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
Showing posts with label Yemen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yemen. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
St John's Church
I think I may have to re name this - I don't get in the churches to think, or I try to sit in churches to think and am too chicken to get in them. Or in this case I try and sit in a church to think but it isn't a church anymore.
Wow!- though, this church that isn't a church anymore is beautiful. Like looking through the window of an expensive bakery at an elaborate tiered cake, the construction, how it stands, propped with pillars and fancy towers, slightly baffling.
Today it is very hot and the boys and I have worms. I am feeling mildly desperate about this, partly because it has made us all feel tired and weepy, but also because we have taken the tablets, I have washed all the towels and bedclothes again and again and we started feeling better and now they seem to have returned. I have spent another day cleaning and cleaning and washing and washing. Plus due to the weariness I went to bed at 11 o'clock last night - which I never do - and then woke to hear the phone ringing. I thought it was the early hours. I thought someone must have died. But exexDH ( have I explained this? ex drunk, ex husband) in his hostel room, down the street had put an ear plug in and somehow he said it had disappeared into his ear. At least it isn't an orange. I said. Could he come round and I tweezer it out? Bloody Hell I thought in the dark of the nighttime flat, the sound of the boys sleeping. Though sorry for him too, appearing scared, holding a pair of tweezers. Our not married life. Nothing I could do, he had to go to casualty. But I found it hard to go back to sleep and I am tired.
It is a complicated day too because one of my best mum friend's from the school, who lives one block down has asked if her and her son can come round this evening because her husband has five friends coming round and she doesn't want to be there when they come. She, her beautiful face, framed like the moon by shadow, in her headscarf is from Indonesia, her husband from Yemen. Me and her hang out quite a lot with the boys. She makes me laugh and is funny and kind, and we talk about politics and swop tips on two for one offers or cheap crumpets. I have never met him. Though I am now quite fascinated by the idea of him and his five friends in their small extraordinairly clean flat. Yes. I say. But I am worrying about the worms and also me and the boys and infact xxdh are all going to a friend's art school private view, and each bit makes the other more complicated. George Osbourne has been detailing his budget too on the radio as I clean and I feel what? anxious and frightened and then scared they are right, and then scared they are wrong. Though I think they are wrong. So perhaps just scared.
Anyhow, I think I will just run to St John's Smith Square Church on the way to pick the boys up from school. I have kept it as a bit of treat. A lift to the spirits. I felt certain I would be able to go in. I felt certain that it would be beautiful. I have occasionally looked up the music concerts on the weekends when the boys are away, but never been. It is a new thing, an age thing, hearing the beauty of classical music easily, like an aspiration of good, while some music I have always loved has gone powdery, to dust, like tinny transistor radio tunes in my ears. Walking down to the end of my street, past exexDH's hostel past the home office, then turning into this beautiful old street, a view of St John's Smith Square at the end. I have never been here before and houses I have never seen, but so near, are like a costume drama setting. Beautiful proportions, and a feeling of ease, of plushness, but more than that, sometimes old houses especially a whole street of them, have just that fortitude of time.
But here we go, possibly everyone knew this, it is now only a concert hall, not a church at all and there are notices on all the doors saying Private Property.
I actually think I won't write about St John's, I will have to go and sit in another church, but when I google it, I find out it was a church until the war, an English baroque masterpiece built by Thomas Archer 1713 - 28, Queen Anne likening it to a footstool because of it's tall corner towers, Charles Dickens describing it as 'resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air'. But it was really badly bombed in the blitz. Sold by the church and then restored to be a concert venue. Suddenly, oh suddenly, I realise here, these streets I walk everyday, were at the heart of incredible attack. I order a book on Amazon The Blitz, Westminster at War. It is like another lead, another layer, another fascination to this area.
Later, the out of control, tubby, muslim boy ( I think last time I mentioned him I said slightly out of control but it isn't true, I watch him and his brother and his mum and there is chaos there, I'm not sure what, though her boys flinch from her, and she is exhausted by whatever it is she can't control) escaped under the railings in the park, and danced with his pants down in a scrap of wilderness no one could get to, while the big kids roared with laughter and egged him on. I feel anxious to point out that it is rare to see an out of control muslim kid, mainly they are almost too beautifully behaved.
