the font and the altarpiece's carving is by Grinling Gibbons I discover. I want to know more of his work. It is really exceptional. There is also a sermon that uses the history of the area and combines with fairness and inclusion a celebration of all people.

http://www.st-james-piccadilly.org/Library/HistorySermonSJP-HughV-%20Suprised%20in%20the%20closet-PP%20edit120207.pdf

I had been very disappointed with my last post - I did not feel I achieved what I had wanted to describe. I think it is this - the spread and scale of London - and it's growth. Months ago in the July post 'Christ Church' when I first discovered the 1755 map of Westminster I was fascinated by the edge of the city then being so close to my own door, and the knowledge that the building I lived in would have been built on marsh land. Increasingly, but it is so hard to picture, is the vision of this city evolving from clustered settlements at the banks of the huge river Thames. An unrelenting tide of many different people spreading out, draining and strengthening boggy ground. The Romans are believed to have forded the river at Westminster. Our amazing city built because the gravel beds make it the easiest point to cross or land inland. It is just hard to imagine the world so un populated, the people so much nearer to the beginning of human time. Also that our size means we only consider our own scale. A Boris bike, a stroll, all take me quickly beyond the edges of that early city.

I read too that when the Romans left their city on their site in The City and abandoned their empire in 410 to return to matters nearer home, the Angles and Saxons had no use for their elegant structures or towns. Though eventually, much later, they settled in Mitcham and Croydon. I imagine a ghost town of beautiful temples, an ampitheatre and bath houses at the side of the Thames, in a green wet valley divided by this wide river with the rain beating down.

On Radio 4 in a discussion on Wikileaks a caller describes the site another brick cementing the end of our 'empire' our modern order.

This day, police amassed for nothing, I go to get the boys from school. Every other vehicle is a police van. Though they seem sheepish, tootling, re ordering. Nearing Horseferry Rd I hear loud hailers roar. Aha! I think. There IS a demonstration. But instead it is the journalists and protestors packed outside Westminster Court to hear the bail of Julian Assange, TV vans lined down Marsham Street. How funny. I think. I live here. In the thick of all this. I think of A.S.Byatt's The Children's Book, which I thought was an amazing book describing well the bubbling of change. Though, the liner at the end of their street was the first world war.

Finally I need to say, I am behind. Today now means two days ago. The 14th December. This is always a chaotic time of year for me, however many lists I write in November this week and last week I always end up with too many cakes to make, too much to do, always busy at work and slightly ratty. Last Saturday we had my son's birthday party, this week his birthday and then it is the end of term. I also feel like the ex labour government - I am overspending but I believe my grit at doing so produces well being. If I scrimp and keep to the budget those boys lives will be too restricted. But I remember from last year and the year before it all has to be paid at the same time - swimming lessons, school clubs - chess and football, the birthday party, presents, xmas ( all of it - presents, stockings, christmas dinner, our photo family calendar. The little bits that make our life ours. But also this year, last year, the one before, I panic, nearly lose my nerve, half way through And everything has gone up. Chocolate that I need for the cakes cost about 1.10 in most shops last year. Now it is edging to £2. Though I mix cheap chocolate with 70% cocoa solids that I tracked down for a bargain 82p a bar. But I am shutting my eyes to the fact that the porridge I like has gone up about 40p. That my sums are not working.

My friend says when I speak to her today. The real today. Not the one I started with. But she says - the carol concert was beautiful but rather magically shambolic. And Ed Stewpot Stewart hosted it. It won't mean very much to lots of people. But if it does. It is hilarious.

