It is nearly the end of term. We are all tired and grumpy. Waking everyday to this grey sci-fi summer we talk of rain at breakfast. The boys usually recalcitrant to waterproofs understand their necessity like soldiers stowing kit. I am finding the high pressure full time job and my own life hard to sandwich. As if I am a voyeur on comfortable and cultured lives, my face feels pressed to the glass of ease and ambition. Though I like the work, feel completely at home looking carefully at beautiful pictures, trying to find the detail of narrative that makes sense of a story and my sons have a better standard of drawing paper. No longer felt-penning superheroes on the other side of TOWIE girls in bikinis, they sketch on the reverse of Titians, theatre productions and news pictures of the anniversary of the London riots. When it goes well it is work I love - there is just a lot of it and I have to squeeze in parent teacher meetings, cooking cakes to thank teachers and baking Munch scream cookies for the Bazaar with finding and paying for childcare. The boys exhausted melt down being dragged home, the last children left at after school play centre. Oh I think then this is tough.
Between school and work I ride the Boris Bikes over Westminster Bridge past PSM's house near to the turrets of Southwark Cathedral. The brief space between home and work feels like freedom. The view of Big Ben, the river, crowds increasing as the Olympics near.
I have been collecting 'old views'. Cycling or walking past I suddenly catch one - a back street in Waterloo, without the gloss of front doors but an overgrown row of back yards, a corner in St James's, roof tops and elegant pillars, a street a stillness to time, a fold, something eyes from another time saw. A handkerchief of land in Russell Square, an old bomb site just left. A turn near Borough market that bears almost no trace of now. I like the authenticity of the past almost undisturbed. It is like a rhyme or a wink, how Paul Auster describes the vibration of coincidences. Once, cycling home on a bike I see a woman in a Crinoline and two men in frock coats on Pall Mall, just standing on the corner trying to hail a cab, hair tucked into wigs, a little bit drunk.
Between school and work I ride the Boris Bikes over Westminster Bridge past PSM's house near to the turrets of Southwark Cathedral. The brief space between home and work feels like freedom. The view of Big Ben, the river, crowds increasing as the Olympics near.
I have been collecting 'old views'. Cycling or walking past I suddenly catch one - a back street in Waterloo, without the gloss of front doors but an overgrown row of back yards, a corner in St James's, roof tops and elegant pillars, a street a stillness to time, a fold, something eyes from another time saw. A handkerchief of land in Russell Square, an old bomb site just left. A turn near Borough market that bears almost no trace of now. I like the authenticity of the past almost undisturbed. It is like a rhyme or a wink, how Paul Auster describes the vibration of coincidences. Once, cycling home on a bike I see a woman in a Crinoline and two men in frock coats on Pall Mall, just standing on the corner trying to hail a cab, hair tucked into wigs, a little bit drunk.
My 16 year old niece comes to stay for a week while she does a fashion course and my sister in law and two nephews come for the weekend ( It is a long story but employment worries mean my elder brother now works in Dubai on his own and his family live in their home in the North of England though he comes home for snatched weekends and holidays. My sister in law and I became close through our children but perhaps closer since this arrangement took hold - she isn't exactly a single mum but she does the work of one at the moment - and it is nice to spend time working together in a team, kind to each other, able to make each other laugh, part of each other's families. I squash everyone into the flat squeezing buckled air beds into the boys' room and sleep on the sofa. The youngest nephew once said to the boys 'Aren't you embarrassed to live here?' not understanding that most of their school friends live cooped lives with dirty yards too.
