I go back to Rymans and buy purple stickers then stick them on the map to mark the churches I have been to. Dark dots radiating out from Westminster Abbey, clustering near the centre then broadening out into Pimlico, Chelsea, Mayfair and two stray dots south of the river. The only yellow dot ( marking churches I haven't been to on this street map of London) surrounded by purple ones still is the Queen's Chapel at St James's. I have tried a couple of times to get in, but it is only open on Sundays for services and is only open certain months of the year.
I try again when the boys are away with exh and his mum, though I haven't finished writing Corpus Christi. I think oh good I am going to speed the whole project up, go back to visiting a church a week, mainly write about the churches IT IS GOING TO BE GREAT I THINK.
The night before UL and I drink too much, argue, cry and then walk through London in the middle of the night, holding hands. It feels way too dramatic for the sort of people we are really. When we were together we never spoke much of love or ourselves - we just were. We did things side by side and we allowed each other enormous personal freedom. By the end I wanted to talk about love, I wanted a plan. I probably sat like a slightly intense puppy waiting for that ball - but it never came. Now and completely unexpectedly it has been dropped at my feet.
I wake that sunday morning way too early feeling delicate and slightly desperate. The flat is quiet. This would be my life without the children I think and it feels unbearable. All that myself. All that not them. For they are so completely and utterly fascinating to me. I am not sure if at the core of me is depression or joy sometimes but having limitations to being me - all that thinking about myself - the worry and energy and slight paranoia and over bearing generosity - seems more manageable spread out and focussed on two clever bright and funny boys. I wonder how I will suffer when they've had enough, grown out of it completely - and it is a title for something - all that me. Though - and possibly because so much of myself has been provided - they are nonchalent and rebellious of it already. But adapting at each age from the tiny dry and nervous papery nappies of new borns and the beat of their sparrow hearts under soft baby gros to the seemingly endless school uniform trousers growing too short and feet too big for trainers and vivid moments when I turn to watch them, sometimes just briefly, with absolute wonder and pride and laughter. I hope when the time comes it will just be a new stage. Somedays I shout at them. ' You NEED to grow up to be smart, clever, funny, kind young men.' YOU CAN DO IT!' And oh oh oh I hope they do.
I walk through St James's Park on a sunday morning and it is packed. There is a royal wedding knock on to tourism. The crowds are thronging. Enthusiastic about where they are. Though all the flags are gone and the flesh of the pink tarmac where that beautiful and jaunty navy Aston Martin drove is slightly naked without them.
The Queen's Chapel is tucked at the side of the little street alongside St James's Palace on the opposite side. A white house flat to the street - nicely proportioned, a simple gable roof, large windows like wide-opened eyes and a high forehead. There is a verger standing outside the chapel and when I nod to her and ask if it is ok to come in, she takes me in and seats me. It is hushed and wealthy, though less secret than the dark surprise of the packed Chapel Royal which is it's sister church. This Chapel is open in the summer the other - the Chapel Royal in the winter. Here light pours in from huge windows of blurry old leaded glass, and the ceiling though strangely only half gilded is oppulent. There is rich gold plates at the altar and a painting. I spend ages looking at this picture trying to work out what it is before realising I should put my glasses on. When I do I see a mother and baby with another child and I can't remember what I thought it was before I could see it. It had just seemed a mystery. The organ is playing majestically. A woman on her own, of roughly the same age and reassuringly not grand is seated next to me. I think wouldn't it be funny if we were doing the same thing. Then I think what if she were a 'mystery worshipper'. You would probably need to be a dedicated reader to know who 'Mystery worshipper' is? But there is a site
http://www.ship-of-fools.com/mystery/specials/london_05/index.html
that reviews church services and early on, when I first went very fearfully into churches, avoiding services, barely getting into them at all I seemed to be in their wake. Early on my friend even said if your life was a film - mystery worshipper would be the romantic interest. Though at that point I didn't know I needed one.
At the back I can see the choir and clergy gather in the sunshine of the pavement before the procession down the aisle. I recognise some of them from before, the little mice boys, the man with the black folded and pleated sleeves but it is less surprising, less Alice in Wonderland. The establishment of establishment is more open here because it is daylight and also because we face forwards towards the altar not each other watching the procession. Maybe too the trappings of establishment have had a resurgence, even since I wrote the Chapel Royal - standing alongside a ladder at the Royal Wedding watching golden coaches and soldiers I was moved by the continuity of history and the acceptance of it even if I didn't really believe what I was being moved by or tacitly accepting.
