St James's Piccadilly

Today, even more than a week ago, the narrow side-streets round here are packed with police vans. Strength hidden, tucked into old streets. At St James's Park tube station there are loads of them, grilles above their windows, stretching as far as the eye can see. Even on the street where I live, there are three, squeezed into the narrow bit where men hide to piss or deal drugs. Metal barriers armour the sides of roads and office workers, out to buy sandwiches, weave around battalions of coppers. It is like the preparation for an urban battle but everyone is attempting to carry on regardless. Later it appears that there is no demonstration. Though I find something on the internet that says there will be a gathering outside New Scotland Yard to protest against the serious head injuries suffered by one student last week. I think with all those police vans there won't be room for many.

Last week I watched on the TV at work as our coalition government voted for higher student fees and winced as the violence gathered momentum. When I got off the tube and walked home that night I walked up to where I had seen the pope and there at the end of Victoria Street and the edge of Parliament Square in the dark, people milled around, but beyond, there was a dense black wall of police. I don't know if you have ever seen that Hitchcock film - Marnie - but I always remember very clearly the street where Marnie lived, and the two terraces of houses shown, with the sea at one end with a huge liner blocking the small space but visually it just looked like a small gap filled with something monumental and dark. This felt like that too. Though as I walked away I could hear kettled student's cheering.

That night Sparky escaped. I was icing xmas cookies for the school bazaar, watching the news, helicopters and sirens continual outside. I was worried that people were going to die just around the corner from me while I put silver balls on cinnamon flavoured snowmen and stars. Sparky watched with his intelligent gaze. He had been making plans. Already he could jump from his seesaw onto the bars of the cage's ceiling and gnaw and worry and shake them and I had grown accustomed to the evening noise of his determined efforts to be off and out and onto a better life. As a friend said after reading his introduction 'I love Sparky - he's got balls!' But that evening, there was a sudden quiet, which took me a few minutes to identify, and even then it was no more than an inkling that something was up, and I looked over and there he was on top of the cage, the lid sprung. As if in a tiny top hat and tails doing a tap dance, he was puffed up with pride. But then, even as I got near, walking very quietly and gently carrying an empty pringles tube, I could see him attempting to fathom the freedom he had won. What do I do now? I thought I saw him formulate. But the choice he made was to walk, nose sniffing, long whiskers guiding, into the pringle tube, and Sparky was again caged, surprised, staring up at the ceiling being secured with heavy books.

This morning I go to Piccadilly. I have started to notice now, with all the history of London I have been reading, that the buildings above shop branded facades are beautiful. Looking up, there is old London, almost untouched. In the churchyard of St James's is a bustling antique and craft market that spills into the porch of the church. I have to push my way through people buying christmas cards to get in through the door. Inside though it is still and quiet and very, very beautiful. Christopher Wren built it in 1684 and had wanted to pack them in - in his letter 'Upon the Building of National Churches' he wrote:

'The Churches therefore must be large; but still, in our reformed Religion, it should seem vain to make a Parish-church larger, than that all who are present can both hear and see. The Romanists, indeed, may build larger Churches, it is enough if they hear the Murmer of the Mass, and see the Elevation of the Host, but ours are to be fitted for Auditories. I can hardly think it practicable to make a single Room so capacious, with Pews and Galleries, as to hold above 2,000 Persons, and all to hear the Service, and both to hear distinctly, and see the Preacher. I endeavoured to effect this, in building the Parish Church of St. James's, Westminster, which, I presume, is the most capacious, with these Qualifications, that hath yet been built; and yet at a solemn Time, when the Church was much crowded, I could not discern from a Gallery that 2,000 were present. In this Church I mention, though very broad, and the middle Nave arched up, yet there are no Walls of a second Order, nor Lanterns, nor Buttresses, but the whole Roof rests upon the Pillars, as do also the Galleries; I think it may be found beautiful and convenient, and as such, the cheapest of any Form I could invent.'

