SIMPLY HAVING...

Your Busy Time...

"It's coming up to your busy time, isn't it?" people say, cheerily. Every priest gets this, all through their ministry, every Christmas. There's no point in saying that actually there are more services at Easter, because people are trying to be friendly. It's an indication that they sort of understand Christmas; it's a frenetic time, and they recognize that we have some sort of proprietorial relationship with it. And to be fair, Christmas is more stressful than Easter because the extra services are things that you are not in control of. In Holy Week you have a very demanding round of worship, but you set the pace, and the liturgy is all given, so you know what's coming next, whereas at Christmas, there is an expectation that you will put in an appearance, give a welcome, say a prayer or a blessing and generally be Christmassy at events that you haven't planned, and where you don't know how long they will last. If they are using your building then you probably have to open and close for them and generally do what a verger does in places that have vergers (though the excellent Lesley does some of that for me here). When you go to someone else's premises to do the Christmas thing you often fail to factor in the possibility of being offered mince pies by nice hospitable people, which again adds to uncertainty over timing. I should say that I'm in no position to complain, as we have hardly any outside requests for use of our buildings as Christmas venues, unlike some of my brethren, in more "civic" churches, where there is a constant procession of carol services for one organisation or institution or another from late November onwards. It's also not just worship, because there are Christmas events of other sorts that require a clerical presence as well.

The reason clergy tend not to welcome the "busy time" comment, though, is that underlying it is the assumption that we're not busy the rest of the time. There is a very persistent presumption in England (which goes back centuries) that the clergy are idle and ineffectual, and in a society that doesn't much want to engage with things of the spirit, or matters of life and death, it's not surprising that many people simply can't envisage what we do all day. We are economically unproductive, and so don't fit easily into a business model, which is how most people seem to be encouraged to view the world just now. To be fair, lots of churchgoers seem to imagine that their parish priest does nothing very much for most of the time, which is a bit frustrating. All the clergy I know work very hard, all year round, and don't actually take anything like the amount of time off that they are supposed to. Finding the time for one's personal relationships, not to mention prayer, study and reading, all of which are supposed to be priorities for us, is always a challenge.     


Are You Going Away?

The other question that grates for us just now (this is really Scrooge-like!) is when people ask, "Are you going away for Christmas?" which someone does almost every day. Some then think about it and add, "Oh, but I suppose you have to be here," but it's amazing how many that never occurs to. Yes, actually, I shall be here, because I have to celebrate the Holy Mysteries at Midnight, and on Christmas morning; and please don't think I'm complaining about that. Far from it; that is a great privilege for a parish priest. And it's entirely appropriate that we should be at home at Christmas, because you're supposed to be in the bosom of your family, and actually, for the priest, your congregation and the people of the neighbourhood are your extended family. It would feel very strange to be worshipping with a different bunch of people at Christmas from those you minister to for the rest of the year. But the question just forgets that whereas Christmas means holiday for most people, we are the one profession who are absolutely guaranteed to be working, at least up until lunchtime on Christmas Day. It doesn't necessarily stop then, either, because I remember years ago having someone turn up on my doorstep after dark on Christmas Day who needed to make a confession, which demanded quite a change of gear.


Deck The Halls

The events, however, have been joyful. Our Christmas fair raised over a thousand pounds (which should please the treasurer, who was crewing a yacht sailing across the Atlantic) and passed off happily. The Lunch Club Christmas Party fed about sixty people (variously elderly, vulnerable or needy) with, frankly, a feast, cooked almost single-handed by the indefatigable Jacqui, and ended with an extraordinarily diverse group sitting around playing dominoes. I went along to the Paddington Festival Gala Awards last week, to support one of the volunteers who works incredibly hard to support the Lunch Club, and who we'd put up for an award, which he duly received, but then I found myself being given an award for "encouraging community spirit", which was a total surprise. It was good to see ordinary people being saluted for making an effort in their community, and moving to see how loyal to the area many people who have grown up in Paddington are. Probably our most important events, though, were carols in St Mary Magdalene's Church for Edward Wilson School, the other school on the Estate, the secular, "community" school, whose student body is at least 90% Muslim. The current Head decided a year ago that it was not sustainable for the school to ignore Christmas, as it had done, and so last year was the first time they used our building, while I stayed away, at his request, so as not to appear to be proselytising. This year I was asked to be present and welcome people, which I was delighted to do, and it was really encouraging to see lots of parents there. A new group of people found that they were welcome in a beautiful and inspiring space, which is what it's all about. Happy Christmas!    

THREE CHURCHES

 

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

I went back to my old parish in Reading the other day, for the induction of the new Vicar; now you never attend the induction of your immediate successor, for obvious reasons, but after that there’s no particular prohibition. It is quite unusual, though.  All Saints, Downshire Square, Reading, is a Victorian daughter-church of Reading Minster, which sits on the crest of the chalk ridge along which the Bath Road runs. It is a handsome, well-kept church, much beautified by my predecessor. I suppose I have kept in touch with All Saints better than is normal, mostly because Helen’s best friend is still there, and of course here in Paddington we are quite conveniently situated for popping over to Reading (fast trains from Paddington, as they say). I carefully tried not to undermine my successor, and I have no intention of criticizing the new Vicar, but when I heard about the Induction I thought it would be good to go along. The new Vicar is a woman, you see. 

When I moved to All Saints, in 1996, it was in the wake of great controversy, and deep hurt, over the ordination of women. My predecessor, Fr Jones, had been a doughty opponent of women’s ordination, and when it came to pass spent a good deal of energy in trying to persuade his people. In the end he resigned in 1995 and became a Roman Catholic (though he subsequently came back to the Church of England). There were bitter arguments in the parish, and one family moved to another church amid much unhappiness. When I was appointed the bishop’s clear desire was that I should keep the parish in the Church of England and try to heal the divisions. I stayed eleven years in Reading, and hope that was what was achieved. We managed to steer a course where I hope everyone felt they were part of the family. I believe my successor carried on much the same. Now, though, a woman has been appointed, and I felt it was important to be seen to offer support, so along I went. It was interesting to see a number of those who had been unconvinced by the wisdom of the ordination of women were there to welcome their new parish priest. Nobody was tactless enough to ask me, “Did you ever think you’d see this?” but I don’t suppose I did. Things have changed. Not impressed by the poor turnout of clergy from Reading Deanery, though; in my day we tried hard to attend these things, for the sake of solidarity.

OPEN OR CLOSED

I had a Sunday off to go down to Exeter, to the parish I served my first curacy in. There they were closing a church, St Andrew’s, on Alphington Road. St Andrew’s is a modern building, which replaced a “tin church” that had been destroyed in the war, and has a very high, steeply-pitched roof. Its fittings are a bit 1960s. Now I had no particular connection with St Andrew’s when I was there, I was mostly at the parish church, St Thomas, but St Andrew’s was Helen’s church. She was the head server there when I arrived, and her father was churchwarden, and her mother became sacristan. Ian, her brother, was in Cambridge then, but when he returned to Exeter when the Met Office moved down there a few years ago he slotted back into St Andrew’s. So the life of St Andrew’s has been part of my family for thirty years. I didn’t particularly want to go, but the idea gradually crept up on me that I should, and I asked a colleague whether he could do the service for me at St Peter’s, having worked out that it was just possible to get down leaving after Mass at St Mary Mags; he sensibly said he could do Mary Mags as well and urged me to have a Sunday off. So I did. I realised that I owed it to Helen. She would have gone, and while she would have told me I shouldn’t leave my responsibilities here, if I’d had any sense I would have insisted on going with her. So I had to go.

