Of course I went. I took my sons. We took a step ladder!
We went down our street, turned right, turned left and turned right again and walked a few metres to stand opposite Westminster Abbey door. I had good intentions of getting up early to bag a space but somehow ( I made two Victoria Sponges and washed the kitchen floor before leaving) it was 10.30 when we left and the wedding started at 11am. It was crowded by the Abbey but we could get near. We stood in almost exactly the same place I had seen the pope and just a bit further back from where at the edge of parliament square I had seen the thick black wall of policemen kettle protestors but this was the busiest. This was packed. Today I was with my friend that I have known since school, her girlfriend, her girlfriend's pretty niece, the boys and at the last minute exh had rung the bell and said could he come with us too - so we all walked down there together. Though there was only one real royalist among us and it was my friend's girlfriend. Exh had made royal wedding badges to sell and he carried them on a make shift tray slung round his neck - dressed like the guest of a big fat wedding. A rogue hat and a button hole. People kept taking his picture though not many bought badges.
There was a time early on writing this blog when I found the task of describing Westminster Abbey too daunting and thought about leaving it until last. Then as soon as I had been and learnt the history of an Abbey built on an island in the marshes by the Thames over a thousand years ago I wished I had started there. It was where Westminster began. This history radiating out from the boggy island as the surrounding land was drained and built on. Researching or writing this I have often been surprised at who lived here - then it dawned on me that early on there was only Westminster or The City of London - the rest of London wasn't here. Though I was excited to find out recently that Caxton brought his press here from Bruges in 1473 the first printing press in England. I discover the shop was here, adjacent to the Abbey and that he rented tenements and a loft over the gate to the Almonry (near the west end). It wasn't just London radiating from Westminster Abbey but our language too.
When the Royal Wedding was announced I thought oh wow if I had waited that would have been a perfect ending to ISICTT - it would have been going for just over a year AND it would end with a wedding! What a perfect and traditional way to end a story I think and I am tempted.
The royalist in our party has brough a mini tv and spare batteries and lots of people cluster around to work out what is happening. There is a debate in the crowd whether to climb on top of a bus stop to get a better view and for a while no one dares. Eventually a man gets up and he is then asked by the police to get down. Which he does. Another man asks exh the price of his badges and then whips out a trading licensing id. 'Either give them away or I'll confiscate them' he hisses as exh bundles badges into his pockets. The children squabble about turns on the ladder. Then fight. I worry that this will be what the crowd remember. It will be what I remember. Though as the bride arrives I hold the ladder for one son and put the other on my shoulders, slightly stooped, eyeing the pavement with a wobbly gaze. The crowds surge holding periscopes, cameras and phones aloft. I am pleased I am not a royalist, that I don't really mind missing it. Though I am not sure anyone sees much. Or even that we mind.
At some point a couple push buggies, one each, through the dense mass of people. It looks hard work and there isn't much further they can get. The crowd advise them to stay put, it gets more crowded further down, they won't see much more. The couple stop to take breath. Then start, ' I'd rather be anywhere but here today.' They say. 'Who'd come here.' They say. 'What a big fuss.' They say before pushing on. This is not a cut through. This is a dead end. I don't understand their effort.
After the arrivals the crowd thins and we are able to inch our ladder down the street. A policewoman only a fraction away from obesity ( I only mention it because I have never seen it before) says we mustn't use our ladder. My friend says - we've been using it just down the street and she says, well, I would have stopped you, if I'd seen you. 'It's a by law.' Though there is a lack of conviction and I doubt it. How can it be a by law to set up a ladder? It is how things are built. But just a bit further down we find a good angle to the Abbey door against a wall ( still with the ladder ) and my eldest son becomes a tripod to the royalist friend. Everyone is happy.
The crowd cheer when the couple are pronounced man and wife and we hear Jerusalem sung from within the church itself.
A group of pretty girls push a young woman in a wheelchair into the crowded throng. We need to get to Trafalgar Square. They announce. The crowd takes charge. It is impossible, now, from here, they say. Even with a wheelchair? Even with a wheelchair is the verdict. The pretty girl in the wheelchair says 'I suffer from claustrophobia' but it is a quiet, low down voice and I feel only me and my friend from school holding the ladder hear her. They all keep pushing on. Again, there is only a dead end to reach.
Three women in black robes, but not full face burkahs stand alongside us. They have slightly masculine faces and whitening make up - creamy, a little bit oily, like floating chalk on their skin I think of Michael Jackson. They are smiley with me and my grumpy, bickering sons. We are all here. I think. Celebrating something. Love or tradition. Or history. Or just living round the corner. The carriages and horses and soldiers line up alongside us, ludicrously fairy tale, a historic toy box come to life.
