After what has felt like weeks and weeks of grey and rain, even before that the cold and snow, and everyday waking the boys for school on dark mornings trying to describe spring to them - today the sky is blue. Briefly, cycling past parliament on a Boris bike, I sit at traffic lights warm in sunshine. How lovely I think. Over Westminster Bridge, there is the big expanse of sky with London spread out, and the bagpipe man playing. It is the first time isictt has gone south of the river.
I meet ul sometimes on mondays. This monday I make him wait for me while my friend cries in my kitchen. Then rush to get the clearing up done, clean sheets on the beds, the floors washed, the tidal scurf of football cards, lego, books, and feathers tidied in the boys bedroom. I find it hard not to be the parent. Not to be thinking of them. But he waits for me. Watches my face as it softens, relaxes. Are you ok now? He says. Yes. You work very hard. He is patient for me and with me which I don't remember. It is lovely. I doubt what we are doing, that it is possible, advisable, that it can be true. Though we discuss pop music, the economy, what to feed children. But at each turn, and each hurdle I make he says, I have missed you for a long time, I don't want to lose you. As if has found the password. Which it appears he has. But, and I find it hard to forget. He is married. To an unfaithful wife. And strangely I feel guilty to exh. I feel we have all reached dry land together, a modern reclaimed version of a family and now suddenly it is me that is endangering it. Though I got us here. I am proud of the path from bog through soggy marshlands and this solid ground we now stand on. But really I want to accept this new happiness which is precious and deserved and not squander it with doubt.
Since the naked Rembrandt lady in the window across the way I have thought it would be possible to do paintings of things I have seen at these windows. A small girl opposite stood patiently and silently at an open window, arms outstretched, feeding pigeons on her arms. The night Michael Jackson died when people talked across the street, just as the news was breaking. If anyone was watching my windows this monday they would have seen me embrace my Indonesian friend, her perfect, metallic threaded headscarf and my own tumbling untidy hair together in a hug , only hours later at the same window I kiss ul in his pants. That afternoon after school I dance a tango with my youngest son, his feet off the floor
I feel like I am in a film, that this range of emotions is not possible in one day. Though in the evening at a hen do at Pizza Express for my editor I get the giggles so badly on low alcohol wine, that I cannot speak.
The church is huge, set back from the imax cinema roundabout, greek style pillars, big doors, one of those shiny coffee trucks outside. The door is open, and inside the small hall way is a carved stone plaque with an old text on it. I can't quite work out what it says. I don't know why but I don't copy it down, don't try and work it out. I think, oh I'll look that up later, but later I find very little information about the church, as if slightly uncared for, it isn't documented very well, each bit I discover takes a while to piece together. Pushing the door open, I can hear voices and in this huge room is an overhead projector with a picture of a leaf lit on a screen. A woman talking, students sat on chairs. There is too a guard at a desk, who I nod to, and he smiles at me. It doesn't seem to matter to him who is there, and I just stand and look around. Students move around the room talking and an old woman behind me shuffles out of the door smiling serenely.
Despite the screen, the tutor, the students, the security guard, a whole kitchen area with a table, and carpet, and a curtained off bit like a ward which is stacked with the silent sculptural forms of musical instruments in their cases the room still seems massive and airy. Huge high windows letting in the light of the blue sky. A white and gold pulpit like something from Barbie's bedroom or Gracelands is pushed to one side to make room for the rows of chairs, and here is the trick - it is on wheels. Another, also on wheels seems to be roughly in the right place on the other side, but there is something skewed about the arrangement. On the back wall a triptych of huge expressionistic paintings, then another smaller one at the altar. I am surprised by all these people, all this activity, these jarrring paintings, the students lounging, shiny hair and flirting and I don't spend long enough looking or thinking about anything much.
The church was built in the peace and prosperity after the Napoleonic wars on a marshy site of land in 1824, when parliament gave money to build churches for the expanding population south of the river. Four churches were built and named after the evangelists - Kennington 'St Mark's', Brixton St Matthew's and Norwood St Luke's and here on the approach to Waterloo bridge St John's. Waterloo bridge itself had only opened in 1817 designed before the battle of Waterloo and originally known at the Strand bridge. It was rebuilt in the early 1940s by an architect who had little idea of engineering, shortly afterwards bombed in WW2 then built again by a mainly female work force, still known by a few as the 'ladies bridge.' The church itself was bombed too. I find a picture of it with the roof blown out, the balcony that isn't there any more damaged, people wrapped in thick coats praying at pews that still stand in the rubble. Restored in the 1950s it became the parish church of the Festival of Britain.
