St John of the White Tower

The Court on Horseferry Rd that closed in December has been demolished. A vast space on the corner of Marsham St opened up revealing a rather blank blocks of flats and unexpectedly a view of the gothic, golden-tipped tower of the Houses of Parliament with the Union Jack flying. I find the view fascinating as we walk to and from school, the change it makes to other buildings, the layers of London peeled back, the shift/mark of change like a lost tooth. Though the speed that it has been taken down and the hoarding advertising luxury apartments suggests it won't be there long.

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.

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.

The Queen's Chapel of Savoy

We get up at 5.45 to see the river pageant. The boys waking as if going on holiday, scrambling into their clothes while I make sandwiches. Outside the light has the grey speckle of underarm, warm and damp but not quite raining. I carry bags of activities and food, my sons carry the folding camping stools. We thought we would pitch up at the end of our street in the garden by the Houses of Parliament - we had done a recce the night before and there were toilets and a coffee kiosk setting up - with lots of room to run about until it got crowded. This morning in the gloom we can see the silhouettes of a few umbrellas already at the river side but vistas of free space under the trees. For a moment the plan seems to have gone ridiculously smoothly and my eldest insists we high five. At the gate however there are security men. 'We have to sweep the garden for bombs', they say, we can't let anyone in until 11am. But, there are people already here I say pointing at the draggle of umbrellas already on the front. 'They were here before we arrived' says the man. We can't do anything about them now. You should have got here 5 minutes ago - we weren't here. We plead for a while but they won't let us in. Let's keep walking, I say, we'll find a place. On Westminster Bridge there is a group of older women already set up with camping chairs and union jacks at the edge of the bridge under Big Ben and a gentle elderly lady with bulging feet in old lady sandals, a mac and a cheap umbrella. It has started to pour and the wind has picked up. Security guards give conflicting advice as to where we can be, allowing us onto the bridge and then herding us back. It is all women here someone observes, then notices my sons. For about 10 minutes we debate whether it would be better to be here with the best view or nearer to PSM's house on the South Bank with the obvious advantages of friends, toilets and cups of tea. My youngest needs a wee and the decision is made.

On the east side of Waterloo Bridge we choose our place on the railings, in view of St Paul's, almost as if standing where Canaletto painted the historic view of the Thames. It is pouring now and really cold. My youngest has retreated to PSM's to watch cartoons though my eldest is still at my side - I am going to sit with you all day he says. By 9am we have sat for 2 hours played a lot of games of travel Connect 4 and he has tooted a rather beautiful looking but tuneless brass horn that I bought for him on the internet loudly and repeatedly to tug boats and steam boats moving up river. We have spent the only money I have on hot drinks and a minescule bag of warm doughnuts and when he says 'how much longer' I have to say probably 7 hours. Understandably he decamps to PSMs for a break. I do wonder what giving up might feel like, the dirty damp bags a tide at my feet.

On one side there are now two old ladies from the North and on the other an East End family, of different generations - a nice young man and his girlfriend with smart cityessex (citisex?) accents, his cockney mum and grumpy cockney granny in high heeled flip flops with socks who says every now and then. 'I don't think I should have come.' coughs a bit, then sniffs the air and says longingly 'I can smell bacon.' Though the family try and jolly her on. The rest of us are smiley and stoic in waterproofs. At 9.30 it starts filling up and a posh older man with a booming voice, spots a gap between me and the east end granny and stakes a claim on the railings, phoning his family on the mobile, I have found a simply perfect spot he says. It is absolutely marvellous. For a while the original settlers bristle to the boom of him but then we all relax and get on. He is really nice to the grandchildren that he slots in around us, and the WAGs and sons or husbands of his family become the crowd behind us but retreat/duck under his well meaning Empire-running tone.

I am in the elderly women gang on the unsuitable footwear. I dithered in the hallway about wellies. Then plumped for ballet pumps and no socks and oh my goodness I am cold.

At 11am the children return with PSM's sons and PSM and her boyfriend. She takes one look at me and goes home bringing socks, wellies, a hot water bottle and a flask of hot sweet tea. She is a midwife and I feel I have been midwifed though it is lovely to feel so cared for.

The children settle down to a couple of hours Where's Wally and Tintin books while I stitch union jacks out of felt. When I thought I would be entertaining the boys for hours and hours on my own I packed craft material and bamboo sticks to make flags. I think I look a bit mad and a lot more patriotic than I actually am, doling out sandwiches and union jacks to four boys. Somehow though I don't know how exactly, it is assumed I am a single mum by the boomy grandad who is unable to hide his surprise I know who Canaletto is. PSM always more sensible than me has retreated to the warmth of her house, to drink cava and wait for some friends. Though it is no longer actually raining now just damp. There are dark inflatable speed boats patrolling the sides of the river, low in the water but skimming fast, men with guns shadowy in black. The boys watch them through binoculars, sing songs and talk nonsense - with intermittant bursts on the golden horn. When they turn to me and ask how much longer they look disbelieving when I say probably 4 hours.

About 1 o'clock the crowds are 9 or 10 deep but a procession of small children in bone dry cashmere breton jumpers process in a line like a scene from a stylish french children's book to our vantage point at the railings propelled by a professionally blow dried mother hissing in their ear - 'well done' and 'keep going'. At the railings she is showy and loud pointing out London landmarks, herding the children and staking a claim with her body language, hogging the view of the older women next to us. I feel tired and angry. 'I am really sorry we have all been here a very long time, it isn't fair if you take our space. 'MY MOTHER HAS BEEN HERE SINCE 10! she says shrilly, waving to a woman 5 back in the crowd. But she isn't at the front I say. I hate being rude or mean but I don't want to let her take our place, can't stand the air of entitlement. We have been here since 7 I say dourly, like a toad on a camping stool, guarding something momentarily precious. 'These nice people have been here since 7 she says in a shiny voice to the children, not catching my unblinking hooded eye under the green waterproof - though there is a tinge of incredulity, as if only fools would make the effort. And that's why we are at the front. I say. She stays. I glower. She stays. I glower. In pique I use my son's camera to take a picture of her. In a town on the border of Mexico and America I once saw grids of poloroid pictures of shoplifters pinned to the pound shops door. In the small hazy focus of the bare backroom they had been taken to, powerful portraits of fear, defiance and sulky resentment. Though I am still surprised by how much authority a camera has - as if there is a central 'badly behaved' shop door pictures could be sent to for the mother turns back her party from the railings. Oh I just wanted my children to see the pageant she says in a little girl voice as they depart. The children cry on the retreat, like little pink mice, their tails tucked behind them. I feel like someone wicked in a nursery rhyme though a woman on the other side of the northern women say she had asked them to move too.

At 2pm PSM texts me to say she will never get through the crowd to the front but can I have two of her friends children please. Small boys are despatched to collect them, squeezing back between the crowds legs as if amoebas splitting and doubling. PSM's eldest son carries a clingfilmed glass of cava for me. With six children I feel we are a rowdy pack, but the Grandad says - leave them - they are enjoying themselves, they have done very well, but in a benevolent 'isn't it jolly what things under microscopes do when you watch them' tone. My eldest and PSM's youngest, sing the National Anthem at the top of their voices, which should be charming but isn't. The cashmere breton jumpered children have been packed at the feet of the Grandad's family. Only writing this do I realise this wasn't just kindness - they were a part of it.