The bride and groom appear at the door of the Abbey. I am still holding child legs steady as the crowd cheers. Though later I am pleased because our royalist friend gets perfect pictures of the pair smiling at the doorway.
After the carriages and soldiers and finally the mini buses for the guests have all disappeared we meet PSM and her two sons on parliament square. The peace tents are still parked tight on the edge of pavement by railings. But just for this day the green lawn of the square has been opened. We walk down The Mall as the flypast flies past, and then cut through horse guards parade and into the park. A huge royal standard billows over Buckingham Palace. Crowds of people are clustered, picnicking, wearing flags and hats like old fashioned scenes in modern colours.
Then back for tea. By now there is quite a throng - 5 boys, 6 women ( my Indonesian friend comes with her son) and exh. I have said there will be an English tea. ( Remember the Victoria Sponges? ) I serve tea and Cava and make egg and cucumber sandwiches but there isn't really enough. I put pizza out for the children but unexpectedly they go for cucumber sandwiches and everytime I slice the crusts off another round and put them out on a fancy cake stand they have gone. I worry that my friend's girlfriend is hungry. I worry that I have told my Indonesian friend that there will be alcohol but not that there will be lesbians. Though I need her to accept us as we are. Then hold my breath when PSM asks me about UL - for an adulterous relationship is almost too much to ask anyone to accept. But she takes everything in her stride, smiling, kind and funny. And the cakes save the day - they are delicious.
Trying to piece this together I find that nearby 'Caxton Hall' near St James's tube station was a registery office popular with famous people.
http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2009/06/caxton-hall-in-westminster-and-the-marriage-of-diana-dors-to-dennis-hamilton/ ( the description of Diana Dors wedding is hilarious and terrifying )
Two days later we wake to find Bin Laden is dead.
I don't think this will be the last post. I think my ambition is to reach The City.
Amen.
Friday 29 April 2011
Monday 18 April 2011
Saint Etienne, Vallouise, France
I feel like I am in a Pixar film. We have two hamsters in the flat. One in a cage in the kitchen, one in a cage in the living room. Both gnawing at the bars. If I didn't keep closing the door between the rooms they would be able to see the mirror of their solitary bent-on-escape lives. Which seems cruel to both though I have been told that two male hamsters would fight to the death if put together.
We are looking after PSM's eldest son's hamster while they are on holiday. Mush Mush. A golden hamster with gentle eyes and inquisitivie whiskers. Everytime I mention the fight to the death the boys look fascinated, even sly, certain Sparky would win. Though Sparky - who has entertained us by building structures out of his sawdust to get nearer to the bars, mixing water from his bottle to the sawdust to make a firmer mixture to build those slopes and spires, and eventually a kind of condensation heating system out of these water/sawdust mixtures, all the time maintaining his fierce stare and wild determination seems to have a new ploy. He has become a 'pet'. My youngest son plucked up courage to handle him with gloves and within a couple of holiday hours both boys were bare hand handling, even putting him in their pockets and on their shoulders. I worry that my own fear has blighted the little furry fellows life. Or he has pulled off his best stunt yet, swopping himself with another more biddable but look-a-like pet.
It is the Easter holidays. In my surprising life we went ski ing for the first five days. My brother has a flat in the Alps and I would beg, steal or borrow to ski, to teach my young sons to ski. Infact of course I mainly borrowed. But it always costs more than I think and I come back with shaky financial nerves, not enough money left to buy the beds for them that I had also borrowed money for and a sense that my strategy, this brave but foolhardy sailing into the wind, trying to give them a good life, a life off the breadline I have put myself on will tumble. I should get a proper job. Spend less on ebay shoes. Spend less. I don't know. I feel shaky and wrong with my illusions of grandeur. Defeated. At one point I let them watch tv on a beautiful sunny afternoon so that I can cry while I tidy up their bedroom. I berate myself that other mother's are managing better and indeed facebook proves it. Sunny smiling children mix perfume in perfumed gardens.
Later ( and all of it behind scenes ) I pull myself together and we have fish and chips in St James's park and play catch. It is magical. All three of us happy.
My answer ( if anyone ever asked ) to 'What is the most surprising thing about you?' Would be that I can ski. That I can ski well.
I go with exh and two other Dads and their sons. I forget to be alarmed at the exclusively male company until just before going. My plan is that each adult takes responsibility for one days food and I get a bit bossy just before we go about how to do it. I want us to save money, I want us to be fed well. But it is good for me to lay down the law for I would have adopted annoying martyr tendencies if I hadn't and everyone sticks to the arrangement with good grace.