We take a boat to the Tower of London. It rains a bit and we can't really hear the commentary. She must have been cold my sister in law and I say about the Queen - for it is a much warmer day and yet the wind on the river is old lady chilly. Just as we disembark I see the Spirit of Chartwell motor past. I think after all they did a good job for it is an ugly boat brown boat, like an obese cinderella skiving up the river. As our boat turns to dock at the Tower of London I feel excited, just as I did as a child by Traitor's Gate. It seems so easy to imagine the dead end fear of being rowed in, fear stage managed in the crick of the neck height of the castle and the low down boat gliding in. With absolutely no queue we see the Crown Jewels. Unexpectedly there is barely any grumbling from the children. Such riches seem to quiet them. Narnian scabbards, diamonds and rubies and sapphires bigger than birds eggs, a huge ornate gold punch bowl, detailed by fish and lobsters - holding 115 bottles of wine my eldest son winks at me. The last glass case of the exhibition shows the cases the jewels travel in - sculptural, empty spaces describing a puzzle of baffling forms. Afterwards I notice a church tucked into the corner of the courtyard. I want to go there I say as my sister in law and I hand out sandwiches to the range of ages ( 6 - 16 ) sat on a damp bench, hoods up, waterproofed against the drizzle. But we see the ravens, the torture chamber, the Bloody Tower, then the White tower. Walking into the White Tower we pass an open door that reveals the narrow staircase where the bones of two young boys were found buried, then troop past suits of armour through bare halls. I catch the cousins ( brothers/boys ) fighting - cuffing and kicking opposite boy armour. My sister in law is round the corner - so i intervene - quietly shouting at them to stop it, what a bad example, how old are there, all the things you say. Behind me a guard of the tower, a cell block H looking woman takes over from my remonstrations and says she will throw them out. Chastised we move on through. There is a room of majestic life sized models of horses, almost as if stabled and beautifully carved called the 'Line of Kings'. Restored onto the throne in 1660 Charles II presented this Line of Kings- each king since Wiliam the Conquerer represented by their armour and the powerful model of horses. Possibly one of the first tourist attractions it was an advert to the strength of royal lineage and he opened the tower to the public putting both weapons and the crown jewels on display. A Stuart spin doctor he also laid on the Royal Thames pageant. At work I get a book catalogue that lists a book called Rebranding Rule' the restoration and revolution monarchy 1660 -1741 by Kevin Sharpe that seems to be about the public representation of monarchy after the aftermath of Cromwell. Oh I think rather chuffed I am on to something. Though I also read in the Metro that there has been the biggest amount of reported visitors to Buckingham Palace this year, many coming to see Kate Middleton's wedding dress despite the queen called the headless dummy horrible, horrid and 'made to look very creepy.' I think how the anxieties of royalty must be imbedded - perhaps the riots triggered old fears of execution. Though they have had a good year this year - putting a lot of verve to their popularity - the pageant, jumping out of helicopters, a summer of flag flying and pride.
I discover too that until 1830 a menagerie was housed at the Tower of London, another potent symbol of power and strength. Believed to have started with one lion in the time of King John the collection grew - a gift of three leopards from the Holy Roman Emperor in 1235, a white bear believed to be a polar bear donated by the King of Norway in 1251, and an African Elephant ( the first in England since the Roman invasion of 43AD ) given by Louis IX in 1255.
By 1741 the first true guide book to the Tower listed the animals on display and recorded their often mundane names:'The collection included Marco and Phillis the lions and their son Nero, another two lionesses called Jenny and Nanny, a leopard called Will, a panther called Jenny, two tigers confusingly also called Will and Phillis with their son Dick, as well as a racoon, two vultures, two eagles, an ape and a porcupine whose names were unrecorded.'
The Menagerie was not without incident - 1686 a keeper's daughter was mauled by a lion, a boys leg torn by monkeys in the 17th century and an escaped Leopard shot in the 18th century.By 1830 the animals were trundled away to form London Zoo or sold and shipped to an American showman.
I lose all the children for a while - I can't exactly remember if I go back to check on one group or forward to check on another but somehow I am without any of them for a while. I coast briefly, unattached to anything, not really taking in the details any more, just resting, aware of the historic space but also an ugliness to the display. I notice a huge fireplace in one room and think what a beautiful space and then climb some wooden steps into a simple stone room and suddenly there is some rush and an attractive smiley woman is saying 'IF YOU WANT TO HEAR THE TALK YOU NEED TO SIT NOW!' Oh I think looking up to the simple arches and windows above a table altarpiece, I didn't know this was here. But with a lovely feeling of recognition of a space as if I knew already about this simple but completely beautiful chapel. I think oh it is on the cover of a book my dad gave me about the city churches, that I haven't let myself look at yet. A pause here - I have mumbled an interest in London churches to my Mum and Dad who used to nag me how the novel was doing - but not revealed the extent of this project. I wonder if it is accepted within the family I have become a Sunday writer, lost my ambition, that I am too old for publication. I wonder with fear if it is true. Though I am so involved in the obsession of this work I don't think there is anything else I can do now. I lean on a pillar for the talk. I think the children or my sister in law will either come up the stairs and find me or come back to find out where I have got to but no one does.
