We all went to the Stop The Cuts March! Almost everyone I have ever mentioned in this blog was there, somewhere. If this was Jane Austen it would be the Box Hill picnic though with a lot less dramatic impact and more people and more banners.
Me, the children, exh and the exd friend of exh set off. One son dressed in a storm trooper costume, another in a viking helmet and me in ( I didn't seem to have any marching shoes) wellington boots and a bowler hat. Though all of us being awful ( not the exd friend luckily - he behaved perfectly. ) The boys crying on our street corner because I wouldn't let them take guns. Exh disappearing. Me frazzled for we are meant to be meeting people and we are late. Exh reappearing. With a bubble machine that looks exactly like a gun I have just confiscated. Both boys want the bubble machine and both boys still want guns. I am rolling my eyes and sniping at exh though later I feel I lost track of humour because a bubble machine subverts a gun so well.
Joining the march at parliament square our spirits soar. We become part of something bigger than our leaky bickering boat, and are buoyed up, part of a current - nice nurses, beautiful handstitched TUC banners, good people blowing whistles. At Downing St we all boo. Everyone taking pictures or film. The children surprised by the childishness of adults. BOO!
We meet our friends on the corner of Piccadilly. “HEY HEY, HO HO, THE FUNDING CUTS HAVE GOT TO GO!' From near Green Park I see a church that I have wanted to visit tucked into a dark street like a scene from a period drama. 'STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS.' Later in Hyde Park we meet more friends and a message comes through on my phone from UL who had been marching with his son saying that banks are being trashed near Cambridge Circus and there is pandemonium. Police sirens scream around Hyde Park Corner and we, the three families coming back to the flat for tea, cut through the opulence of Belgravia to avoid it. Under the nose of policemen a young couple, like insects, black scarves over their faces and really enormous bags, like stretched skin, the shells of cockroachs slung on their backs, carry a crate of beer. Close up, we can see pale skin, and make out skinny youthful faces, a boy and a girl. It is like a black space when they walk past, as if breath is held. All the children are fascinated, open mouthed, their instinctive love of order threatened. What do they have in their bags? They want to know. Why have they got masks on? Why did the policemen not stop them?
Nearing Victoria I see another church. One I didn't know was there, one I must have missed. It is much nearer than some other churches I have already been to. There. I think. I'll do that next. Pleased to have made a discovery. Outside an exclusive Belgravia shop a man in plush corduroy and a blazer pauses, watches us trudging along with our weary children as if we are foot soldiers back from an old battle, as if we are a defeated enemy. Finally back at the flat, eating toasted sandwiches we watch Fortnum and Masons's taken over on the tv. 'Oh' I say. 'What a shame. I love Fortnum and Mason's it's so beautiful.' My more left wing but rich friends scowl at me.
UL tells me later he saw the bloc party kids - a big group of those insect-like, masked youth- move up and out of Trafalagar Square, menacing but choreographed, wearing black and red, banging sticks, marching in formation - intent on trouble. He said they were 'high' but he wasn't sure if it was just excitement and fear or drugs too.
UL and I haven't seen each other much. He was ill, then one of the boys was ill and Exh has been on a babysitting boycott for weeks. We squeeze in a cup of coffee at the British Library before I meet a friend who works there for lunch. Everything feels rather unsatisfactory for I just have too much to do, I don't really have time for either assignation - I haven't yet been to a church, I need to buy hamster bedding, should be working on my novel or editing a friend's photographs for money. We correspond continually - modern electronic love letters of beauty and mundane detail. Homework, meals made, misunderstandings, political debate, It is wonderful and exciting but sometimes I wonder if the gaps between what we write and who we are is too wide. The reality is we are a middle aged couple that repeat themselves, apologise for wearing glasses, and forget they have told each other something already. I know that love is there but it is hard to trust. I worry each sentence exchanged and see trapdoors in everything. I know I will ruin what there is if I keep going with my detective's eye and empty pockets of faith. But I can't seem to help myself.
I write this and then think does it sound too mean? I have become increasingly squashed now between hurting people in my life, telling a story and telling the truth. I discuss this with a writer friend. She suggests writing about it. Being honest about the difficulties. She suggests researching how Charles Dickens responded to opinions on his serialised novels.
'Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Nell and her grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly instalments, his friend John Forster pointed out: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you?" Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win". In tragedy, it is: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". The dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Nell died.
He abides by plot which seems to be the sensible answer. But doesn't really help me. My plot was an accident. Unexpected. Muddled.
I race back from the British Library to the church I saw. Squeezing time before getting the boys from school The main door is shut, but I spot a back door, left slightly open. Pinned wonkily is a poster for a baby singing group. There are two women with smart buggies and cashmere dressed babies approaching and for a minute I think they are smiling at me, but of course it is at each other. 'Is it possible to get into the church this back way?' I ask. 'I just want to have a quick look.' Probably functioning on exhaustion and Munch mask screams behind the perfect make up they are helpful and usher me in. Only when we are all inside, past the kitchen, into the gloom of the vestry is there a sudden suspicious glance, an understandable holding tight of their babies. These are the first-to-arrive-mums, the organised ones but I am beyond their comprehension, a funny woman in patent platform court shoes rattling the bull ring of the locked wooden door into the actual church, then standing at the glass peering into view the interior. Which is almost square with a high ceiling. Stained glass, simple pews. A lot of space. I dare only a quick look before turning and bobbing and thanking my exit. Rushing to Sainsbury's and to get the boys from school.
I don't know I find these Pimlico/Belgravia churches hard to remember, hard to attach to. So difficult that when I went past St Saviour's the other day I couldn't really remember whether I had been inside or not. And when I read that St Michael's like St Paul's Wilton Place was designed by Thomas Cundy Jnr I know I have been to that church but can't quite remember which one it was. Most of the churches I have been to I remember vividly, but these few lack, lack what - a heart, a mystery, authenticity?
Initially a church was not planned in Chester Square ( built 1835) but squeezed into an awkward space meant for a mews when the nearby Chapel of the Lock and hospital was demolished in1842 leaving the new residents with no where to worship. Though it a surprise that the clientele of this 'the most retired and therefore the most satisfying of the Belgravia squares.' Nickolaus Pevsner - would be have been happy to worship in the Chapel of the Lock which had been alongside a leper hospital for women of dubious reputation.
'LOOK HOSPITAL, removed, from its old habitat in Grosvenor Place, to a more appropriate position in the Harrow Road, discharges the functions both of a hospital (established in 1746) and an asylum (dating from 1787) for penitent Magdalenes afflicted with disease, or sincerely desirous of abandoning the "primrose path that leads to the everlasting bonfire."
Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865
'Look or Lock' referring 'to the old French loques, rags, from the linen applied to sores; "but otherwise, and with more probability, from the Saxon loq, shut, closed, in reference to the necessary seclusion of the leper on account of the infectious nature of his disease." (Archer's Vestiges, Part I.)'
Finally ( and yes, I'm rushing ) I find these two things
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/02/yemeni-protest-chants.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/28/cuts-protest-uk-uncut-fortnum
I don't know. Our assumptions of safety get us into trouble sometimes.
Amen.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley St
'Your life sounds like a film at the moment.' a friend says. 'Yes.' I say . But I feel slightly detached as if writing my life separates me from myself. That sometimes I don't have time to experience what is happening to me, for I am always worrying about the next bit, what other people think, about the neighbours, about money, about what to make for tea. Also, I boasted about time having expanded but it just isn't true. I am swimming upstream, slightly harried, flailing against whatever is oncoming. Though occasionally the fast currents form warm deep pools and briefly I kick out my legs and tread water.
The night I started writing this blog I could not sleep for I knew somehow this was my adventure. Though I had no idea what I would write and when the words first tumbled out I held my breath as if they were escaping. The adventure turned out to be to tell my truth and my ambition became to make it as honest and real as possible. Though the stories have gathered unexpected momentum as if into a plot. But reality seems a difficult story to write. It becomes invasive and perhaps questionable for different realities are owned by different people.
Today at the doctor's I heard an older receptionist talking to a young pretty colleague. With great kindness and concern she was talking about her alcoholic partner. The pretty girl seemed to have experience of alcoholic behaviour too and asked deftly 'Does he take it out on you, does he get nasty towards you, are his outbursts directed at you?' 'Oh yes. Of course.' said the kindly and chatty woman. I was only eavesdropping but I realised she was oblivious of what she had said. Why? 'Of course? ' Why? 'Oh yes? ' Though I understood.
My pride meant I did not tell people what was happening to me as our family life gathered speed to the point where h was really really dh. I felt I peered out of a 'hide', a camouflaged place - observing normality from a smiley face. I thought it was all my fault. I thought others would think that too. I thought I have children now and I better make it work for all. Some of the tales I have told or events that have happened have been so truly painful and what a funny word - embarrassing - how did I get here - how did I let these things happen - how did I become so trapped - that writing the words, telling the truth freed me from that hidden, isolated observation post of pride and shame. Recently I went to see the twin babies of a couple I know and really like and in the midst of all the love and beauty and wow how lovely I am holding a baby, ooh now I am holding another one, and how do you ever get time to do anything ever again, one of the women said oh I read your recent blog this afternoon and she said it so matter of factly and warmly I felt like crying. Everything I once screened and desperately hid was just accepted in a nice calm room.