This holiday my youngest son cracks it - he learns to ski. I feel like a lioness watching as he is joined by his brother and the two other boys coming down the mountain, his cheeky face beaming - the three older boys at his side, caring for him, praising him, standing by him when he falls until I swoop from high to lift him onto his feet. In the time between speeding down the mountain, dusting snow out of small children's gloves and necks, strapping small feet into ski boots and persuading boys to put suncream on or sitting on chair lifts both exh and his friend keep drily suggesting I find time to visit a church. This blog has caused so much trouble in this group, and I am not really forgiven, certainly not by exh so I say, no I don't think so. I enjoy just the speed, the angle my body can make coming down a mountain fast, the swoop and elegance of a turn. Of not thinking of anything, anybody, but doing this, being here now. And the mountains are magnificent, beautiful, breathtaking. Oh it is a good thing.
During an evening meal the two other dad's charm me with a tale of themselves as young men paying a prostitute to play table tennis with an imaginary ball in ( I think ) Poland. They said when their hour was up, she stopped on the minute but that she played well.
On the last day it is necessary to do a supermarket shop to replace things we have used in the flat and me and one of the dads drive down the mountain to do it. He has injured his knee and has not been able to ski the last few days and has already explored some of the valley. I keep saying nervously how brilliant the holiday has been and then remembering about his knee and feeling guilty. Can we just go back to a church in the village, he has left his camera case he says. I think he is teasing me, wonder if he is testing me but can only say yes. He parks the car like in a car advert, just flung by a water trough that serves as a roundabout in an old stone, fairy tale village. We enter the church through a beautiful old grained wood carved door. The church is lovely, of basillica design, arches like the structure of internal organs .
I am paranoid that he has engineered this and determined as I look round not to write about it. He finds his camera case quickly and easily - did he just have it in his pocket I wonder? There are lovely statues and frescos. A rich gold altarpiece with floral decorations painted on the vaulted ceiling above. A fresco of dead christ, his rib cage exposed and puny and some absolutely lovely figures of saints - Saint Pancrace, Saint Roc, Saint Jacques de Compostelle, Sainte Barbe, Saint Antoine and another of a pious but sinister looking priest. I am grateful to come here, see this lovely church built in the 14th century - tucked in a dead end valley with a glacier like that hitchcock ship in Marnie at the end of their 'street' - it must have been a remote place for most of history.
Back in London I think I am going to have to describe the French church after all for the Easter holdiday means I have no time to visit anywhere but adventure playgrounds and pet shops. Also I want to be straight about my Marie Antoinette lifestyle. I am poor but I have assumptions of middle class life which are tricky to balance with where I am and what I describe.
Round here preparations are under way for the Royal Wedding - shop facades are being steam cleaned on Victoria Street to a certain height as if getting rid of old grime to eye level. Though I check the route and it doesn't look like the royal couple will come this way so I not sure what it is about. Though there will be thousands of people pouring down these streets maybe they just want their brand names to look good. I discover too more historic grime of where I live. On my street corner I find a description of badger baiting:
'In 1792 one William Ebberfield ( probably the same individual as a well-known local criminal called Slender Billy, later hanged for forgery) was prosecuted by his neighbours for the nuisance caused by dog- and badger baiting in a house in Great Peter St. In another ( or perhaps the same ) 'pit' said to be Duck Lane, the the heart of the Westminster slums, a dog-fighting African monkey attracted the fashionable West End to rub shoulders with more local low life.'
Also the overcrowding,
'Under parliamentary powers obtained in 1845, Victoria Street was cut through the Almonry, Dacre Street, and the northern ends of Duck Lane and Strutton Ground. The slums, however, did not go away. Indeed the vicar of St John's estimated that the work displaced five thousand of the poor from their homes. Although three quarters of these left the district, mostly crossing the river to other poor districts, the remainder croweded into the courts and cottages that were left, living three or four families to a house built for one. A local missionary estimated in 1855 that in one of the areas's 24 common lodging houses an average occupancy might be one hundred and twenty people a night. 72 lived in one of the twelve six-roomed houses in one court. From another in the course of three months, 69 young people had been sentenced to transportation, and one hanged at Newgate.'
'Westminster And Pimlico Past.' Isobel Watson.