There is lovely stained glass windows at the front and really, really beautiful carved garlands and flowers in draped shapes with a pelican in the centre and carved doves at the sides on the wall behind the altar piece. I spy the font, which looks really old, really unusual with the figures of Adam and Eve at the base and the stem, like a tree supporting a delicately carved bowl. I walk over to have a look at it, and it is a surprise, even a shock, to notice there are men tucked into the pews, behind pillars, as if attempting to be invisible, though one is laid out asleep on the bench at the back. They have beards and are wrapped in coats like parcels. On this bitterly cold day they have found shelter, a place to rest. But I feel I have disturbed their hidden sanctuary though they frighten me a little. I sit for a while. I can hear the man snoring. Then a lady comes in with community policewoman and they disappear round the corner to inspect the sleeping man. I slip out, I don't want to witness his removal. I wish they would leave him be. Though as I haggle with a woman at a stall in the churchyard for a brooch for my Mum's christmas present, I see the commy bobby leave on her own.

As I walk away my friend texts me to see if I would like to go to the carol service in St James's on wednesday evening. It is a strange coincidence since she lives in Streatham and doesn't go to Church. But unfortunately I am going to my office party that evening.

On the chuch's website the history is detailed and put together with love and care. Both the font and the altarpiece's carving is by Grinling Gibbons I discover. I want to know more of his work. It is really exceptional. There is also a sermon that uses the history of the area and combines with fairness and inclusion a celebration of all people.

http://www.st-james-piccadilly.org/Library/HistorySermonSJP-HughV-%20Suprised%20in%20the%20closet-PP%20edit120207.pdf

I had been very disappointed with my last post - I did not feel I achieved what I had wanted to describe. I think it is this - the spread and scale of London - and it's growth. Months ago in the July post 'Christ Church' when I first discovered the 1755 map of Westminster I was fascinated by the edge of the city then being so close to my own door, and the knowledge that the building I lived in would have been built on marsh land. Increasingly, but it is so hard to picture, is the vision of this city evolving from clustered settlements at the banks of the huge river Thames. An unrelenting tide of many different people spreading out, draining and strengthening boggy ground. The Romans are believed to have forded the river at Westminster. Our amazing city built because the gravel beds make it the easiest point to cross or land inland. It is just hard to imagine the world so un populated, the people so much nearer to the beginning of human time. Also that our size means we only consider our own scale. A Boris bike, a stroll, all take me quickly beyond the edges of that early city.

I read too that when the Romans left their city on their site in The City and abandoned their empire in 410 to return to matters nearer home, the Angles and Saxons had no use for their elegant structures or towns. Though eventually, much later, they settled in Mitcham and Croydon. I imagine a ghost town of beautiful temples, an ampitheatre and bath houses at the side of the Thames, in a green wet valley divided by this wide river with the rain beating down.

On Radio 4 in a discussion on Wikileaks a caller describes the site another brick cementing the end of our 'empire' our modern order.

This day, police amassed for nothing, I go to get the boys from school. Every other vehicle is a police van. Though they seem sheepish, tootling, re ordering. Nearing Horseferry Rd I hear loud hailers roar. Aha! I think. There IS a demonstration. But instead it is the journalists and protestors packed outside Westminster Court to hear the bail of Julian Assange, TV vans lined down Marsham Street. How funny. I think. I live here. In the thick of all this. I think of A.S.Byatt's The Children's Book, which I thought was an amazing book describing well the bubbling of change. Though, the liner at the end of their street was the first world war.

Finally I need to say, I am behind. Today now means two days ago. The 14th December. This is always a chaotic time of year for me, however many lists I write in November this week and last week I always end up with too many cakes to make, too much to do, always busy at work and slightly ratty. Last Saturday we had my son's birthday party, this week his birthday and then it is the end of term. I also feel like the ex labour government - I am overspending but I believe my grit at doing so produces well being. If I scrimp and keep to the budget those boys lives will be too restricted. But I remember from last year and the year before it all has to be paid at the same time - swimming lessons, school clubs - chess and football, the birthday party, presents, xmas ( all of it - presents, stockings, christmas dinner, our photo family calendar. The little bits that make our life ours. But also this year, last year, the one before, I panic, nearly lose my nerve, half way through And everything has gone up. Chocolate that I need for the cakes cost about 1.10 in most shops last year. Now it is edging to £2. Though I mix cheap chocolate with 70% cocoa solids that I tracked down for a bargain 82p a bar. But I am shutting my eyes to the fact that the porridge I like has gone up about 40p. That my sums are not working.

My friend says when I speak to her today. The real today. Not the one I started with. But she says - the carol concert was beautiful but rather magically shambolic. And Ed Stewpot Stewart hosted it. It won't mean very much to lots of people. But if it does. It is hilarious.