St Barnabus Pimlico

Anybody who knows me would know that I am the least likely person to put the words Fun and Run together. And yet somehow, I have been volunteered by work to do exactly that - a 5km Fun Run. If only I could write the words as I would say them. Fun Run, the short syllables dragged into sarcasm and withering wonder mixed with fear.

For a few weeks I just dreaded it. Then I bought a pair of trainers and a sports bra. Dithered for another week. Finally I looked up 'how to train for a 5km fun run' on the internet and followed the 7 week plan in just over 3 weeks. I run and walk around the lake in St James's Park. Starting at 15 seconds running 40 seconds walking and building to the heady 20 seconds running - 30 seconds walking for 5km. Not really a run more of a run walk but still I have amazed myself - gaining my first exercise high ever and despite aching knees, sticking to the project.

Late spring/ early summer in St James's park is beautiful. I feel free. Allowed out. Not at work. Not with children. At certain points I feel strong and connected to myself and my breath. Fearless. Ducks with ducklings, moorhens with chicks and pelicans folded like origami onto rocks. Feet the tick of the circumference. In beautiful planted flower beds tulips drop their petals, their colour textured by wallflowers and the gash of poppies alongside the spires of delphiniums. Young love, office affairs and arguments sit in couples on park benches. A weeping woman says ' I just want to be loved' to a man who eyes the floor. There are many, many different languages. And Buckingham Palace stands cock a hoop with flags and the surprised air of success. At dusk rats in the gloaming slink from view under the refreshment kiosk and at the side of the path as if testing their visibility in the grey furred light. I wonder how evolution has worked that the squirrels can sit on the railings eating a nut being photographed with Britney Spears-dark-eyes-cute to the camera and the rats know to keep cover, out of sight only daring just a little bit more as the park empties. The homeless gather too on benches and under trees, staking a pitch, carrying their careful systems of survival. One man whiskered and brown skinned from extreme outdoors arrives on a bike, plastic bags like swollen ballons packed like panniers, a bucket slung on the handlebars. He parks his bike and sits on a bench and waits. For dark, I assume. A black woman with dusty croc shoes, sits her head bowed into her lap a bag at her side. Not long now.

Another evening I see a police car alongside a still prone figure under a tree. In the two laps around the lake it is never clear if it is just a body or still a person.

The magazine I work for is full of 'Real Life' stories- plastic surgery, weight loss and weddings ( in any combination really - plastic surgery and weight loss weddings would be ideal.) When I first started working part time on this magazine I was living with an alcoholic husband and angry children, I had left my full time job and our house to try sort out the chaos within our family. Sometimes I wonder now if I tipped up our lives too hastily, if I did more damage with my nutty idealism of happiness and balance. The boys still accuse me 'You made dad leave.' But coming out the other side - I don't know. We could still be there within that madness of alcohol and rage. But I'm not sure how. My little children may have been less damaged by mum and dad splitting up and by the final spiral into alcoholic behaviour but the battles of mum and dad would have been awful. And I'm not sure I would have coped. That hostile and unsafe world was really poisonous to me. I was part of it but I didn't actually create it.
Initially I sneered at the magazine, at the stories of simple fat people making their lives better. Oh my harsh soul. Each week I would ring the people up from the case studies persuading them to send pictures of their hospital trips, fat holidays and weddings - before and after, before and after a refrain. I am reasonably slim, of small frame, bigger boobs than I would like, but in the many secrets I had then possibly the final one and who knows - least important - was that my post children tummy sagged as if I was a drugs mule for bags and bags of wet flour. I am not sure I was completely conscious of this but I couldn't see my knickers because they were covered by these drooping rolls of fat. And yet, and yet, I was someone who people assumed to be skinny at least slim. I thought it was just how it was after children, I am not even sure I was aware it was fat.

