Christian Scientist Reading Room, Mayfair

It is the third time I have tried to get into the magnificently fronted Christian Scientist Church on Curzon Street. I have been refused politely but determinedly twice - no, I am sorry, you have to come to a service, no I am sorry, the service has started we cannot let you enter. The first time a man with dried spittle on his lip appeared from the back of the slightly smelly reading room ( opposite to the door of the church) looked suspiciously at me and turned me away. The second occasion a black man with an old weary face on guard at the doorway of the church ( though I was certain the service had not started. ) They both acted as if they have been guardians of the doorway for a long time and that I ( red tights, metallic red dance shoes, big fur hat/I wonder if I sound loathsome? ) am just who should be turned away.

This time I am determined, though dreading the encounter. I have decided to try the end of a service on a Sunday rather than the random weekday or the beginning of a service on a weekday evening that I have tried before and I know there is a bb docking bay opposite the grand, almost american college-like building so I have chanced split-hair-timing of when I think the service will finish.

I have lost my job. Even writing this down it shocks me. I have never lost a job. Those closed door meetings dragged on for 10 days, wounding the build up to xmas - how could I sit and order stocking fillers on line - when it seemed likely there would be no money coming in afterwards? Though I attempt to think golden positive thoughts when I wake, I attempt to think good can come out of change for a few minutes every morning. I don't know - it does seem to help. The opposite is helpless, hopeless worrying and a flailing 'it's not fair.' Finally on a Friday I am taken into a room and offered money and allowed to still work for the company. I think I will cry but I am bold to the two men who deliver the news 'I feel I have worked really hard and done a really good job' and they concur and say yes, it is very sad, they are sure they will see me back but I feel they resent my bitterly spoken pride. When I open the envelope they offer me I am much more pleased with the money than I can imagine. Though despite wanting to write a story of 'our time' and everything I can see from the corner I live on I feel like a method actor actually losing a leg. It was only just a level of pretending before.

On a day I wouldn't have worked anyhow I sit at the kitchen table and write careful lists in pale pencil. Under headings - christmas, writing, job hunting, money, children - the items range from the ambitious - contact Granta, to the life saving - phone about smoke alarm, the needy - e mail 3 work contacts a day and mundane slightly over fussy - check gravy boat and cutlery for Christmas. Listening to Radio 4 that morning as I start these chores I hear amazing accounts of:

A transexual's life and the apparent prediliction for electronic engineering.

Chinese migrant workers status and the hukou system which means that household registration cannot be moved from countryside to the cities despite modern China's dependence on this workforce - how such workers have to lead second class lives, unable to obtain healthcare, their children unable to attend state schools. "Wo shi nongmin [I am a peasant]," a fixed status, shown on ID.

Then a whole programme about a writer I had never heard of - Robert Aickman. 'He had the ability to invest the daylight world with all the terrors of the night, and specialised in subverting notions of safety and sunshine into something sinister and unforgiving. His work is best summed up by a wonderful German word, unheimlich, meaning "uncanny", which has the deeper connotation of suggesting the unease caused by being away from home, literally un-homelike.'

I think as I do the cleaning this is a rich life. Make it what you want.

In my attempt to get into the church I rush up the grand stairs from the street, pass a few stragglers of congregation in the atrium between the reading room and the church and I am at the door of the church in that furry hat and gold buttoned coat, pink cheeks from the cold and the rush and the bike ride and both the dried spittle man and the weary faced seated man are there. Both are shaking their head - they are just closing up, they say. They look at me as if I am loathsome. I say - I will only be 5 minutes - less than that even - I am doing a local history project - oh please, I plead. The two guardians exchange slightly fearful glances and say ok reluctantly. I bolt up the carpeted stairs, like the winding stairway of a well vacuumed bed and breakfast and reach the plain but beautiful airy room. Like a horror film DS man has followed me, lurking behind but I say truly - oh it is beautiful - and he smiles finally trusting that I do not want to harm whatever it is he protects.

'Christian Science, a new American religion based largely in both Puritan and Transcendental strains of theology, was formulated by New Englander Mary Baker Eddy and organized as a denomination in the 1880s and 1890s, based on her discovery of a radical method of Christian healing found through a spiritual interpretation of the Bible—a science of Christianity.
This room is airy and simple with lovely proportions and texts carved on the walls.

Christian Science came to Britain in 1890. Mrs. Eddy sent students to London, where fashionable West End women began to be attracted to it

'By 1907, the Christian Scientists had grown in influence enough to interest over 9000 people to attend a Christian Science lecture delivered by American Bicknell Young in London’s Albert Hall. The idea that the acoustically perfected lecture hall or theater provided the best vehicle for Christian Science churches in Britain was henceforth continually suggested in the architectural press and demonstrated in several branch church designs: Byzantine styled Second Church by Sir John Burnett (1924-25); Lanchester and Rickard’s monumental Baroque Third Church (1910) in Mayfair, which included a lamp of wisdom in its elaborate entry cartouche surmounted by a tower of Wren derivation.
Likewise the First Church, Manchester England, a striking expressionist Arts and Crafts design by Edgar Wood, was one of the most celebrated churches in Britain of any denomination.

Though a falling congregation meant this church was divided in 1980. The facade and front part of the building was kept - the rest developed as flats. I find a story of the magnificent oak case of the organ from the huge church being sold and shipped to Australia, 'the timber used in the case came from oak retrieved from English manor houses and shipwrecks, and was designed by L.F. Roslyn to incorporate biblical images, floral motifs, sheaves of wheat and doves.'

Finally, returning home one night from the Southbank after a night out with ul I turn into the dark closed huts of the christmas Thameside market. The gingerbread twinkly fairytale world has flipped it's artifice to the slightly sinister grey tones of garden sheds and cheap magic shut away and out of reach. Oh I suddenly realise - I don't want this to be the ISICTT xmas special - I need to get to another church. Of course posting this on xmas day I have missed my own ambitious deadlines - but I aiming for two this week! I don't know! Let's see!