I got his mum, and then coaxed him squirming in the dust, his big beaming face appearing back under the fence.
I worry that I know about chaos, I recognise it.
Amen.
Wow!- though, this church that isn't a church anymore is beautiful. Like looking through the window of an expensive bakery at an elaborate tiered cake, the construction, how it stands, propped with pillars and fancy towers, slightly baffling.
Today it is very hot and the boys and I have worms. I am feeling mildly desperate about this, partly because it has made us all feel tired and weepy, but also because we have taken the tablets, I have washed all the towels and bedclothes again and again and we started feeling better and now they seem to have returned. I have spent another day cleaning and cleaning and washing and washing. Plus due to the weariness I went to bed at 11 o'clock last night - which I never do - and then woke to hear the phone ringing. I thought it was the early hours. I thought someone must have died. But exexDH ( have I explained this? ex drunk, ex husband) in his hostel room, down the street had put an ear plug in and somehow he said it had disappeared into his ear. At least it isn't an orange. I said. Could he come round and I tweezer it out? Bloody Hell I thought in the dark of the nighttime flat, the sound of the boys sleeping. Though sorry for him too, appearing scared, holding a pair of tweezers. Our not married life. Nothing I could do, he had to go to casualty. But I found it hard to go back to sleep and I am tired.
It is a complicated day too because one of my best mum friend's from the school, who lives one block down has asked if her and her son can come round this evening because her husband has five friends coming round and she doesn't want to be there when they come. She, her beautiful face, framed like the moon by shadow, in her headscarf is from Indonesia, her husband from Yemen. Me and her hang out quite a lot with the boys. She makes me laugh and is funny and kind, and we talk about politics and swop tips on two for one offers or cheap crumpets. I have never met him. Though I am now quite fascinated by the idea of him and his five friends in their small extraordinairly clean flat. Yes. I say. But I am worrying about the worms and also me and the boys and infact xxdh are all going to a friend's art school private view, and each bit makes the other more complicated. George Osbourne has been detailing his budget too on the radio as I clean and I feel what? anxious and frightened and then scared they are right, and then scared they are wrong. Though I think they are wrong. So perhaps just scared.
Anyhow, I think I will just run to St John's Smith Square Church on the way to pick the boys up from school. I have kept it as a bit of treat. A lift to the spirits. I felt certain I would be able to go in. I felt certain that it would be beautiful. I have occasionally looked up the music concerts on the weekends when the boys are away, but never been. It is a new thing, an age thing, hearing the beauty of classical music easily, like an aspiration of good, while some music I have always loved has gone powdery, to dust, like tinny transistor radio tunes in my ears. Walking down to the end of my street, past exexDH's hostel past the home office, then turning into this beautiful old street, a view of St John's Smith Square at the end. I have never been here before and houses I have never seen, but so near, are like a costume drama setting. Beautiful proportions, and a feeling of ease, of plushness, but more than that, sometimes old houses especially a whole street of them, have just that fortitude of time.
But here we go, possibly everyone knew this, it is now only a concert hall, not a church at all and there are notices on all the doors saying Private Property.
I actually think I won't write about St John's, I will have to go and sit in another church, but when I google it, I find out it was a church until the war, an English baroque masterpiece built by Thomas Archer 1713 - 28, Queen Anne likening it to a footstool because of it's tall corner towers, Charles Dickens describing it as 'resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air'. But it was really badly bombed in the blitz. Sold by the church and then restored to be a concert venue. Suddenly, oh suddenly, I realise here, these streets I walk everyday, were at the heart of incredible attack. I order a book on Amazon The Blitz, Westminster at War. It is like another lead, another layer, another fascination to this area.
Later, the out of control, tubby, muslim boy ( I think last time I mentioned him I said slightly out of control but it isn't true, I watch him and his brother and his mum and there is chaos there, I'm not sure what, though her boys flinch from her, and she is exhausted by whatever it is she can't control) escaped under the railings in the park, and danced with his pants down in a scrap of wilderness no one could get to, while the big kids roared with laughter and egged him on. I feel anxious to point out that it is rare to see an out of control muslim kid, mainly they are almost too beautifully behaved.
I got his mum, and then coaxed him squirming in the dust, his big beaming face appearing back under the fence.
I worry that I know about chaos, I recognise it.
Amen.
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