As I have a little bit of time to spare before picking the boys up I ride the Boris Bike to Tate Britain. At the shop I buy my Dad 'Night Walks' by Charles Dickens for his birthday, a 70% off cut price ' Family at One End Street' to read to the boys. and 'Con men and Cutpurses - Scenes from Hogarthian Underworld for myself. I was given the exquisite Mapping London for christmas by ul. A man that once bought me a battery recharger as a christmas present bought me exactly, oh exactly, what I wanted. Though I felt a little bit guilty because I had written about it so precisely here - as if I had asked for it - set it as a test - demanded it.
I had just meant to write about money and about desire. Always wanting - a dress, a book, better quality butter - balancing what you can have. Ideally I would like to buy the best butter, to worry less, to have a small house with a garden but I don't actually want much, I have got used to relishing what I can have.
At the Tate I go to look for the proper painting of 'Christ in the House of his parents 1849-50' having seen the sketch the week before at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square. The collection - which I know reasonably well is being re hung, put into categories - and I am annoyed because I don't understand it, don't have time to decode it and there seems to be modern paintings hung alongside old ones. But I keep going, finding the pre raphaelites and there, above eye level, slightly awkward for an intimate scene is the painting. I like it. Compared to the lurid technicolour of much pre raphaelite painting this seems subdued and simple. A family scene in a real place. The boy Jesus having hurt his hand on a nail in his father's workshop, the blood dripping onto his foot. His mother comforting him, his father inspecting the wound. I find out that Millais based the setting on a real carpenter’s shop in Oxford Street ( I feel my maps would come in handy to find this) and that he was viciously attacked by the press for showing the holy family as ‘ordinary’. Charles Dickens described Christ as ‘a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a night-gown.’ and Mary as an alcoholic '...so hideous in her ugliness that ... she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.'
Later I discover, piecing this together, (and it is a bit later, I don't know why this post seems to have taken me ages to write, and I worry that I have missed the moment, that there is more to say about all sorts of things but I have to finish this to say them about something else) but the painting above the altarpiece at St John' is a Nativity, painted in dull pastel colours by Hans Feibusch a jewish painter who escaped to England from the Third Reich. I find it a little bit mannered but the baby is beautiful, sat pert and inquisitive. When Hitler achieved power in January 1933, a new member joined Feibusch's art group in Frankfurt. At first he always had excuses for failing to produce any work. But as the new regime began to tighten its grip, this newcomer appeared in Nazi uniform. "You, you, you," he shouted, pointing his riding whip at the Jewish members of the group, "you can just go home and forget about art. You will never show anything again."
The Nazis' exhibition of Degenerate Art took place in 1937. "From now on," Hitler explained at the opening, "we are going to wage a merciless war of destruction against the last remaining elements of cultural disintegraton. From now on - you can be certain - all those mutually supporting cliques of chatterers, dilettantes and art forgers will be picked up and liquidated."
The exhibition was divided into various sections, including "Vilification of German Heroes of the World War", "Mockery of German Womanhood" and "Complete Madness". Feibusch qualified under "Revelation of the Jewish Racial Soul", with a canvas entitled Two Floating Figures. He was in good company: Chagall and Kokoschka also featured in the exhibition.
In my book of finely drawn maps, I find Waterloo in the 18th and 19th century. Amazingly the maps are on line, the detail of line and drawing and named wood yards amazing. And scrolling like walking.
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com/horwoodpages/horwoodthumb19.html
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com/greenwoodpages/greenwoodnorth12a.html
Now it is almost a week after the days I have described. I don't feel very well. Need to go to bed. I feel exhausted. But I can't quite work out how to finish this. Did I miss the moment? I am not sure. Just now time seems like doors I walk through, a narnian wardrobe of history, past, recent past, present and ideas of future all muddled together. Today, this real one, I give my counsellor a postcard with a Martin Creed illuminated sign on the exterior of the Tate Britain building saying 'Everything is going to be alright' as a thank you card for it is our last session. I am not sure she thought it was funny or apt. But I hope it is.
Tuesday 18 January 2011
Tuesday 11 January 2011
The Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity with Saint Jude, Upper Chelsea, sometimes known as Holy Trinity Sloane Square
Today I take my eldest son to the church. He doesn't really want to go, but he is off school with a rather vague tummy ache. I was all ready to put him into class despite his grumbling but he had statistics and the time of year on his side - his teacher said, seeing his pleading face - 'there is a bug going round and it is contagious, I would take him home'. I could see a flicker of triumph in his pale blue eyes and by 11 o'clock after a few rounds of undisturbed-by-brother Wii while I vacuumed and cleaned he announced he was better. 'Oh good.' I said we can go to a church. He wanted to argue and did try but we went anyhow.