Next to this other woman - strangely more like me than I anticipate in this church - and someone who also declines the communion offered when the congregation rises and queues at the altar. I sense a relief from both of us - I am pleased not to be the only outsider and she must be pleased I don't need to clamber past her to get to the altar. Or both.
As communion is taken the choir sing Tallis. Thomas Tallis was part of the Chapel Royal ( living within St James's Palace) from 1543 and composed and performed for Henry V111, Edward V1, Mary 1 and Elizabeth 1 (1558 until he died in 1585). As composer and organist under the royal wing he managed to avoid the religious controversies of the times though he remained an unreformed roman catholic. It was a difficult and suspicious position to be. Early in his career he was part of the monastery at Holy Cross in Waltham until the abbey was dissovled in 1540. There he acquired a volume of treatises by Leonel Power at this dissolution and preserved it - one of the treatise prohibited consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves. Later Queen Elizabeth granted him and Byrd 21 years sole rights to compose polyphonic music from 1575 and a patent to print and publish music too, which was one of the first arrangements of that type in the country. I struggle to understand this. The restrictions sound very tight. UL is a muscian and when I ask him he sends me a thoughtful essay explaining the central ideas of of sacred proportion, of chiming simple notes perfectly.
In the service with the beautiful music and the choir's voices building one of those boys - not much older than my son and with reassuringly scruffy hair and a thoughtful but not goody goody expression, opens his mouth, and this sound of gold and heaven and height soars out - his eyes slightly baffled by the voice he posseses.
I think the personal restriction of having a family has made me happier, more fulfilled, more open to people, more keen on joy.
At a time when Catholic worship was illegal in England The Queen's Chapel was built as a roman catholic place of worship for the Spanish Infanta to aid negotiations in a potential marriage with Charles 1 that fell through. Though it was then used for the wife he married - the french catholic Henrietta Maria. The beautiful building was completed in 1629 causing resentment and suspicion, indeed it's plain exterior was meant to deflect this outcry. But in troubled times it contributed to the conflict that eventually erupted between Charles and Parliament into the English Civil War and Charles 1's eventual execution infront of the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall.
Both the Queen's Chapel and the Banqueting house were designed by Inigo Jones - a welsh catholic cloth makers son who travelled in Italy studying architecture with 'Collector' Earl of Arundel. He brought a version of the Italian architect Palladio's work home and translated it into early Palladianism here in England. Based on the proportion and symmetry of formal classical temples of the Ancient Greeks and Romans Inigo Jones fascination even led him to our own ancient structures - he was the first to measure Stonehenge. I don't know why - I find the scene, those old stones on a windswept plain being studied by a man in the thrall of classical mathematics beautiful and mysterious.
Walking back from dropping the boys off at school one morning I hear and then see a horse drawn cart move across the traffic lights crossroads of Horseferry Road and Marsham Street, I have been deep in thought about the boys, about writing this, about all the things that make my life. I look up and laugh as if there is a tear in modern life and some old bit of history is coming towards me, two beautiful horses pulling this open carriage with two men in top hats perched high. On our street, on the thin dark street that Charles Dickens called 'Devil's Acre' the street where my sons have said that they are scared by something - it feels dark to them - a building oppposite has been taken over by a pack of youth. I wonder if they are squattting. They sit and smoke at the huge windows and watch people pass below though my brother who is a surveyer came to dinner one night ( roast chicken, gratin dauphinoise and salad) and texted me as he left to say that he forgot to tell me his company surveyed a brothel down here. I think how funny, the ground is the same, this dark street has not changed.
Amen
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
St Michael's Chester Square
We all went to the Stop The Cuts March! Almost everyone I have ever mentioned in this blog was there, somewhere. If this was Jane Austen it would be the Box Hill picnic though with a lot less dramatic impact and more people and more banners.
Me, the children, exh and the exd friend of exh set off. One son dressed in a storm trooper costume, another in a viking helmet and me in ( I didn't seem to have any marching shoes) wellington boots and a bowler hat. Though all of us being awful ( not the exd friend luckily - he behaved perfectly. ) The boys crying on our street corner because I wouldn't let them take guns. Exh disappearing. Me frazzled for we are meant to be meeting people and we are late. Exh reappearing. With a bubble machine that looks exactly like a gun I have just confiscated. Both boys want the bubble machine and both boys still want guns. I am rolling my eyes and sniping at exh though later I feel I lost track of humour because a bubble machine subverts a gun so well.
