A Happy Easter
Importantly, we have now celebrated our first Holy Week and Easter in the newly-refurbished church. We still had to clean and polish everything, as the amount of dust in the atmosphere is still tremendous, but everything is looking much better, and I was not ashamed to welcome the Archdeacon of London, Fr Luke Miller, who spent Holy Week with us. Having someone else to share the preaching (and reading the Passion on Good Friday) makes a surprising physical difference.
With some repaired and refurbished candlesticks we were able to create a much better altar of repose on Maundy Thursday, and then to make a bigger, better splash on Easter Day, and frankly St Mary Mags looked splendid. We also used the old marble paschal candlestick for the first time since I've been here (as we had builders' labourers to move it) which looks impressive in the sanctuary. That still needs repair, but it's quite safe, so it's good to use it.
We also used our new Stations of the Cross, which I am very pleased with. I bought them in Palermo, and had them shipped over, which was fine, except that the package was just left on my doorstep. The old plaster-of-Paris ones were past repair, and looked very tatty. They would inevitably have got even more damaged, and if we had tried to put them up and take them down it would have been a terrible chore, resulting in more damage. They also take up a lot of space in storage. The new ones, on the other hand, are in silvered bronze (and so pretty resilient) and are virtually flat (and so store easily). They are also silver, which looks very striking on the dark walls of the church. Their design is contemporary, but not aggressively so, and they are framed by a stylized thorns pattern, which works very well in a gothic setting.
Deliverymen
The person delivering the Stations left them on my doorstep, but at least he delivered them in a timely fashion, unlike a Hermes deliveryman, who took a fortnight to find my house, despite having "The Vicarage" in six-inch-high letters outside. I discovered through this that Hermes is not really a delivery company at all, but essentially an internet device, matching up deliveries with self-employed deliverymen. This would be fine if they were all competent, but mine wasn't. I actually saw him on one of his failed visits, trying to get into the school one evening, little imagining that this was for me. His vehicle was distinctive, and it is even more ironic that I have since seen it overnight a few hundred yards away in St Peter's parish. He claimed to have tried to deliver, but never left a card, and simply failed to identify the house on repeated alleged attempts. Since there are only 3 buildings with my postcode, and the others are the church and the school, I was not impressed. Hermes of course takes no responsibility for failed deliveries and directs you back to the supplier you purchased from, so I had long email exchanges with Rapha (classy cycle clothing, ironically based about 4 miles away). The particularly annoying thing was that I have had numerous successful deliveries from Rapha before (via Royal Mail, I think) and so let them know that I didn't think much of their new contractor.
Nearly There
Of course the new building wasn't finished for Easter. Silly of me to have thought it would be. But we are genuinely close now. The scaffolding is coming down, and it looks terrific. New turf is going down where the compound has been. People are frantically fixing things. The lift car appears to have been manufactured the wrong size, which is more than a little vexing, but we trust that something can be done.There were a whole string of things that were meant to be done over the school holiday, to avoid annoyance, but which seem not to have happened then, which is a shame. I compared notes with my neighbour Jem, the Baptist minister, who has totally rebuilt his church (and has flats on top); his is even further behind than ours, and we should just about finish together!
Thursday 25 April 2019
Wednesday 10 April 2019
GLAZING
We're still putting windows into the new building; yesterday I found myself unable to watch as the glazing for the north lantern was being craned into place. The sheet of glass hung there from those huge suction caps in a way that seemed barely feasible, and it was all too much for my imagination. We walked around last Friday, with some senior officers from the City Council, and I was rather taken by surprise by how far from finished it all appeared, but apparently we are still due to finish in a couple of weeks. I was a bit disconcerted by one of the council officers asking me whether the exterior was going to be brick, but of course what they were looking at was a large section waiting for its glazing to be installed. When I pointed out that the main facade material is our glazed faience, which is already complete, they understood and were duly impressed. At that point the faience was still concealed by scaffolding, so we took them to a different elevation where it is more visible, and they loved it; whenever we take people to see the faience at close quarters they get excited by it. I'm just keen now to be able to reveal the extension in all its glory.
I am preparing a couple of children for First Communion, and the only practical way is to see them individually in their own (or their granny's) home. Not especially efficient use of my time, but actually the only way to get it done. The weekend before last I was perturbed to hear mention of one of those two venues on the television news, and when I looked into it I discovered that it was not only the same street, but actually the same block, that had been the site of a stabbing. The victim died. At the time there was talk of a dispute over a woman, but now drugs and gangs are mentioned. When I asked my candidate's granny (who is my age, I should point out) about it, she remarked that it was a reminder that "although we live in St John's Wood" awful things could still happen here, as anywhere in London.