I sat in that office - on a desk which was oddly perched on the end of another department's - like an island, as isolated at work as at home, just observing men putting together a tabloid newspaper - a fascinating, obscenely witty, sometimes disturbing thing. My marriage was on the very brink of being over and I never knew what I would return home to. I worked really hard in that office but somedays I hid tears behind the computer screen and in the brief minutes of freedom between home and work I would always always walk back from the tube crying, it was like I had time quickly to feel what I really felt, before I was back to reading bed time stories and the mayhem of trying to smile at someone who wanted to pick an argument so they could go and get drunk.
One day I clicked a link for an internet 'lose your tummy' diet - paid for the download - printed it out, read that I needed to get hold of almost 'pure' not pasturized milk and put it in a drawer. Later, quite a lot later, after we seperated, after we moved from the tiny flat to this one and things were already starting to get better I got it out again and realised these were just guide lines - I could try and make it work with less 'pure' things. Porridge and nuts in the morning, hardly any carbohydrates, no processed food, lots of eggs and avocados, a day off from the diet once a week. Everything was food I liked eating anyhow. The fat slowly retreated. Though I have been on that diet over 2 years now and my tummy is still not perfect but every month it gets a bit better. It has taken so long that I doubt I will every reach a flat tummy but I am proud to have turned it around. To be a simple fat person who made their life better. Alongside everything else there is a physical proof and pride that things can be changed.

This morning the beautiful mum that I sometimes walk to school alongside ( clever, funny, elegant and very charming) who once sported the worst black eye I have ever seen on someone at 8 months pregnant ( how does that sentence make sense? how could any bit of the sentence make sense?) said to me ' I feel well. A small window has finally opened.' Her beautiful face lit up. I look at her. She smiles with her eyes. Good I said. Good. A long time ago she confessed some of her homelife to me in the time it took to cross road with the green man flashing. That her husband lay in bed depressed ( she didn't say he hit her, she assumed I knew, for she had averted her eyes with a proud tilt to her chin when I saw that black eye ) that the social services said she was too good a mum to take the children. Get as much help as you can I said. But shortly after she reverted to her smiles and waves and charm. Today we both smiled with our eyes to each other. That is really good news. I said. Yes. She said. I feel like a weight has gone. He has left. Though I wonder why everyone I know round here has some dramatic tale. Are we somehow adrift. Or just poor. Or do I spy it easily? Somehow my observant sympathy attracts only trauma? It seems I have told quite a few versions of the same tale.

Oh but all these bank holidays plus extra days at work and very long hours has tipped up our family routine and left me exhausted and behind on everything. Have you noticed? This post must be the longest coming. And the dates are all wrong. I have done the fun run! I have tipped from the high of doing it to a low of not running and my knees feeling buggered. I am frankly ratty.
In a state of permanent ineffectual skidding on the surface of tasks needing to be done I fail to ring back the phone company in time to get the fault fixed on the home line to be told I will need to start the process again. I need the phone to ring the tax office because I know I will be left on hold for hours and don't want to do it from my mobile. I need to ring the tax office to see if I qualify for a tax rebate and to find out why my working tax credit has been slashed. I feel caught and trapped in my ineffectualness. Even UL becomes something on a list to be squeezed between other things. And when I see him I am not happy. I feel I should be doing something else on the list and I doubt him.

But I make time to visit St Barnabas church between dropping off PSM's youngest son's swimming stuff to school, buying a toilet seat, paying library fines on 'Mill on the Floss' ( oh oh, I was so excited reading the introduction, for I loved Middlemarch when I read it years ago and I could see George Elliot was exactly what I needed to read, and here I am paying £3.25 to bring it back unread), buying birthday presents and picking my eldest son up early for a hospital dentistry trip. The flat is a tip and Barrack Obama is in town. I had tried to see him the day before. Another trip to Westminster Abbey! A detour on the way to pick the boys up from school. I put the tv on to time my departure - as I leave the flat the motorbikes are getting ready at Buckingham Palace gates. I walk fast. Nearing the Abbey door I can see a calvacade of cars and a glimpse of 'The Beast' through a splinter gap in the small crowd and stand on tip toe to see. I don't see anything and a young policewoman asks me to move on. I can hear a cheer and then people move away. I am slightly late to pick the boys up but strangely high that I nearly saw the President of the USA on my school run.
This day, the day I visit the church I cycle around parliament square on a BB between chores and realise the crowds are lining up again, that Obama must be about to pass by. Even though I would love to see him I don't have time to stop. Opposite the Houses of Parliament, there are hooded and bound/chained men, heads stooped, in orange jumpsuits protesting silently on top of the stop the war hut. Almost christ like in their quiet vigil. But I keep cycling round keen to get to the church.