Joining the march at parliament square our spirits soar. We become part of something bigger than our leaky bickering boat, and are buoyed up, part of a current - nice nurses, beautiful handstitched TUC banners, good people blowing whistles. At Downing St we all boo. Everyone taking pictures or film. The children surprised by the childishness of adults. BOO!
We meet our friends on the corner of Piccadilly. “HEY HEY, HO HO, THE FUNDING CUTS HAVE GOT TO GO!' From near Green Park I see a church that I have wanted to visit tucked into a dark street like a scene from a period drama. 'STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS.' Later in Hyde Park we meet more friends and a message comes through on my phone from UL who had been marching with his son saying that banks are being trashed near Cambridge Circus and there is pandemonium. Police sirens scream around Hyde Park Corner and we, the three families coming back to the flat for tea, cut through the opulence of Belgravia to avoid it. Under the nose of policemen a young couple, like insects, black scarves over their faces and really enormous bags, like stretched skin, the shells of cockroachs slung on their backs, carry a crate of beer. Close up, we can see pale skin, and make out skinny youthful faces, a boy and a girl. It is like a black space when they walk past, as if breath is held. All the children are fascinated, open mouthed, their instinctive love of order threatened. What do they have in their bags? They want to know. Why have they got masks on? Why did the policemen not stop them?
Nearing Victoria I see another church. One I didn't know was there, one I must have missed. It is much nearer than some other churches I have already been to. There. I think. I'll do that next. Pleased to have made a discovery. Outside an exclusive Belgravia shop a man in plush corduroy and a blazer pauses, watches us trudging along with our weary children as if we are foot soldiers back from an old battle, as if we are a defeated enemy. Finally back at the flat, eating toasted sandwiches we watch Fortnum and Masons's taken over on the tv. 'Oh' I say. 'What a shame. I love Fortnum and Mason's it's so beautiful.' My more left wing but rich friends scowl at me.
UL tells me later he saw the bloc party kids - a big group of those insect-like, masked youth- move up and out of Trafalagar Square, menacing but choreographed, wearing black and red, banging sticks, marching in formation - intent on trouble. He said they were 'high' but he wasn't sure if it was just excitement and fear or drugs too.
UL and I haven't seen each other much. He was ill, then one of the boys was ill and Exh has been on a babysitting boycott for weeks. We squeeze in a cup of coffee at the British Library before I meet a friend who works there for lunch. Everything feels rather unsatisfactory for I just have too much to do, I don't really have time for either assignation - I haven't yet been to a church, I need to buy hamster bedding, should be working on my novel or editing a friend's photographs for money. We correspond continually - modern electronic love letters of beauty and mundane detail. Homework, meals made, misunderstandings, political debate, It is wonderful and exciting but sometimes I wonder if the gaps between what we write and who we are is too wide. The reality is we are a middle aged couple that repeat themselves, apologise for wearing glasses, and forget they have told each other something already. I know that love is there but it is hard to trust. I worry each sentence exchanged and see trapdoors in everything. I know I will ruin what there is if I keep going with my detective's eye and empty pockets of faith. But I can't seem to help myself.
I write this and then think does it sound too mean? I have become increasingly squashed now between hurting people in my life, telling a story and telling the truth. I discuss this with a writer friend. She suggests writing about it. Being honest about the difficulties. She suggests researching how Charles Dickens responded to opinions on his serialised novels.
'Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Nell and her grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly instalments, his friend John Forster pointed out: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you?" Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win". In tragedy, it is: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". The dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Nell died.
He abides by plot which seems to be the sensible answer. But doesn't really help me. My plot was an accident. Unexpected. Muddled.
I race back from the British Library to the church I saw. Squeezing time before getting the boys from school The main door is shut, but I spot a back door, left slightly open. Pinned wonkily is a poster for a baby singing group. There are two women with smart buggies and cashmere dressed babies approaching and for a minute I think they are smiling at me, but of course it is at each other. 'Is it possible to get into the church this back way?' I ask. 'I just want to have a quick look.' Probably functioning on exhaustion and Munch mask screams behind the perfect make up they are helpful and usher me in. Only when we are all inside, past the kitchen, into the gloom of the vestry is there a sudden suspicious glance, an understandable holding tight of their babies. These are the first-to-arrive-mums, the organised ones but I am beyond their comprehension, a funny woman in patent platform court shoes rattling the bull ring of the locked wooden door into the actual church, then standing at the glass peering into view the interior. Which is almost square with a high ceiling. Stained glass, simple pews. A lot of space. I dare only a quick look before turning and bobbing and thanking my exit. Rushing to Sainsbury's and to get the boys from school.