The young woman gives an enthusiastic and smiley sing song talk to the seated audience. She over emphases the first word of each sentence - HERE, she says, the White Tower was built with work commencing in 1078, the thick walls a symbol of Norman strength but also a royal home, a safe place. IT capitalised on the wooden fortification built in 1066 as William the Conqueror's stronghold, becoming one of the biggest forts in Christendom. THE small chapel is the oldest intact church in London she says and was the king's private chapel situated next to the royal bedroom. HENRY VII's wife Elizabeth of York lay in state having died in childbirth here, MARY I was married by proxy here to Philip II of Spain and Lady Jane Grey would have worshipped here. MUCH earlier during the peasant's revolt of 1381 the castle was stormed as the young King Richard II went to hear the demands of the peasants at Mile End. THE Lord Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury who was particularly associated with the disputed poll tax and Lord Treasurer ( Robert de Hales, the Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitallers of England ) were both dragged from the chapel, then taken and beheaded on Tower Green. The guide passes a laminate picture between the different nationalities seated on wooden chairs showing Simon of Sudbury's part mummified skull that is preserved in his home town clearly showing the axe mark. A South African girl passes it back to me as I loll on the pillar looking at the dense stone of the structure, the simple space that was probably once ornately coloured holding my breath. It seems such a tight space for these tales, I wasn't expecting to come across it. The small Norman arched window above the altar table faces directly east along with the gallery windows curved around the apse and I imagine the sun light spilling into the chapel as it rises each day. Though writing this I realise this is why churches are often to be built east to west, that out of the darkness the sun rising each day could be a celebration.
I catch up with the others, though no one seems to have missed me, everyone just milling around now, the children bored, anticipating the gift shop. Just before departing I find a list of executions within the tower listed by centuries and I am surprised to read that in the 20th century 12 people were executed. 11 during World War I and one during World War II - all shot by firing squad. We are running out of time because my sister in law and her sons need to catch a train. Though I still try to get in the other church in the corner of the walls of the castle. 'Only if you are part of a tour' the beefeater says, so I will have to go back.
Later I read:'...the Tower appears almost as a character symbolising both protection and fearful danger.' about Shakespeare's Richard III. For the young sons of Edward IV confined in secure cells on upper floors in the White Tower in May 1483 it seems to have been danger. The Princes in the Tower disappeared in July 1483 presumably murdered. In 1674 workmen digging out foundations of a staircase leading up to the Chapel of St John the Evangelist, high in the White Tower, found a chest containing the skeletons of two boys and Charles II had the remains buried at Westminster Abbey. Tests carried out by medical experts in 1933 confirmed that these bones were those of two children of the ages of the Princes in the Tower in September 1483. Though there is now controversy that this can be true. I wonder too how handy for Charles II to have loopholes in his lineage cleared up.
I book a standing ticket at the Globe for the Richard III for £5. I have never seen the play before or been to the Globe. But I love the aeroplanes passing overhead in the blue sky of the open roof, the gaudy painted colours of the stage, the pack and cheer of the crowd, the standing audience swaying as legs grow tired. Mark Rylance is Richard III with an all male cast. He is brilliant, deviously charming on spindly legs and nursing a drooping claw, a damaged man damaging others with his ruthless ambition. The ghosts of all he kills lining around him in the final scenes:
Sweating and terrified, Richard asks desperately, “What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. / Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. / Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am” (V.v.136–138)
“I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, / And if I die no soul will pity me. / Nay, wherefore should they?—Since that I myself / Find in myself no pity to myself?” (V.v.154–157). Shakespeare too helped tell our stories - the stories of our king's lineage, stories that made the monarchy real to the people in the pit.
I must have told my sister in law about the blog over a glass of wine though I don't remember doing so. Out of the blue she emails weeks after their visit to say she has read the blog and found it intensely moving. I wonder and worry whether she might just feel sorry for me. Is it any good I want to reply. Can I write? I want to reply, can I? Or am I just a Sunday writer? Is it ok to write about my children? My family? You?
There is always a moment of optimism when I first start writing about a church when I think oh this one is going to be easy, I will have this done in a couple of days. I will be back to doing a church a week I think excitedly eyeing the City churches as I pass them. But then the summer holidays hit, the sun comes out, the boys camp in Norfolk with their Dad and friends and I join them for a weekend. The following week I even sit and watch some of the Olympics, 'Mum's watching telly' the boys say in glee as I shout at athletes winning gold medals. Then we are off for the annual camping holiday in Dorset where we catch Olympic sailing from the cliff tops. I finally finish War and Peace ( it has taken me exactly a year ), those last pages so dense with ideas of power and scale, freedom and humanity that I have wondered occasionally if I might not make it, might not get to the end. Briefly wonder if that happened - would I lie - say I had read it. But I do. The last thirty pages taking three months. Oh but it is worth it. I don't believe it is a plot spoiler to copy the last paragraph. Tolstoy finished by talking of the historic acceptance of earth's motion in space and it's imperceptibility:
'In the first case, we had to get away from a false sensation of immobility in space and accept movement that we could not feel. In the present case it is no less essential to get away from a false sensation of freedom and accept a dependence that we cannot feel.'
Amen.
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