Years ago I worked with a picture editor - an honourable but difficult and demanding man who was brilliant and determined about what he did. He helped discover the artist Richard Billingham and in a junior position I spent a lot of time within office hours helping colour photocopy ( remember it was a while ago ) Richard Billingham's brilliant pictures from the snap shots originally taken for the work to be edited into a book. RB was a young art student who wanted to be a painter. His Dad Ray was a chronic alcoholic. His Mum Liz obese, with a love of colour and decoration and pets. They lived in a council flat in Dudley. RB had taken hundreds of pictures of his family life. His Dad slumped by a bed, his mum in a big dress raising a fist to his Dad infront of a gaudy carnival of colourful knick knacks and a dog and a cat eating dropped peas and carrots off the dirty floor. Richard had intended to make paintings from them. Understandable for the colour in his pictures has the verve of brushstrokes. But his tutors, this man I worked for and some others I didn't know, found them - greedily understanding their painful and beautiful honesty. At the time there was almost a blood lust for 'reality' in photography and a hunting mentality about obtaining it. As publication of the book loomed - letters come from a german art gallery that advised them all to leave the young man alone. This gallery had worked with a very young german female artist on a reality project and built her up and she had not been able to cope and killed herself.
But the book 'Ray's a laugh' is a masterpiece. And Richard Billingham is still an artist. I get it down from the shelf to look at it to write this. They are better even than I remembered. Very shocking but very very beautiful. Despite and including the violence and dirt they feel to me to be about love. And I remember there is a quote from Richard that when he came home the first thing he always did was check Ray was breathing, check he was still alive, and the photographs started with this.
I didn't write about these because they are about an alcoholic I just wanted to think about the ethics of portraying 'reality'. Of describing other people's lives involved in your own. I always think of the 'authorship' of Richard's pictures. That when the scratched and badly cared for negatives were lovingly hand printed to exhibition quality there was more to the pictures than the lazily cropped snaps printed on a machine at the chemists had shown. In these unseen edges there was more compositional balance, even more of an exact idea of a whole picture. Richard 'constructed' the pictures from the real events that occured infront of his eyes. He 'told' these lives. His skill makes them real. Not just them being in them. Though when the book was first published it felt like a boundary of reality was crossed. That there was no longer any privacy. Not even within the family.
Oh it is tricky.
In Mayfair I try to obain access to the grand fronted Christian Scientist reading room but only a bookshop is open. The man who appears from a back room says the 'church' ( is that what it is called - I am not sure?) is only open for services. There is a slight smell of wee and unwashed clothes. I take a BB from right outside and weave again up through the beautiful streets tucked between Park Lane and Berkeley Square. I don't have much time, I have an appointment with the bank which I am dreading and later exh wants to talk to me. Belatedly he has been reading the blog.
These streets are where I walked just after christmas trying to decide whether UOL ( unexpected old love) could or would become UL. It felt like a journey that day into a beautiful and unknown place, the church I eventually found a surprise, like one of those precious beautiful eggs that open to reveal intricate treasure.
Today though the church I had hoped to go into on that day is open and fortunately there is a BB locking station alongside. It is a relief because I am running out of time. Grosvenor Chapel. I don't know why it looks Dutch to me or maybe just American. Simple and charming with painted doors and a white portico. A clock and a steeple. I slip in through the door and there are buckets of flowers in the hallway. I am not sure if these are being stored for the flower stall at the side or if the church is about to be decorated. There is no one around. Inside it is plain and spacious with a wooden gallery and a simple shallow marble font on a slim stem.
At the altar there are pillars and fences and railings as if to keep the eye moving inwards, as if somewhere in the centre of these arrangements something is hidden. I read afterwards that the simple georgian church was built in 1730. On a peppercorn rent for 99 years given by Sir Grosvenor to developers including Benjamin Timbrell who designed it almost from a 'pattern book' of recently built churches like St Martin's in the Field and St George's of Hanover Square without having to bother with an architect. It's simple emphasis on the pulpit and the spoken word was changed by John Ninian Compern in 1912 'to a prayerful church in which attention is directed to the mystery of the altar.'
'In the body of the church Comper brought the iron Georgian communion rails forward to enclose a new sanctuary within which the High Altar stands against the screen. It is flanked by two Corinthian columns intended to carry a canopy which was never completed, and the giant Ionic columns at each side set the scale for colonnades which were to run the whole length of the building, replacing the gallery columns. They carry a beam on which stands the rood with the crucified Christ, attended by his Virgin Mother and the beloved disciple John, triumphing over the dragons of evil. Two angels kneel below with chalices to gather the sacred blood. The three delicate stained glass windows in the south wall are also by Comper two of which contain his trademark strawberry motif.'
I find also photographs of a beautiful installation on the internet by Claire Morgan in 2005 made on the stairs up to the church galleries of the Grosvenor Chapel where she made an arch of real strawberries hung on nylon thread
http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/page18.htm
I am so worried about what is about to come - the bank/exh- my reality - that I leave quickly. Back onto the bike in cold sunshine.
Since Richard Billingham's pictures were published technology has increased the pursuit of 'reality' I think. Like a mass produced invasion. Digital cameras, home computers. How we process what we see has changed. For example I read that the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video in 1989 made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before. (Film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis.) This became reality TV. But it is a strange reality - Big Brother, Jade Goody, Katie Price, The Only Way is Essex, even some programme I saw mentioned recently 'The Batchlorette' where a man chose a bride from a group of girls - leaving the spurned girl from the final two with a kiss, sobbing, heartbroken.
Big personalities acting out what being a human being is under the eye of a camera.
Finally I want to mention Nigel Shafran who is another photographer whose work I love. He takes beautiful pictures of rather unnoticed parts of life - the washing up on the draining board, his girlfriend, gentle ordinary domestic scenes. A very early picture shows the mark left by a sock on his girlfriend's leg, just the imprint on her skin. Time, love, a whisper of something noticed. Observation rather than entertainment from reality. 'An acceptance of the way things are.' he says.
The bank manager consolidates my debts. Exh says he won't babysit anymore.
Amen
The night I started writing this blog I could not sleep for I knew somehow this was my adventure. Though I had no idea what I would write and when the words first tumbled out I held my breath as if they were escaping. The adventure turned out to be to tell my truth and my ambition became to make it as honest and real as possible. Though the stories have gathered unexpected momentum as if into a plot. But reality seems a difficult story to write. It becomes invasive and perhaps questionable for different realities are owned by different people.
Today at the doctor's I heard an older receptionist talking to a young pretty colleague. With great kindness and concern she was talking about her alcoholic partner. The pretty girl seemed to have experience of alcoholic behaviour too and asked deftly 'Does he take it out on you, does he get nasty towards you, are his outbursts directed at you?' 'Oh yes. Of course.' said the kindly and chatty woman. I was only eavesdropping but I realised she was oblivious of what she had said. Why? 'Of course? ' Why? 'Oh yes? ' Though I understood.
My pride meant I did not tell people what was happening to me as our family life gathered speed to the point where h was really really dh. I felt I peered out of a 'hide', a camouflaged place - observing normality from a smiley face. I thought it was all my fault. I thought others would think that too. I thought I have children now and I better make it work for all. Some of the tales I have told or events that have happened have been so truly painful and what a funny word - embarrassing - how did I get here - how did I let these things happen - how did I become so trapped - that writing the words, telling the truth freed me from that hidden, isolated observation post of pride and shame. Recently I went to see the twin babies of a couple I know and really like and in the midst of all the love and beauty and wow how lovely I am holding a baby, ooh now I am holding another one, and how do you ever get time to do anything ever again, one of the women said oh I read your recent blog this afternoon and she said it so matter of factly and warmly I felt like crying. Everything I once screened and desperately hid was just accepted in a nice calm room.
Years ago I worked with a picture editor - an honourable but difficult and demanding man who was brilliant and determined about what he did. He helped discover the artist Richard Billingham and in a junior position I spent a lot of time within office hours helping colour photocopy ( remember it was a while ago ) Richard Billingham's brilliant pictures from the snap shots originally taken for the work to be edited into a book. RB was a young art student who wanted to be a painter. His Dad Ray was a chronic alcoholic. His Mum Liz obese, with a love of colour and decoration and pets. They lived in a council flat in Dudley. RB had taken hundreds of pictures of his family life. His Dad slumped by a bed, his mum in a big dress raising a fist to his Dad infront of a gaudy carnival of colourful knick knacks and a dog and a cat eating dropped peas and carrots off the dirty floor. Richard had intended to make paintings from them. Understandable for the colour in his pictures has the verve of brushstrokes. But his tutors, this man I worked for and some others I didn't know, found them - greedily understanding their painful and beautiful honesty. At the time there was almost a blood lust for 'reality' in photography and a hunting mentality about obtaining it. As publication of the book loomed - letters come from a german art gallery that advised them all to leave the young man alone. This gallery had worked with a very young german female artist on a reality project and built her up and she had not been able to cope and killed herself.