I don't know I find these Pimlico/Belgravia churches hard to remember, hard to attach to. So difficult that when I went past St Saviour's the other day I couldn't really remember whether I had been inside or not. And when I read that St Michael's like St Paul's Wilton Place was designed by Thomas Cundy Jnr I know I have been to that church but can't quite remember which one it was. Most of the churches I have been to I remember vividly, but these few lack, lack what - a heart, a mystery, authenticity?
Initially a church was not planned in Chester Square ( built 1835) but squeezed into an awkward space meant for a mews when the nearby Chapel of the Lock and hospital was demolished in1842 leaving the new residents with no where to worship. Though it a surprise that the clientele of this 'the most retired and therefore the most satisfying of the Belgravia squares.' Nickolaus Pevsner - would be have been happy to worship in the Chapel of the Lock which had been alongside a leper hospital for women of dubious reputation.
'LOOK HOSPITAL, removed, from its old habitat in Grosvenor Place, to a more appropriate position in the Harrow Road, discharges the functions both of a hospital (established in 1746) and an asylum (dating from 1787) for penitent Magdalenes afflicted with disease, or sincerely desirous of abandoning the "primrose path that leads to the everlasting bonfire."
Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865
'Look or Lock' referring 'to the old French loques, rags, from the linen applied to sores; "but otherwise, and with more probability, from the Saxon loq, shut, closed, in reference to the necessary seclusion of the leper on account of the infectious nature of his disease." (Archer's Vestiges, Part I.)'
Finally ( and yes, I'm rushing ) I find these two things
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/02/yemeni-protest-chants.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/28/cuts-protest-uk-uncut-fortnum
I don't know. Our assumptions of safety get us into trouble sometimes.
Amen.
Me, the children, exh and the exd friend of exh set off. One son dressed in a storm trooper costume, another in a viking helmet and me in ( I didn't seem to have any marching shoes) wellington boots and a bowler hat. Though all of us being awful ( not the exd friend luckily - he behaved perfectly. ) The boys crying on our street corner because I wouldn't let them take guns. Exh disappearing. Me frazzled for we are meant to be meeting people and we are late. Exh reappearing. With a bubble machine that looks exactly like a gun I have just confiscated. Both boys want the bubble machine and both boys still want guns. I am rolling my eyes and sniping at exh though later I feel I lost track of humour because a bubble machine subverts a gun so well.
Joining the march at parliament square our spirits soar. We become part of something bigger than our leaky bickering boat, and are buoyed up, part of a current - nice nurses, beautiful handstitched TUC banners, good people blowing whistles. At Downing St we all boo. Everyone taking pictures or film. The children surprised by the childishness of adults. BOO!
We meet our friends on the corner of Piccadilly. “HEY HEY, HO HO, THE FUNDING CUTS HAVE GOT TO GO!' From near Green Park I see a church that I have wanted to visit tucked into a dark street like a scene from a period drama. 'STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS.' Later in Hyde Park we meet more friends and a message comes through on my phone from UL who had been marching with his son saying that banks are being trashed near Cambridge Circus and there is pandemonium. Police sirens scream around Hyde Park Corner and we, the three families coming back to the flat for tea, cut through the opulence of Belgravia to avoid it. Under the nose of policemen a young couple, like insects, black scarves over their faces and really enormous bags, like stretched skin, the shells of cockroachs slung on their backs, carry a crate of beer. Close up, we can see pale skin, and make out skinny youthful faces, a boy and a girl. It is like a black space when they walk past, as if breath is held. All the children are fascinated, open mouthed, their instinctive love of order threatened. What do they have in their bags? They want to know. Why have they got masks on? Why did the policemen not stop them?
Nearing Victoria I see another church. One I didn't know was there, one I must have missed. It is much nearer than some other churches I have already been to. There. I think. I'll do that next. Pleased to have made a discovery. Outside an exclusive Belgravia shop a man in plush corduroy and a blazer pauses, watches us trudging along with our weary children as if we are foot soldiers back from an old battle, as if we are a defeated enemy. Finally back at the flat, eating toasted sandwiches we watch Fortnum and Masons's taken over on the tv. 'Oh' I say. 'What a shame. I love Fortnum and Mason's it's so beautiful.' My more left wing but rich friends scowl at me.