The imprint of desperation still exists. I have seen a young man in shabby shoes and a grey face his fingers shaking, his eyes ashamed but determined, neck methadone in one gulp at the counter in Boots, a gentle girl like a soft Disney animal, kindly holding out the plastic measured cup. We'll see you tomorrow she said. He waved. An acrid aftertaste in the air. A homeless man ran bleeding through our courtyard recently but followed by a well dressed man who stubbornly kept on his trail organising help. Another destitute man sits on the corner sometimes with his arm around a life sized toy Alasatian Dog. But Westminster Council are trying to pass by laws to make street sleeping illegal and helping or feeding homeless people prosecutable with heavy fines.
http://www.westminster.gov.uk/press-releases/2011-02/soup-runs-and-rough-sleeping-could-be-banned-at-we/
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/7920
My youngest son, has only just started to read but he understood immediately the flier that came through the door - 'Do not feed the homeless' it said, drumming up support for a demonstration against the measures and he wrote in his still big, wavery letters. NOT RITE.
Finally and this was before school broke up my Indonesian friend came unexpectedly one morning to drop her son off so I could take him to school. His beautiful face anxious as she ushered him in. I need to tell you something privately she said and I pulled the door to and stood with her in the stairwell hearing the boys all laughing slightly manically inside. Her husband had been set upon by three men, somewhere just outside of London. His face had been smashed, his cheekbone broken. I have to go to him she said. Yes, I said let me know what I can do to help. But I don't think there is anything I can do. They are trapped in something terrible and I don't even know what it is.
Amen.
We are looking after PSM's eldest son's hamster while they are on holiday. Mush Mush. A golden hamster with gentle eyes and inquisitivie whiskers. Everytime I mention the fight to the death the boys look fascinated, even sly, certain Sparky would win. Though Sparky - who has entertained us by building structures out of his sawdust to get nearer to the bars, mixing water from his bottle to the sawdust to make a firmer mixture to build those slopes and spires, and eventually a kind of condensation heating system out of these water/sawdust mixtures, all the time maintaining his fierce stare and wild determination seems to have a new ploy. He has become a 'pet'. My youngest son plucked up courage to handle him with gloves and within a couple of holiday hours both boys were bare hand handling, even putting him in their pockets and on their shoulders. I worry that my own fear has blighted the little furry fellows life. Or he has pulled off his best stunt yet, swopping himself with another more biddable but look-a-like pet.
It is the Easter holidays. In my surprising life we went ski ing for the first five days. My brother has a flat in the Alps and I would beg, steal or borrow to ski, to teach my young sons to ski. Infact of course I mainly borrowed. But it always costs more than I think and I come back with shaky financial nerves, not enough money left to buy the beds for them that I had also borrowed money for and a sense that my strategy, this brave but foolhardy sailing into the wind, trying to give them a good life, a life off the breadline I have put myself on will tumble. I should get a proper job. Spend less on ebay shoes. Spend less. I don't know. I feel shaky and wrong with my illusions of grandeur. Defeated. At one point I let them watch tv on a beautiful sunny afternoon so that I can cry while I tidy up their bedroom. I berate myself that other mother's are managing better and indeed facebook proves it. Sunny smiling children mix perfume in perfumed gardens.
Later ( and all of it behind scenes ) I pull myself together and we have fish and chips in St James's park and play catch. It is magical. All three of us happy.
My answer ( if anyone ever asked ) to 'What is the most surprising thing about you?' Would be that I can ski. That I can ski well.
I go with exh and two other Dads and their sons. I forget to be alarmed at the exclusively male company until just before going. My plan is that each adult takes responsibility for one days food and I get a bit bossy just before we go about how to do it. I want us to save money, I want us to be fed well. But it is good for me to lay down the law for I would have adopted annoying martyr tendencies if I hadn't and everyone sticks to the arrangement with good grace.
This holiday my youngest son cracks it - he learns to ski. I feel like a lioness watching as he is joined by his brother and the two other boys coming down the mountain, his cheeky face beaming - the three older boys at his side, caring for him, praising him, standing by him when he falls until I swoop from high to lift him onto his feet. In the time between speeding down the mountain, dusting snow out of small children's gloves and necks, strapping small feet into ski boots and persuading boys to put suncream on or sitting on chair lifts both exh and his friend keep drily suggesting I find time to visit a church. This blog has caused so much trouble in this group, and I am not really forgiven, certainly not by exh so I say, no I don't think so. I enjoy just the speed, the angle my body can make coming down a mountain fast, the swoop and elegance of a turn. Of not thinking of anything, anybody, but doing this, being here now. And the mountains are magnificent, beautiful, breathtaking. Oh it is a good thing.
During an evening meal the two other dad's charm me with a tale of themselves as young men paying a prostitute to play table tennis with an imaginary ball in ( I think ) Poland. They said when their hour was up, she stopped on the minute but that she played well.