St Barnabas is open. I have been lucky. This tiny bit of time I have found is exactly the right piece of time because it is the one lunchtime of the week that there is a service and I am here twenty minutes before it starts. I walk through a pretty courtyard to the porch on the left and open the heavy door with a bull ring handle into the gloom and chatter of two old women preparing the church for the service. Is it ok to look around I ask and an old, rather fragile man nods and follows behind me as I move around the church. 'I never wear polish' I hear one woman say to the other as they put out prayer books 'I find it damages my nails' then they are into a conversation about the quality of the candles. The church is lovely, it's decoration is beautiful - really fine stained glass, mosaics, and an amazing chancel and altarpiece. The richness of the ceiling in the chancel is like a tapestry, ornately detailed, awe inspiring. I am surprised, I had assumed it would be another plain, slightly lacking in authenticity Pimlico church - indeed Thomas Cundy junior, the builder of those other pattern book churches was the architect here although this work is so different from his other churches that I find in my research a whiff of a rumour that the gothic architect Pugin was consulted too.

I start to read the history. It was the first church built in England where the ideals and beliefs of what came to be known as Anglo-catholic movement were embodied in its architecture and liturgy. My heart sinks as I try to make sense of this Oxford Movement/The Tracterians that seems to result in rioting here at St Barnabus church. I have been here before with St Paul's, Wilton Place and found it hard to fathom, to understand the tiny details of belief that result in such outrage. Central seem to be two premises - that the Church of England is more Catholic than Protestant and that the most effective expression of giving worship to heaven is as it is described in the Book of Revelation in which the use of white robes and incense in a setting of considerable beauty is described;

This time I have an amazing breakthrough I find on the internet:
http://anglicanhistory.org/england/bennett/bio/

It is the history of the founding Reverend of St Barnabus - W.J.E. Bennett written by his son in 1909. Initially the vicar of the wealthy St Paul's, Wilton Place he describes the area before the church was built.

'THERE had arisen in the lower portion of the district assigned to S. Paul's, amid the marshes of Pimlico, near the Hospital and to the east of Ebury Street, a series of deplorable slums, which extended down to the river. From 1742 to 1803 those gardens, which in still earlier times had belonged to the Earl of Ranelagh, attracted to their nightly shows, amid fashionable sin and frivolity, the princes and nobles of the land. But in that neighbourhood most unfashionable sin and brutal degradation reigned in 1850. There the streets were rugged and but half made, undrained, unpaved. The houses were not old but already ruinous. The foul sewer, which drained half of Western London, and had been originally "The Serpentine River," ran, open and uncovered, full of filth of every sort down to the Thames, between starved, half-decayed trees whose branches produced leaves that could be numbered. The appropriately named "Nell Gwynn's Court" looked down, in defiance of cholera, upon this flowing tide of abomination, and delighted in filth and foulness both of body and soul, which neither the Sanitary nor the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had been cruel enough to put to flight.

The inhabitants matched, naturally enough, their surroundings. Men, women and children were half clad, without shoes, dirty, ragged, reckless. Their lot seemed so low and miserable that they were careless with despair and without power to desire to be otherwise than they were. The low lodging-houses were dens for profligates and thieves. The small beer-shops were receptacles for the veriest dregs of society. Street rows were incessant. Drink and gambling flourished. Dirty, disorderly, ill-conditioned children filled the streets. Blasphemy met the ear at every turn. The district presented an aspect of degradation and darkness scarcely to be exceeded in London.'

All this resulted in his determination to build a church there. He lists the detailed mathematics of how the rich could pay for the church and the school that was to be built. Then joy that his high church architectural plans are approved by the Bishop.

"I hardly dared to entertain the thought that" he would consecrate such a church. "I could not expect, I did not expect, in my own mind, that a rood screen, a chancel highly decorated, an altar of stone, diapered work and panelling throughout, painted glass in every window and gilded capitals" (what a terrible list of enormities!)--"I hardly thought that all this would pass without censure, or at least without some expression of unwillingness to stamp it with Episcopal sanction. I hardly thought that a piscina, a credence, an aumbry, sedilia, and all the furniture appertaining could pass without some words of remonstrance. I wished the Bishop personally to inspect it. Accordingly on May 2 he came. He did not like the screen as a matter of private taste, but made no objection 'as long as there was no rood (i.e. crucifix) on it.'"