By 3pm excitement is high - across the river we can see the flicker of screens between trees and know the Queen has embarked, that the boats are on their way. Every 10 minutes the boys ( and one girl ) say - how much longer - and I guess 10 minutes. Then they ask again. 10 minutes I guess again. But suddenly it is nearly happening and I feel tired and cold and need a wee.

The Bell boat is first, careering rather madly, through the choppy water, the bells ringing out, tipping back and forth on wheels like something put together from the making box. Then the Venetian style Gloriana, very beautiful, men in time powering the boat cleanly through the currents. Behind with the the flurry of oars and paddles, and punts the little boats pour under Waterloo Bridge - comical and beautiful in their pell mell dash and endeavour. Red, blue, yellow, gold, orange, - flashes of colour and rich details - canoes and skiffs, gondalas, row boats, kayaks, fishing boats, the rhythm of oars in and out and in and out, shoulders moving together. I hear myself just saying, oh, it is lovely, repeatedly. Like a Richard Scary children's book page full of crazy animals in crazy vehicles spread out infront of us the boys and I point out to each other different boats and flags The gondala' we say, to the elegant arc of a white and golden boat. The little long boat! for there is a mini Viking boat with shields and a dragon masthead. The willow pattern plate boat - a low slung boat with a braided canopy But the scene does look like the Canaletto - it is absolutely beautiful. And we wave and wave and wave.

Infront of us though the boats have to funnel through a channel between moored boats packed with flag waving wellwishers and the currents of the Thames seem to pick up on this corner and we see the oarsmen, the canoeists, backing up, jamming into pockets, a little bit of panic then paddling through.

The Commonwealth boats glide in, jaunty, more controlled with their little motors powering their triangular formation. Flags fluttering, turquoise clad crew, padded and proud. The Grandad behind is listing the countries of each flag, to no one in particular. He wants his binoculars back from his grandchildren but everytime he nearly gets them another striped child lisps it is their turn. He is kind enough not to demand them but I feel he would like to. I am on his side. Oh it is beautiful I say again. A big pleasure boat with an orchestra playing Handel's water music in a plastic flapping gazebo on the top deck sails past, music in gusts, everyone cheering.

Is it the Queen? Is it the Queen? Is it the Queen? my youngest says.

A boat with some trumpeters dressed a bit like cards in Alice in Wonderland playing a fanfare comes under the bridge. Da da they say. Da da da da da da da da dahhhh! Then the royal barge - a big maroon thing ploughing through the water flanked by the drop shadow of the dark inflatable security boats, and backed up behind with matt grey warships, soldiers at attention, alert to attack. But after all that waiting I find it hard to remember anything and I confuse the snippets I have seen on tv with the not much I remember. I think it may have started really pouring at this time though that might happen shortly after. I remember people saying they couldn't see the thousands of flowers on the barge and I say - the flowers are in the swags - in the garlands. The Grandad snaps once or twice at my sons/charges to keep their heads down, but he still hasn't got his binoculars back and is feeling frustrated. I continually tap at the 6 children with my felt flag not to stand on the concrete of the railings so that other people can see. I feel briefly like I have turned into the grumpy east end granny though no one attends to my grumbling. A few people sing God Save the Queen but just like my son and his friend it sounds slightly ironic, a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit don't care and the woman leading it at the back just sounds drunk.

I think then it is odd - I have waited in the cold and rain for 9 hours for something I don't believe in - don't really give a shit about. Infront of us the big boat moored up and packed with well wishers tips precariously as everyone leans to wave. Our crowd keep laughing as the boat tips alarmingly further and further out of the water, the bottom of the boat, a muddy white, revealed.

No one says - god bless you ma am , no one says anything very much about the Queen at all apart from she works hard. I hear people say this will never happen again in out life time. Not even in your life time a woman points out to my sons, calculating the possible reign of Charles or William to not amount to much and I think most are just there for the sense of history. Though I wonder if a boat pageant might become the new royal pop concert - there is something so popular and spectacular to it.

But seeing the Queen as a vulnerable grainy fleck of white in the grey damp air waving on a boat floating on the Thames I think of my Mum. They have the same dogged duty, the same unfailing and unstinting duty to duty. Though what they are dutiful to is almost forgotten, a dry husk of whatever it is they were told was important to be as good little girls. The guarding has become the important thing, their determination and obedience almost the value itself. When I watch the tv I think the Queen has a few seconds when she looks up to the drip of her gazebo, the grey rain coming down and wonders just briefly why she is here, what on earth she is doing adrift on a tarty barge. But I also think Kate Middleton looks lonely. Stood a fraction behind William as he laughs with his brother she laughs too, but anxiously, looking to check if she laughed correctly. A family I supose. Just a flawed family.

Later I find out researching and watching endless youtube clips of the pageant to try and remember what happened that someone I went to college with, a friend's ex boyfriend was in charge of the look and dressing of the Royal barge which seems funny. He was then an energetic, beautiful but appropriately for art school, snarling young man. Though I like the idea of the banner at the stern decorated with more than half a million gold buttons in the shape of the royal coat of arms - though I am not sure anyone noticed it.

If it hadn't already started raining when the Queen passed by - it does now - a deluge as the cheery Dunkirk boats come through. The boats of different shapes and sizes are painted and polished with the spit and rub of pride and it is almost possible to smell the fresh paint and duraglit across the width of the Thames. The crowds cheer and cheer in the rain proud of the pluck, the spirit and bravery of boats that evacuated 338,226 troops from the shores of France. When those troops were cut off by the German Army on the shores of France in the early summer of 1940 the extent of the possible disastrous defeat was kept from the British public. However King George V1 ( the Queen's father) called for an unprecedented week of prayer - the Archbishop of Canterbury led prayers 'for our soldiers in dire peril in France' and the public knew something grave was up. These little boats - the fishing boats and pleasure craft alongside royal national lifeboats and British destroyers ferried the troops to safety 'a miracle of deliverance' as hailed Winston Churchill.

A military band packed onto a pleasure boat sails through, drummers drumming scottish songs, the grandad humming, a few of us snatching the words we know, good to jig a little in the sheeting rain. Then the toot of the historic boats, steam funnels puffing smoke. The boys take it in turn to play the golden horn in conversation to the boat whistles. The working boats following, life boats and fire boats spraying water.

The music is muddled in my mind and it seems not very well reported on tv or even youtube - though it was beautiful and there was a boat with an amazing eastern sounding choir, which I imagine must be the Shree Muktajeevan Pipe Banc and Dhol Ensemble.

Toot toot toot, the golden horn played right in my ear. I have had enough.