It was fantastically difficult. I couldn’t look at the servers (dressed exactly as they used to be) because I just saw Helen. Serious catch in the throat when singing. So many memories from so long. I renewed acquaintance with someone I was very close to before Helen and I got together, and hadn’t spoken to in twenty-eight years. Many people there who remembered me, and who I remembered, even if not their names. I was thinking that one really does feel old in that situation, having started work in a church now closed, but then I thought of my boss there, Fr Alan, who, when he was a student, had been present at the consecration of St Andrew’s back in the early 60s, and was now there with us at its closing. It was very brave of the present congregation to decide to close, and to throw in their lot with St Thomas, especially those who, like Ian, have a lifetime’s memories there. Of course we can worship anywhere, and it is the quality of the human fellowship that is the most important feature, but we do all invest memories in buildings, even modern ones like St Andrew’s.

A FAMOUS SHRINE

I had the honour to be asked to preach at St Mary’s, Bourne Street, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, last week. St Mary’s was built as a servants’ church, a little brick, gothic place behind Sloane Square tube station, but it was transformed by Fr Humphrey Whitby in the early twentieth century, who installed lots of baroque furnishings, many by Martin Travers, and attracted a smart congregation. The congregation remain smart in many ways. There was a surprisingly good turnout for a midweek evening, and it was all very well done. The choir sang a Mozart setting and a Bruckner motet, though there wasn’t enough congregational singing for my taste, just two hymns (one unknown) and the Creed to the Missa de Angelis. The ceremonial is what is described as traditional, and all justified by the most impeccable authorities, but of course as it was a modern service (albeit old language) which inevitably affects the ceremonial, you can’t really claim that this is the traditional rite. Fortunately, as a visiting preacher one has few opportunities to mess up the ceremonial. It all went on very smoothly around me. Everybody was very kind and welcoming, and we chatted merrily over a glass of wine afterwards. It was here that Helen and I came on the Sunday after she had received her diagnosis last May, when we wanted to be somewhere we weren’t known, but no-one remembered me from then. Why would they, since I wasn’t dressed as a priest on that occasion?  The people were very positive about the sermon when we had a glass of wine in the Presbytery afterwards, though I came away starving, as there were only tiny snacks, and it was too late to eat a proper meal.

BIG FOOD RESCUE

Big on the Small Screen

St Peter's appeared on the television today, and may do so again this week, on BBC 1 at 9.15am, in a series called "The Big Food Rescue", which is all about The Felix Project. Readers of the Evening Standard will already be familiar with this excellent project, which collects waste food from businesses and directs it to those feeding the needy. It seems to be an idea whose time has come. This week they are getting five morning slots of documentary on BBC 1 telling their story. Needless to say, there were minor inaccuracies on the voice-over, but never mind. It did show the Lunch Club (and Jacqui) in action, which was good; the bizarre spectacle of the Lunch Club feasting on asparagus had a certain surreal quality, but fortunately they concentrated on nourishing soup, which was a bit simpler to eat. Who knows whether they will use any more of the footage they took: one of our users throwing his plate at his carer perhaps?


An Odd Encounter

I was invited to a reception in the Lord Mayor's Parlour last week, apparently nominated by the councillors, and found myself with a very assorted bunch of people. I was chatting to two locals when someone came over who asked if I was from "The True Church" (the capital letters were implied!) to which I replied that obviously everyone in my business has to think his is the true church. I assumed this was a light-hearted conversational opening, but soon found that they meant it. I wanted to think they were pulling my leg, but this just went on, and it became clear they were not joking, and obviously thought I would be pleased because the True Church, in their view, was the Church of England. Turns out that their taste is for Matins at the Abbey at a civilised hour on a Sunday, so I don't think they will be joining the flock here soon, but I came away marvelling at what some people regard as acceptable discourse. Perhaps it shows how soft and liberal I am, but I don't think claiming absolute truth for one's religious denomination is a normal feature of cocktail party conversation. In the religious melting-pot which is London, we muddle along pretty well with one another, but on the basis that none of us makes truth claims in the public space. You can assume that the practitioners of any religious system believe it to be true, and it is polite not to try to enforce your view on them, because we can live perfectly well side by side; co-existence rather than competition is the way to harmonious relations. The jihadist, of course, would take an opposing view. It might be supposed that my interlocutor would do the same, but I'm not so sure, because I think they didn't mind co-existence as long as we just patronised other faiths.


The Pastor and the Imam

So our film show will be happening on Monday, something for which we owe the (multi-faith) chaplaincy at Wormwood Scrubs a debt. The film comes from Nigeria, and is an encouraging story of reconciliation in a situation where Christians and Muslims sometimes do actually end up killing one another. It is plain that the clerics in the film (and our two friends from the Scrubs) are sincere believers, and not woolly liberals, but they demonstrate that respect and common humanity are at the heart of all religious faith. The film exists online, but we are showing it in the splendour of St Mary Mags at 6.15 on Monday 5th, with a question session and refreshments afterwards.   

THE CONCRETE AND THE CLAY

 CONCRETE CITY

One of the most obvious features of our neck of the woods at the moment is the enormous amount of concrete being transported about. Because of restrictions on turns at the Prince of Wales junction it all comes up to the traffic lights outside St Peter’s and lumbers around, gradually destroying the traffic island. This traffic comes (I presume) from the Tarmac company’s concrete batching plant next to the bus garage on Great Western Road, beside the railway, and involves both concrete mixer trucks and huge tipper trucks. Lots of concrete obviously means lots of building work; the last big spike in activity was in the early stages of Crossrail, but I think this is not destined for that scheme, which seems to be past the big concrete stage. It’s clear that the property boom continues unabated, despite recent events. You just have to look at the skyline, where you will always see cranes somewhere. Wherever you go in London there seems to be “development” taking place, with old buildings being swept away and new, shiny ones taking their place, or the existing buildings being extended or “basemented”. With all this building going on, one might ask, why do young people find it so hard to get a place to live?

Both my churches were put up during a previous building boom, in the 1860s and 70s, when, I have read, Chippenham Road was surfaced with wood blocks (I don’t think that lasted long). St Mary Magdalene’s features an early use of poured concrete, in the vault of the undercroft, a patent fireproof product, which shows how progressive the neo-gothic architects actually were. Much as I may fear and resent today’s concrete traffic (as a cyclist) I have to concede that life must have been much worse then, when there was far less regulation, and you had wooden scaffolding, steam-driven piledrivers and far more workmen. You only have to look at the photos of the digging of the Circle Line on display at Paddington Station to become aware of how ghastly it must have been. The Circle, remember, basically follows the street pattern, and was built in a huge trench dug down from the existing road; think what that would have done for traffic on Marylebone Road! Health and safety was rudimentary, and consideration for residents seems to have been very limited; you just had to put up with it as they tunnelled past your house. Meanwhile, the speculative builders were putting up whole new districts, like ours, with cheap, meanly-built housing. They look quite solid and respectable, but were often built in a hurry and ended up being let by the floor or the room as they weren't actually nice enough for the imagined target market. The planned development of Queen’s Park was a reaction to the free-for-all that had gone before, somewhere orderly and decent rather than the wild west of St Peter’s Park. It can still feel a bit like that!

THE HERON KNOWS

As I was taking a bite to eat at Clarence Gate the other day (in a break while cycling round the perimeter of Regent’s Park) I was watching the herons. I have mentioned before that there they now seem to have adapted to humans being an easy source of food, and they join the geese and gulls in looking for bread; well, on this occasion I was watching with fascinated horror as a tourist held out his hand towards a heron’s beak. Have you no imagination? Have you not seen what they do to fish? (Probably not, of course). They stab their beaks through fish a good deal thicker than your hand, so watch out, mate! Blessedly, nothing happened, but then I turned to watch one heron standing on his own in the middle of a flowerbed, stock still, classically immobile. Then a jogger came into view. She was short and extremely skinny, and dressed entirely in grey. As she came past him the heron clearly turned his head to follow her progress, as if not entirely sure that she was of a different species.