On May 17 Mr. Bennett pleaded for a "rood cross," i.e. without the Figure, and though the Bishop at first strongly objected, he "ultimately gave me my way." The only point to which the Bishop permanently objected was--the placing flowers on the altar. One is glad to reflect that flowers have now purged themselves from the charge of being of Romish proclivities, that the Pope is no longer supposed to lie concealed in a rosebud, that indulgences and papal bulls are no longer looked for among the petals of a lily, and that we now realize that we might have searched in vain for the Jesuit College even amidst the florets of the then newly evolved double dahlia.'

When the building was finally finished in 1850 it is praised.

"It is a noble work," said Archdeacon Manning in his sermon, "nobly conceived, and as nobly carried to its end; a work for God and for His poor wrought out of the costliest gifts, and with the most skilful art, in splendour and symmetry, in stateliness and beauty."

But the Bishop of London, leaning increasingly to the Protestant side of the church and Mr Bennett's beliefs become increasingly divergent. Differences about which way the vicar faces at communion, the disputed rood cross ( later it is nailed to the altar to attempt to make it part of the building after one church warden would take it away and another put it out again) and tiny details that align St Barnabus to Catholiscism are exchanged in heated letters. Important to this row is the central idea that Mr Bennett should be obedient to the Bishop as part of the Apostolical Succession for indeed within his faith it is impossible for him to disobey a Bishop. The row gathers momentum, the Bishop of London not listening to the well formed and heart felt arguments of obedience. The Prime Minister - a recent worshipper at the Oxford movement St Paul's denounces St Barnabus for it's popery, and the bishop sends the exchange of letters between himself and Bennett to be published in the Times 'proving' St Barnabus's Catholic allegiance. A mob gathers, gaining momentum Sunday after Sunday.

"I wish to inform you that on Sunday, November 17, a very large mob of most tumultuous and disorderly persons collected together a second time round the church, and this with a much greater demonstration of force than on the preceding Sunday--that a force of one hundred constables was required to keep the mob from overt acts of violence; that notwithstanding the exertions of the police much violence was committed, and a leader of the rioters taken into custody; that the mob again assembled at the evening service at three o'clock, and were guilty again of violent cries, yells, and other noises, battering at the doors of the church and disturbing the whole congregation--that similar scenes occurred again on Sunday, the 24th of November, when I was interrupted in my sermon by outcries and other signs of disaffection as before; all this tumult, your Lordship will please to remember, arising from persons collected from all parts of London--non-parishioners.

"NO VIRGIN MARY."
"NO WAFER GODS."
"NO BISHOPS."
"NO CREED WORSHIP."
"NO FORGIVENESS OF SINS.
is chalked on walls in surrounding streets.

It gives dramatic details of the sermon Mr Bennett preached from his heart as the mob breaks into the church and how they turn tail and retreat.

Then Mr Bennett's resignation to the Bishop of London with his stated belief that 'The Church is superior to any individual bishop.'

Despite the working men's presentation which the Bishop will not hear.

"We beseech your Lordship to let Mr. Bennett remain with us; but, if not, we do hope your Lordship will see that our church, which was built expressly for us, is still a poor man's church.'

But he leaves. The church packed hours early service after service before he departs. A last meal when he is presented with a silver inkwell, candlesticks and from the "Committee of the Poor " a silver teapot.

All this in this little beautiful and peaceful church. The principles fought for seem so unimportant to me, so minute in the details of faith but the bravery and intelligent honesty and honour seem really moving.

Amen

St James the Less, Vauxhall Bridge Rd

St James the Less stands dark, slightly foreboding, set back from Vauxhall Bridge Rd, between an estate pub and a building site. Litter and leaves catch in eddies in the expanse of paving stones between the grimy main road and grimy church. I walk past once in the week but it isn't open and the only notice is the times of the services on Sunday.