But the book 'Ray's a laugh' is a masterpiece. And Richard Billingham is still an artist. I get it down from the shelf to look at it to write this. They are better even than I remembered. Very shocking but very very beautiful. Despite and including the violence and dirt they feel to me to be about love. And I remember there is a quote from Richard that when he came home the first thing he always did was check Ray was breathing, check he was still alive, and the photographs started with this.
I didn't write about these because they are about an alcoholic I just wanted to think about the ethics of portraying 'reality'. Of describing other people's lives involved in your own. I always think of the 'authorship' of Richard's pictures. That when the scratched and badly cared for negatives were lovingly hand printed to exhibition quality there was more to the pictures than the lazily cropped snaps printed on a machine at the chemists had shown. In these unseen edges there was more compositional balance, even more of an exact idea of a whole picture. Richard 'constructed' the pictures from the real events that occured infront of his eyes. He 'told' these lives. His skill makes them real. Not just them being in them. Though when the book was first published it felt like a boundary of reality was crossed. That there was no longer any privacy. Not even within the family.
Oh it is tricky.
In Mayfair I try to obain access to the grand fronted Christian Scientist reading room but only a bookshop is open. The man who appears from a back room says the 'church' ( is that what it is called - I am not sure?) is only open for services. There is a slight smell of wee and unwashed clothes. I take a BB from right outside and weave again up through the beautiful streets tucked between Park Lane and Berkeley Square. I don't have much time, I have an appointment with the bank which I am dreading and later exh wants to talk to me. Belatedly he has been reading the blog.
These streets are where I walked just after christmas trying to decide whether UOL ( unexpected old love) could or would become UL. It felt like a journey that day into a beautiful and unknown place, the church I eventually found a surprise, like one of those precious beautiful eggs that open to reveal intricate treasure.
Today though the church I had hoped to go into on that day is open and fortunately there is a BB locking station alongside. It is a relief because I am running out of time. Grosvenor Chapel. I don't know why it looks Dutch to me or maybe just American. Simple and charming with painted doors and a white portico. A clock and a steeple. I slip in through the door and there are buckets of flowers in the hallway. I am not sure if these are being stored for the flower stall at the side or if the church is about to be decorated. There is no one around. Inside it is plain and spacious with a wooden gallery and a simple shallow marble font on a slim stem.
At the altar there are pillars and fences and railings as if to keep the eye moving inwards, as if somewhere in the centre of these arrangements something is hidden. I read afterwards that the simple georgian church was built in 1730. On a peppercorn rent for 99 years given by Sir Grosvenor to developers including Benjamin Timbrell who designed it almost from a 'pattern book' of recently built churches like St Martin's in the Field and St George's of Hanover Square without having to bother with an architect. It's simple emphasis on the pulpit and the spoken word was changed by John Ninian Compern in 1912 'to a prayerful church in which attention is directed to the mystery of the altar.'
'In the body of the church Comper brought the iron Georgian communion rails forward to enclose a new sanctuary within which the High Altar stands against the screen. It is flanked by two Corinthian columns intended to carry a canopy which was never completed, and the giant Ionic columns at each side set the scale for colonnades which were to run the whole length of the building, replacing the gallery columns. They carry a beam on which stands the rood with the crucified Christ, attended by his Virgin Mother and the beloved disciple John, triumphing over the dragons of evil. Two angels kneel below with chalices to gather the sacred blood. The three delicate stained glass windows in the south wall are also by Comper two of which contain his trademark strawberry motif.'
I find also photographs of a beautiful installation on the internet by Claire Morgan in 2005 made on the stairs up to the church galleries of the Grosvenor Chapel where she made an arch of real strawberries hung on nylon thread
http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/page18.htm
I am so worried about what is about to come - the bank/exh- my reality - that I leave quickly. Back onto the bike in cold sunshine.
Since Richard Billingham's pictures were published technology has increased the pursuit of 'reality' I think. Like a mass produced invasion. Digital cameras, home computers. How we process what we see has changed. For example I read that the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video in 1989 made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before. (Film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis.) This became reality TV. But it is a strange reality - Big Brother, Jade Goody, Katie Price, The Only Way is Essex, even some programme I saw mentioned recently 'The Batchlorette' where a man chose a bride from a group of girls - leaving the spurned girl from the final two with a kiss, sobbing, heartbroken.
Big personalities acting out what being a human being is under the eye of a camera.
Finally I want to mention Nigel Shafran who is another photographer whose work I love. He takes beautiful pictures of rather unnoticed parts of life - the washing up on the draining board, his girlfriend, gentle ordinary domestic scenes. A very early picture shows the mark left by a sock on his girlfriend's leg, just the imprint on her skin. Time, love, a whisper of something noticed. Observation rather than entertainment from reality. 'An acceptance of the way things are.' he says.
The bank manager consolidates my debts. Exh says he won't babysit anymore.
Amen
Monday, 21 February 2011
Chapel Royal, St James's Palace
Sunday morning. It is Radio 2 love songs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle time and I am waiting for exh to come and look after the boys so I can go to church. He is late. I am disorganised. My hair is wet and I am trying to wrap christmas presents for my best friend who I haven't seen since just before christmas. How does that happen? We are going to hers for sunday lunch. I am starting to think I will have to miss the church, that I won't get there in time when exh bursts through the door panting and gasping. He just woke up he says.
I put lipstick on and dash for it. Out into the damp sunday morning and quiet streets. A gathering of men on a street corner looks like one of those history walks and I lean into to hear what they are saying. But then I see a dungeons and dragon style book clutched by one and realise it is a queue for some sort of convention in a pub. The men have the happy animated faces of being with their own kind, of being understood. I pass by onto St James Park where there are snowdrops and pink blossom in the mist. It feels lovely to be out. I would have been dreading going before, really dreading it but I realise the fear has gone, now it is just what I do. No one is going to hurt or mock me. I enjoy it.
Oh and I have been looking forward to going to the Chapel Royal. There seems such a mystery to it. Within the dark slightly foreboding thick walls of St James palace there is a chapel where the services are open to all. I wouldn't even know about it if I hadn't tried before to get into the Lady Chapel just around the corner. A notice there said that it was only open in the summer months but services went on within the palace all year. On Pall Mall I find the gateway flanked by empty sentry boxes and a policeman standing guard. Is it ok to go to the church service? I falter. He waves me in. I am only just in time and a robed 'greeter' in the thick old stone walls of the doorway ushers me through the door into the tiny narrow church, opening a small, high up, hinged door of a pew to squeeze me into a seat. I am next to a smart politician-like couple and a tweed man who smells of clean strong soap. The plush chapel, is soft-lit with desk style lamps, like an expensive but characterless hotel and it is packed. Instead of sitting looking forward towards the altar we are all sat either side of the nave staring at each other. I remember with embarrassment that my hair is still wet and that I must look rather dishevelled and unkempt. I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I feel I have tumbled into another world.
Above the heads of the congregation the organ, pounds and soars joyfully.
Everyone rises as the choir enters. Small boys like white mice in extraordinary red jackets with gold braid and big gold buttons, red breeches and oliver cromwell shoes with buckles, the older choir flamingoes in white surplices with respectful bent necks and dipped heads, a man in crow robes, intricate ruffled sleeves and a black staff, some more men in surplices and the vicar all sailing in like swans. They process to the front of the church. Wow. I think. This goes on every sunday and who would know? This has happened every Sunday for hundreds of years.
We sit. Stand again and sing. Sit. The choir sings. There is a reading. Then another. The lord's prayer. Psalms from the St James prayer book. The tweed and soap man next to me relishes each word, really enjoys each one, as if reaching his tongue for an oyster, pulling and sucking the texture. It is almost embarrassing how much pleasure he is obtaining from speaking them aloud as if he is talking dirty alongside. I mumble along. Thinking I really don't believe what I'm saying but I think being here saying them is good. The kneelers are purple velvet. Very royal. Very posh hotel plush. And everyone kneels. In the parish church of my childhood there was a bit of laziness about kneeling - you could, but most people just put their hands together and crouched.
How funny - I find later, having written this that Samuel Pepys on the 10th May, 1663 'I walked to St. James's, and was there at masse, and was forced in the crowd to kneel down"
Observed by an elderly man on the opposite side I gaze around the room. The ceiling is panelled and intricately painted. Up high is the organ, tapestries hung high either side of the altar, a big quite modern looking stained glass window above the altar depicting a tree and at the back, just above me, a sort of royal box facing the altar. I imagine this is where the royal family worship if they come. It is completely hidden from view. Do you just not know if they are here I wonder? Are they here I think. The pews we are sat in have high walls as if we are fenced and stalled like animals. Or part of a lock-in with the Establishment.
The 'Chapel Royal' initially was not a place but a body of priests and singers who cared for the spiritual needs of the Sovereign and travelled with him. But Henry V111 took a fancy to the site of a female leper colony that had stood in this then remote corner since the saxon times. There was good hunting alongside and good access to the woods of Kensington and he comandeered the hospital, building a palace including the chapel as a home for the Chapel Royal. Like a fly digesting time in longer flashes, slowed down, opened up, it is impossible to understand that this place that is a brief stroll from my flat, from the Thames, from Whitehall could seem remote but perhaps the outskirts, the outside, the edge is always the furthest place away and therefore distant.