Briefly before that we played his christmas game of 'Rush Hour'. I bought it for him with some money from a great aunt. I think it is a game for one person really but we helped each other. I hadn't played before. On a gridded board small plastic coloured models of cars, vans and lorries fit in units of two or three squares. From a natty drawer under the grey square grid, cards tell you how to arrange the cars according to level - beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert - then you have to free a red car by reversing or advancing. I am not completely sure I have pinned down the essence of the game by this description - basically the car is stuck and you have to free it in as few moves as possible. We work through beginners to intermediate, high fiving, and only writing this do I think probably a pattern emerged, but I/we didn't notice it. We just started each match from scratch - always thrilled when the red car emerged free.
At Sloane Square I expect him to ask if we can go to Peter Jones. It is where we buy shoes and indeed toys. But he doesn't. I think he is slightly fascinated by this glimpse into his mum's secret world - what his mum does when he isn't there. Almost a philosophical question for a young child. If you are there for them? Who are you without them? Though perhaps I am worrying about this anyhow, for as UOL and I attempt to fathom our L there are a few pockets of uneasy but exciting secrets squeezed into my days and occasional evenings that never had any spare time before. Here too, writing this - attempting to describe what I think - it is apparent it is only ever an approximation, a sweeter more lilting version of the mess that I often feel, and it reveals the impossibility to trace or catch thought fully.
My eldest child is by nature an absolute unbeliever. 'God's a baby in the bible and Allah is a pigeon' he once said to me. His sharp brutal wit shocking me. He is still a little kid. Even Santa gets fairly short shrift - ' I know it is you mum.' Today, despite the irritation about the non tummy ache it is nice for the two of us just to be together. For he skips alongside and holds my hand. Which his younger brother normally does. Though his questions are like rounds of sharp pins.
'Can you measure a globe and work out how many miles the earth is?'
I have a stab at explaining scale
His mind fizzing like strip light flashing to on. Aha he says, it depends how big the drawing is. A drawing of a house could be more centimetres than a street. Or a town. Yes. I say.
How many is it?'
'What?'
'Miles round the earth?'
'I don't know. Shall we look it up when we get home?.....' That feeling other parents might just know.
A pause.
'I love you Mum.' Back into thought.
In the church he is ill at ease. He attempts to swagger against the dim grainy light. 'It's creepy Mum.' He says. No. I say, look at the pictures in the windows. The stained glass is rich with beautiful colours and drawn figures but he doesn't know the basic bible stories and can't really follow the narratives. I made this choice early, instinctively, not to take him to church, not to send him to a church school but seeing him so out of water in a place of worship makes me doubt myself. Not even to think about what to believe seems a position of lack. We look at the font, the ceiling buttresses, he notices and likes the light fittings. 'The whole place is HUGE mum' He says. He is right. The nave, the width of the church is extraordinary, almost a square. Later I read it is the widest church in London, eclipsing St Pauls by 4 inches. Then as we inspect the pulpit. 'Is this what you do for your JOB?' A slight incredulity. 'No' I say. 'I just like looking. Having a think. Having a think about the history.' 'Oh.' He says. We both like the Memorial Chapel at the south side. It is like an elegant peaceful room with dining chairs. But perhaps for both of us a more manageable size.
Sitting writing this, with a guide book on my knee, the Memorial chapel being slight denigrated for being a later, lesser design I realise I could have helped him more if I had been able to tell him the history. Broken my own rules by looking it up before we went. I feel slightly disappointed that I hadn't thought this through. Sometimes there just isn't the time to do things properly. Though also, I hope, just to look, without pressure is a good thing too.
Built in 1888 by John Dando Sedding who was inspired by the work of Pugin ( see Farm St ) and an exponent of the Arts and Craft Movement John Betjeman later called it 'the cathedral of Arts and Crafts'. Their message to make everyday things beautiful and to revere Nature through crafts, painting and architecture, in a time of industrialism, The East window (which saved the church from demolition in the 1970s with the help of JB ) is the work of Burne Jones and William Morris and was meant to be a window with 'thousands of bright little figures.' Though infact there are 48 prophets, apostles and saints against a William Morris natural foliage background. On the south wall, tucked into the back, under a stone carved freize of grapes that looks like it never got finished, there is a small Millais painting or sketch of Jesus in his father's carpentry workshop. Which is beautiful. A realistic idea of a workshop with dirt and dust, and wood. But I try to look it up and I can't find a reference to it. I wonder if I got it wrong. Though there is a painting at Tate Britain that seems to match some of what I remember - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_in_the_House_of_His_Parents, so maybe it is a sketch connected to that painting.
