Westminster Methodist Great Hall

I can see one of the towers of the Houses of Parliament from our street and the helicopters overhead have been constant for days. It is still always a thrill however, the short walk, to Victoria Street and the sight of the London Eye squeezed between office blocks. Then the squash of the blank, concrete blocks giving way to Parliament Square. Big Ben's face familiar like a Dad's watch. The Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey. The peace camp tents. I live here. I always think. I live right here. With pride. Laughing at home on the night before the election that it would be possible to run out of the flat, round the block and wave to the tv cameras behind the political pundits and be back in time to watch it.

A week later, Nick Clegg twirling between the parties with the glee of Grayson Perry winning the Turner prize in a dress. Then the pair of them, school boys with men's pink, soap scrubbed faces. Our headboys. Gordon Brown a kind of left wing Coriolanus, his absolute honour and wilting strengths making tragedy inherent. I cried when he made his last speeches. He always seemed such a fundamentally good man. His son goes to my son's poor but beautifully behaved, high attaining, amazing school. Though presumably not for much longer.

Today I have been told I am no longer entitled to free dental care and glasses because I have taken on more work. I have been told that some of my childcare will not be paid because of an error. Most of my childcare isn't paid, it is just the little bit that might have been paid but won't be now. It has come as a bit of a blow. I don't think I have quite enough money to pay the rent this weekend. I don't know. I seem to fall a little bit between everything. I live in the heart of politics and just as we all are, I am it.

I had thought the Westminster Methodist Great Hall marginally nearer than Westminster Abbey, but as I get near I am not sure, they are so close to each other. Not much in it though and I decide to stick with my plan. It is a huge, white, wedding cake but though it is massive, it is somehow invisible, more like another government building than a church. But a sign says 'Whoever you are, wherever you are on life's journey. Welcome.' I walk in.

Inside I ask a man if I can just look at the church, and in the same moment see a poster for tours, 'do I have to take a tour?' I say. 'No.' he says 'you can just look'. He waves his arm around. The building is huge. 'Where do I go for the main bit?' I say. 'Upstairs.' He says.

Up the disney princess staircase, up and up, the curling, curving, ornate and marble stairs, to a sort of huge conference hotel corridor and then the doors into the ...........I don't know what the proper word is.......but I think assembly must be near. Like a parliament, I think. A god parliament. I didn't expect this, though I realise it is handy to be able to use parliament as a theme. There are chairs fanning out in neat rows, then a balcony with more chairs, all in the round. Except the focus at the middle is a low wooden stage and behind a wizard of oz organ. Absolutely massive. There are three cleaners staring at me as I enter, an industrial vacuum cleaner balanced on chairs. I bob and nod and smile at them. But they are busy. Cleaning and staring. The room has that funny brushed hush of corporate carpet. Above an enormous shallow dome, that should be beautiful and sort of is, but not quite enough. I don't stay.

Downstairs there is a table laid out with goody bags for some conference within the building. For a minute I think they say Prada. But they don't. A smaller more intimate chapel, at one side with book shelves just of the bible in the entrance. A statue of John Wesley, a short, energetic man, captured in wood. In a corner of the hallway, as if only stored, is a very plain cross. Again wood, but rough, visible brackets holding it together. I think I like this best.

I had read recently ' We secularists should forget the tedious fixation on belief, forget about being 'atheist' and concentrate on a conversation about the spiritual strategies for overcoming the common human resistance to living well.' Michael McGhee. Whatever parliament, I imagine this is the question. Perhaps my own question.

Later I read that the church was opened in 1912, built on the site of a music hall with £250,000 of the 'Million Guinea Fund' a fund where over a million Methodists gave a guinea. That the church was designed so that it did not look like a church, so that people from all walks of life would enter. That the suffragettes came here, and Ghandi.

Writing this at night. The helicopters still overhead. I hear Big Ben chime. I imagine David and Samantha Cameron listening too.


Amen.