I read too that the chapel was considered the cradle of English church music - Tallis, Handel, and Henry Purcell were all organists or composers of the chapel and the poet Dryden escaped his many creditors by staying with Henry Purcell in a turret room of the composers apartments.
The vicar's sermon is of love. He talks well and passionately about showing up everyday to love, of being free from the limitations of romantic love to form a deeper and fundamental joy. He talks about faith and doubt. He is talking about God. But love is love I think. Mary I's heart is buried beneath the chapel. Charles I recieved the sacrament of Holy Communion prior to his execution here. Diana's body lay by the altar before her funeral. Victoria and Albert married here. Though I find all this out later. But it is me that is wracked by doubt. As if trust is something I haven't used for a while I keep opening the store cupboard door to find the basics, all the horded tins and packets look ok but are infact old, past their sell by date, no longer quite nice. Something has grown unknown and unexpected like mould or weevils in the everyday ingredients. I am horrified. I thought everything was just put away dry and stored. Here I say, and here, look at this, and this, showing ul what leaving did, what has been done. I have prided myself on my sanity and find now occasionally a raw madness in attempting to trust.
At the end of the service the white mice, the flamingoes, the black crow, all process out, the organ playing.
I shake hands with the vicar in the old walls of the palace as I leave but I notice that others keep his hand, holding it tight, maintaining steady eye contact. Not me. I flinch from the warmth and sincerity of the greeting. Bobbing my head in embarrassment. In the park though I feel fresh, restored. I need faith I think. I need to clean those cupboards and keep only the nourishment of good.
I put lipstick on and dash for it. Out into the damp sunday morning and quiet streets. A gathering of men on a street corner looks like one of those history walks and I lean into to hear what they are saying. But then I see a dungeons and dragon style book clutched by one and realise it is a queue for some sort of convention in a pub. The men have the happy animated faces of being with their own kind, of being understood. I pass by onto St James Park where there are snowdrops and pink blossom in the mist. It feels lovely to be out. I would have been dreading going before, really dreading it but I realise the fear has gone, now it is just what I do. No one is going to hurt or mock me. I enjoy it.
Oh and I have been looking forward to going to the Chapel Royal. There seems such a mystery to it. Within the dark slightly foreboding thick walls of St James palace there is a chapel where the services are open to all. I wouldn't even know about it if I hadn't tried before to get into the Lady Chapel just around the corner. A notice there said that it was only open in the summer months but services went on within the palace all year. On Pall Mall I find the gateway flanked by empty sentry boxes and a policeman standing guard. Is it ok to go to the church service? I falter. He waves me in. I am only just in time and a robed 'greeter' in the thick old stone walls of the doorway ushers me through the door into the tiny narrow church, opening a small, high up, hinged door of a pew to squeeze me into a seat. I am next to a smart politician-like couple and a tweed man who smells of clean strong soap. The plush chapel, is soft-lit with desk style lamps, like an expensive but characterless hotel and it is packed. Instead of sitting looking forward towards the altar we are all sat either side of the nave staring at each other. I remember with embarrassment that my hair is still wet and that I must look rather dishevelled and unkempt. I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I feel I have tumbled into another world.
Above the heads of the congregation the organ, pounds and soars joyfully.
Everyone rises as the choir enters. Small boys like white mice in extraordinary red jackets with gold braid and big gold buttons, red breeches and oliver cromwell shoes with buckles, the older choir flamingoes in white surplices with respectful bent necks and dipped heads, a man in crow robes, intricate ruffled sleeves and a black staff, some more men in surplices and the vicar all sailing in like swans. They process to the front of the church. Wow. I think. This goes on every sunday and who would know? This has happened every Sunday for hundreds of years.
We sit. Stand again and sing. Sit. The choir sings. There is a reading. Then another. The lord's prayer. Psalms from the St James prayer book. The tweed and soap man next to me relishes each word, really enjoys each one, as if reaching his tongue for an oyster, pulling and sucking the texture. It is almost embarrassing how much pleasure he is obtaining from speaking them aloud as if he is talking dirty alongside. I mumble along. Thinking I really don't believe what I'm saying but I think being here saying them is good. The kneelers are purple velvet. Very royal. Very posh hotel plush. And everyone kneels. In the parish church of my childhood there was a bit of laziness about kneeling - you could, but most people just put their hands together and crouched.
How funny - I find later, having written this that Samuel Pepys on the 10th May, 1663 'I walked to St. James's, and was there at masse, and was forced in the crowd to kneel down"
Observed by an elderly man on the opposite side I gaze around the room. The ceiling is panelled and intricately painted. Up high is the organ, tapestries hung high either side of the altar, a big quite modern looking stained glass window above the altar depicting a tree and at the back, just above me, a sort of royal box facing the altar. I imagine this is where the royal family worship if they come. It is completely hidden from view. Do you just not know if they are here I wonder? Are they here I think. The pews we are sat in have high walls as if we are fenced and stalled like animals. Or part of a lock-in with the Establishment.
The 'Chapel Royal' initially was not a place but a body of priests and singers who cared for the spiritual needs of the Sovereign and travelled with him. But Henry V111 took a fancy to the site of a female leper colony that had stood in this then remote corner since the saxon times. There was good hunting alongside and good access to the woods of Kensington and he comandeered the hospital, building a palace including the chapel as a home for the Chapel Royal. Like a fly digesting time in longer flashes, slowed down, opened up, it is impossible to understand that this place that is a brief stroll from my flat, from the Thames, from Whitehall could seem remote but perhaps the outskirts, the outside, the edge is always the furthest place away and therefore distant.
I read too that the chapel was considered the cradle of English church music - Tallis, Handel, and Henry Purcell were all organists or composers of the chapel and the poet Dryden escaped his many creditors by staying with Henry Purcell in a turret room of the composers apartments.
The vicar's sermon is of love. He talks well and passionately about showing up everyday to love, of being free from the limitations of romantic love to form a deeper and fundamental joy. He talks about faith and doubt. He is talking about God. But love is love I think. Mary I's heart is buried beneath the chapel. Charles I recieved the sacrament of Holy Communion prior to his execution here. Diana's body lay by the altar before her funeral. Victoria and Albert married here. Though I find all this out later. But it is me that is wracked by doubt. As if trust is something I haven't used for a while I keep opening the store cupboard door to find the basics, all the horded tins and packets look ok but are infact old, past their sell by date, no longer quite nice. Something has grown unknown and unexpected like mould or weevils in the everyday ingredients. I am horrified. I thought everything was just put away dry and stored. Here I say, and here, look at this, and this, showing ul what leaving did, what has been done. I have prided myself on my sanity and find now occasionally a raw madness in attempting to trust.
At the end of the service the white mice, the flamingoes, the black crow, all process out, the organ playing.
I shake hands with the vicar in the old walls of the palace as I leave but I notice that others keep his hand, holding it tight, maintaining steady eye contact. Not me. I flinch from the warmth and sincerity of the greeting. Bobbing my head in embarrassment. In the park though I feel fresh, restored. I need faith I think. I need to clean those cupboards and keep only the nourishment of good.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
St Saviour's, Pimlico
Something has happened. Whether I have got more organised or the children's increasing contentment and my own upsurge of happiness has combined to good effect but I am less manic, less stricken with the poverty of time. Before I felt I was running, literally running between everything needing to be done, wheras now, I feel I am ambling, able to take in some of the scenery. I painted my nails at the weekend while the boys played lego. My elder son saying sternly to the younger one, let mum sit there - she can't do ANYTHING while her nails are drying. Thank you. I said, admiring the shiny red gloss and the rare view from the sofa understanding for the first time the benefits of nail varnish.
But really it is as if time itself has expanded. I seem able to fit in two or three dates a week with ul without anyone really noticing. Perhaps if the neighbours watched the windows really carefully they would see him here occasionally after the children have gone to bed or briefly when they are at school. But it isn't just time for dates there just feels more time for everything. Today I did a supermarket shop, the vacuuming, the paperwork, I made appointments for the doctor and the dentist, and registered for tickets for the Olympics. I left the flat clean and tidy to go to St Saviour's on a BB, knowing the church would be open for a Tuesday lunchtime mass, I caught the end of the service, had a good look round, then went and bought hamster bedding (from a newsgents/come pet store), good salami and Italian cheese from the Italian cafe and was back at the flat starting to write with a good two hours clear before picking the children. Even now writing this in the evening - I have already made minestrone soup, tidied up, put the children to bed and again I have a couple of hours stretching ahead. Plus as if this new telescopic time, extends even further I have started reading again. Sitting on the tube and just before I go to sleep. Finally I have read The Corrections ( loved it, but not completely convinced it had the depth of it's touted masterpiece/ maybe squandered 'Christmas' at the end) I have read Invisible by Paul Auster. Oh I love Paul Auster. But it isn't his best. Now I am reading Island on the Edge of the World. The story of St Kilda by Charles Maclean.