So I go again on the Sunday. I aim to get there for 10.30 and have a look round before the service starts at 11am. I am taking the boys for lunch at my mum and dads with fireworks afterwards, so exexdh is to have them briefly, before we set out. But I am late. I hear 11 strike on Big Ben as I walk down Vauxhall Bridge Rd, a bit flustered, very slightly hungover, having thought I was being clever and taking a short cut but having gone the wrong way - though surprised to have done so, for I live here and know my way really well. Surprised too to hear the clock so clearly from this distance. I am starting to have to travel a bit further to visit churches but I can still hear Big Ben. I get as far as the porch under the tall four storey tower, with it's patterned brick arches, and intricately carved doorway and the wooden door open to a glass one where I can see a man standing just the other side, with a hymn book ready to hand out. I can make out people in pews and a large lit over head screen, and an unexpected richness of mosaic, and brickwork. But I can't sit through the service without being really late for my mum and dad's so I have to turn round and leave. But it feels unsatisfactory, I could see there was something fine to the detail of the church

My youngest son, (which seems as scripted as U'OL coming back on the scene), has started to demand to pray. He is five. He has been to church possibly, twice in his life, goes to a predominantly muslim school with no obvious religious worship, though they did a nativity the first year Gordon Brown's son was in reception ( the year before my youngest attended, and the year after the eldest started ), and beyond slipping out to visit churches twice I have barely mentioned my church visiting project at home. He started asking about two weeks ago, but I couldn't face mentioning it, it just seemed too much like an invented plot. Though years ago he had a dream he had stigmata. Of course he didn't know the word, but he described it exactly. Which scared the hell out of me. Anyhow we have started doing the Lord's Prayer each night. The old words incredibly soothing to speak out loud. And the youngest kneels and closes his eyes, beautiful in his pyjamas. The eldest initially sarcastic, has since asked for a prayer of trust. I find a prayer by Ignatius Loyola 1491-1556.
Saying the words, I wish I could believe something. I can see it would be good for us.

But in the back of the car, through the stop starting of traffic lights at the outskirts of London with a wildly inappropriate CD that we all adore - Leadbelly, Buddy Holly, The Damned, White Stripes, The Clash - the youngest sings 'I want to be a Christian, I want to go to Church' to the tune of I'm so bored of the USA. I wince at the combination. Though I promise I will take him.

Later, I look up St James the Less, to find out it is a celebrated Gothic Victorian Church. There is only a little bit of history - it was built by three sisters in memory of their father the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol between 1856 - 61 in one of the poorest areas. But there is an immense amount of architectural information - designed by G.E Street, a victorian gothic architect of note, he employed the best craftsmen for this, his first church in London- Thomas Earp for stone carving and Clayton and Bell for stained glass and the famous Victorian artist GF Wyatt painted the mural above the chancel, called the The Doom, later replaced by a mosaic he designed. I feel a bit of a fraud because I haven't really seen the interior. Also I discover, John Betjeman, a big fan of Gothic Victorian Churches, helped save it, writing letters to defend the church from demolition, which is amazing symmetry because I have just been reading 'On Churches' by JB, and how he saved loads of churches, writing many letters. Then I find a painting of St James the Less by John Piper in his book English Churches with an introduction by John Betjeman which includes:

'The more you look at churches the more you appreciate their varying atmospheres – whether the vicar is high or low or breezy or lazy or crazy. You notice too oddities of furnishing, hymn boards, oil lamps, electric lighting, pipes, wires and heating stoves.'

And I thought yes. Yes. Exactly.

But then I want to actually see the church, and it seems to suggest on a Victorian architecture history site that it is often open at lunchtimes. So I go back again. From a distance I can see the gate to the porch is chained shut, and I nearly just cycle away. But a man is walking up to the church so I follow him and see him ring the bell of a side door and disappear inside. I have to go and park up the Boris Bike and then come back. Another man rings the bell and disappears inside. I press the bell. The door buzzes and lets me in. Above the bell I suddenly notice two AAs in a triangle. Oh, I think, for after all I did look up all the local AA meetings for exexdh in the area when he first stopped drinking, I just didn't remember it here. Anyhow, I am in a hallway at the bottom of some stairs, with an empty dark kitchen with toddler toys stacked and no one and no noise. I see a sign for the office but when I open the door it is dark and closed. I move further into the building, I just want to ask someone if it is ok just to have a look around. I open another door, pushing it open into a bright lit empty room with chairs around a table. Only then do I really realise I could accidentally walk into the AA meeting and it would be hard to get the words out quick enough to explain the mistake.