This is the end, the War and Peace moment, the moment when the French army retreat - when the crowds who have stood so long, came together into a collective of cheers and reasonably goodwill decide - everyone, all at the same time, without saying goodbye or even making a plan just ups and leaves. I think one of the boys says - I have had enough and rather than do the normal - just 10 minutes more - I just say yes. Let's go. Only then noticing the departing backs of the Grandad's family, the empty stretch of railings, just the movement of retreat. The recreation boats are coming through, endless white fibre glass boats that our gaze slide away from. And we run back through the rain and abandoned union jacks curled in puddles to PSM's house. And PSM and her friends cheer me when I come in as if the Queen herself has arrived - I am my mother's daughter with my ridiculous stoic duty to the task. Our children will remember this for ever they say, giving me soup and tea. Secretly I think I don't think the children really cared. Perhaps even I didn't really, though I had wanted to see the Thames swamped with colourful boats.

I am just saying I wish I had seen The London Philarmonic Orchestra when we hear it. PSM's house is just set back from the South bank ( though behind solid office blocks ) and we hear them loud and clearly. She runs out with her boyfriend into the rain to see, the rest of us stand in a the sea of a lego of a boys bedroom to hear them.

I will never get these tired damp boys home without a fuss I think looking out at the pouring rain, knowing I haven't got enough money for a taxi or even a bus as a back up plan and too proud to ask PSM to borrow some. But we walk back through the lash of wind and rain happily carrying our damp stools and bags. My youngest dancing on tip toes through the lakes of puddles, his face completely absorbed to the dance he makes.

I wonder what church could sit with the pageant but think I will just have to make it work - there aren't any specifically royal churches left that I know.

When I walk down Savoy Hill to the Savoy Chapel there are still metal barricades stacked up, left over from the pageant though I think by the time I get to the church it is a week later. The chapel is set back in a garden but there is building work going on and it looks closed up and a bit of a mess, though there are old gravestones skewed into the railings, as if the earth has just been turned over.

I have tried a few times to get into the church and it has always been shut ( even when it should have been open ) so I am pleased to see the door wide open. Inside a very plain and small village hall style porch there are flowers on a table and closed doors. Then a door opens revealing a glimpse of the chapel, a mother propelling a child as if to the toilet. I squeeze past their hurried exit into the small chapel where it looks like the congregation are just leaving. I think I'll just sit briefly, before realising the seemingly departing congregation are mainly a family gathered around the font with a baby. It is a christening and the baptism is about to take place. I lose my nerve and get only a quick look at the high narrow chapel with painted ceiling and anonymous plush decor and recognise the slightly anonymous royal chapel style. It doesn't seem anything to do with the hotel at all but The Queen's Chapel of Savoy. Completely unexpectedly it is a royal chapel. 'The chapel belongs to Her Majesy The Queen in her right as Duke of Lancaster'. In a glass case there is a signed book of the monarchs that have visited.

A church was originally built here in the Middle Ages as part of the Savoy Palace, the walled riverside mansion built by Count Peter of Savoy in 1246. He was given the riverside land between Westminster and the City of London when his niece married Henry 111. Later it became the home of John of Gaunt who inherited the title of Duke of Lancaster in 1351. With it came the rights of palatine giving his land the right to be ruled autonomously from the rest of the kingdom, indeed this area known as 'Savoy' kept many of these special judicial privileges until 1873. Under these laws someone being pursued for a debt in London could reside in the Savoy without fear of arrest by people acting under the King's authority. The vast palace where Chaucer ( a clerk of the palace ) began the Canterbury Tales was burnt down in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 fueled by the unpopularity of John O Gaunt's poll tax which taxed rich and poor alike. Later restored and rebuilt by Henry V11 it became a hospital for the homeless, a vast nave filled with a hundred beds, and the first to benefit from permanent medical staff. It closed in 1702, falling into disrepair. Though there is a Turner sketch of the ruins and I love the idea of this gothic crumbling pile in the heart of London.

The Chapel known as both St Mary in the Hospital and St John the Baptist in the Savoy was the only thing to survive a fire of 1860 and was later restored. In the 18th century it was a place where marriages without banns could legally occur and was referred to in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as the place where divorced couples got married - 'a poky little place'

The impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte bought the ruins of the Savoy Palace in 1880 initially to build the Savoy Theatre for the production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. It was the first public building to be lit entirely by electricity and so successful was the venture that it financed the building of the Savoy, most of the revenue coming from the Mikado.

Writing and researching this I was for a while worried that there was going to be no connection to the Savoy hotel. I had bought the brilliant The West End Front - The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels (if you know me and it is your birthday soon expect it as a present) after hearing extracts on R4 - and wanted to use the fascinating stories some of which show so clearly the divide between rich and poor during the war.

As the communist newspaper The Daily Worker asserted in September 194o campaigning against the lack of reasonable or indeed any shelter from the Blitz in Stepney,

'If you live in the Savoy Hotel you are called by telephone when the sirens sound and then tucked into bed by servants in a luxury bomb-proof shelter. But if you live in Paradise Court you may find yourself without a refuge of any kind.' Then in big bold print 'THE PEOPLE MUST ACT'.

On 14th September, the 8th night of the Blitz they did. Meeting in Embankment Gardens they waited for the air raid siren to begin, unfurled their banners and marched onto the Savoy. Why the Savoy? 'It was the nearest' was the straightforward reply. Mainly east end communists - dockers, clothing workers, bootmakers though a few recruits had been picked up on the night from the poor public east end air-raid facilities. Somewhere between 40 and 80 it is claimed, though memories seem uncertain. The group marched through the doors of the Savoy, making a speech for equality. Despite the panic button being pressed and the police being called unexpectedly and cleverly the assistant general manager Willy Hofflin answered simply, 'There is no reason why these people should not have the same shelter as the Savoy's guests.' Infact, with bombs coming down outside it was the law not to turn people away into danger.

In a padded, cavernous space with a dance floor on one side and a dormitory on the other, separate quarters for single men and women and camp beds with matching sheets and pillows in green and pink and blue, a snore warden and uniformed nurses - the invaders were heard to remark - 'Shelters....why we'd love to live in such places'.

They ordered tea, demanding to pay only what they would pay in a Lyons Corner House. The waiters huddled to debate the request seemingly sympathetic to the invaders for in minutes trolleys appeared with tea and bread and butter.

After that there are two versions of the night - that the all clear sounded just as tea was served or that they stayed a victorious night.

Barely reported in the British press the Savoy invasion gained more coverage in the Nazi 'Volkischer Beobachter' 'For ten days now eight million people have flown into the air raid shelters and the subway' 'Londoners have become cave dwellers. Life has stopped. The working population is fleeing from the east and south of the city to the West End. Desperate men and women have stormed the luxurious Savoy hotel. Only police have been able to evacuate them. The question comes into one's mind.....whether at all and for how long the English population will follow Churchill on this path....'

Only fuelling the suspicion that the Communists were working on behalf of the Nazis. When the Savoy invasion was discussed in parliament the matter was taken very seriously and Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary,

'agreed with the Prime Minister that it would be necessary to take strong action to prevent demonstrations of this kind, which if allowed to grow, might easily lead to serious difficulties.'