A FUNNY OLD YEAR

For All Souls’ Day we invite the families of people whose funerals we’ve done in the past year, and so I was going through my records to find the names and addresses. Now I haven’t done any more funerals than normal, but this year’s have been pretty memorable. I’ve been doing funerals for thirty years, but had never done a stillborn child until last November; and now I’ve done two. Stillbirths are not as uncommon as we suppose, but as parish clergy we tend not to do the funerals, as the hospital chaplains generally look after most of them. Fortunately I got to know the excellent Rosie at St Mary’s pretty well last summer, and so when the first one came to me last November I was able to pick her brains, and she directed me to her colleague, Michele, who specialises in this particular ministry. So, I had appropriate words to use, and it wasn’t too terrible. The more recent one, where I knew the family (slightly) and the funeral was in church, was pretty traumatic, and they remain traumatised by it all. There is clearly still work to do. So I’ve had two neo-natal deaths, and as well the funeral of a fourteen year old who died from an acute asthma attack. She was a twin, and I baptised them both and gave them their First Communion when they were altar servers, before their mum sent them to boarding school. That funeral involved a white, horse-drawn hearse, and a Pentecostal music group, but the thing that really sticks in the memory is the remaining twin sitting at a keyboard and singing a song she had written for her sister. Remarkable. Beside that, going back to Colchester to do the funerals of an old friend (aged 90), and my sister-in-law’s mother (also over 90) seemed more or less normal. As did the burial at Kensal Green of one of our most notable characters at St Mary Mag's. But it has been a funny old year.         

LIGHT PERPETUAL

THE LORD LOVES A CHEERFUL GIVER

The trouble is that I’m a pretty graceless giver; I wish I could get better. On Tuesday morning I came to St.Peter’s to get ready to say Mass, and Linda, the cleaner, told me that the homeless guy was in the church foyer. He’d asked to come in and use the lavatory, and then had curled up on the easy chairs in the warm. No problem there, but I hoped he’d wake up before I was finished. Linda just cleaned around him. Then, as I was going backwards and forwards preparing the altar, a young man waiting for an appointment with the Enterprise Centre said, “Oh, sorry, there’s someone at the door for you.” So, up I go and find a local man who is known to me, brandishing doctor’s letters about an inguinal hernia, and saying he has no money for his fare to the Charing Cross Hospital and if he misses the appointment it’ll mess up his benefits. This is 9.55. I am due to say Mass at 10. I haven’t dressed yet. I haven’t opened the safe. This isn’t the best time! Ungraciously I end up making a point of bringing out my wallet and giving him a fiver “from my own money – nobody else’s”. I am mortified to realise a moment later that the young man waiting for his appointment has heard the whole conversation, and witnessed my grumpiness.

At the end of Mass, the homeless man is still asleep, and after I’ve bumbled around clearing up I have to wake him because I need to lock up. He  goes to the lavatory again and then says he’s diabetic and needs food, so I find some crisps and fruit bars and give him a fiver as well.

THANKS TO FELIX

We discovered the Felix Project a few months ago, or rather, they discovered us. They give waste food from supermarkets to groups feeding the hungry, and they have transformed our lunches. They don’t do meat, so we still have to find that, but they give us all our vegetables, and all manner of excellent extras. The only trouble is that sometimes the enthusiastic staff on the van are just too keen to shift stuff, and force food on us that we can’t realistically use. Three cartons of Rooibos tea anyone? A couple of weeks ago we had a young man making a TV film about the Felix Project who came in to see the lunch club in action, and did interviews. Whether any of it ends up being shown is quite another matter, and I wonder whether his pretty committed work is necessarily what his editors want, but we shall see (or at least we will if they warn us when it is to be broadcast).

GIVE THEM REST

Last night was All Souls’, our big occasion at St.Mary Mags. We had orchestra and choir, and about four hundred in church. We sang Fauré, in memory of Helen, and I presided in the black High Mass set that we bought in memory of Ian McPherson, a dear old Mary Mags regular a couple of years ago. I always invite families for whom we’ve done funerals in the past year, and each year some of them come and really get it. This year a young mum, who lost a teenage daughter to an acute asthma attack came, along with the daughter’s twin, and they loved it. She was absolutely blown away by the experience, which is as it is meant to be. The music, which is sublime, in that beautiful setting, and with the solemn mystery of the liturgy, takes people to a better place. We had lots of positive comments afterwards, from Warwick Estate families as from Little Venice grandees. The Music Society has been putting on a French Romantic Requiem for All Souls’ Day here for nearly fifty years, and we must be one of the very few places where it happens with full orchestra, which is really special. My mission has been to make it clear that this is an act of worship, not a concert, and so I’ve managed to get a second congregational hymn into the order, as well as making sure the order of service is designed to help people participate. We always invite people to add names to the list of departed to be read out at the intercessions, while the musicians want to suppress the list, so there’s always a little tension there. To be able to preside at All Souls’ Day at Mary Mags is a great privilege in my ministry.       

MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS

O, GIVE ME A HOME…

We have a Harrow Road Ministers’ Fraternal, which basically means that a bunch of us meet for lunch every six weeks or so, and arrange an ecumenical service for Good Friday (the one that attracted a noise complaint this year) and another for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (which is at the end of January). The make-up of the group is quite fluid, because it’s not as though we live in an area with clear boundaries; essentially it’s the northern half of the Anglican Deanery of Paddington (the ancient parish and former London borough of Paddington). Except that the two furthest parishes, St John’s, Kensal Green, in the west, and St Augustine’s, Kilburn Park, in the north, are not usually part of it, because they do ecumenical things with nearer neighbours in other boroughs (Kensal Town, in Kensington, and Kilburn, in Camden or Brent).

The choice of ecumenical partners is also a bit eccentric: at the heart of it is the Methodist Church in Fernhead Road (which we might call West Kilburn), whose former church is now the Maida Vale public library (in Shirland Road), which gives them a sort of sense of ownership of the whole area (and there isn’t another Methodist church for some distance). The other major partner is Our Lady of Lourdes and St Vincent de Paul, the Roman Catholic bunker on the Harrow Road, just across from Maida Hill Market, but the peculiarity there is that they are never actually represented by the parish priest; the ministers’ fraternal is attended by a Catholic layperson. We don’t include West Kilburn Baptist Chapel (a traditional-looking building on Carlton Vale, who would surely look towards Kilburn if they felt like being ecumenical) or the independent chapel on Kilburn Lane. My neighbours at Westbourne Park Baptist Church are felt to be out of the area (south of the railway) and their focus is definitely different from ours. Nor do we include my Roman Catholic neighbours on the Warwick Estate, Our Lady of Sorrows, but I’m not sure that Fr Sharbel, its Maronite priest, would find much need to work with us. We all (I think) have tenant churches who use our buildings, and we periodically talk about inviting them to things, but we all know that they wouldn't come to the Fraternal because they're all doing normal jobs as well as ministering to their congregations. We used to include the Queen’s Park United Reformed Church, in its modern building on the Harrow Road corner of Third Avenue, but sadly they have closed down; we didn’t get a chance to explore this with their last minister, who came and went quite quickly. 