This conversation brought home to me how much perceptions matter in these things, because I wouldn't have supposed her neighbourhood to be immune, but nor would I have called it St John's Wood. Yes, her flat is just off St John's Wood Road, but it's also not far from Maida Vale, and is part of a sprawl of social housing that runs through to Lisson Grove. I dare say estate agents would call it St John's Wood, but why would we believe them? The whole point of St John's Wood Road is that it leads TO St John's Wood (unlike St John's Wood High Street, for instance) so it actually isn't in St John's Wood itself. It is, in any case, a sort of boundary, with much more prosperous territory to the north, but more diversity to the south, at least going east until you reach Lisson Grove. I once had a parishioner who insisted on telling people that he lived in St John's Wood, despite the fact that his flat was just off Edgware Road, near Church Street Market. I'm not even sure that he was in the right postcode, but nothing would shake him from the belief that he must be in a smart area. London neighbourhoods are amorphous things, but what you call your area can be bound up with your own perception of it (let alone other people's perceptions). For instance, I always say that I am in Paddington, whereas I could perfectly justifiably say Little Venice, but the latter just doesn't reflect the reality of the Warwick Estate, or the whole diversity of the area.
Organising a wedding is quite a faff, isn't it? I had thought we would make this a simple and informal affair, but all sorts of stuff seems to have crept in that requires choosing and organising (and paying for). Meanwhile, I keep wondering whether there isn't something which we have simply both forgotten as we are pretty much doing this by ourselves, unlike young people who always seem to have a gaggle of family and friends advising and suggesting. Still, if we haven't thought of it, it can't be important to us, can it?
We've had a couple of "test events" in the refurbished church. They were meant to be test events for the new facilities in the extension, but since that isn't finished yet, it was all a bit provisional. Anyway, we managed to host an immersive theatre production involving local teenagers (which was attended by the Lord Mayor and the MP as well as all sorts of local worthies), and a training day for the Waterways Chaplaincy (who had brilliant cake). Nobody died. Nobody fused the lights. The portaloos coped. That, in my view, was success. And, of course, loads more people came into the church and went "Wow!"
I am preparing a couple of children for First Communion, and the only practical way is to see them individually in their own (or their granny's) home. Not especially efficient use of my time, but actually the only way to get it done. The weekend before last I was perturbed to hear mention of one of those two venues on the television news, and when I looked into it I discovered that it was not only the same street, but actually the same block, that had been the site of a stabbing. The victim died. At the time there was talk of a dispute over a woman, but now drugs and gangs are mentioned. When I asked my candidate's granny (who is my age, I should point out) about it, she remarked that it was a reminder that "although we live in St John's Wood" awful things could still happen here, as anywhere in London.
This conversation brought home to me how much perceptions matter in these things, because I wouldn't have supposed her neighbourhood to be immune, but nor would I have called it St John's Wood. Yes, her flat is just off St John's Wood Road, but it's also not far from Maida Vale, and is part of a sprawl of social housing that runs through to Lisson Grove. I dare say estate agents would call it St John's Wood, but why would we believe them? The whole point of St John's Wood Road is that it leads TO St John's Wood (unlike St John's Wood High Street, for instance) so it actually isn't in St John's Wood itself. It is, in any case, a sort of boundary, with much more prosperous territory to the north, but more diversity to the south, at least going east until you reach Lisson Grove. I once had a parishioner who insisted on telling people that he lived in St John's Wood, despite the fact that his flat was just off Edgware Road, near Church Street Market. I'm not even sure that he was in the right postcode, but nothing would shake him from the belief that he must be in a smart area. London neighbourhoods are amorphous things, but what you call your area can be bound up with your own perception of it (let alone other people's perceptions). For instance, I always say that I am in Paddington, whereas I could perfectly justifiably say Little Venice, but the latter just doesn't reflect the reality of the Warwick Estate, or the whole diversity of the area.
Organising a wedding is quite a faff, isn't it? I had thought we would make this a simple and informal affair, but all sorts of stuff seems to have crept in that requires choosing and organising (and paying for). Meanwhile, I keep wondering whether there isn't something which we have simply both forgotten as we are pretty much doing this by ourselves, unlike young people who always seem to have a gaggle of family and friends advising and suggesting. Still, if we haven't thought of it, it can't be important to us, can it?
We've had a couple of "test events" in the refurbished church. They were meant to be test events for the new facilities in the extension, but since that isn't finished yet, it was all a bit provisional. Anyway, we managed to host an immersive theatre production involving local teenagers (which was attended by the Lord Mayor and the MP as well as all sorts of local worthies), and a training day for the Waterways Chaplaincy (who had brilliant cake). Nobody died. Nobody fused the lights. The portaloos coped. That, in my view, was success. And, of course, loads more people came into the church and went "Wow!"
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