St Saviours is at the Vauxhall Bridge Rd end of Lupus Street, just before the tube station. In the not just manic but nearly mad days when we lived round the corner from the other end of Lupus St and had a two mile journey to school each day and another two on the way back and exh was very, very dh - I used the clock on the church to know if we were late or not. Pushing the youngest still in his buggy, encouraging the eldest on his bike, singing, telling stories, chanting positive affirmations and taking deep breaths. Shall we go down the 'secret path' this morning I would encourage as I led them on a route through the vast Churchill Garden estate. Every morning stopping to say 'We're going to rescue you!' to a teddy bear rotting behind a wire fence that had been thrown in a tangled piece of undergrowth behind some flats, his dirty fur and sad face slumped in leaves. We talked about bringing a fishing line to rescue him. Of cleaning him up. Of loving him back to life. I even thought about writing a children's story about the bear and that school route - the herons we spotted at the edge of the Thames dock ( once even a kingfisher ), the tough dogs and very very occasionally tough people we skirted in the estate, the concrete and the patches of nature combined. But perhaps I knew it wasn't really a children's story. Though it was my children's story. There was a slumped unhappy figure in our lives and those boys certainly wanted to love him back to life and even I would have perhaps still have attempted to try on their behalf.
When I creep into the church today it looks completely empty but I can hear the end of the Lord's prayer sing-songed from a side chapel and a woman in orange perched on a chair mouthing the words. I can hear the voices of others but she is the only one I can see. Stepping out of the day into those old words, I can feel the soothing peace. Despite my personal feelings of wellbeing something truly terrible has happened and a church seems a really good place to go.
Yesterday was Valentine's day. My sons made me perfume with a strong top note of toothpaste in a milk carton. UL brought me some supermarket flowers (no one can be completely perfect). Exh broke the rules and let himself into the flat also to leave some flowers. But as I left to pick the boys up from school I miss a call from my bestfriend and then a text comes in. The text is from my elder sons best friend's mother who is living in a refuge, though finally, finally she is going to be housed, but she texts me to say she has terrible news, two children who lived at the refuge and were really good friends with her children were murdered yesterday by their dad. It is all over the news. she says. Reading the text I feel sick to the stomach. I feel angry and shaky. I feel, and this is so instinctive and the thoughts feel so old - so completely weary of men and their dangerous harboured thoughts.
Sometimes I have thought that if I finish this blog I'll do another about madonna and child representations. It is a hard plural to work out - madonnas and child? madonnas and children? Though I imagine if I started looking they would probably be everywhere ( also I could go back into the churches and look again and look more carefully ). I remember at school an amazing and inspiring art teacher teaching us art history and we studied so many - Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Duccio. Now most of those are around the corner at the National Gallery and what a pleasure to find time to see them. But only very recently did I truly understand that these sculptures and paintings are attempts made by generations and generations to describe the bond and strength and sacrifice by mothers for children. I want to find one in this church and think of the strength and power of this woman who escaped this brutal man with her children and then fought in the courts for two years not to allow him access to the children knowing he was not safe. Whilst week in week out testing their spellings, feeding them, washing their clothes, keeping their finger and toe nails straight and short. Oh! but it was overturned. All that strength and fight and journey for them to be murdered. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I am not sure I have the right to write about this, it is not my story. But still I know just enough about chaos to watch at school and see the Mums who feel frightened, the ones with bruises. But I only find a michaelangelo copy of a madonna and child and I don't know how you know what is a copy or not but I felt I did.
It is nice in the church, the communion being taken, the words being said, some nice stained glass, nice kneelers hung neatly on the back of the pews, but nothing I latch onto. A font topped by a huge gothic wooden top like an ornate spire with a pulley system to lift the lid off. I imagine having a baby christened and worrying that the rope would snap, the great heavy wooden structure hurtling to hurt the baby. It is one of the fears that I wake in the night with - that somehow the bunk bed ( which isn't really a bunk bed but a platform bed with a mattress underneath) will collapse and crush my younger son. Lying in the dark I can picture the bolts working loose from the structure, the wooden slats tumbling, the noise of the crash and screaming. But then I make myself listen to the silence, imagine a big 'golf sale' sign arrow that means 'I can't think about this now' and finally tumble back into sleep.
St Saviour's is part of Thomas Cubitt's Pimlico, like square feet of building rolled out with churches attached. Previously it was where vegetables were grown for Westminster and the City of London, with a tea garden in the meadows, reed banks, a steel works and a distillery. Thomas Cubitt pieced together the land from different landowners and by 1839 he had established an eleven acre factory area on the river bank on the present site of Dolphin Square, just round the corner from St Saviour's.
'Here the joinery, glass, plasterwork, steel and marble, as well as some of the bricks and cement for the various building operations were produced, using the latest steam-driven technology, enabling the business in Pimlico and beyond to benefit from the sheer scale of production as well as control of the entire process.'
While Cubitt had to clear most of the older generation gardening businesses out of the area in order to make the roads he then sub-let again for gardening, until he was ready to sponsor building on a large scale in 1840. Like the ferry man who sabotaged the building of Westminster Bridge the market gardeners must have taken this changing world badly.
St Saviour's was consecrated in 1864 and designed by Thomas Cundy. But Pimlico struggled as an area as early as 1852 - Henry Mayhew noted the neighbourhood 'prolific in loose women' in particular he identified this neighbourhood as one where an affluent man might seek a discreet introduction to the sort of 'quiet lady whose secrecy he can reply upon...who in all probability does not reside at any great distance.' Though I also read that at Victoria station there were complaints of being accosted by a 'low class of unfortunates who come from Great Peter Street, Laundry Yard and the black area that lies in the very shadow of the Houses of Parliament' Which is where I live.
Today I ring my best friend back. She says on valentines day afternoon she was upstairs in her house tidying the bedroom and saw flames leaping behind the blinds in the opposite house's bedroom and called the firebrigade. Then she ran across the road and knocked at the door to save the occupants. Her son who is nearly twenty was shouting out of her upstairs window 'Come away mum come away mum come away from the fire'. Standing on the step she suddenly realises somehow ( I don't get this bit but that is what she says) that what she has seen is infact the glint of hundreds of candles and valentine balloons. Too late, the operator says the fire engine is on it's way. The man in his dressing gown descends the stairs, tying the belt and shuffling his parts, opening the door as the fire engine arrives. I hope it was HIS wife I say.
Amen.
But really it is as if time itself has expanded. I seem able to fit in two or three dates a week with ul without anyone really noticing. Perhaps if the neighbours watched the windows really carefully they would see him here occasionally after the children have gone to bed or briefly when they are at school. But it isn't just time for dates there just feels more time for everything. Today I did a supermarket shop, the vacuuming, the paperwork, I made appointments for the doctor and the dentist, and registered for tickets for the Olympics. I left the flat clean and tidy to go to St Saviour's on a BB, knowing the church would be open for a Tuesday lunchtime mass, I caught the end of the service, had a good look round, then went and bought hamster bedding (from a newsgents/come pet store), good salami and Italian cheese from the Italian cafe and was back at the flat starting to write with a good two hours clear before picking the children. Even now writing this in the evening - I have already made minestrone soup, tidied up, put the children to bed and again I have a couple of hours stretching ahead. Plus as if this new telescopic time, extends even further I have started reading again. Sitting on the tube and just before I go to sleep. Finally I have read The Corrections ( loved it, but not completely convinced it had the depth of it's touted masterpiece/ maybe squandered 'Christmas' at the end) I have read Invisible by Paul Auster. Oh I love Paul Auster. But it isn't his best. Now I am reading Island on the Edge of the World. The story of St Kilda by Charles Maclean.
St Saviours is at the Vauxhall Bridge Rd end of Lupus Street, just before the tube station. In the not just manic but nearly mad days when we lived round the corner from the other end of Lupus St and had a two mile journey to school each day and another two on the way back and exh was very, very dh - I used the clock on the church to know if we were late or not. Pushing the youngest still in his buggy, encouraging the eldest on his bike, singing, telling stories, chanting positive affirmations and taking deep breaths. Shall we go down the 'secret path' this morning I would encourage as I led them on a route through the vast Churchill Garden estate. Every morning stopping to say 'We're going to rescue you!' to a teddy bear rotting behind a wire fence that had been thrown in a tangled piece of undergrowth behind some flats, his dirty fur and sad face slumped in leaves. We talked about bringing a fishing line to rescue him. Of cleaning him up. Of loving him back to life. I even thought about writing a children's story about the bear and that school route - the herons we spotted at the edge of the Thames dock ( once even a kingfisher ), the tough dogs and very very occasionally tough people we skirted in the estate, the concrete and the patches of nature combined. But perhaps I knew it wasn't really a children's story. Though it was my children's story. There was a slumped unhappy figure in our lives and those boys certainly wanted to love him back to life and even I would have perhaps still have attempted to try on their behalf.
When I creep into the church today it looks completely empty but I can hear the end of the Lord's prayer sing-songed from a side chapel and a woman in orange perched on a chair mouthing the words. I can hear the voices of others but she is the only one I can see. Stepping out of the day into those old words, I can feel the soothing peace. Despite my personal feelings of wellbeing something truly terrible has happened and a church seems a really good place to go.