So the Fraternal met the other day, at the Manse (for the very first time). The old Methodist minister, Alan, always entertained us in a room at the church, which felt very characteristic of its type, with formica surfaces and mismatched chairs, but Paul, the new man, invited us to his house.  Now the Manse is not adjacent to the Methodist church, oh no. The Manse is in Queen’s Park, but not “our” Queen’s Park, the Westminster ward of that name, basically comprising what people call “The Avenues”, the Artisans’, Labourers’ and General Dwellings Company estate of 1875-81, which is a planned estate of little gothic artisans’ cottages most of which are still social housing, and which is somewhat oddly in the W10 postcode. No, the Manse is in Queen’s Park NW6, north of the West Coast Main Line, and facing onto Queen’s Park, the Corporation of the City of London’s thirty-acre park dating from 1887. To avoid confusion, I call that Brondesbury, but estate agents insist on Queen’s Park. Anyway, Paul’s manse is a very fine late Victorian villa, beautifully presented (as the estate agents say), and he told us that he has a high court judge as a neighbour, and that the house next door went for £5.5 million the other week. The parakeets were screaming in the park. I had a sense of how the other half lives. That must actually be a bit of a challenge for Paul, who is a good guy, and thoroughly grounded. It is a charming house, but I can’t help feeling more comfortable here on the Warwick Estate.

ALL CHANGE

 The Indian restaurant across the road from St Peter’s has had a makeover, and has clearly changed hands. Opening offers are advertised. It used to be the Maida Vale Tandoori, but no longer. I saw people up ladders taking down the big white letters that proclaimed that name, and repainting the fascia board (curiously almost the same colour). I wondered what the new name would be; four letters were re-erected (almost straight) reading “Mala”. It’s a Bengali first name, but presumably means something as well, I know not what. But it rather appears that they looked at the array of letters, Scrabble-like, and made something out of what they had.

Curiously the little café in the same block has morphed, almost unnoticed, into a tiny convenience store. Perhaps its reputation will improve. William Hill shows no shadow of alteration.

FAREWELL TO ZEITA

On the last day before the half-term break we said farewell at St Mary Magdalene’s School to the remarkable Zeita, who has been working there, in various different roles, for thirty-seven years. Five years ago the Bishop of London came and dedicated a newly set-out garden at the school as “Zeita’s Garden”, and we all sort of assumed she would soon retire, but she didn’t, because she just loves the children. She has been working in the Nursery for the past few years, where her palpable faith and good nature have been invaluable in giving the children an impression of what a Christian life is meant to be about. That’s real Christian education.  Often in recent years I would see Zeita’s husband, Jody, dropping her off, having driven her over from Barking! For the farewell assembly Jody and other family members came to share the occasion, and everyone sang “The Irish Rover”. It was all terribly emotional. I took family members out to see Zeita’s Garden, and as we crossed the playground we smelt the distinctive scent of weed, presumably drifting down from the flats, but who knows? It certainly didn’t come from the garden, but it is indicative of the environment Zeita has worked in for so long. That sort of quiet devotion to the community is something you don’t see very often.

JAILHOUSE ROCK

Jailhouse Rock

My nephew decided a few months ago that he was fed up with being a land surveyor, and wanted instead to become a prison officer, so that he could help rehabilitate criminals. We all applauded this socially-useful aspiration, and wished him well. To be fair, people who know people who have been in prison reacted with satirical laughter. He has now thoroughly investigated the prison service and finds that as a  married man with children and a mortgage he simply can't afford to do it. The pay cut (to some 60% of what he's earning now) would  be too great, and it would be 5 years before he was back to a similar pay grade, and sadly family life can't sustain that. It should come as no surprise that the prison service finds it hard to attract quality applicants given how poor the pay is. It is also no surprise that corruption results. Anyone with experience of "third world" countries will testify that the first step in eliminating corruption is paying public servants well enough that they do not need to be corrupt. Do we not learn these lessons when we dish out aid?

Meanwhile the young man of our acquaintance with the gunshot wound is still on remand. The good news is: he's been moved from Wormwood Scrubs. The bad news is: he's been moved to Pentonville. Yes, that Pentonville, where an inmate was murdered last week. News reporters sounded surprised as they announced that it seemed that gang rivalries were carried on inside the gaol. Really? You'll be telling me that it's news that prisoners can get hold of drugs inside next. This is a scandal, of which the Justice Department is well aware, and about which it chooses to do nothing. There are no votes in prisoners' welfare, and worse still, you'd provoke the atavistic bile of the Daily Mail. So clearly nothing can be done.


Widower of this Parish

When the Independent ceased its print edition I stopped buying a daily paper, but began to pick up the Guardian when I went to Waitrose on a Saturday. I was a little spooked to find a column in the "Family" section headed "Widower of the Parish". This (signed "Adam Golightly", an obvious pseudonym) is an account of life as a new widower in middle age. His wife died last autumn (I think) from cancer, in her forties, she was called Helen. In other respects he is quite unlike me; he has two children (and did have a nanny) and goes abroad for work. But several of the columns have made me cry, from recognition, I suppose. I promised that this wasn't going to be a "living with cancer" blog, though it didn't really get a chance since the living didn't last very long, but now I have to promise that it won't become a "life as a widower" blog. This is just life, though I suppose widowerhood comes through occasionally.


Opus Anglicanum

As a birthday treat I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the show "Opus Anglicanum", which is of English medieval embroideries, mostly ecclesiastical. Obviously I was not the only cleric there drooling and making excited little whimpers, but actually it's for the general visitor as well, and is full of extraordinary stuff, works of exquisite beauty. I was struck by how far this felt from the Harrow Road, but of course it shouldn't, because St Mary Magdalene's was built precisely to bring that sort of beauty into these gritty urban lives. We even have embroidered seraphs after the medieval pattern (6 wings, standing on wheels) because Ninian Comper was such a thorough antiquarian. My companion remarked how amazing it must have been to step out of a medieval hovel and into a church full of beautiful things, to which I responded that this was exactly what St Mary Mags was all about. People's lives today contain a lot more colour and entertainment than in the slum 150 years ago, which makes our impact less, but I think there's still an absence of real beauty, which means our amazing building still has something to say. When our conservation work is finished (in maybe 18 months' time) I suspect the colour will make an impact too, once all the paintwork is cleaned. The sense of being enfolded in the worship of heaven should become very hard to avoid.    

SLEEPERS WAKE!

When I got to the office door yesterday, hurrying to try to open up for the breakfast club in place of the organiser who had been delayed, I met not only a volunteer for the club, but also a complainer, and I’m afraid I didn’t give him the attention he wanted. This gentleman, a resident in the sheltered flats beside St.Peter’s, wanted to complain that we had a rough sleeper in the church doorway. I needed to know that this was a good neighbourhood, (hmm, matter of debate) a residential neighbourhood (not strictly true) and that this was very bad. I would have agreed that it was very bad that in a staggeringly wealthy city, in one of the richest countries on earth, some people are forced to sleep on the street, but that wasn’t what he meant. I might also have said that the rough sleeper had been in the vicinity for several days, but he’d only become noticeable when he’d come under the church porch when it poured with rain. Clearly his presence wasn’t so bad when he didn’t make the place look untidy. The rough sleeper has very little English and is some sort of refugee, which is ironic, since the gentleman complaining about him is himself the son of Jewish refugees.

Not Melodious At All

As I was crossing to the church the other day there was a tremendous racket from magpies, several of whom were swooping around. Now and again I heard a different call, once from one of the trees, and then closer, and then I saw the source of that call, a handsome jay, and it became clear that there was another one nearby. The second jay looped out of the tree and came to rest beside the first, on the planters beside the school carpark. Almost at once the magpies started to mob them, and the jays flew off. I’d never supposed that there would be this degree of aggression between jays and magpies, who are, after all, sort of cousins in the corvid family, but it was clear that the magpies objected to having the jays on their patch. Today, I spotted it happening again, in the trees on the Green.