The communists kept going with their attempts to find safe places for people to shelter repeatedly targeted the tube stations - exhorting London Transport to keep the gates unlocked or getting a crowbar to the barriers when shut. Only a week after the Savoy invasion on 21st September London Transport switched off the electricity at Aldwych, chemical toilets were installed and 2,500 were finally allowed to shelter on the Piccadilly line track along with the Elgin Marbles which had already been stored there three weeks previously.

'We went to the Savoy to show the class position; to show how the rich lived with a great mass of stuff while the ordinary working man and woman had to live on the coupon books. And because of what we did, the Underground was opened, and people had somewhere to shelter from the bombs. I'm very proud of the part I played.' says Max Levitas who was part of the Savoy invasion to Matthew Sweet the author of 'The West End Front'.

Finally I look again at the Canaletto:

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/canaletto/the-river-thames-with-st-paul-s-cathedral-on-lord-mayor-s-day-

finding diarists Pepys and John Evelyn's description of the 1660 pageant when King Charles 11 took part in the pageant a year after the restoration of the monarchy. Pepys described the scene as the king and queen journeyed downriver from Hampton court to Whitehall 'under a canopy with 10,000 barges and boats, I think, for we could see no water for them.'

For Evelyn, the event 'was the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames.' He wrote admiringly of 'the innumerable boats and vessels dress'd and adorn'd with all imaginable pomp...the thrones, arches....stately barges...musiq and peals of ordnance both from ye vessels and the shore'

In the painting St Paul's dominates the skyline but surrounding it - under an egg blue sky are the many church spires of the city. The only secular interruption to the sky is the Monument. On the long wait at the side of the Thames when arguments broke out and distraction was needed I had said - let's count how many churches we can see but it wasn't a game that captured the imagination of the pack of occasionally unruly children and I don't remember the answer. The spires peered from behind office blocks, nudged the view from the layer of buildings. St Paul's still central but the Monument hidden from view. I thought I have become a church watcher - like a bird watcher - the sightings on a skyline or glimpsed down a side street, the observation of history, the peck of another time, the i spy thrill of spotting one I haven't seen before.

Amen.

Notre Dame of France, Leicester Square

I think about Co Dependency and Christianity as I cycle to work across the parks, mainly in the rain. After a really horrible row with exh and an evening of tears and wine and good advice from a mum who spent a year in a refuge I grumpily get the co dependency books back out. It seems I need to accept my part in my problems. Though I believe I do mainly, I just need to guard the boundaries. The ride is beautiful: nosing the bike infront of Buckingham Palace, along the bottom of the damp dark green of Green Park, under Wellington Arch, up the steady incline of Hyde Park, past the barracks, alongside the lake, over the road, past the gallery and beneath the canopy of old trees. Dogs like cartoon characters in dog walker packs, all ears and eyebrows stretched taut on leads, then wet deck chairs blown inside out, billowed pregnant in the wind. At the brim of the hill The Round Pond is almost part of the sky, a grey disc of reflected cloud with swans and geese flapping their wings in a slow feathered cancan under the unseasonable gloom. Tourists at the gates of Kensington Palace, where the tide of cellophane flowers lapped when Diana died talk in hushed voices of where they were when she died ( in a teepee in New Mexico with shagging lesbians if you want to know.) Princess Diana is almost the patron saint of CD I think, all those unsuitable men, the middle of the night bedside hospital visits, the unhappy childhood, the open wound of that savagely caring heart dragged like heavy luggage. I imagine a catholic coloured statue of her, a Jeff Koons perhaps, a single tear in the corner of those dipped blue eyes dropping with the weight of the sorrow of the world.

This is the Christianity I learnt at home, at sunday school, at school:

Think of others before yourself.

Give without counting the cost.

Do a good turn every day.

As a family we said prayers every night until I was a teenager when I finally rebelled against the tradition, the words themselves exhausted by the speed with which we rattled them off. We didn't have a TV and I think my childhood was more old fashioned than my age. Exh still laughs at my 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit' story of collecting for Oxfam when the men landed on the moon. ( though not actually the first landing I suspect ). My younger brother and I peering round the dimpled glass front door of a house to see the grainy black and white picture of men in bulky suits as if made on Blue Peter. My Mum above us rattling the collecting tin circled by the pictures of starving children to a Dad who was surprised the door bell had rung.

Co d is what you learn when you detach from an alcoholic. What you have become or have always been. It is the unhealthy attachment to another, the willingness to take care of someone else's problems, a compulsive wish to control others by your care.

This is what Nietzsche said on christianity:

'Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.'

He 'called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error", and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world.'

' Nietzsche associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions. Nietzsche sees slave-morality born out of the resentment of slaves. It works to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness." '

It seems a lot of the churches I want to get into now are only open on Sundays or odd times in the week and it is increasingly difficult just to slip into a church as I am working all but full time. Also I have discovered on my map behind the computer that charts churches I have been to and those still to visit, a purple sticker over a yellow one on a church in Soho - though I am not sure if this is a mistake or if the boys are playing a trick on me. I had a boyfriend once a long time ago, a college boyfriend, who kept adding extra birds to a large copy of Constable's Haywain that hung in his parents front room. They never noticed he said and the intricacy of the sly sabotage made me laugh.

It is pouring as I turn off Leicester Square into the narrow street of Notre Dame of France. Infront of the Odeon there is a woman with a clip board directing passersby away from the workmen creating a gothic landscape for the premiere of Snow White and the Hunstmen. A drunk man cackles to security guards behind the newly errected barriers 'It is pissing down, no one will be coming here.' 'They will come.' they say calmly - behind them green astro turf being rolled out and men placing fake crows in fake trees.

In a flat faced large 50s building I walk up the steps and into a huge rotunda room with grey light from a cupola skylight in the shallow domed roof. It is a bit murky, a bit municipal, a bit unkempt. I sit at a pew. Just sit. There are about five others sat in the pews with their heads bowed. Perhaps just sheltering I wonder - the heels of scruffy shoes and stowed bags visible, though they seem devout in their prayer. As I sit in the grey stillness it feels like an arbitary act that I am just sitting still on a Tuesday lunchtime here in this place. I begin to hear high holy music, as if almost at a frequency beyond human ear, I can't work out where it is coming from, and imagine a cd piped in for atmosphere. Later when I am researching the church I find a mention on flickr that there was an organ playing when the photographer took the pictures and I wonder now writing this whether someone was actually quietly playing.

Above the altar piece is an large ornate and richly detailed tapestry of Mary. Like a Disney princess she is surrounded by animals and birds - a cockerel, a peacock, a squirrel, a deer. I am mesmerized by the fine detail though I find it a bit sickly, a bit ugly.

