St Gabriel's, Pimlico

I gave myself a bit of talking to after the last post, I had to try harder, to be a bit more determined to actually get into a church. It was no good just endlessly being 'a bit shy' to get through the door. Whatever it was I feared needed to be overcome. I have decided to make a list of some of those fears ( I might add to them later) but at the moment ( and slightly nonsensically) they seem to be the fear of:

a funny smell (specifically of dirty charity shops)
the suspicion in old people's gaze
the trust in old people's gazes,
belief,
expectation of belief,
non belief
stupidity,
expectation
not being able to escape.
being asked 'can I help you?'
not wanting to walk in on a fully submerged baptism. ( I am keen to get in the baptist church next)

I have read too in a book I bought called 'How to Read a Church' ( I bought it this summer but haven't had time to even dip into it until this week) that ' The Church is a symbol of heaven, of the world as it should and could be'. Aha, I thought when I read it that's the question I'm after. Perhaps if I was Mystery Worshipper that would be my final q n a 'Did the church symbolize heaven to you? As the world as it should and could be?' It is such a good question. Is the world as it should and could be? You could ask it of almost anything.

Determined, I ask exexdh if he can come and look after the boys on Wednesday so I can slip out to an evening bible and prayer meeting at the Baptist Church. Though, and it is a popular phrase, sometimes I think I should get out more. But not there.

Monday morning I wake up thinking 'Remember this was meant to be fun' and on tuesday, 'I just dread going'.

Then my new pal, a recentish single mum friend from school, asks if I would like to come after school on wednesday with her boys and my boys for her birthday tea party. Yes. We do. She and her boys are great. They came camping with us and calling ourselves the PSM (pissed single mums/ did I say I was perfect? oh no I'm not/ though we are talking two extra glasses of wine not falling on the floor) we worked side by side, laughing. But I am worried that it will make me late for the Baptist Church or that it will be hard to turn down a glass of wine, and I won't want to bustle myself in that door with even a whiff of alcohol. But mainly I think phew, I don't have to go and try.

My new thing is I have signed up for a Boris bike ( the recently started scheme in London - bikes that you collect and drop off at docking bays across the city for an annual/monthly/weekly/daily fee). I have done this specifically to be able to get easily to the greengrocers on Lupus Street in Pimlico. When the four of us first moved back to London we lived at the end of that street, under a bridge and around the corner, all us squashed in a tiny one bedroom peabody flat. It was at the time that dh was becoming exdh. And he just got d and d and d and d. And the rows were horrible. I would pass Manolo's every day on the two mile journey to and from school - pushing the youngest's buggy, goading, encouraging, singing to the increasingly angry and violent eldest. God, it is boring the tiny intricate details of how really difficult our life was then, like the workings of a clock, each hardship dependent on the other, each creating a new tiny trial, though really and I never seem to get to this bit I would like to list how I did get out, a how-to-guide, for sometimes I feel I am writing this for that myself, for I would have loved to have found this, found out it is possible to make your life nice or at least much much much much better. Back then, that school run was a daily dante's inferno, an epic voyage.

The shop had no inviting produce outside, no great window displays, it looked rather old fashioned and musty. I know it sounds mad but I walked past many times before I had the courage to go in. I don't know why, I find being visible hard. I have always thought I would be happier invisible but perhaps that is just the observer in me. But when I did turn the squeaky wheels of the buggy in I found this incredible thing. Manolo's supplied the fruit and veg to restuarants, their stock was very fresh, very seasonal, fine quality fruit and veg, but cheap. And Maria, the spanish shopkeeper was beautiful and kind and funny with an incredibly happy marriage to her greengrocer husband Manolo ( he does the buying and the deliveries). She called my youngest the 'little bird' when he reached out his still chubby hand from the restrain of the pushchair to pop cherry tomatoes into his mouth, and I would remonstrate with him while she laughed and allowed it, and told him about a real bird that used to come and fly down and steal the cherries from the doorway. Anyhow, all this to say that not only was I able to buy delicious food - pomegranates, artichokes, big field mushrooms alongside the staples, really good apples, delicious tomatoes that burst in your mouth with flavour, but it was, at that time, that very bleak and isolated time the one place I felt connected. I wasn't the only one. Old people still shuffle into the shop to buy a daily apple and small bag of potatoes and Maria gives them a chair and listens to them. I have heard her checking that they are taking their medicine, how they are. Once, she told me, an old lady collapsed onto her, both of them pinned down on the floor, until somone found them. And though I believed I maintained the pretence that I might just, at a pinch, come from the beautiful big houses nearby, that my life was ok, with my carefully picked clothes and constant cheer, there was a day when I miscalculated and I just didn't have enough money to pay, and Maria only smiled and said it was fine, I know you will pay me, I trust you, you can always come here and have what you want, writing down 'little bird' and the amount on a tiny scrap of paper kept in her till.