The magpies, despite their numbers, never seem to try to impose their will on the crows which have recently appeared on the Green. At least I say they are crows, but I remember being told in Cornwall, “If ‘ee see an old rook on ‘is own, ‘a’s a crow; but if ‘ee see a load o’crows all together, they’m rooks”. They are there in quantity, but I’m pretty sure they’re crows, neater trousers and no bald patch on the face. But why are they here? They are scavengers, so where is the carrion they feed on? And why were they not on Westbourne Green in the past?  One of the favourite films of my youth was “Excalibur”, and there is an extraordinary scene in a wintry forest with the decaying bodies of knights hung from bare branches, being pecked at by rooks. One always thinks of them as crows, but from memory I’m pretty sure they are rooks (which are noticeably more unattractive). I don’t think there are any decaying medieval corpses to attract the crows to Westbourne Green, so their appearance is a bit strange. I notice that they are patrolling the grass, and probing with their big, strong beaks, so they are presumably looking for live food in the ground, so perhaps the newly turfed area contains lots of nourishing leatherjackets and worms.

Prison Chaplains

Had an excellent session with Muslim and Christian chaplains from Wormwood Scrubs this week; we are planning an inter-faith event in church. They are very impressive people. I contemplated, but in the end didn’t ask them about a young man currently inside the Scrubs, who is known to me. He’s a relation of a church member, and was recently shot by two boys on a moped, not far from here. I’m being deliberately vague, as these things have unknown ramifications. But it may have had to do with where he was, or he may have “been a naughty boy” as it has been reported. Either way, there is a whole life going on beside us of which we know nothing, only bumping up against it when it bursts in on the lives of people like my church member.  Wormwood Scrubs, despite its fame, is only a local prison these days, so it’s full of men on remand from local boroughs; the only trouble is that if someone wants to hurt this young man he has nowhere to run to now, and is intensely vulnerable. The local prison just reproduces the life on the local streets, but with all the law-abiding bits taken out. It’s all very worrying for our member.

BLURRED LINES

Blurred (Yellow) Lines

I sometimes wonder what the purpose of single yellow lines is. In Westminster it seems to be largely advisory, giving a message along the lines of, “It would be better if you didn’t park here, but if you really need to, then go ahead.” You regularly see “civil enforcement officers” as traffic wardens seem to be called now, walking past vans and commercial vehicles parked on yellow lines, and that seems to be Council policy, not to enforce parking regulations against businesses. One of the prime examples is a business on the Harrow Road which keeps a fleet of vans parked on a yellow line, which they would no doubt claim to be loading, but which observation suggests are merely parked. In fact they are gaining commercial advantage from this favourable treatment by the Council.

There’s also a general feeling that yellow lines don’t really apply later in the day. 6.30pm is the time round here when they are supposed to become free, but on the Harrow Road you’ll find people parking from 3 o’clock onwards, and in the backstreets some people seem to think they can park from lunchtime. So why does this annoy me? Simply because these vehicles cause congestion and are often dangerous as well. It’s particularly an issue of visibility for cyclists.

The latest offenders are the delivery riders, Deliveroo and the like, who park their motorbikes on double yellow lines with apparent impunity. There is a particular spot on Porchester Road where this happens constantly, where the road is narrowed by a traffic island, just before the bus stop, and a parked bike makes a real hazard.

Still, it’s better than Harlesden, which always seems particularly lawless when you drive through. I was told that traffic wardens there don’t dare to challenge illegal parking.

Va Pensiero Revisited

My regular readers will remember a previous post bemoaning the way that chain restaurants trading under an Italian label have ceased to cook Italian (or in truth any) food. Today I have cause to celebrate, because a really top class Italian restaurant has appeared almost on my doorstep. It’s called Guste Remo, and it sits on the corner opposite the Porchester Baths, in Porchester Road. It’s a rather ill-omened site, as a previous restaurant (Spanish) suffered a fire. The most recent occupant was a very well-intentioned organic, vegetarian pizza place, which just didn’t do much business. Guste Remo, on the other hand, seems busy already, and frankly is very good indeed. It’s not the cheapest around, but that wasn’t what I was looking for; I had an exquisite veal chop and we had a very leisurely evening.

Carnival Again

As I’ve said before here, street processions are significant in symbolic terms. They are expressing important meanings, as any social anthropologist will tell you, meanings around identity and ownership. I suspect that Lady Borwick MP understands that, which is why she is so keen to expel Carnival from the streets of Notting Hill. It is offensive to her and her supporters that poor black people should express any ownership of these streets. Now in fact there are still a good number of Caribbean families living in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington and Notting Dale, though clearly there isn’t the concentration that there was in the 1960s and 70s, when most of Notting Hill was pretty run-down, and most houses were let in multiple occupancy. Many of those houses have now been converted back into single dwellings, and the remaining flats are sold these days, and if let are not let to social tenants, so the change in housing has made for a change in population, wealthier and whiter. But the fact remains that Carnival is still the cultural expression of a sizable chunk of Notting Hill’s population, who have quite as much right to be there as Lady Borwick. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

I was at a meeting recently when a policeman said of Carnival that “They’ve had fifty years of it, so it’s time to finish it.” I think I now understand what is meant by institutional racism.      

NOTHING LIKE A DAME

Nothing Like a Dame 

One of the more unusual requirements of life as a parish priest, to be photographed alongside Dame Barbara Windsor, with a Chelsea Pensioner and a train. Strictly speaking it was nothing to do with me, but by a circuitous route I got a call from a charming lady from the British Legion in Devon, who was desperate to have some sort of religious act to preface the launch of a drive for more poppy day collectors, and by chance I could be available at 36 hours’ notice and so agreed to help out. So I invented a liturgy, printed it out, and turned up in fancy dress. I had been told that they had a Chelsea Pensioner coming, as well as Royal British Legion standard bearers, so I knew it would be a uniform occasion. I have no white gauntlets or service beret, but managed an MA hood and preaching bands. Dame Barbara wore the largest, glitteriest, poppy I’ve ever seen. She was charming and devout. Everybody was muttering about how good she looks for 79. I was struck by how very small she is, even on four inch heels. It was incredibly difficult not to gaze down at her cleavage, and I was left thinking how much she must have exploited that during her career, because it unquestionably puts her at an advantage (with men, at any rate).

Spare Vicar

In fact my presence was quite redundant, because Great Western Railway has a chaplain, who came along (which was no surprise since he is, quite logically, based at Paddington Station). He very graciously agreed to take part in what I’d concocted, and I think we got on well. But I had no idea he even existed! Nor had my colleague, the Vicar of Paddington, in whose parish the station actually lies. He’s paid by the Railway Mission, of which I’d never heard either. But isn’t it absurd that we should not know about him at all! We had a diocesan study day about chaplaincy a few months ago, but I don’t think anyone mentioned the point that if chaplains aren’t Anglican then there’s no reason why you would know they were there. As we’re the Established Church we tend to assume that requests for chaplaincy will come in our direction, but if an institution has other links it will of course look there (as a Roman Catholic school or hospital will obviously do) and then there are a few long-established industrial chaplaincies which exist quite outside Anglican structures, but I had never heard of the Railway Mission. I have to say, I’m very glad the chaplain’s there, as he is obviously good at the job, and it’s good to know that there’s someone with a real knowledge of the industry who’s there to pick up the pieces.

Not Actually What He Said

After standing around the very evocative GWR war memorial (marvellous sculpture by Charles Sargeant Jagger) to pray, everyone decamped to stand in front of the locomotive power car named after Harry Patch, the last of the Tommies, for publicity photos. This power car is splendidly decked out in computer-printed vinyl with poppies and silhouettes of soldiers, and the famous words of Lawrence Binyon that we say each Remembrance Sunday. The chaplain and I took malicious glee in pointing out to the GWR Area Manager that they’d got the Binyon wrong, though. The locomotive says, “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old…” but Binyon wrote, “They shall grow not old”. It’s poetry, you see… The general verdict was some computer auto-correct had been at work.