Yesterday was Valentine's day. My sons made me perfume with a strong top note of toothpaste in a milk carton. UL brought me some supermarket flowers (no one can be completely perfect). Exh broke the rules and let himself into the flat also to leave some flowers. But as I left to pick the boys up from school I miss a call from my bestfriend and then a text comes in. The text is from my elder sons best friend's mother who is living in a refuge, though finally, finally she is going to be housed, but she texts me to say she has terrible news, two children who lived at the refuge and were really good friends with her children were murdered yesterday by their dad. It is all over the news. she says. Reading the text I feel sick to the stomach. I feel angry and shaky. I feel, and this is so instinctive and the thoughts feel so old - so completely weary of men and their dangerous harboured thoughts.
Sometimes I have thought that if I finish this blog I'll do another about madonna and child representations. It is a hard plural to work out - madonnas and child? madonnas and children? Though I imagine if I started looking they would probably be everywhere ( also I could go back into the churches and look again and look more carefully ). I remember at school an amazing and inspiring art teacher teaching us art history and we studied so many - Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Duccio. Now most of those are around the corner at the National Gallery and what a pleasure to find time to see them. But only very recently did I truly understand that these sculptures and paintings are attempts made by generations and generations to describe the bond and strength and sacrifice by mothers for children. I want to find one in this church and think of the strength and power of this woman who escaped this brutal man with her children and then fought in the courts for two years not to allow him access to the children knowing he was not safe. Whilst week in week out testing their spellings, feeding them, washing their clothes, keeping their finger and toe nails straight and short. Oh! but it was overturned. All that strength and fight and journey for them to be murdered. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I am not sure I have the right to write about this, it is not my story. But still I know just enough about chaos to watch at school and see the Mums who feel frightened, the ones with bruises. But I only find a michaelangelo copy of a madonna and child and I don't know how you know what is a copy or not but I felt I did.
It is nice in the church, the communion being taken, the words being said, some nice stained glass, nice kneelers hung neatly on the back of the pews, but nothing I latch onto. A font topped by a huge gothic wooden top like an ornate spire with a pulley system to lift the lid off. I imagine having a baby christened and worrying that the rope would snap, the great heavy wooden structure hurtling to hurt the baby. It is one of the fears that I wake in the night with - that somehow the bunk bed ( which isn't really a bunk bed but a platform bed with a mattress underneath) will collapse and crush my younger son. Lying in the dark I can picture the bolts working loose from the structure, the wooden slats tumbling, the noise of the crash and screaming. But then I make myself listen to the silence, imagine a big 'golf sale' sign arrow that means 'I can't think about this now' and finally tumble back into sleep.
St Saviour's is part of Thomas Cubitt's Pimlico, like square feet of building rolled out with churches attached. Previously it was where vegetables were grown for Westminster and the City of London, with a tea garden in the meadows, reed banks, a steel works and a distillery. Thomas Cubitt pieced together the land from different landowners and by 1839 he had established an eleven acre factory area on the river bank on the present site of Dolphin Square, just round the corner from St Saviour's.
'Here the joinery, glass, plasterwork, steel and marble, as well as some of the bricks and cement for the various building operations were produced, using the latest steam-driven technology, enabling the business in Pimlico and beyond to benefit from the sheer scale of production as well as control of the entire process.'
While Cubitt had to clear most of the older generation gardening businesses out of the area in order to make the roads he then sub-let again for gardening, until he was ready to sponsor building on a large scale in 1840. Like the ferry man who sabotaged the building of Westminster Bridge the market gardeners must have taken this changing world badly.
St Saviour's was consecrated in 1864 and designed by Thomas Cundy. But Pimlico struggled as an area as early as 1852 - Henry Mayhew noted the neighbourhood 'prolific in loose women' in particular he identified this neighbourhood as one where an affluent man might seek a discreet introduction to the sort of 'quiet lady whose secrecy he can reply upon...who in all probability does not reside at any great distance.' Though I also read that at Victoria station there were complaints of being accosted by a 'low class of unfortunates who come from Great Peter Street, Laundry Yard and the black area that lies in the very shadow of the Houses of Parliament' Which is where I live.
Today I ring my best friend back. She says on valentines day afternoon she was upstairs in her house tidying the bedroom and saw flames leaping behind the blinds in the opposite house's bedroom and called the firebrigade. Then she ran across the road and knocked at the door to save the occupants. Her son who is nearly twenty was shouting out of her upstairs window 'Come away mum come away mum come away from the fire'. Standing on the step she suddenly realises somehow ( I don't get this bit but that is what she says) that what she has seen is infact the glint of hundreds of candles and valentine balloons. Too late, the operator says the fire engine is on it's way. The man in his dressing gown descends the stairs, tying the belt and shuffling his parts, opening the door as the fire engine arrives. I hope it was HIS wife I say.
Amen.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
St-Mary- at-Lambeth
I forgot to mention the windmills last week.
I think of them as I cross over the Thames at Lambeth Bridge for I have seen maps and pictures with the sails dotted on the pastoral and then industrial South London skyline
Today from the bridge I see the Houses of Parliament dipping steeply into the deep water of the river, the London Eye turning impercetibly, the yellow, cartoon-like amphibean vehicle of the Duck tours passing underneath, the new south london skyscrapers awkward on the horizon - that triple clock one with the head like a 70s pencil case and whatever the new really tall one is going to be - underneath all that sky. This is an ancient place to cross the river, where the horse ferry between Westminster and Lambeth Palace operated with flat bottomed punts capable of fitting a coach and six horses.
I have remembered that there is a church south of the river much nearer home than the last one I wrote about but it is not a church anymore but The Garden Museum. Tucked right next to the Palace of Lambeth on the corner of a mini roundabout and a block of modern flats I wonder too if there might be a church within Lambeth Palace. The big gates are open in the old gate house which is unusual and I find a reception. The helpful east european man doesn't think there is a church but gives me a telephone number and a form to fill in to organise visits with parties of over 50. I take the form and think I will ring and see.
This week I asked UL why he did not stay in Russia? Why he did not make his life there? Remember that is where he went. That he can speak Russian fluently. That his wife is from an ex soviet state. He talked to me of eventually missing the home of language, of living inside what you can say, the layers of what is understood. I imagined my own interior space like the cave of a walnut, a finely woven nest - tongued by words and the tilt and tip of comprehension when fully attended to, the lilt and rhythm of questions, the playfulness, the understanding, the vibration and power of humour, passion and kindness. I think it is possibly the one thing I have always known I needed is that central pleasure of language. What I always enjoyed with him. I find it hard at most times to maintain confidence and often strangely writing or talking is where I feel most at ease - like taking a little hammer to chip away at the bother of being. Only occasionally and preciously, reaching the rare silence of truly understanding or truly being understood as if kept kernalled safe.
The church/museum is set back in the scrap of a graveyard by this overplanned mini roundabout surrounded by traffic lights. I have been once before. I went with the boys and my mum and dad after Sunday lunch. The boys with their bikes and cooped up races and my mum and dad behind and disapproving but brave with limping hips. At the museum which seemed at the time ludicrously expensive when they paid, ( give me the money! give me the money! I could buy washing powder with it! funny how pride is?) they dawdled over each watering can and I stood the boys in the graveyard garden feeling the exhaustion of being a single parent and the weary position of doing the best bad job I could - understanding the day wasn't going very well and knowing it was unlikely to get much better.
Today it costs me £6 to get in even though I explain ( look at me these days! haggling to get into a church!) that I don't want to go to the museum I just want to look at the remains of the church. Though in the end I am late to pick the children up because I spend so long there. The church interior has been blanked out by plain plywood boxed structures and a stairway that creates the exhibition space. It is as if the details of the church have been packed away in a packing case but inside out with the church architecture wrapped round the exterior of the box. I am not sure that gets there exactly but it is confused and complicated, obliterating and making neutral the church itself. On the west side the shelved wall of an L shaped souvenir shop selling greetings cards, dinky garden inspired gifts and historical gardening books is lined against a detail of the rood screen. On the east a cafe crouched in the plywood partitions and under old windows - though in a church with so little left of itself there is some bad stained glass.