On the last day it is necessary to do a supermarket shop to replace things we have used in the flat and me and one of the dads drive down the mountain to do it. He has injured his knee and has not been able to ski the last few days and has already explored some of the valley. I keep saying nervously how brilliant the holiday has been and then remembering about his knee and feeling guilty. Can we just go back to a church in the village, he has left his camera case he says. I think he is teasing me, wonder if he is testing me but can only say yes. He parks the car like in a car advert, just flung by a water trough that serves as a roundabout in an old stone, fairy tale village. We enter the church through a beautiful old grained wood carved door. The church is lovely, of basillica design, arches like the structure of internal organs .
I am paranoid that he has engineered this and determined as I look round not to write about it. He finds his camera case quickly and easily - did he just have it in his pocket I wonder? There are lovely statues and frescos. A rich gold altarpiece with floral decorations painted on the vaulted ceiling above. A fresco of dead christ, his rib cage exposed and puny and some absolutely lovely figures of saints - Saint Pancrace, Saint Roc, Saint Jacques de Compostelle, Sainte Barbe, Saint Antoine and another of a pious but sinister looking priest. I am grateful to come here, see this lovely church built in the 14th century - tucked in a dead end valley with a glacier like that hitchcock ship in Marnie at the end of their 'street' - it must have been a remote place for most of history.
Back in London I think I am going to have to describe the French church after all for the Easter holdiday means I have no time to visit anywhere but adventure playgrounds and pet shops. Also I want to be straight about my Marie Antoinette lifestyle. I am poor but I have assumptions of middle class life which are tricky to balance with where I am and what I describe.
Round here preparations are under way for the Royal Wedding - shop facades are being steam cleaned on Victoria Street to a certain height as if getting rid of old grime to eye level. Though I check the route and it doesn't look like the royal couple will come this way so I not sure what it is about. Though there will be thousands of people pouring down these streets maybe they just want their brand names to look good. I discover too more historic grime of where I live. On my street corner I find a description of badger baiting:
'In 1792 one William Ebberfield ( probably the same individual as a well-known local criminal called Slender Billy, later hanged for forgery) was prosecuted by his neighbours for the nuisance caused by dog- and badger baiting in a house in Great Peter St. In another ( or perhaps the same ) 'pit' said to be Duck Lane, the the heart of the Westminster slums, a dog-fighting African monkey attracted the fashionable West End to rub shoulders with more local low life.'
Also the overcrowding,
'Under parliamentary powers obtained in 1845, Victoria Street was cut through the Almonry, Dacre Street, and the northern ends of Duck Lane and Strutton Ground. The slums, however, did not go away. Indeed the vicar of St John's estimated that the work displaced five thousand of the poor from their homes. Although three quarters of these left the district, mostly crossing the river to other poor districts, the remainder croweded into the courts and cottages that were left, living three or four families to a house built for one. A local missionary estimated in 1855 that in one of the areas's 24 common lodging houses an average occupancy might be one hundred and twenty people a night. 72 lived in one of the twelve six-roomed houses in one court. From another in the course of three months, 69 young people had been sentenced to transportation, and one hanged at Newgate.'
'Westminster And Pimlico Past.' Isobel Watson.
The imprint of desperation still exists. I have seen a young man in shabby shoes and a grey face his fingers shaking, his eyes ashamed but determined, neck methadone in one gulp at the counter in Boots, a gentle girl like a soft Disney animal, kindly holding out the plastic measured cup. We'll see you tomorrow she said. He waved. An acrid aftertaste in the air. A homeless man ran bleeding through our courtyard recently but followed by a well dressed man who stubbornly kept on his trail organising help. Another destitute man sits on the corner sometimes with his arm around a life sized toy Alasatian Dog. But Westminster Council are trying to pass by laws to make street sleeping illegal and helping or feeding homeless people prosecutable with heavy fines.
http://www.westminster.gov.uk/press-releases/2011-02/soup-runs-and-rough-sleeping-could-be-banned-at-we/
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/7920
My youngest son, has only just started to read but he understood immediately the flier that came through the door - 'Do not feed the homeless' it said, drumming up support for a demonstration against the measures and he wrote in his still big, wavery letters. NOT RITE.
Finally and this was before school broke up my Indonesian friend came unexpectedly one morning to drop her son off so I could take him to school. His beautiful face anxious as she ushered him in. I need to tell you something privately she said and I pulled the door to and stood with her in the stairwell hearing the boys all laughing slightly manically inside. Her husband had been set upon by three men, somewhere just outside of London. His face had been smashed, his cheekbone broken. I have to go to him she said. Yes, I said let me know what I can do to help. But I don't think there is anything I can do. They are trapped in something terrible and I don't even know what it is.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)