Making Waves

In the really hot weather this summer a magnificent wave of tarmac began to break over the kerb by the bus stop outside Betfred on the Harrow Road. I watched it grow day by day, and was slightly disappointed when I saw that it had been shaved off one day recently. This, as any urban cyclist will tell you, is not an isolated phenomenon. If there is a large pothole contractors will try to fill it with tarmac. However, tarmac does not set solid at all quickly (and in fact flexibility is meant to be a permanent characteristic) and so traffic is allowed on it before it has properly set. This matters most when you have buses standing on the tarmac, as their extreme weight simply squeezes it up. Obviously, the buses are probably responsible for the pothole in the first place. The result is the strange wrinkled surface you get at the side of many major routes in London. It’s another reason we cyclists keep out of the gutter. 

Grammar Schools

No, Mrs May, grammar schools are not the answer. I say this as an old grammar school boy, immensely grateful for the education I received, but even by my day, in the 1970s, they were ceasing to be engines of social mobility, as middle-class children were coached for the 11-plus. Nowadays the educational arms race has spiralled out of control, so tutors are the norm, and in many areas a substantial proportion of grammar school places are taken by children from independent prep schools. In contemporary conditions they won’t produce the social mobility you want, Mrs May. If you heard Justine Greening interviewed on the Today programme you will have been struck by how resolutely she evaded the question about the evidence base for doing this. I suspect that is because Ms Greening is aware of the evidence, which is absolutely clear, that if raising educational standards is what you want, then a truly comprehensive system is the answer. I know this offends what some people regard as “common sense”, but it’s true. There is an absolute international consensus that a truly comprehensive school system always produces the best results for all pupils. You can observe the results from the international comparisons, where countries like Finland and Sweden consistently do best. It is, of course, true that Sweden and Finland are also much less unequal societies than the UK, and that has all sorts of effects, not least on how acceptable comprehensive schools are to the privileged. The trouble is that we live in a society where privilege is entrenched by education, and grammar schools are part of that, because they cater to a desire to keep your children insulated from “the wrong sort”. So, no, opposition to grammar schools is not ideological (though I can’t help feeling, on reflection, that equality of opportunity is a pretty uncontentious ideology to follow) but on the evidence. They don’t work.

NO, DON'T STOP THE CARNIVAL

The Carnival is Over

It’s actually remarkable how quickly West London recovers from Carnival. Westminster Council sometimes leaves crash barriers for a couple of days, and this year TFL had left confusing temporary signs on Elgin Avenue which were still there two days later, but mostly it went very quickly, and of course the councils make sure the rubbish is removed very quickly indeed. You meet people who are shattered, having spent Bank Holiday Monday dancing all day, and see others who are clearly not up to social interaction yet thanks to their Monday intake. Generally, though, the most noticeable residue is a general feeling of goodwill.

This Year Was Different

Only this year the goodwill (and lots of people were saying that it was the best Carnival for years) was punctured by the Police Federation moaning about Carnival. They pointed to 450 arrests, which is a lot, until you compare it to the number of arrests at other large-scale events (Glastonbury Festival, for instance) to which the arrests are quite proportionate. It’s also not the case that an arrest means that a crime has taken place. People this year certainly saw individuals arrested for apparently no reason, and we all know that when a crime has certainly taken place many people are arrested for the purposes of investigation but never in fact charged. Nor is it quite as horrifying that a number of policemen were taken to hospital when you learn that several of them were taken to hospital because someone spat on them. Now that’s not to say that spitting is acceptable, but it’s a misleading statistic. The Metropolitan Police themselves pointed out that the number of arrests this year could be expected to be higher than in the past because they were enforcing the new Psychoactive Substances Act (which recently banned what were previously known as “legal highs”). Since the streets of Notting Hill were peppered with nitrous oxide canisters it is no surprise that this resulted in a number of arrests. What was different this year was that the Metropolitan Police Federation felt able to decry Carnival (perhaps emboldened by the post-Brexit mood, which apparently licenses being rude to foreigners and people of colour).   

Constituencies

We know that the MP for Kensington, Lady Borwick, wants to close Carnival down. She has made that very clear, and sent out a nasty “survey” to constituents inviting their complaints earlier in the year. I don’t doubt that lots of wealthy Notting Hill residents would much rather have the Carnival go away, and probably I would hate it if I lived on the route, but then I would either join in or go away for two days, which is in fact what many residents do. But Carnival is not unique: the same problems are faced by residents of Twickenham, for instance, albeit on a smaller scale, but much more frequently. I’m sure that a section of Lady Borwick’s constituency wants to be rid of Carnival as an inconvenience, but she should be aware that lots of businesses regard it as a gilt-edged opportunity. She clearly doesn’t care about her constituents who enjoy Carnival (of whom there are many, of all backgrounds) but you would suppose that she might worry about what businesses thought. It’s worth pointing out that Karen Buck, the other MP whose constituency is part of Carnival, is a consistent supporter of the event.

Success Story

It seems to me that Lady Borwick (and the Police Federation) should be celebrating the success of Carnival, which is the second-biggest street festival in the world, and which attracts tourists in large numbers. Did you not see them? Foolishly festooned with cameras and photographing the most mundane things? More than ever this year. That is because it is generally peaceful and cheerful. People enjoy it. People (in huge numbers) come to London to enjoy it. It shows off the diversity of London in a pretty authentic way. When it started 50 years ago it was a chance for West Indian people to gain some self-respect by celebrating their culture in an environment which had greeted them with racism, and that story still needs to be heard. But it’s more than that today, as the samba bands demonstrate (not Caribbean at all) and as a glance at the participants will show. Vast numbers of young people regard the music being played at Carnival as their own, whatever their background, and they are happy to take part, and are welcome to do so. This is a reflection of the London that most of us enjoy living in, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, vibrant and full of artistic endeavour, the London which is the world city that most people seem to want to live in. That is surely a success, and something that should be celebrated, not moaned about.  

REJOICE, REJOICE!

Not Blue Suede Shoes

At St.Peter’s people regularly leave bags of jumble outside the church (or on the steps of the Office, which annoys our colleagues) because they know that we have market stalls to raise money for our social projects. Sometimes it just seems like bags of rubbish, but it is all kindly meant. Now, though, odd things have started to appear outside St.Mary Mags, and I’m quite sure that no-one expects us to sell them. There were two smashed-up motor scooters some time ago, but they disappeared as quietly as they came. Last week, though, there appeared a child’s scooter, abandoned outside the church porch; not a particularly nice one, mostly plastic, but in working order. Today, however, we have a pair of shoes, coral patent, wedge heels, quite glossy, placed beside each other on the pavement, some time around Usain Bolt’s 100m final. Curious.

A Question of Etiquette

What exactly is the correct form when a (clearly stolen) Boris bike is left on your property? This has now happened a couple of times this summer, parked up quite neatly on my forecourt, out of sight behind the fence. I confess that my policy has been simply to drag the things out into full public view, and to trust that they will either be re-used, or somehow be dealt with. The vans servicing the docking stations do not routinely come our way (because obviously there is no docking station on the Warwick Estate), so is there a number I can call?

Success at Last

At St.Mary Mags, we are rejoicing. We have succeeded in our bid for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. They will give us £3.6 million of a £7.3 million project, which is a brilliant result. We have also had tremendous support from Westminster City Council, who have been part of the process from the beginning, and so we are to receive a good chunk of what used to be called “Section 106” money, which is paid by developers to fund socially useful work in areas affected by their developments. From the start, officers from Westminster recognised that the project would deliver all sorts of desirable social outputs from their point of view, and made the project an integral part of their planning for the Estate, backing us when times were hard. Now that we have the recognition of Heritage Lottery funding it will be good to be able to repay their perseverance with us. Of course St Mary Magdalene’s PCC is not doing this alone; we have been in partnership with the Paddington Development Trust for about eleven years, and they will be the ones delivering the Project. For years we had meetings with representatives of the Council, the Diocese, the Primary School, and ourselves and PDT, inching the Project forward and keeping everyone on board. PDT carried out consultations, we had open days (one with a falconry display inside the church), we did market research. I think it’s seven years ago that we had the architectural competition to find designers for the new building, and the delay has made it clear that we picked winners, which is quite gratifying. Gradually the Project has got nearer and nearer to reality, but I’ve lived with it for so long that it’s hard to see it as totally real yet. Now the real work starts!

HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE

A Hostage Situation

On Monday morning a couple of police officers turned up at St Peter’s House, and rather apologetically explained that they had received a report that hostages were being held in the building, and asked whether they might take a look around.  Between us, the PDT girls and I unlocked as many doors as we could and they wandered around. I warned them that a self-help group session was in progress downstairs in the Hall, but said they could just open the door and peep in. Perhaps the trauma of having uniformed police officers peering in at their meeting was responsible for the fact that when the group left they hadn’t put the furniture back to normal, they hadn’t turned the water boiler off, and they hadn’t locked the front door! And the police wandered off without saying goodbye, which was a bit strange. I realised afterwards that I wasn’t clear whether it was supposed that we were holding some innocent citizen hostage, or whether we were meant to be the victims. Either way, they didn’t seem to have treated it with great seriousness, as they said the report had been made several days earlier (which since a Sunday had intervened made it hard to see how someone could be incarcerated) but I suppose they were doing their duty. Afterwards we speculated as to which particular mischief-maker might have invented this story, but didn’t reach any conclusion.

Irish Eyes

It was fun to go along to the Maida Hill Irish Festival on Sunday, even if the first person I saw was one of my own congregation who is no more Irish than I am. Lots of people were very friendly (albeit that some of that friendliness was lubricated by Guinness) but one lady harangued me at some length. At first she asked me what I believed in, and then told me what she believed in, to which I generally assented, but then she started berating me about the animals, and how we were doing nothing for the animals. I nodded sympathetically, not feeling that a discussion about priorities in a world full of war, starvation and terror would get us very far, but then she told me that she took direct action by feeding the pigeons! “Because they’re starving,” she said. At that point I made my excuses and left, or rather she told me to get up because her friend wanted to sit back down where I was, and I slipped away, but really! No they’re not! Urban pigeons do not starve. The urban pigeon, properly the feral rock dove, is an extremely resilient creature. When we were driving over the Himalayas, from Manali to Leh, a few years ago, I had been looking forward to the opportunity to see scarce wildlife, and fair enough we saw the bharal, or blue sheep, and we saw marmots (“Is rat,” said our driver, unimpressed), but hardly any interesting birds. And when we got to the highest part of the road, where there were only the tiniest sprigs of vegetation among the scree and rocks, what did we find, but rock doves! In the most barren landscape they were still scratching a living where there appeared to be nothing to eat. Hence, I don’t think Maida Hill presents too much of a challenge for them.

Canalside Living

A few weeks back I was looked in the eye by a heron as I rode my bike, which came as a bit of a shock. Fair enough, he was on the grass beside the canal, just along from the Harrow Road bridge, but on this occasion he was the wrong side of the path, nowhere near the water at all. I suspect he may have been attracted by the pile of food waste which some café-owner (I presume) puts out beside the path to feed the birds. Well, I say feed the birds, but the other day there was a pile of meat there (in midsummer, very nice) which I suspect may have been dumped to avoid inspection. Magpies, crows and gulls will have enjoyed the meat, but not so much the ducks and geese, while foxes and rats will have been delighted. This particular spot regularly smells like a Kathmandu rubbish dump, which makes a change from the smell of weed, but isn’t especially attractive.

Paranoid Style

Back in the last century, when I did my degree, I did a paper on American history, and was introduced to the work of Richard Hofstadter, who had died ridiculously young not so many years earlier. Hofstadter was a person of great wisdom (and scholarship) and I’ve just been reading his essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. He wrote this originally in 1963, and published a revised version in 1965, taking account of Barry Goldwater’s Republican candidacy; it is reprinted in a 2008 paperback collection of essays named after it. Hofstadter’s argument is that there is a consistent strain in American politics, going back to the 1790s, of outbursts of extreme right-wing politics that share a “paranoid” style. The McCarthyite and Goldwater episodes were then the most recent, but his analysis fits the Trump phenomenon almost exactly. One fascinating point he makes is that these outbursts are largely about what he calls “status politics” rather than “interest politics”, where “interest politics” are the normal pursuit of your own (or your class’s) material or economic interest. “Status politics” meanwhile, are about moral outlooks, or identity, or culture being under threat; critics misunderstood the notion of status and objected that the poor whites who supported Goldwater enjoyed no status to lose, but the point is that they thought the Republic had enshrined their values (which perhaps gave them some psychological status) but was now disowning them. This means that just using the normal arguments about the economy doesn’t work for those people. It seems to me that this not only fits Trump very closely, but also fits the Brexit phenomenon in UK, which is perhaps an indication that for the first time mass immigration really is having an impact on our society, because people are beginning to behave like Americans, whose immigrant nature was, for Hofstadter, at the heart of the political behaviour he analysed. The big difference is that Brexit won, whereas Hofstadter was confident that the paranoid style would only ever appeal to a minority in the US. It remains to be seen whether we shall see Trump go the way of Goldwater, or whether paranoia has now edged over into the majority. Either way, read the essay!

HEAVEN KNOWS I'M MISERABLE NOW

The Morning After

Yes, of course the sky has not yet fallen in, though that’s partly because chaos in the financial markets doesn’t have immediate visible effects, but I cannot help but be sad. Today we have an exhibition opening in the Crypt of St.Mary Mags, “Magic of Light”, which is organised by Tomek, a Polish artist. On Sunday I am going to a party given by Germ, Helen’s old supervisor, who is a Dutch academic. It is no surprise that London voted heavily to remain in the EU, because here we actually see the value that our European brothers and sisters bring to our lives. Most particularly we also reject the poisonous politics of division that are signified by this result. It’s no surprise that Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen think it’s a great result because they recognise what it says. Mr Farage may insist that his voters are “decent people” and of course most of his voters are, but he cannot escape the fact that the people with really despicable views will also have voted for him, and he has given plenty of signs that he understands and welcomes them.

The Revolution

Round here we still have some revolutionary Socialists, and I know some who have proudly voted to leave the EU, which they regard as a bourgeois conspiracy. They are delighted at the fall of David Cameron, as they relish the prospect of his being replaced by a more nakedly right-wing figure whose tyrannical rule will motivate the workers to rise and overthrow the bourgeois regime. But this is fantasy. The Referendum result demonstrates that the workers are much more ready to form  mobs to hound out foreigners than they are to turn on the bosses. Watch the hedge-funders and currency speculators (Nigel?) getting rich as the markets boil over, and see whether the workers mobilise. My revolutionary friends think it will be absolutely fine for Prime Minister Johnson to scapegoat immigrants, and repeal workers’ rights and employment protection because that will hasten the uprising of the proletariat, and as Lenin said you had to break a few eggs, but actually the revolution isn’t just around the corner, and real people will suffer. The poorest and weakest are always the victims, and so it will prove, comrades.

R.I.P. Amjad Sabri

And just in case you thought things couldn’t get worse, look at the news from Pakistan. Amjad Sabri, a musician, has been murdered by the Taliban in Karachi. He was part of the world famous Sabri Brothers ensemble (the “Brothers” were his father and uncle) who perform qawwali, the Muslim devotional music of the Indian subcontinent. The Sabris are hereditary musicians, descended from Tansen, the court musician of the Mughal Emperor Akbar back in the sixteenth century, and while they perform on secular stages (I saw them at the South Bank once) their art is entirely based on the worship of God. Listen to a Sabri Brothers CD and appreciate the devotion. Amjad had broadened the repertoire to engage with new audiences (a bit like Youssou N’Dour has done, and just as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan did) but the core of their repertoire was still the traditional qawwali sung at Sufi shrines every Thursday night for hundreds of years, which are love songs to God. Helen spent time in Karachi two years ago and reported how lawless it is, but there is still something profoundly shocking about the murder of a singer of devotional music.          