The back garden grave yard is beautiful. I remember being there with the boys and feel I have come along way. I don't feel desperate anymore. There is the grave of the Tradescants, an amazing tomb with finely detailed relief. On one side a scene with a crocodile, beautiful shells at the bottom of the sea and some egyptian buildings. On the other the suggestion of unrelenting History and Time - with classical pillars broken and buried underground and spires tumbling with the movement of earth. John Tradescant father and son were travellers, diplomats, horticultural pioneers, and polymaths, they were also collectors, acquiring (and asking their friends to acquire) specimens of the wonders of the world. This grave is the reason the garden museum is here for they were impotant botanists and horticulturists, the younger said to be the first man to grow a pineapple in England. Indeed there are stone pineapples on Lambeth Bridge in celebration. Their botanical garden in Lambeth became the centre of horitcultural interest in Britain and thier collections could be viewed by the public at a large house 'The Ark'. Described by a German traveller George Christoph Sirn in 1638
'In the museum of Mr. John Tradescant are the following things: first in the courtyard there lie two ribs of a whale, also a very ingenious little boat of bark; then in the garden all kinds of foreign plants, which are to be found in a special little book which Mr. Tradescant has had printed about them. In the museum itself we saw a salamander, a chameleon, a pelican, a remora, a lanhado from Africa, a white partridge, a goose which has grown in Scotland on a tree, a flying squirrel, another squirrel like a fish, all kinds of bright colored birds from India, a number of things changed into stone, amongst others a piece of human flesh on a bone, gourds, olives, a piece of wood, an ape's head, a cheese, etc; all kinds of shells, the hand of a mermaid, the hand of a mummy, a very natural wax hand under glass, all kinds of precious stones, coins, a picture wrought in feathers, a small piece of wood from the cross of Christ, pictures in perspective of Henry IV and Louis XIII of France, who are shown, as in nature, on a polished steel mirror when this is held against the middle of the picture, a little box in which a landscape is seen in perspective, pictures from the church of S. Sophia in Constantinople copied by a Jew into a book, two cups of rinocerode, a cup of an E. Indian alcedo which is a kind of unicorn, many Turkish and other foreign shoes and boots, a sea parrot, a toad-fish, an elk's hoof with three claws, a bat as large as a pigeon, a human bone weighing 42 lbs., Indian arrows such as are used by the executioners in the West Indies- when a man is condemned to death, they lay open his back with them and he dies of it, an instrument used by the Jews in circumcision, some very light wood from Africa, the robe of the King of Virginia, a few goblets of agate, a girdle such as the Turks wear in Jerusalem, the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone, a large magnet stone, a S. Francis in wax under glass, as also a S. Jerome, the Pater Noster of Pope Gregory XV, pipes from the East and West Indies, a stone found in the West Indies in the water, whereon are graven Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a beautiful present from the Duke of Buckingham, which was of gold and diamonds affixed to a feather by which the four elements were signified, Isidor's MS of de natura hominis, a scourge with which Charles V is said to have scourged himself, a hat band of snake bones'.
All this (apparently in dubious circumstances) was taken over by Elias Ashmole and formed the foundation of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. 'Museum' itself a new word listed a few years later in the New World of Words (1706) as `a Study, or Library; also a College, or Publick Place for the Resort of Learned Men', with a specific entry for `Ashmole's Museum', described as `a neat Building in the City of Oxford'.
Though there is another grave in this beautifully planted place that just says 'Reader, prepare to meet thy god.'
I discover later that the tower of the church is medieval and I feel ashamed I did not notice it. The church just seemed bland, though checking the photos I realise that the tower is the part nearest to Lambeth Palace and maybe I wasn't concentrating when I entered and the rest of the mainly victorian building is so hidden by its clumsy museum purpose. The church is mentioned in the Domesday Book and apparently even before the Norman Conquest there was a church dedicated to St Mary's here which belonged to the Countess Goda, sister to King Edward the Confessor. I think the site was higher and drier than much of the south bank of the thames for the land around was low and sodden and developed very slowly. The Archbishop of Canterbury took up residence of the Manor of Lambeth in 1197 - giving the church a special importance and the bells of the church rang out whenever royal personages came to visit the Archbishop, the boats pulling up at the landing alongside.
Up the staircase of the museum, is the engraving of 'The Prospect of London and Westminster taken form Lambeth' by W.Hollar 1707 edition of a 1647 plate. Oh, it is beautiful with intricately inked detail, the arch of the wide river, Westminster Abbey high in the distance across the river, rural Lambeth etched on the bend of the Thames and St Mary's central, the Tradescant tomb clearly visible. Wencelas Hollar 1607 - 1677 was an engraver and map maker from Prague who came to London in 1637. Charging 4 pence an hour he was prolific with 2733 examples of his work known and listed - views of London, a map after the Great fire, detailed depictions of women's fashions, animals and engraved portraits of both of the Tradescant's. A biography written by a contemporary John Aubrey has this detail of Holler leaving London during the civil war and then returning.
“I remember he told me that when he first came into England, (which was a serene time of peace) that the people, both poore and rich, did looke cheerfully, but at his returne, he found the countenances of the people all changed, melancholy, spightfull, as if bewitched.
But somehow he died penniless. “He was a very friendly good-natured man as could be, but shiftlesse as to the world, and dyed not rich."
I engineer time to spend with ul. Though on a rare weekend I don't have the boys we see each other until late and then meet again early in the morning. This is what an affair feels like I think. But I know him so well I skate round the guilt. Just. Perhaps only just. The following morning I phone exh to make arrangements about the children. But they have all stayed with friends and exh is in the shower. His friend answers and pretends to be him tired, shouting, explaining the children woke them all up at five in the morning.
He means it so genuinely as a joke. But I think it is exh. I think he is drunk. It sounds so perfectly like when he was. And exactly the right time of day. It is 10 oclock in the morning. I just keep saying 'I can't really understand what you are saying' I keep saying it. I am terrified. This life, my life, the boys life that I believe to be on solid ground is suddenly tipped up, I am drowning. I want to puke. I want to cry. Also I understand I have been arrogant - our life has got better because exh stopped drinking - not really anything to do with me. I have worked hard but not made the fundamental difference.
I buy a book on amazon called 'Lambeth windmills' a careful piece of detective work tracing windmills from the end of the 16th century that appear and disappear from maps - as the fickle design mind of the cartographer decides whether he fancied using the nice symbol of sails or didn't have enough space to squeeze it in. Normally windmills are associated with corn milling but in Lambeth, famous for wood yards, glassmaking, pottery and boat building the spread of industrialization caused the power of the wind to be set to other tasks - mechanical saws and crushing materials for the production of china ware. The Garden museum had a history of Lambeth powerpoint installation, outlining the industries, the smell, the fast development south of the river, it was what made me late to pick the boys up from school - so many details I wanted to catch them all. From 'A Map of the New Roads from Westminster Bridge' published in 1753 showing the three windmills near St Mary-at-Lambeth in almost open fields progress hurtled on, steam, the railways, mass production and the windmills disappearing. My final detail and oh, there seems so many, even lovely ones I can't really fit in - the poetry of Herrick, a toll path across the Lambeth marshes, even Lambeth Bridge featured in the 1982 music video hit 'pass the dutchie' by Musical Youth - is the history of Doulton's pottery in Lambeth. A patnership formed in 1815 when John Doulton ( who had just finished an apprenticeship with early commercial potter John Dwight) and John Watts ( previous forman of the existing pottery) were taken into partnership by a young widow Martha Jones who had inherited the business from her late husband. Alongside beautiful tiles and beautiful porcelain they made drain pipes. Thousands of drain pipes. High temperature firing taking stoneware to its true vitrified form. Expanded by Doulton's son Henry these drainpipes drained and dried the boggy land of London for building and allowed the vanguard of Victorian sanitation to be brought to Metropolitan London. This is the land our city is built on. Our waste matter taken away.
Amen.
I think of them as I cross over the Thames at Lambeth Bridge for I have seen maps and pictures with the sails dotted on the pastoral and then industrial South London skyline
Today from the bridge I see the Houses of Parliament dipping steeply into the deep water of the river, the London Eye turning impercetibly, the yellow, cartoon-like amphibean vehicle of the Duck tours passing underneath, the new south london skyscrapers awkward on the horizon - that triple clock one with the head like a 70s pencil case and whatever the new really tall one is going to be - underneath all that sky. This is an ancient place to cross the river, where the horse ferry between Westminster and Lambeth Palace operated with flat bottomed punts capable of fitting a coach and six horses.
I have remembered that there is a church south of the river much nearer home than the last one I wrote about but it is not a church anymore but The Garden Museum. Tucked right next to the Palace of Lambeth on the corner of a mini roundabout and a block of modern flats I wonder too if there might be a church within Lambeth Palace. The big gates are open in the old gate house which is unusual and I find a reception. The helpful east european man doesn't think there is a church but gives me a telephone number and a form to fill in to organise visits with parties of over 50. I take the form and think I will ring and see.
This week I asked UL why he did not stay in Russia? Why he did not make his life there? Remember that is where he went. That he can speak Russian fluently. That his wife is from an ex soviet state. He talked to me of eventually missing the home of language, of living inside what you can say, the layers of what is understood. I imagined my own interior space like the cave of a walnut, a finely woven nest - tongued by words and the tilt and tip of comprehension when fully attended to, the lilt and rhythm of questions, the playfulness, the understanding, the vibration and power of humour, passion and kindness. I think it is possibly the one thing I have always known I needed is that central pleasure of language. What I always enjoyed with him. I find it hard at most times to maintain confidence and often strangely writing or talking is where I feel most at ease - like taking a little hammer to chip away at the bother of being. Only occasionally and preciously, reaching the rare silence of truly understanding or truly being understood as if kept kernalled safe.