I have never liked the pre raphaelites or even the arts and crafts movement much. Both always seemed to be based on fantasy to me, but a slightly dishonest sexual/industrial fantasy, where women didn't come off very well. But I like this sketch, I like the realism, the sense of family. I might go back and look at it again. I wish too that we had slowed down and considered it together, but my son was itching by then to light the 20p candle I had promised if he was a good. Which we did.
Reading the history I start to like Mr Sedding - he designed and helped his wife complete the medieval style embroidery of the altar cloth, which is now at the side of the church behind glass, drawing the thistles at each end from those in his own garden and in an age when previously architects would not have spoken to the masons and carpenters he, an important architect of that time used 'to run across the scaffolding shouting with the builders in their own language'
Also I find he said.
"It is well for a man to have a circle of religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character, that they become part of his everyday existence…" .
Later, we pick up the youngest from school, and meet exh to go to the last counselling session for the boys. It is the first time exh has come and we are all nervous.
But we are signed off. The boys are really pleased that their Dad came. That he took part. That he saw their drawings. Though Exh says to me later, surprised. how disturbed the drawings seemed.
I think we have come a long way. A trapped red car surrounded by the juggernauts of alcoholism, denial, manipulation and my own part in all of those. I remember talking to someone I worked with at the time I felt completely trapped about setting up a website called 'Should I stay or should I go?' I would have liked it to exist. I wanted advice. I wanted to be given permission to leave. But, and I thought after playing that Rush Hour, that change is made by small moves of reverse and advance, reverse and advance, the pattern not quite clear, the solution often feeling far away, then a sudden run, a rush and the red car off the board into freedom. That it is worth learning to recognise even small feelings of being trapped and devising strategies of questioning curtailment early. But I also thought change itself is the same. It isn't a dramatic announcement but a series of tiny moves, of back tracking, sudden accelerations, of getting used to, of discovering, finding out if that route is possible while launching into happiness.
Amen
Briefly before that we played his christmas game of 'Rush Hour'. I bought it for him with some money from a great aunt. I think it is a game for one person really but we helped each other. I hadn't played before. On a gridded board small plastic coloured models of cars, vans and lorries fit in units of two or three squares. From a natty drawer under the grey square grid, cards tell you how to arrange the cars according to level - beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert - then you have to free a red car by reversing or advancing. I am not completely sure I have pinned down the essence of the game by this description - basically the car is stuck and you have to free it in as few moves as possible. We work through beginners to intermediate, high fiving, and only writing this do I think probably a pattern emerged, but I/we didn't notice it. We just started each match from scratch - always thrilled when the red car emerged free.
At Sloane Square I expect him to ask if we can go to Peter Jones. It is where we buy shoes and indeed toys. But he doesn't. I think he is slightly fascinated by this glimpse into his mum's secret world - what his mum does when he isn't there. Almost a philosophical question for a young child. If you are there for them? Who are you without them? Though perhaps I am worrying about this anyhow, for as UOL and I attempt to fathom our L there are a few pockets of uneasy but exciting secrets squeezed into my days and occasional evenings that never had any spare time before. Here too, writing this - attempting to describe what I think - it is apparent it is only ever an approximation, a sweeter more lilting version of the mess that I often feel, and it reveals the impossibility to trace or catch thought fully.
My eldest child is by nature an absolute unbeliever. 'God's a baby in the bible and Allah is a pigeon' he once said to me. His sharp brutal wit shocking me. He is still a little kid. Even Santa gets fairly short shrift - ' I know it is you mum.' Today, despite the irritation about the non tummy ache it is nice for the two of us just to be together. For he skips alongside and holds my hand. Which his younger brother normally does. Though his questions are like rounds of sharp pins.
'Can you measure a globe and work out how many miles the earth is?'
I have a stab at explaining scale
His mind fizzing like strip light flashing to on. Aha he says, it depends how big the drawing is. A drawing of a house could be more centimetres than a street. Or a town. Yes. I say.
How many is it?'
'What?'