Eventually I stand and walk to the back of the church, finding blue and white delft tiles depicting the Stations of the Cross and a notice board on the curved wall labelled 'Spiritual Life' listing retreats, and prayer groups, some of it in French. I find too a mention of Jean Cocteau's mural. Aha I think, they are here. A friend had mentioned that there were some of Cocteau murals in a french church in Soho but for some reason I had assumed they were in the French Protestant church in Soho Square which I still haven't got into. I have to wander around the church, up to the altar and then to the side curved wall where there are glass booths sectioned off from the church. It isn't clear if they are chapels or offices but pressing my face to the dark glass and through the reflection I see the slab of an altar and vibrant life-sized drawings of the Cruxifiction on the wall behind. Passionate but stylised line drawings in bright pencil crayon colours they show only the legs and bleeding feet of Jesus, the blood dripping from his feet to a rose. Homoerotic soldiers, bereft women, a gold ringed black sun, there is an odd but modern narrative within the picture, a crucifixion of difficult human emotions.

The mural was painted over eight days in Novemeber 1959 when Jean Cocteau was promoting his film Le Testament d'Orphee in London. The church had been badly bombed in 1940 and then restored. The french cultural attache Renee Varin was commissioned to encourage eminent french artists to help create a sacred space. Though Cocteau's poetry, opium and homosexuality were seen to sit uneasily with his Catholicism he was invited to decorate a chapel and screens had to be errected to keep away the crowds while he worked.

'He arrived each morning about 10am and began by lighting a candle. He was heard talking to the Virgin Mary while working on the drawing. 'O you, most beautiful of women, loveliest of God's creatures, you were the best loved. So I want you to be my best piece of work too....I am drawing you with light strokes....You are the yet unfinished work of Grace.'

And when he left,

'I am sorry to go, as if the wall of the chapel had drawn me into another world.' 'I shall never forget that wide open heart of Notre Dame de France and the place you allowed me to take within it'

Though as I begin researching the murals I am tipped through a door of conspiracy and complicated plots attached to Cocteau. A lot seems to be based on the discredited Priory of Sion - a lineage invented by the frenchman Pierre Plantard in 1956 to prove he was descended from the true King of France. The plot included fake documents being planted by Plantard and accomplices in the Biblioteque Nationale and across France to establish his claim. (Oh I love the idea of false history embedded in the real. ) Despite Plantard admitting his hoax the story seems to have gathered momentum, being used to prove the lineage of Jesus and Mary Magdalegne and becoming the basis of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. The son of a suicide Cocteau was listed by Plantard as a Grand Master of Sion along with Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. The murals at Notre Dame fuel the debate:

'The Priory of Sion has, in the past, purposely used the letters "MM", or sometimes jus "M" to symbolize Magdalene and Cocteau used them as well. In the Church of Notre Dame de France ("Our Lady of France") in London, which Cocteau decorated with fantastic murals, this letter "M" is mysteriously placed on the altar, directly beneath the scene of the crucifixion. To the left are depicted the dice thrown by the Roman soldiers who according to the Gospels, cast lots to determine who should get Christ's clothing after he died. The number of dots that are shown on the dice is fifty-eight, a significant number. The skull of Baphomet, which the Templars and later the Priory of Sion are said to have possessed, was referred to cryptically as "Caput 58M" 5 +8= 13, and "M" is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Therefore "58M" could be a code for "Mary Magdalene" who is traditionally shown praying before a skull.'

'The same statement is being made in Cocteau's mural at Notre Dame. This statement is further reinforced by the fact that the 'M' on the altar is directly below a rose that Cocteau has placed on the cross, precisely beneath Christ's feet. Not only does that make it a 'rose cross' but the rose is above the initial for 'Mary'. The term 'Rosemary' is used in occult parlance to refer to the female consort of a god or demon. (Thus the title for the film Rosemary's Baby.) This is exactly what Magdalene's symbolism entailed. The fact that the rose as well as the blood drops beneath it, are coloured both red and blue may indicate the 'blue blood' of Christ's royal line. Given all of this, the Church's title 'Notre Dame de France' is interesting. Most would assume this to be a reference to the Virgin Mary, who is called by Catholics 'Our Lady'. But the true 'Lady of France' is the goddess Marianne, their national symbol. Perhaps 'Marianne' and Magdalene' are representations of the same archetype.'

http://quintessentialpublications.com/tymman/?page_id=26

Phew, I find this stuff exhausting. Though ( and I think this is my favourite bit) I also read fascinating accounts of two female academics of impeccable reputation being transported through time in the gardens of Versailles in 1901. Cocteau calling it 'the most important experiences of our time'

http://www.kathleenmcgowan.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52:the-mystery-of-the-versailles-time-slip&catid=38:articles&Itemid=62

Notre Dame of France itself was established by the Marist Fathers for the French community in London in the 1860s in a building that had previously been 'Burford's Panaroma' accounting for its circular shape. Consecrated in 1868 the church's mission included a hospital, an orphanage and two schools which were run by the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul. The Marist fathers wished to put the sacrifice of Mary at the centre of their faith - Mary's close and gentle but human relationship to Jesus to mirror their own. They call themselves rather intriguingly 'hidden and unknown' - I think they mean that their work is 'unsung' 'unobserved' - again like Mary - with the sacrifice of her holy motherhood.

The original panoramic building was built in 1793 by Richard Barker. He had invented a circular drawing on a cylindrical surface to convey complete 360 degree scenes in 1792 and obtained a royal lincence in 1787 for the exclusive use of his invention for fourteen years. Initially setting up with his son he showed huge panoraomic drawings in a make shift shed in his back garden near Leicester Square before purchasing this site and commissioning the purpose designed rotunda building. 'Panorama painting seems to be all the rage' wrote Constable in a letter of 1803 and Ruskin later described a visit to Milan:

'I had been partly prepared for this view [of the city from the cathedral roof] by the admirable presentation of it in London a year or two before, in a great exhibition of which the vanishing has been in later life a greatly felt loss to me,--Burford's panorama in Leicester Square, which was an educational institution of the highest and purest value, and ought to have been supported by the government as one of the most beneficial school instruments in London. There I had seen, exquisitely painted, the view from the roof of Milan Cathedral, when I had no hope of ever seeing the reality, but with a joy and wonder of the deepest;--and now to be there indeed, made a deep wonder become fathomless. (from Praeterita: TheAutobiography of John Ruskin [Oxford 1978]

http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2003/panorama/new_001.htm for a picture.

It was not the only spectacular attraction of Leicester Square - in 1851 the area was occupied by a large, circular, domed building, in which was exhibited Wyld's "Great Globe."

http://www.ssplprints.com/image/105139/unattributed-wylds-globe-leicester-square-london-12-july-1851 Do look! It is a fascinating illustration!

The representation of the world was sixty-five feet in diameter, and comprised a surface of some ten thousand square feet. Galleries encircled the interior of the building at different heights from the ground, by which means visitors were enabled to walk round and inspect every portion of the globe, an attendant, staff in hand, pointing out its principal features; lectures were likewise delivered at intervals during the day.

