FIXING A HOLE

FIXING A HOLE  (WHERE THERE ISN’T ONE)

Astonishingly, Elgin Avenue is being resurfaced, which is causing vast congestion. I suppose we should have spotted the parking suspension notices which would have informed us, but we didn’t, so it came as a surprise this morning. No-one seems to have had any notice; certainly we didn’t. I should have felt pretty foolish (and very angry) if I’d organised a funeral for any time in the next three days. The thing that causes me real bafflement is that Elgin Avenue is very far from being the worst-surfaced road in the neighbourhood; that accolade belongs to Kilburn Park Road, in my view. There were a couple of potholes on that stretch of Elgin Avenue, but they were easily avoided, and shallow, so I don’t really see the problem. Given that builders are putting up speculative flats on the old sorting office site in Lanhill Road it wasn’t brilliant timing, as they now have to reverse their concrete mixers and long flatbed trucks out onto Chippenham Road, as Elgin Avenue is shut to them. Result: chaos.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

One of the things that struck me when Helen died was how kind people were to me; not so much members of the congregations, of whom it might have been reasonably expected, but people I hardly knew. I had occasion to go to Maida Hill Market a few days after it happened and was stopped by several people saying how sorry they were. Two of the classes at St.Peter’s School all made me cards and sent them over, and then when I went back into school, two months later, I was astonished to be greeted by a nine-year old who said, “Hello, Father Henry. I’m sorry for your loss.” He wasn’t the only one. And now, six months on, I had a local chancer come to the door, asking for help (which I rather ungraciously gave) who, as we parted said, “I was really sorry to hear of what happened to you.” It had never occurred to me that someone like that (terrible phrase) would have even heard about Helen’s death, let alone paid any attention. A humbling moment.

HANDS FREE

Spotted at the bus stop the other day: a young woman in hijab, whose neon-pink headscarf was pulled really tight, and into which was tucked her phone. She was chatting away animatedly while busy with both hands. Very smart. 

LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES

The present government wants to “free” schools from local authority “bureaucracy and interference”. Observe the story from Edinburgh, where schools built under a private finance initiative are found to be structurally unsafe. Who is acting? The local authority. Who else would act? Who else could possibly sort out such a situation? Nevertheless, the government thinks that is unhelpful interference. We might observe that the authority should never have been seduced by the PFI model in the first place, but that is where we are. The response will obviously be that of course the Department for Education would sort out anything like that, but do we really think that a Whitehall civil servant will necessarily do that job more efficiently or expeditiously than a civil servant closer to the action (who may actually have a personal stake in the outcome, and will certainly have a personal stake in the community)?

GOODWILL TO ALL  PEOPLE

On Good Friday the local churches get together, just after noon, to have a service on the piazza at Maida Hill Market. The service lasts half an hour or so, and has never in my experience involved more than about a hundred people. We have been doing it all the time I’ve been here, and I’m told it has been going for twenty years or more, certainly long before the junction became a piazza. Anyway, this year it went off rather well, despite using a really manky little keyboard of ours. We plugged in our microphone to the Italian lunch stall, and a decent atmosphere was generated. We were packing up when a local authority noise officer turned up, because someone had complained. I was rather bemused, and so, to be frank, was the noise officer when he saw our equipment. I concede that the weather was nice enough to have your windows open, but I doubt whether we were particularly audible over the traffic. The stallholders seemed perfectly relaxed about our being there, but I gather that there are liable to be complaints about all sorts of activity on the piazza. Very odd. What may one do on a public space? How much do people have the right to not be irritated, disturbed or offended? And how far does that right override the right of others to free expression and peaceful enjoyment of the public realm? The principle of live and let live seems to me to be essential for urban life, but others don’t seem to agree. Anyway, we forgive you for trying to disrupt our worship, and are sorry we disturbed you. We don’t promise not to do it again!