EURO 2016

You Got This One Wrong, Boris

Last night two leaflets came through my door from the Vote Leave campaign. One is headed “Thursday is Polling Day. Your street is one of the most likely to Vote Leave in the country”. Well, sorry to break the bad news, Boris, but no it isn’t. You see, when I go to the polling station on Thursday and the poll clerk looks up my address, he will find just one name in my street, mine. I remember that the Conservatives at the last General Election tried some targeted leaflets with a similar idea, so presumably some research has told them that people are more likely to vote if they believe that their vote will make a material difference, and that their neighbours are thinking the same. Well, you don’t need research to tell you that people vote more enthusiastically if they think it matters, but doing the same as your neighbours? I’m not sure about that. And frankly, I’m not sure they’re right anyway. I seriously doubt whether anyone has actually surveyed the Warwick Estate to see whether the residents favour Brexit, and so this must be based on some sort of extrapolation. I suspect that the logic is that some research has suggested that the poorer you are the more likely you are to vote Leave, and since we are one of the most deprived wards in London someone at Vote Leave has assumed that means we will support them. The flaw in the logic is that there are multiple factors, and their research represents findings about white British people, who are quite thin on the ground here. We have a lot of residents who weren’t born in the UK, and most of them will not vote enthusiastically for Brexit, especially when it is represented by posters of queues of migrants represented as a threat, whom they regard with empathy.

…And Statistics

The research does seem to show that the less well-educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Leave. It’s worth pointing out that lots of our local residents have degrees and professional qualifications that are simply not recognised here, which may deceive the statisticians. No statisticians are deceived by the notorious “£350 million a week” claim, though, and I am staggered that Vote Leave continue to use it. It is simply a lie. The leaflet states “We send the EU £350 million a week” which Vote Leave know is not true, and which has been exposed as an untruth. Sure, we send a lot of money to the EU, but that figure is simply a lie. And as for the next line, “Let’s fund our NHS instead”, that’s simply shameless, as Farage would happily dismantle the NHS altogether, while Gove and Johnson have been part of a government that has persistently undermined the NHS, and has had the chance to fund it better but has chosen not to do so. The leaflet also bears the inflammatory map showing the “accession” countries that are applying to join the EU at some indeterminate point with the untrue claim that they are “joining soon”. No they aren’t. I’ve been to Albania, and to suppose that they will be ready to join the EU in thirty years would be optimistic. And it is perfectly clear that Turkey has no chance of joining until the division of Cyprus is resolved, which seems unlikely in our lifetimes. If you think the bureaucrats will fudge that one, think again; it cannot happen. It will be vetoed. But not only is this untruth promulgated, but alongside it is the map, with the accession countries coloured red, and Syria and Iraq coloured orange, with no explanation whatever, just prompting the thought in your mind that  they are somehow connected. This is shameful, using the plight of those countries to provoke xenophobia and fear.

Ourselves Alone, or not

Brexit thrives (like ISIS and Donald Trump) on crude identity politics, promoting the idea that we each have just one essential identity that overrides all others. You don’t have to have studied Social Identity Theory to see that this is nonsense; in real life we all have multiple identities which we use or privilege at particular moments. Well, on the Warwick Estate you can see this demonstrated. If you take a walk along Senior Street just now, during Euro 2016, you’ll find plenty of flats with flags draped from their windows, but several flats have both an England flag and an Ireland one. I know some of the families concerned and I can quite understand; both identities are meaningful for them. It would have horrified Michael Collins and the other leaders of the Easter Rising, but it shows how far we have come in a century.   

UGLY DUCKLINGS

Ugly Ducklings

A pair of swans on the Canal have produced a brood of cygnets, six of them, and at present they have succeeded in keeping them all alive for a fortnight. I imagine they are taking them onto the island in the Pool overnight, which is at least safe from foxes. Usually they get picked off while still small by foxes or dogs. A pair of Canada geese had a couple of goslings about a month ago, but considering how many of them are on the Canal we see very few goslings. A first for me last Saturday was seeing a baby Egyptian goose in Hyde Park, a delicate thing covered in black and white fluff (unlike the Canada geese, whose goslings rejoice in lemon and grey fluff). I have a soft spot for the rather charming Egyptian geese, who always go round in pairs rather than gaggles, and don’t try to bully you, like Canada geese; we sometimes have a pair on the Canal, but they don’t seem to be permanent, so perhaps they fly up from the Serpentine (following the course of the Westbourne River, maybe?)

Alright for Fighting

Yesterday evening I came to the Parish Office at a quarter to seven and was transfixed by an enormously loud row going on outside the pub opposite (The Squirrel, formerly The Skiddaw). A youngish woman was screaming abuse at the top of her voice at a woman seated at one of the tables outside the pub with a companion, who were responding. I was on my bike, so not really in a position to give my full attention to proceedings, but people waiting outside St.Peter’s for the self-help group meeting had been watching for some time and reckoned that the standing woman was drunk. Remarkably, it hadn’t progressed to actual violence, but the fury was of such a level that you feared that it could escalate at any moment. The landlord seemed to be trying to stop it, but without much success, though I presume he must have succeeded eventually. It was the volume that was so striking, together with the (presumably alcohol-fuelled) disinhibition in a public place in broad daylight. A reminder of the fragility of social stability.

Pining for the Fjords

One of my Churchwardens was called to the public lavatories in Maida Hill Market a few weeks ago, because “There’s someone dead down there.” She was understandably anxious, and so went down with caution. She ascertained that the woman in question (lying on the floor) was not in fact dead, but drunk or high, so she gave her a slap to wake her up, which was effective. Getting the woman out of the loos and set on her way home was a bit less easy, but some help turned up after a while. You’d think people would be able to distinguish between dead and dead drunk, but apparently not. Sometimes, in an environment like this where chaotic things do occur, people leap to the most melodramatic conclusions.

Franglais

I’ve noticed that the English have a tendency to pronounce any apparently foreign word as though it were French (I guess it’s because French is the default foreign language for us). For instance, my mother used to pronounce bergamot (the oil which flavours Earl Grey tea) as “bair-zha-moe” (which ironically wouldn’t even be correct in French). Another example is Farage, a name that appears French and so gets pronounced “Fur-arzh”, but why? It’s not quite the same as the genteel pronunciation of garage which seems to have won out over “garridge” (which was quite normal when I was a boy) but that’s not natural English either. Surely it’s the same syllable as at the end of manage, salvage or porage? It’s very odd; why is he not Mr “Farridge”?

The BBC gets itself into terrible confusion over some French names, with a desire to be correct, but not be too pretentious (and actually pronounce things in a French way). A recent test case was the rugby team Racing 92, who the BBC scrupulously called “Rasseeng Ninety-Two”. Could they not spot the illogicality? “Rasseeng Quatre-vingt-douze” would have been okay, but not “Rasseeng Ninety-Two”. Just saying Racing 92 in English would probably have been better. They seem to have abandoned their insistence on pronouncing the first S in Catalans Dragons which they persisted with for some time, but that one is a total mix-up, because if it’s French you wouldn’t pronounce the S, but if it’s Catalan you would, but either way “Catalans” is an adjective which ought to come after the noun it qualifies. Their website proclaims them to be Dragons Catalans, which makes sense, and surely that (pronounced in a French way) ought to be their name.