I am about to chicken out, to leave, when I see a heavy wooden door to the side. I lift the latch, surprised it is open and feeling like I am in a fairytale I walk through into the dark, unlit church. The air is so quiet and still and subdued, I feel my lungs fill with the grainy peace. From very far away I can hear voices but no one challenges me and I walk quietly around. I am briefly worried that they will think I have got lost and come and collect me for the meeting and usher me out of the church and onto a chair with a cup of tea and a biscuit and everything to say about alcohol. Then I feel free, just allowed to be here under these high ceilings, in a huge space like finding lung capacity.

In this dull gloaming light, the church is pixellated with the patterns of red, black and cream bricks. There is an extraordinary font of wrought iron with a roof like a nutty hat at ascot. Then sofas crammed in the back. Beautiful stained glass, beautiful tiles, and the overhead screen hung from the high ceiling. The G.F. Watts mosaic is high up on the chancel wall picturing Christ in heaven. Far away, in the corner there looks to be a skeleton glowing out from the dark. Slightly wary, I get near, but it is a large figure of made out of parts of musical instruments, the body a squeezebox, the fingers keys from a piano, the legs saxophones. It is crazy loose-limbed - a strange, crude representation of Christ. I go back to look at the craftsmanship of the iron work, and the pulpit. But mainly I like the fact I shouldn't be here, there is no electric light, there is space and quiet to breathe deeply.

Then today at work on the TV above my head I see the scenes of fire and windows breaking, and demonstrators pouring into Millbank Tower. Just round the corner from us, just round the corner from the school. I watch fascinated, slightly admiring ( though later I think - of what? ) but anxious for my children. Also I know, having been to a children's birthday party at the Pizza Express in the wings of the building that diners, tucking into doughballs and a Veneziana would have surprise ringside seats to the burning of David Cameron and Nick Clegg effigies. Then cower at the back of the restuarant near the toilets (or watch - which would you do?) as windows were broken, youths showed their bottoms and young people overcame the police. I would have taken a photograph of those diners faces but I don't think anyone did.

Later, on my way home from work I think I will just go and see, getting off one stop early. Walking past the peace camp and the increased police presence at the Houses of Parliament, and in a straight line on. I wondered if I will recognise students in the normal crowds of tourists and office workers. But it is surprisingly easy. Young women wear DM's again and young men look earnest.

I get to Lambeth bridge where cars in a tailgated traffic jam are being diverted. It is dark and really cold. A runner flashes past and dips down the steps to the Thames path. There is police tape across the road, with a few coppers alongside but no barrier to the pavement. I think they will say 'Turn back now, lady' or some such. But no one stops me and I keep walking on an almost empty street. Above a helicopter hovers, as if focussing. I am carrying a Gap bag with a new coat for my eldest son, some jogging bottoms and pants for both, using one of those 30% off vouchers and a heavy tesco bag too. Nearing Millbank Tower, police like dark beetles in riot gear arch together herding the few demonstrators left. Apart from the helicopter, it is very quiet. Bystanders and students ( ex protestors?) stand on the pavement in the dark under the trees by the Thames, placards littered. Many are drinking. Cans or whole bottles. Better protest than drink, I think. But I worry about everyone's drinking these days, including my own, for it doesn't seem good for survival. You ain't the fittest if you are drinking and that seems to be how evolution works. Inside the foyer of the lit building I can see police in riot helmets and fluroscent yellow jackets jammed together, like fish in a tin. Too many and too big for the space. On the walls in surprisingly thin and ineffectual pen there is an anarchist A in a circle, 'Tory scum', and a drawing of a prick and a broken glass door with some girls taking photos on their phones, I walk on. It doesn't seem very substantial. Though I think the lib dems will not be trusted for a long time. Do you remember Nick Clegg's sudden credible status through the televised debate? - I think I had forgotten, I just thought he was a twit - but those young people had wanted to believe absolutely - and here they are disappointed. Combined with the gleeful cruelty of the Conservatives, I think people already feel trapped in having got what they didn't want.

Past the Tate and then circling back to home. I hear a young man say 'In the UK there just aren't many of the lower or upper classes' and I think maybe not where you live mate.
Behind the buildings, I look up and see the tower and I think there are still people up there. ghostly white against the dark night sky, with a helicopter coming in, really near as if herding. I imagine that they got in, went as far as they could and don't know what to do now. Though the power of having obtained the roof top, however briefly, must be amazing.

Amen