For the first time writing this bloody thing, I am crying.

Now I live the opposite side from the school and the shop is quite a long way away. But I still always try and go once a week but I can never manage it in the school holidays, and it has got harder now I am doing three days work not two, to find the time to get there and I haven't been able to get there for absolutely ages. But my plan is with a Boris bike I will be able to get there easily. This day, I do some other shopping and then walk onto hers. I am excited about the idea of cycling home, of using the bike for the first time, Through the door I notice a slump to Maria's posture, a little bit of weight put on, a guardedness to her welcome that I have never seen. I ask her about her summer, I ask her about the ongoing battle with the council to be allowed again to put the produce out on the street, I am prodding her to tell me what is wrong. Then, finally she starts to tell me, and I hadn't even noticed, Tesco's has opened up on the street and their own trade has, she says literally disappeared. She had thought, as I had done when we talked about it before it happened that it would bring more shoppers to the street and they could coexist. It is not true though, she says and she is holding back her own tears, she is throwing veg away every day, for everything, the parsnips, the celeriac, french green beans just stays on the shelves. The shop is shutting in November. Though, and she says the really upsetting thing is when her old customers come in for just a pack of celery and she can see through the milky transparency of that blue and red logoed bag, their tasteless apples and potatoes and flabby tomatoes. Now I am howling, literally howling because of her kindness and for the irretrievable, the careless harm, the damage done almost unnoticed. There is no history of greengrocers as far as I know. Or is this the start? But something very good will no longer be there, will have gone without a trace.

In a mild shock ( and yes, I can see a grief for a greengrocers might seem a trifle strong a term) but I think that is what I feel on this day, plus I have forgotten the boris bike map, and thought it would be obvious where the docking bay is but it isn't, I wander the ordered streets of pimlico. White, proud, affluent houses in precise, tree lined, gridded rows. It is the London of old Disney films, easy to imagine clean children marched by perambulator pushing nannies, smiling maids twirling with feather dusters, men in plush overcoats, women rustling. Now there are bugaboos in paint chart shades, personally trained bodies, pale caramel tans, a lot of cashmere and still, even now, builders vans and skips parked up.
Finally I find the bikes but the key doesn't work, the bike does not release. I have to walk home. With sudden inspiration I realise if I can find a church with it's door open I can get in and 'do it' and be able to get to my friend's tea party easily. Pimlico is packed with churches. I try two with no luck. Doors bolted tight. But around another street corner, another chuch, one I have never even seen before, howdydoodee St Gabriel's church door is wide open.

I walk in hesitantly, there is a woman in an old fashioned pinny cleaning. 'Is it ok just to have a look around' I say loudly and clearly. 'Yes', she says, smiling. I walk quietly, respectfully around. The air is still and dense, the hush disturbed by my presence. High vaulted ceiling giving heaven enough space, damp peeling damaged walls, the shinest, polished parquet floor ever. A child daubed mobile, white paint on black card, hung on a small statue of jesus as a boy. I think for a minute, slightly amused that it is halloween themed ghosts but on closer inspection I think they are angels. I sit at the back while the lady cleans. I think, good, I have got this done, like ticking a box.

I am reading 'Absence of Mind' easiest just to copy from the book jacket to explain, 'in this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought - science, religion, and consciousness' 'By defending the importance of individual reflection...... Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.' Reading it, snatches of it, on the tube on my way to work, a page or two in bed at the end of the day, is like the air in the church, dense and heavy, with slight shifts of movement as I read. I have flashes of excited comprehension but when I go back to copy them up, I lose the thread. I need more time, I think, to get to what I think.

Finally, something has happened which is so completely unexpected, so ludicrously like a plot, that I feel it is barely credible but it is true. The man I mentioned having once truly loved - turns up. We have been emailing each other for over a year, cautiously and kindly, with respect for our present family situations. He is married with a son. He left me, went to russia, came back with a pregnant wife. I never saw him again, or heard from him until this recent time and I found it very hard to recover from his absence, Though I did. Out of the blue he e mails to say his wife and son are away and he comes to my flat. He has always loved me he says. It seems a cliche and if I was you dear reader ( I know now there are a few ) I would doubt this, but he is a good man and an honourable one, and his anger and unhappiness and regret are near to poison. I say I think it is probably too late. I think I say, that I am almost irrelevant compared to inventing at least a window in his own trapped life.

After he has gone that night I email him to say I will probably write about you in this. He replies, 'the minute I walked through the door I knew I could be walking into your blog'.

So yes, another opened door.