Though anybody who complains about Leicester Square these days will like the later description of the central patch of land once the Globe had closed down: 'Overgrown with rank and fetid vegetation, it was a public nuisance, both in an æsthetic and in a sanitary point of view; covered with the débris of tin pots and kettles, cast-off shoes, old clothes, and dead cats and dogs, it was an eye-sore to every one forced to pass by it. '

The Notre Dame Hall beneath the church later hosted many punk gigs. Here, a description from John Springate from the Glitter Band:

'Gerry Shephard and I went to see The Sex Pistols at Notre Dame Hall in Leicester Square, which I think was late-76. Gerry and I were dressed in our snazziest gear with flared trousers and all that, and there's all these punks there with drainpipe jeans, short hair, really sort of 'now'. The Sex Pistols came on and did four numbers and I said to Gerry - cos we'd had had enough by then, we'd seen enough and we came out - I said, 'Well that's it then.' I just knew.'

http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/punk.html ( a music site charting glam rock in its proponents own words including its demise as punk arrived. Here too is this great description from Tina Charles ( 'I love to love ( But my Baby Loves to Dance') ):

'I did a TV show in Germany with The Clash and Dana and Showaddywaddy, which was a very strange group of people. And we were all on the 'plane going over and I always remember The Clash were so badly behaved, taking all the mini-bar from the hotel and everything - they were just shocking. And there was Dana and I behaving ourselves totally.'

And in the late 80s when I helped my neighbours in the opposite bedsit in Baron's Court run a party business we hosted a Burns Night party there - attaching stag's heads to sandy concrete and borrowed tartan draped round pillars and folding endless purple and green napkins. Thatcher's children indeed.

I struggle writing the Cocteau conspiracy theories for days then wipe out the whole post by accident. In tears I text friends to see if they can help me retrieve what I have written. I take it on myself to delve deep into the bowels of the computer getting as far as 'meta data and hidden cache' but not knowing the software to open them with.

Still cycling back and forth across the parks - preparations for the Queen's celebrations are underway. One morning with traffic at a standstill I have to push the bike infront of the palace because the roads are shut. Soldiers in Nutcracker suite outfits dotted across Green Park move in a slow pace sweeping for bombs. Another day, I turn the bike onto Birdcage Walk to find myself at the head of a busby-clad brass band regiment like a middle aged masthead on a hired bike. I treat myself to an out of character self-waved circular cheer - a booyah! to the world, though no one is watching .

I rewrite the blog - remembering almost word for word some of the early stuff then getting bogged down in religious conspiracies again. It feels like it takes me ages - an extra week at least to rewrite and I don't even have the satisfaction of a purple sticker to place.

OL sends me an image of a church sign he has seen in Cambridgeshire visiting his parents. 'The Hokey Cokey is NOT what its all about' it says. He says it is the sister image to a nearby off licence which says 'What if the Hokey Cokey IS all it's about?'

Amen.

St Clement Danes

It is Sunday afternoon and I am cycling down the Strand really really fast, wearing a cape, with a man in a white van gesticulating at me and I am absolutely hopping mad. I have discovered this morning that there has been an incident at Exh's new place yesterday that includes our children, a knife, a screwdriver, PSM's sons, and an altercation with some big boys. The children had been allowed to roam Bermondsey unattended. I am furious and frightened. I feel sick. Everyone is safe and all is well and in many ways the incident is better than it sounds but in many others it is worse. I have the sense that my optimism that everything will be ok is not true. That my foggy cheer that by the teenage years we will have worked out so much I will not be shocked by what is to come is only an essential lie that I tell myself. Once a woman cornered me to say how much I would suffer when they were teenagers. Her beautiful and seemingly biddable son had turned unexpectedly drunken and nasty. I thought grumpily that she should keep quiet, as if transgressing the sanctity of motherhood truths like talking about childbirth to a first time pregnant mum. After all my oldest friend's son is 21 this year and I have witnessed some of the pain of a son growing up. Though he is a fantastic. However my eldest child has a warrior heart - brave and fearless and while you would want him on your side in any battle he is a difficult child to fit into the mild mannered expectations of our time. I believe he would stoop to pick up the wounded in a battle if they were on his side but I believe too he would be a ferocious enemy. Also and this is understandable as a 9 year old boy he has no comprehension that he is mortal. I believe too he needs more freedom - I have seen his engrossed and happy face as he made camps in muddy fields on his own for hours, and yet I trap him in a second floor flat with a making box, a wii, a load of lego and a lot of paper and pens. Of course I get them out to the park, to the countryside, to Richmond Park as much as possible, but he needs freedom to make mistakes on his own.


'Oh' I feel like roaring. Sometimes I don't know what to do. I think of everything tender in him, the care and thought with which he picks presents, the dedicated attention and gentle patience he lavishes on his young cousins, the enthusiasm and beauty with which he makes a japanese garden on a beach and the question he asked me the day before - did you realise when you were a little girl that the people around you had witnessed the war? - but I have realised this morning for the first time he is a danger to himself. He will swagger down the street, he will challenge others, he will get into fights. I have to teach him to be safe but I worry it is inherent in him.


I am aiming for the Savoy Chapel but I sort of know I am late. The incident has taken hours of discussion and detective work to sort out what is being said and what is nearest the truth. Then just before getting on the bike I spoke to PSM and she has added extra details which seem to change everything and mean that someone/everyone is lying. Though I suspect infact everyone believes the truth they are telling. It just doesn't all add up.

The Chapel, just off the Strand is shut. It is only open for a service at 11am on Sundays, there seems to be some restoration work going on which means it is shut in the week. Oh, I think, what shall I do now. I still have the anger and tears choked in my throat, stuck like a swallowed spoon. I am in a haze. Shall I get another bike and go up to try Soho? Or South London? I have got to get into a church today for I am starting full time work the next day - I have just over a month booked at one newspaper and then a contract at the quality broadsheet for six months potentially being extended for a year. I got the job! Though the combination of pending full time work and being less available to my sons is an additional worry.
Then I look up and laugh. It is a game that is easy to play in London - how many churches can you see at one time - and here in easy view are two churches as if under my nose. The first, at the bottom of Aldwych, St Mary Le Strand is shut. But, a little bit further down the Strand, on a kind of traffic island in the wide thoroughfare St Clement Danes is open. Oh I think a rush of excitement - this is nearly the City - this is the Oranges and Lemons church.

At the gate I see that the church is affiliated with the Royal airforce and as I walk in I can see display cases of airforce memorabilia and postcards for sale. A man in the office at the side nods to me as I enter. The church is light and bright and beautiful - dark wood at the lower floor and white columns reaching up from the gallery, ornate plaster work of swags and rich gilding in the vaulted roof, I sit in a pew. I want just to think.

Across from me an old woman with a peaceful face also sits at a pew. She is folding things into plastic bags. Large with bare arms she is like a painting, somehow monumental, completely at ease with herself, engrossed in her task, oblivious of my sidelong eyes observing her.