'Miles round the earth?'
'I don't know. Shall we look it up when we get home?.....' That feeling other parents might just know.
A pause.
'I love you Mum.' Back into thought.
In the church he is ill at ease. He attempts to swagger against the dim grainy light. 'It's creepy Mum.' He says. No. I say, look at the pictures in the windows. The stained glass is rich with beautiful colours and drawn figures but he doesn't know the basic bible stories and can't really follow the narratives. I made this choice early, instinctively, not to take him to church, not to send him to a church school but seeing him so out of water in a place of worship makes me doubt myself. Not even to think about what to believe seems a position of lack. We look at the font, the ceiling buttresses, he notices and likes the light fittings. 'The whole place is HUGE mum' He says. He is right. The nave, the width of the church is extraordinary, almost a square. Later I read it is the widest church in London, eclipsing St Pauls by 4 inches. Then as we inspect the pulpit. 'Is this what you do for your JOB?' A slight incredulity. 'No' I say. 'I just like looking. Having a think. Having a think about the history.' 'Oh.' He says. We both like the Memorial Chapel at the south side. It is like an elegant peaceful room with dining chairs. But perhaps for both of us a more manageable size.
Sitting writing this, with a guide book on my knee, the Memorial chapel being slight denigrated for being a later, lesser design I realise I could have helped him more if I had been able to tell him the history. Broken my own rules by looking it up before we went. I feel slightly disappointed that I hadn't thought this through. Sometimes there just isn't the time to do things properly. Though also, I hope, just to look, without pressure is a good thing too.
Built in 1888 by John Dando Sedding who was inspired by the work of Pugin ( see Farm St ) and an exponent of the Arts and Craft Movement John Betjeman later called it 'the cathedral of Arts and Crafts'. Their message to make everyday things beautiful and to revere Nature through crafts, painting and architecture, in a time of industrialism, The East window (which saved the church from demolition in the 1970s with the help of JB ) is the work of Burne Jones and William Morris and was meant to be a window with 'thousands of bright little figures.' Though infact there are 48 prophets, apostles and saints against a William Morris natural foliage background. On the south wall, tucked into the back, under a stone carved freize of grapes that looks like it never got finished, there is a small Millais painting or sketch of Jesus in his father's carpentry workshop. Which is beautiful. A realistic idea of a workshop with dirt and dust, and wood. But I try to look it up and I can't find a reference to it. I wonder if I got it wrong. Though there is a painting at Tate Britain that seems to match some of what I remember - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_in_the_House_of_His_Parents, so maybe it is a sketch connected to that painting.
I have never liked the pre raphaelites or even the arts and crafts movement much. Both always seemed to be based on fantasy to me, but a slightly dishonest sexual/industrial fantasy, where women didn't come off very well. But I like this sketch, I like the realism, the sense of family. I might go back and look at it again. I wish too that we had slowed down and considered it together, but my son was itching by then to light the 20p candle I had promised if he was a good. Which we did.
Reading the history I start to like Mr Sedding - he designed and helped his wife complete the medieval style embroidery of the altar cloth, which is now at the side of the church behind glass, drawing the thistles at each end from those in his own garden and in an age when previously architects would not have spoken to the masons and carpenters he, an important architect of that time used 'to run across the scaffolding shouting with the builders in their own language'
Also I find he said.
"It is well for a man to have a circle of religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character, that they become part of his everyday existence…" .
Later, we pick up the youngest from school, and meet exh to go to the last counselling session for the boys. It is the first time exh has come and we are all nervous.
But we are signed off. The boys are really pleased that their Dad came. That he took part. That he saw their drawings. Though Exh says to me later, surprised. how disturbed the drawings seemed.
I think we have come a long way. A trapped red car surrounded by the juggernauts of alcoholism, denial, manipulation and my own part in all of those. I remember talking to someone I worked with at the time I felt completely trapped about setting up a website called 'Should I stay or should I go?' I would have liked it to exist. I wanted advice. I wanted to be given permission to leave. But, and I thought after playing that Rush Hour, that change is made by small moves of reverse and advance, reverse and advance, the pattern not quite clear, the solution often feeling far away, then a sudden run, a rush and the red car off the board into freedom. That it is worth learning to recognise even small feelings of being trapped and devising strategies of questioning curtailment early. But I also thought change itself is the same. It isn't a dramatic announcement but a series of tiny moves, of back tracking, sudden accelerations, of getting used to, of discovering, finding out if that route is possible while launching into happiness.
Amen
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