UL tells me later he saw the bloc party kids - a big group of those insect-like, masked youth- move up and out of Trafalagar Square, menacing but choreographed, wearing black and red, banging sticks, marching in formation - intent on trouble. He said they were 'high' but he wasn't sure if it was just excitement and fear or drugs too.
UL and I haven't seen each other much. He was ill, then one of the boys was ill and Exh has been on a babysitting boycott for weeks. We squeeze in a cup of coffee at the British Library before I meet a friend who works there for lunch. Everything feels rather unsatisfactory for I just have too much to do, I don't really have time for either assignation - I haven't yet been to a church, I need to buy hamster bedding, should be working on my novel or editing a friend's photographs for money. We correspond continually - modern electronic love letters of beauty and mundane detail. Homework, meals made, misunderstandings, political debate, It is wonderful and exciting but sometimes I wonder if the gaps between what we write and who we are is too wide. The reality is we are a middle aged couple that repeat themselves, apologise for wearing glasses, and forget they have told each other something already. I know that love is there but it is hard to trust. I worry each sentence exchanged and see trapdoors in everything. I know I will ruin what there is if I keep going with my detective's eye and empty pockets of faith. But I can't seem to help myself.
I write this and then think does it sound too mean? I have become increasingly squashed now between hurting people in my life, telling a story and telling the truth. I discuss this with a writer friend. She suggests writing about it. Being honest about the difficulties. She suggests researching how Charles Dickens responded to opinions on his serialised novels.
'Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Nell and her grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly instalments, his friend John Forster pointed out: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you?" Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win". In tragedy, it is: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". The dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Nell died.
He abides by plot which seems to be the sensible answer. But doesn't really help me. My plot was an accident. Unexpected. Muddled.
I race back from the British Library to the church I saw. Squeezing time before getting the boys from school The main door is shut, but I spot a back door, left slightly open. Pinned wonkily is a poster for a baby singing group. There are two women with smart buggies and cashmere dressed babies approaching and for a minute I think they are smiling at me, but of course it is at each other. 'Is it possible to get into the church this back way?' I ask. 'I just want to have a quick look.' Probably functioning on exhaustion and Munch mask screams behind the perfect make up they are helpful and usher me in. Only when we are all inside, past the kitchen, into the gloom of the vestry is there a sudden suspicious glance, an understandable holding tight of their babies. These are the first-to-arrive-mums, the organised ones but I am beyond their comprehension, a funny woman in patent platform court shoes rattling the bull ring of the locked wooden door into the actual church, then standing at the glass peering into view the interior. Which is almost square with a high ceiling. Stained glass, simple pews. A lot of space. I dare only a quick look before turning and bobbing and thanking my exit. Rushing to Sainsbury's and to get the boys from school.
I don't know I find these Pimlico/Belgravia churches hard to remember, hard to attach to. So difficult that when I went past St Saviour's the other day I couldn't really remember whether I had been inside or not. And when I read that St Michael's like St Paul's Wilton Place was designed by Thomas Cundy Jnr I know I have been to that church but can't quite remember which one it was. Most of the churches I have been to I remember vividly, but these few lack, lack what - a heart, a mystery, authenticity?
Initially a church was not planned in Chester Square ( built 1835) but squeezed into an awkward space meant for a mews when the nearby Chapel of the Lock and hospital was demolished in1842 leaving the new residents with no where to worship. Though it a surprise that the clientele of this 'the most retired and therefore the most satisfying of the Belgravia squares.' Nickolaus Pevsner - would be have been happy to worship in the Chapel of the Lock which had been alongside a leper hospital for women of dubious reputation.
'LOOK HOSPITAL, removed, from its old habitat in Grosvenor Place, to a more appropriate position in the Harrow Road, discharges the functions both of a hospital (established in 1746) and an asylum (dating from 1787) for penitent Magdalenes afflicted with disease, or sincerely desirous of abandoning the "primrose path that leads to the everlasting bonfire."
Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865
'Look or Lock' referring 'to the old French loques, rags, from the linen applied to sores; "but otherwise, and with more probability, from the Saxon loq, shut, closed, in reference to the necessary seclusion of the leper on account of the infectious nature of his disease." (Archer's Vestiges, Part I.)'
Finally ( and yes, I'm rushing ) I find these two things
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/02/yemeni-protest-chants.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/28/cuts-protest-uk-uncut-fortnum
I don't know. Our assumptions of safety get us into trouble sometimes.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)