Saturday 4 December 2010

St Paul's Wilton Place, Knightsbridge

My favourite toy on our shelves is a perspex children's tool box with red, slightly wobbly clasps, that we call 'The City Box'. In it are: shiny, shaped bricks, in 80s colours - old, wooden, coloured tiles, bought from a car boot sale in a 50s tin with a picture of a red-haired girl holding two puppies on the front - a string bag with German ( I think ), wooden houses, horses, hedges, a school house, a church - a tiny, slightly torn box with thin bits of wood painted as sky scrapers that funnily enough U,OL brought back from Russia as a present years ago, before he went to live there, when we were still together - a metal souvenir of the eiffel tower, another of grand central station in New York and a model of a bullet train and two bags of Muiji city blocks -those pale wood blank shapes of city monuments, one marked London and another New York. And the children always moan that I make them put everything back in the right bags and boxes. Though eventually, with encouragement they do.

Cycling alongside Buckingham Palace back from my trip to St Paul's, I am unsure how to write this. I don't feel attached to what I have to write about. The Tractarian movement initially championed by St Paul's church is difficult to fathom as a non believer in the twenty first century, though at it's core is the division between the Church of England and the Catholic church and the overlaps between the two. But, the beautiful view of Big Ben through a gap in the expanse of trees and then the hoop of the wheel above Horse Guards Parade remind me of the blank wood of the Muiji models and of the cities we have made laid out on the carpet. Invented metropolis that have included a school with horses in a hedged playground, the gherkin building alongside the statue of liberty and a high-speed, japanese-style train link made in bright orange and blue bricks alongside tiny skyscrapers of all colours. A city made from scratch.

To visit the church I park the bike in Hyde Park, jostling with the Winter Wonderland and Knightsbridge shopping crowds. Like time has tipped into Christmas. Everyone busy. A family walk past, wrapped up against the cold, talking about somewhere I know really well from my childhood in Hertfordshire - they must have come up on the train for the day. Though there are many different nationalities in the throng. Somehow I am against the tide, I am not going to Harrods or Harvey Nichols, I am not going ice skating or on a helter skelter. I am trying to cross the road into the quiet, grand, residential street, with a few Embassy flags visible, past a stately hotel with doormen outside.
St Paul's is set back from the road with a tall, dark tower, made from dirty stone, but I can see there are lights on, and the door is open. A man with a knapsack squeezes in before me as I stand in the porch fiddling my phone to silence. There is singing inside the church and for a minute I think maybe there is a service, though it is Saturday afternoon (the boys are at swimming lessons). When I step inside I realise it is a rehearsal. Gathered on the steps infront of an ornate rood screen, are singers and musicians, the music grand and beautiful. I stand, slightly self concious watching them, I am not sure where the man in the knapsack has gone. The church has a beautiful, high roof with wooden, carved trusses, a wooden gallery with carved angels looking down and tiled panels, like murals along the walls, almost pre-raphaelite drawn, showing scenes of Christ's life, and slightly awkward paintings of the stations of the cross sandwiched between each panel. The church is really clean, the carpets just vacuumed, everything polished. I am slightly embarrassed to interrupt the rehearsal as I look quickly round, worrying about mud from my boots on the carpet. When I leave I pick up a leaflet for the concert that evening, Handel's Coronation Anthems.

I know, I think, cycling home, I will let myself finally buy the book of London maps, that I have eyed covetously in the nearby amazing map shop 'The National Map Centre' on Caxton St. The shop is where I have found many of the old maps for this project. But this book 'Mapping London' which charts in maps, the growth and expansion of London from the initial clusters of population on the banks of the Thames costs £39.95 and I have looked and looked at it but not let myself buy it. I thought I would ask for it for christmas, but my mum and dad have already bought me an expensive cup and saucer to match the set I am collecting. ( I know, I know, I don't think my priorities are always right, but lovely things do make me happy.) And there isn't really anyone else I can ask for such an expensive book. But the building of this city, has become, suddenly the key - the population and expansion of London and for a moment with excitement, I think oh go on, just buy it. But the shop is not open. Perhaps a good thing, with christmas, my son's birthday and swimming lessons to pay for.