The church/museum is set back in the scrap of a graveyard by this overplanned mini roundabout surrounded by traffic lights. I have been once before. I went with the boys and my mum and dad after Sunday lunch. The boys with their bikes and cooped up races and my mum and dad behind and disapproving but brave with limping hips. At the museum which seemed at the time ludicrously expensive when they paid, ( give me the money! give me the money! I could buy washing powder with it! funny how pride is?) they dawdled over each watering can and I stood the boys in the graveyard garden feeling the exhaustion of being a single parent and the weary position of doing the best bad job I could - understanding the day wasn't going very well and knowing it was unlikely to get much better.
Today it costs me £6 to get in even though I explain ( look at me these days! haggling to get into a church!) that I don't want to go to the museum I just want to look at the remains of the church. Though in the end I am late to pick the children up because I spend so long there. The church interior has been blanked out by plain plywood boxed structures and a stairway that creates the exhibition space. It is as if the details of the church have been packed away in a packing case but inside out with the church architecture wrapped round the exterior of the box. I am not sure that gets there exactly but it is confused and complicated, obliterating and making neutral the church itself. On the west side the shelved wall of an L shaped souvenir shop selling greetings cards, dinky garden inspired gifts and historical gardening books is lined against a detail of the rood screen. On the east a cafe crouched in the plywood partitions and under old windows - though in a church with so little left of itself there is some bad stained glass.
The back garden grave yard is beautiful. I remember being there with the boys and feel I have come along way. I don't feel desperate anymore. There is the grave of the Tradescants, an amazing tomb with finely detailed relief. On one side a scene with a crocodile, beautiful shells at the bottom of the sea and some egyptian buildings. On the other the suggestion of unrelenting History and Time - with classical pillars broken and buried underground and spires tumbling with the movement of earth. John Tradescant father and son were travellers, diplomats, horticultural pioneers, and polymaths, they were also collectors, acquiring (and asking their friends to acquire) specimens of the wonders of the world. This grave is the reason the garden museum is here for they were impotant botanists and horticulturists, the younger said to be the first man to grow a pineapple in England. Indeed there are stone pineapples on Lambeth Bridge in celebration. Their botanical garden in Lambeth became the centre of horitcultural interest in Britain and thier collections could be viewed by the public at a large house 'The Ark'. Described by a German traveller George Christoph Sirn in 1638
'In the museum of Mr. John Tradescant are the following things: first in the courtyard there lie two ribs of a whale, also a very ingenious little boat of bark; then in the garden all kinds of foreign plants, which are to be found in a special little book which Mr. Tradescant has had printed about them. In the museum itself we saw a salamander, a chameleon, a pelican, a remora, a lanhado from Africa, a white partridge, a goose which has grown in Scotland on a tree, a flying squirrel, another squirrel like a fish, all kinds of bright colored birds from India, a number of things changed into stone, amongst others a piece of human flesh on a bone, gourds, olives, a piece of wood, an ape's head, a cheese, etc; all kinds of shells, the hand of a mermaid, the hand of a mummy, a very natural wax hand under glass, all kinds of precious stones, coins, a picture wrought in feathers, a small piece of wood from the cross of Christ, pictures in perspective of Henry IV and Louis XIII of France, who are shown, as in nature, on a polished steel mirror when this is held against the middle of the picture, a little box in which a landscape is seen in perspective, pictures from the church of S. Sophia in Constantinople copied by a Jew into a book, two cups of rinocerode, a cup of an E. Indian alcedo which is a kind of unicorn, many Turkish and other foreign shoes and boots, a sea parrot, a toad-fish, an elk's hoof with three claws, a bat as large as a pigeon, a human bone weighing 42 lbs., Indian arrows such as are used by the executioners in the West Indies- when a man is condemned to death, they lay open his back with them and he dies of it, an instrument used by the Jews in circumcision, some very light wood from Africa, the robe of the King of Virginia, a few goblets of agate, a girdle such as the Turks wear in Jerusalem, the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone, a large magnet stone, a S. Francis in wax under glass, as also a S. Jerome, the Pater Noster of Pope Gregory XV, pipes from the East and West Indies, a stone found in the West Indies in the water, whereon are graven Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a beautiful present from the Duke of Buckingham, which was of gold and diamonds affixed to a feather by which the four elements were signified, Isidor's MS of de natura hominis, a scourge with which Charles V is said to have scourged himself, a hat band of snake bones'.
All this (apparently in dubious circumstances) was taken over by Elias Ashmole and formed the foundation of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. 'Museum' itself a new word listed a few years later in the New World of Words (1706) as `a Study, or Library; also a College, or Publick Place for the Resort of Learned Men', with a specific entry for `Ashmole's Museum', described as `a neat Building in the City of Oxford'.
Though there is another grave in this beautifully planted place that just says 'Reader, prepare to meet thy god.'
I discover later that the tower of the church is medieval and I feel ashamed I did not notice it. The church just seemed bland, though checking the photos I realise that the tower is the part nearest to Lambeth Palace and maybe I wasn't concentrating when I entered and the rest of the mainly victorian building is so hidden by its clumsy museum purpose. The church is mentioned in the Domesday Book and apparently even before the Norman Conquest there was a church dedicated to St Mary's here which belonged to the Countess Goda, sister to King Edward the Confessor. I think the site was higher and drier than much of the south bank of the thames for the land around was low and sodden and developed very slowly. The Archbishop of Canterbury took up residence of the Manor of Lambeth in 1197 - giving the church a special importance and the bells of the church rang out whenever royal personages came to visit the Archbishop, the boats pulling up at the landing alongside.
Up the staircase of the museum, is the engraving of 'The Prospect of London and Westminster taken form Lambeth' by W.Hollar 1707 edition of a 1647 plate. Oh, it is beautiful with intricately inked detail, the arch of the wide river, Westminster Abbey high in the distance across the river, rural Lambeth etched on the bend of the Thames and St Mary's central, the Tradescant tomb clearly visible. Wencelas Hollar 1607 - 1677 was an engraver and map maker from Prague who came to London in 1637. Charging 4 pence an hour he was prolific with 2733 examples of his work known and listed - views of London, a map after the Great fire, detailed depictions of women's fashions, animals and engraved portraits of both of the Tradescant's. A biography written by a contemporary John Aubrey has this detail of Holler leaving London during the civil war and then returning.
“I remember he told me that when he first came into England, (which was a serene time of peace) that the people, both poore and rich, did looke cheerfully, but at his returne, he found the countenances of the people all changed, melancholy, spightfull, as if bewitched.
But somehow he died penniless. “He was a very friendly good-natured man as could be, but shiftlesse as to the world, and dyed not rich."
I engineer time to spend with ul. Though on a rare weekend I don't have the boys we see each other until late and then meet again early in the morning. This is what an affair feels like I think. But I know him so well I skate round the guilt. Just. Perhaps only just. The following morning I phone exh to make arrangements about the children. But they have all stayed with friends and exh is in the shower. His friend answers and pretends to be him tired, shouting, explaining the children woke them all up at five in the morning.
He means it so genuinely as a joke. But I think it is exh. I think he is drunk. It sounds so perfectly like when he was. And exactly the right time of day. It is 10 oclock in the morning. I just keep saying 'I can't really understand what you are saying' I keep saying it. I am terrified. This life, my life, the boys life that I believe to be on solid ground is suddenly tipped up, I am drowning. I want to puke. I want to cry. Also I understand I have been arrogant - our life has got better because exh stopped drinking - not really anything to do with me. I have worked hard but not made the fundamental difference.
I buy a book on amazon called 'Lambeth windmills' a careful piece of detective work tracing windmills from the end of the 16th century that appear and disappear from maps - as the fickle design mind of the cartographer decides whether he fancied using the nice symbol of sails or didn't have enough space to squeeze it in. Normally windmills are associated with corn milling but in Lambeth, famous for wood yards, glassmaking, pottery and boat building the spread of industrialization caused the power of the wind to be set to other tasks - mechanical saws and crushing materials for the production of china ware. The Garden museum had a history of Lambeth powerpoint installation, outlining the industries, the smell, the fast development south of the river, it was what made me late to pick the boys up from school - so many details I wanted to catch them all. From 'A Map of the New Roads from Westminster Bridge' published in 1753 showing the three windmills near St Mary-at-Lambeth in almost open fields progress hurtled on, steam, the railways, mass production and the windmills disappearing. My final detail and oh, there seems so many, even lovely ones I can't really fit in - the poetry of Herrick, a toll path across the Lambeth marshes, even Lambeth Bridge featured in the 1982 music video hit 'pass the dutchie' by Musical Youth - is the history of Doulton's pottery in Lambeth. A patnership formed in 1815 when John Doulton ( who had just finished an apprenticeship with early commercial potter John Dwight) and John Watts ( previous forman of the existing pottery) were taken into partnership by a young widow Martha Jones who had inherited the business from her late husband. Alongside beautiful tiles and beautiful porcelain they made drain pipes. Thousands of drain pipes. High temperature firing taking stoneware to its true vitrified form. Expanded by Doulton's son Henry these drainpipes drained and dried the boggy land of London for building and allowed the vanguard of Victorian sanitation to be brought to Metropolitan London. This is the land our city is built on. Our waste matter taken away.
Amen.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
St John the Evangelist, Waterloo Rd
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.
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, 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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