Infront, hung on the back of each pew there are beautiful cross stitched kneelers. I love the time and care of their work. Nimble fingers counting out in stitches airforce ensignia. I bought recently on ebay a half finished patchwork cushion cover for £15 - it is one of the most beautiful things I possess - possibly from the 30s, the rich colour and textures of the velvets and silks stiched together with highly visible herringbone stitch are in irregular triangular shapes. Like the structure of a leaf the construction is visible, a show of the craft and care and time of a woman's work. I would like to have it framed, would like it one day to hang above my desk while I write. If I was stuck for words or stories I would look at the combinations of colours and patterns, the unexpected arrangements that work so beautifully. When I try to identify the herringbone pattern of the stitch I find:

'Patchwork represents religious poverty in several cultures. A prominent example is the kesa or kasay which origninated in India in the fourth century BC. It arrived in Japan with Buddhism in the sixth century c.e and became a Western Asian tradition. The patched shawl is a symbol of Buddha, who was often depicted with a patched robe draped over his left shoulder. Worn for worship and ritual, the kesa represented a vow of poverty and served as a symbol of humility. The rectangular kesa is about one yard wide and two and a half times the length of the human body.
As a devotional act, monks cleaned and stitched together discarded fabric in a traditional manner, based on seven vertical columns. The pieces of fabric are sewn from the centre, slightly overlapping one another. Patterns are based on rank and position, including the quality and colour of the cloth. In some cases, a brocade fabric was cut up, rearranged and put back together in an artistic manner. Prayers were repeated while the kesa was being sewn, put on, and taken off. the kesa was only cleaned with purified water and incense. In most cases it was the only personal possession owned by a Buddhist monk. Needlework through history: An enclylopedia Catherine Amoroso Leslie

On a whim I have started taking pictures of my washing up on the draining board. I spend so much time doing it day in day out - breakfast bowls, coffee cups, wine glasses, cooking pots, bread tins, stacking clean colourful cups and plates in a higher and higher perfectly balanced arrangements that I thought it would be funny take a record of my work. Also, sometimes, the early morning sunlight hitting a colour combination - a green patterned tea cup with a pink, yellow and orange plastic beaker is just beautiful.

'I believe life is sacred' a man says simply in a discussion about euthanasia on the radio. Ah, I think with a comic book light bulb above my head - get that sound effect machine back out - Ding! That is the key. That is what is celebrated in all these churches, what is found when I come through the doors. It seems very simple and yet completely overlooked most of the time. Life is sacred. Here in the space of these churches is the acceptance of mystery at the heart of life and the celebration of it too. Just sitting still here I understand this for the first time. I don't have to believe I think looking at the cruxifix and the flicker of an altar candle - just accept the statement of sacred. Perhaps it is what my children are missing. I remember travelling in Greece and admiring the inventiveness of the roadside shrines. Votive candles flickering in spindly glass boxes, pictures, a small glass of something, some herbs, once I saw a bottle of coca cola. I thought they were like 'welcome' boxes to god, like a hostess offering some small nibbles to a guest on arrival. This was years ago when I was an art student and I wanted then to make my own, to give thanks by what I kept precious in that box. Though I never did it. Now I would keep an orange, an apple, an egg, a large glass of wine, a candle, maybe a slice of home made bread and something that smells nice, maybe some basil or sage and a bowl of Walker's Chilli Sensations crisps. Simple things that could be shared. I write all this and then google these boxes and discover infact all my ideas are wrong - shockingly they mark road accidents - in memorial for those who died or in thanks for survival. Oh.

Sport I think. That is what we need. More sport for the boys. I will just have to organise them.

I notice the beatiful wooden pulpit, like an intricately carved look out post. I find out it was carved by Grinling Gibbons who's work I have admired before in a Wren church.

In the St Clement Danes guide book I read:
'The Romans, having founded Londinium and occupied it for 400 years, abandoned it in the early 5th century. They left behind them the walled City of London and an embryonic Christian worship.'
Ding! Again that light bulb. Oh I suddenly realise, understanding my stupidity - it is because of the Romans there is Christianity in Britain. I can't tell you what a complete revelation this is to me - and with it the realisation of why it is called the Roman Catholic Church. I think it is almost too embarrassing to mention this it seems so completely obvious but somehow it makes many things very clear to me. The baton on and on of worship. Not only was London created by the Romans but the churches are their legacy. I had only thought of the roman gods as their religion, forgetting St Paul and his travels. On a recent quick dip into the British Museum I was also fascinated by the crossover sarcophogases - egyptian to roman. Again I hadn't understood this movement of change from one to another. It is something that interests me the shifts of power blending and merging, we were taught in 'periods' at school not the gaps between, the downhill run to a new order. I start reading about the Romans in quiet moments on a very rare not busy day at work, I catch Mary Beard on TV talking about the Romans and showing us their remains littered under the streets of Rome - a block of flats still standing, basement burial chambers under modern apartment blocks. We live on the patterns of their lives I think, the Strand itself the straight line of a Roman road.

As the Romans departed the City of London the walled city seems chiefly to have been abandoned though there is some mystery surrounding this - I think of it though - a desolate place, temples left to decay, the rain beating down on elegant columns, the ruins of Roman life fading away. Lundenwic, a port area near the present St Clement Danes was established but when the warriors of Denmark came up the Thames spreading slaughter at the beginning of the 9th century the Saxon population retreated back within the city walls. Eventually Alfred the Great overcame the Danes in 878AD and Guthrum their leader accepted baptism and peace. It is thought that Alfred allowed Danes with English wives to settle in the old 'wic' or port ( hence Aldwych) and that these people took over a small wooden church already in existence. Later, under the Danish king Canute (1017-35) a small stone church was built, dedicated to St Clement. Over the years it was enlarged and restored many times, acquiring a tower in about 1100. This is the church that became known as St Clement of the Danes.

According to the confession of Thomas Winter, it was here that the Gunpowder Plot in was concocted in 1605. He says, "So we met behind St. Clement's, Mr. Catesby, Mr. Percy, Mr. Wright, Mr. Guy Fawkes, and myself, and having, upon a primer, given each other the oath of secrecy, in a chamber where no other body was, we went after into the next room and heard Mass, and received the blessed Sacrament upon the same.'

John Donne lived (1573 - 1631) in the parish and his wife was buried here - though the gravestone no longer exists Donne's epitaph to her remains, now engraved on a tablet within the church. 'Her husband John Donne made speechless by grief, sets up this stone to speak, brings his ashes to hers in a new marriage under God'. She died giving birth to their twelth child.

Despite escaping the Great Fire of London in 1666 the church had become run down or even derelict and became one of the few 51 London churches Christopher Wren designed and supervised in the late 17th century outside the City of London after the fire.

I look up the nursery rhyme 'Oranges and Lemons' but it seems little is known, though the first written record of it is from 1744. There appears to be another version too:

Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London town.

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clements.

Bull's eyes and targets,
Say the bells of St. Marg'ret's.

Brickbats and tiles,
Say the bells of St. Giles'.

Halfpence and farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.

Pancakes and fritters,
Say the bells of St. Peter's.

Two sticks and an apple,
Say the bells of Whitechapel.

Pokers and tongs,
Say the bells of St. John's.

Kettles and pans,
Say the bells of St. Ann's.

Old Father Baldpate,
Say the slow bells of Aldgate.

You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen's.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

Pray when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

Chop chop chop chop
The last man's dead!