Instead I buy 'London. A Social History' by Roy Porter from the Westminster Bookshop on Artillery Row. Which is like a bookshop in a film, or a portal to another, slightly older, well-read world. I also buy a copy of 'On Churches' John Betjeman for my dad's christmas present and the nice, northern, gently spoken, man who is passionate about the books he sells gives me a pound off and we talk about the snow.

This is what I garner.

Around 1700 Celia Fiennes was impressed to find 'London joyned with Westminster...'

By 1760 When Lord Chesterfield built his mansion facing Hyde Park, the site was so rural he quipped he would need a dog for company.

It is just numbers really:

'London grew astonishingly in the nineteenth century, with its hordes of labourers and landlords, it pen-pushers and porters. Between 1841 and 1851 alone, some 330,000 migrants flooded into the capital, representing a staggering 17 per cent of London's total population. Of these 46,000 came from Ireland, fleeing famine and swelling the London Irish community to around 130,000. In the 1850s a further 286,000 migrants arrived; in the 1860s 331,000 Before 1840 the majority came from the south-east but by the 1860s, with agriculture in crisis, the net widened; all were drawn by the hope of work.'

Tobias Smollett's country character Matt Bramble says, 'What I left open fields, producing hay and corn, I now find covered with streets and squares and palaces and churches....Pimlico and Knightsbridge are now almost joined to Chelsea and Kensington and if this infatuation continues for half a century, I suppose the whole country of Middlesex will be covered with brick'

And a beautiful description by H. Llewellyn Smith,
'The contagion of numbers, the sense of something going on, the theatres, and the music halls, the brightly lighted streets and busy crowds - all, in short, that makes the difference between the Mile End fair on a Saturday night and a dark muddy land, with no glimmer of gas and with nothing to do. Who could wonder that men are drawn into such a vortex?'

Knightsbridge was, until 1824, a boggy and dangerous route threatened by highwaymen and thought too marshy for development. From 1825 Thomas Cubitt, the master builder developer who worked for the Marquess of Westminster, and on many projects ( including the nearby east front of Buckingham Palace, parts of Stoke Newington, Clapham, Camden and Pimlico) brought gravel up on barges from St Katherine's Dock ( which he was also developing ) and laid out his most prestigious development including Belgrave Square. He was the first builder to employ his own craftsmen and labourers. Also cannily he established brick fields in Barnsbury and built Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs, as a complex of sawmills, timber wharves, and cement and iron works which serviced his many projects. Thomas Cundy Junior ( there were three - senior, junior and the third) who all worked for the Grosvenor Estates alongside Cubitt designed St Paul's at Wilton Place. Initially ( and with great controversy ) the church was the first in London to champion the victorian Tractarian movement, ideas coming from Oxford emphasising a return to the ritual and traditions of the Catholic church and condemning the state as weakening the church.


I worry that I am an old fashioned mum, an old fashioned person, caught up in all these thoughts about old theological beliefs and educational toys. City boxes are not,after all, X boxes. Though my youngest son recently made a Wii out of a cardboard box, drew switches and cut handsets from card, biro-ing controls. The three of us played imaginary Wii for an hour. Tennis, running races, skateboarding, and ski ing. It was really good fun, though I wondered what the neighbours across the way would have thought at our strange antics. Though they probably just thought we were playing Wii. I don't think imaginary Wii and real Wii look much different from a distance.
Infact I have already bought the boys one for christmas ( though they haven't even asked for one - I think they just don't believe I will go for it) - so the neighbours will have to get used to us waving our arms around in our small living room. Though on Sunday, glancing across, Great Peter Street while we were having breakfast we saw framed in the window of one of the flats opposite a big, naked lady, like a Rembrandt painting. Which has made us laugh for days.

Finally, I read in the Guardian magazine this weekend in an interview with Gordon Brown and it says in a sneery kind of way,

'Brown would probably have been more at home a century or more ago when politics was about morality, principles and ideas.' Not bad things to aspire to I think, just not what we have at the moment.

This morning on Radio 4 it said Nick Clegg had been advised not to ride his bike in case someone pushes him off.


Amen