Theories suggest that these are all the bells of the churches that could be heard from Newgate prison where executions took place and that the meter of the couplets match the sound of the peal of the bells. Another that St Clement Danes' churchyard once stretched to the bank of the Thames and the local children helped to unload cargoes of ships attempting to evade customs duty, receiving foreign fruit as a reward. Then I find the suggestion: 'The round singing of the ancients, of which this game is a fitting illustration, is probably a relic of Celtic festivity. The burden of a song, chorused by the entire company, followed the stanza sung by the vocalist, and this soloist, having finished, had license to appoint the next singer, 'canere ad myrtum,' by handing him the myrtle branch. At all events round singing was anciently so performed by the Druids, the Bardic custom of the men of the wand."
In 1920 a service was introduced at the church for the children of the local school to be given an orange and a lemon which still exists today.

On the 10th May 1941 St Clement Danes received a direct hit from an enemy bomber. Fire roared through the building, Wren's woodwork catching easily, flames as high as the steeple. In the guide book there is a picture of the tower lit like a light house in the dark night, fire spewing from the windows and arches. That night a heavy night of bombing in the capital 1,480 people were killed

Geoff Sanfield recalls his family house in Barnet north London being hit for it was the suburbs just as much as the centre of London that lay at risk. This was just one incident from the thousands that night:

'The bombing had eased somewhat by April 1941, so we came home. The grass in the garden was waist high and the five sycamore trees were even higher and made for great climbing.

On Saturday, May 10th, 1941, the biggest raid on London took place when Hitler sent over everything. For some reason, we had not gone to the Anderson shelter that night, probably fed up with all the various privations, and also things had been beginning to ease a little. We were bombed at around 11 pm. Four bombs in all; one three houses along from us, one on the allotment at the bottom of the garden and two further away.

The various blasts blew the curtains in and most of the windows out, some ceilings out and plaster came in. My sister and I, who were sleeping in a double bed in a downstairs rear room, were still asleep beneath curtains, dust and plaster etc. Dad had been in the kitchen making cocoa, and finished up amidst all the pots and pans. Mum had been standing in the doorway to our room and was narrowly missed by the front door, which was blown in. I can still smell the cordite, explosions, plaster, dust and fractured sewers etc.

We were dragged out of the house and up the front garden path, and I can remember stooping to pick up a large bomb splinter that had become embedded in the garden gate, now hanging by one hinge: I was promptly pulled away as it was still very hot, but what a souvenir to have had!

We were taken to neighbours for the night and Dad returned to what was left of the house, but it had already been looted, mostly food, but also some cutlery and cut glass. One particular piece was a wedding present to my parents from an uncle who had recently been killed. Dad pulled back the debris-covered bedclothes and went to bed, remarking that Mr Hitler was not going to deprive him of his bed.'

http://ww2today.com/10th-may-1941-huge-raid-on-london

I think of my son's astute question about my childhood and think - no - I had no idea that my parents generation witnessed such destruction. (I am an old mother and my mother was an old mother within her generation.) I just longed for hotpants and thought the Osmonds sounded dangerous belted from a dark shop doorway in a Welwyn Garden City precinct. When my Grandad and my grandparents next door neighbour died a day apart the funerals were held back to back in the small village in the Lake District where my mum had been brought up. I witnessed and kept like a stone in a secret pocket, my fingers occasionally fiddling the shape in a thin silky lining, the scene in my grandma's house when my aunt still with her coat on broke down crying after the neighbour's funeral. It wasn't the grief that was hard to understand from the hidden curl of a large chair but the hushed but palpable scorn of my mother and assembled relatives that she had done so.


The Rector of St Clement Danes was said to die from shock within five weeks of the bombing of the church and his funeral was held in the ruins. By 1953 the parish was combined with that of St Mary le Strand and it must have seemed that the church would be forgotten for wildflowers and grasses grew in the remains. However it was given into the keep of the Air Council and rebuilt faithful to Wren's designs, restored as a perpetual shrine of rememebrance to those killed in RAF service. The chancel arch is surmounted by the restored Stuart coat of arms and carries a latin inscription which translated reads, 'Built by Christopher Wren 1681. Destroyed by the thunderbolts of air warfare 1941. Restored by the Royal Air Force 1958.'

Walking up to Victoria Street on St George's day I hear the tinny sound of amplified brass bands and car horns blaring. What's happening I think, catching the streak of red and white flags and the bounce of red and white balloons dragged fast by a parade of scruffy vehicles at the end of the street. People stand bemused by the rattle of vans and scaffolding lorries careering past decked out with a few St George's flags and a couple of random inflatable figures attached to the back of a truck. It goes quickly passed and it seems as if everyone breathes again, frightened by the brief rough display of patriotism.

Finally, the work I am doing at the moment is at High Street Kensington and I can cycle every day through the parks to work. It is lovely - if often damp. Though I wonder if this has caused this blog to take so long - I sit to work in the evenings as usual but I am exhausted, tired physically. In some ways it is good for me because I tuck myself into bed by 11pm when normally I am up until at least 12pm and then read a few pages of War and Peace before sleeping well. ( Losing my job stopped me reading, then I lost a page and finally when I had worked out a plan to borrow someone's kindle to read just that page before recommencing the book, the missing page turned up folded in the ruin of the paperback.) Thinking about War and Peace as I pedal the slight incline up from Hyde Park Corner through the fine sheen of oily rain coating the park, I worry I have fallen out of love with fiction. I still think W and P is the most fantastic thing I have read but as I near the end, the shocking violence and tidying of plot that is accumulating to the finish doesn't interest me as much as the vast vistas of the main book. I like the mundane immensity and non symmetrical nature of life as it plods on, too awkward and sad and sometimes pointless to be tied into a plot, though occasionally finding the rhyme of coincidence and joy. At that moment I see a battalion of plumed golden helmeted soldiers on magnificent black horses on the brow of the hill in the mist of steady drizzle. I can hear the creak of their breast plates and saddles and the jangle of their reins - I imagine a Russian landscape with similar officers step step stepping huge black horses into a village. I see the power and awe they would instill from the discipline of horses moving in time, the straight backs and anonymity of fighting men. These are the Life Guards of the British Household Cavalary exercising near their barracks.

I get used to seeing the soldiers on horseback each morning as I cycle to the brow of the gentle hill, always in a slightly different place, always involved in slight different exercises - marching in line, turning as a unit, galloping, soldiers tilting in their saddles to joust hoops from the ground. Another morning under wet trees I see only soldiers training. Dressed in black they are doing a fast continous circuit - lying on their backs stomach crunching, then sprinting, then jogging back to stomach crunches, their steady fast, obedient and repeated actions reducing them to ants, limbs busy, following orders.



As I pass Kensington Palace on the bike one morning into the pleasure of the downhill, feet off the pedals swoop, I hear distant screams, girls voices high and far away like on a fairground ride. As I cycle down alongside the parkside hotel the screams get louder. Girls in school uniforms cluster in hoodies, screaming and waving handmade posters - 'Justin Bieber' they scream. 'Justin Bieber.'

Amen