HAMILTON AND FREUD

Contractors

Regular readers will remember that I was struck, a month or so ago, by the rash of Morgan Sindall vans that were parked around St Peter's; the reason soon became clear. There was an estate agent's office in Goldney Road (about fifty yards away) which was vacated not so long ago, and this has now become an office for Morgan Sindall Property Services. They have a nice yard, where you can park half a dozen vehicles, but that is clearly not enough, and there are always vans parked on the single yellow lines at all hours of the day, together with others in residents' bays or on the double yellow from time to time. Now they each have a permit in the windscreen from Westminster Housing, but it is not clear what this actually permits. I would suppose it would enable them to park on the estate roads of Hallfield or Churchill Gardens, where parking is usually forbidden, and where Westminster Housing is the landowner, but does it give them a privileged status on the public highway? In the end, it is the City Council that administers street parking, and so it is perfectly able to permit its contractors to park in contravention of all normal regulations, but has it really decided to do that? And if it has, might it not be a good idea to think of the consequences, and perhaps ask for the views of the residents whose spaces are being occupied, not to mention the pedestrians and cyclists who are put at risk by dangerous parking?


Amid the Storm

We hosted a fundraiser for The Avenues Youth Project last Sunday at St Mary Mags, in the middle of the storm. Incidentally, was I the only person to be baffled and then irritated by the fact that what they were calling "Storm Kiera" was spelled "Storm Ciara"?  That's not a name, in the first place, and in whose language is it pronounced that way? Not English, certainly! Anyway, the storm wrought chaos, by preventing some of the promised artists from appearing, as they could not reach us. One side effect of that was that the musical director whose train was cancelled was bringing the music with him that he was meant to play, accompanying a singer, so a student pianist (from Guildhall) was asked to accompany, and the music was sent electronically to me, and I then downloaded it and printed it out at home, on my cheap printer where I never bother to correct the alignment after I've changed the ink. I was anxious about that, but the pianist then had to sight-read this Stevie Wonder number and familiarise herself enough with it in about twenty minutes to accompany a West End star. I discovered that the tall, polite young man in a hat who forwarded me the music was Jamael Westman, who was the original West End "Hamilton". He sang nicely, and his two colleagues from the show performed really impressively. It was a great thing for the young people from The Avenues to be rubbing shoulders with these genuinely top-drawer performers, who were also quite charming and unaffected. We also had three young performers from Guildhall, who played and sang really well. Their rendition of "La ci darem la mano" was absolutely charming, and the meaning was perfectly clear without anyone needing a second language or surtitles.

The trouble with being the custodian of an ancient building is that you do have extra worries during extreme weather events. I sat there being entertained, but listening out for any sounds of damage. I noted that the dormer shutters were clattering, which they don't normally do, but didn't hear anything much else. We used the glass sliding doors in the extension rather than the Victorian church door because the gale kept on catching the old door and was making it unmanageable, so that was a useful experiment. I think the logic is that we shall do that as a matter of course, though when the glass porch over the north entrance is built then that will probably become our main door (though not for me).


Strange Lives

Yesterday we had an event I had long been anticipating. Years ago, when Will Stephens was our artist-in-residence (studio in the old sacristy) he introduced me to William Feaver, who had been art critic for the Observer, and was a tutor at the Royal Drawing School (where Will studied). Last year when Bill published the first volume of his monumental biography of Lucian Freud I saw a possibility for a Grand Junction event, and got Will to put us in touch, which he did. So Bill very generously came last night to talk to an audience of over a hundred about Lucian Freud in Paddington, because from 1944 to 1977 Freud had studios in, successively,  Delamere Terrace, Clarendon Crescent, and Gloucester Terrace, and was evidently full of stories of the old  Paddington.

The mere question of Bill's biographical method is interesting in itself, because Lucian Freud simply liked talking to him, and would constantly phone him up, quite apart from letting himself be interviewed. So, Bill soon started taking notes, and recorded lots of their conversations, which Freud was fine with, as he conceived the idea of Bill writing "the first funny art book", Then he read the first two chapters (which Bill had spent considerable time writing) and took fright, forbidding the enterprise in his lifetime, though clearly accepting that it would eventually appear. The volume of material was obviously vast, and Bill Feaver has compounded matters by being a most assiduous researcher, following up the most obscure and tangential figures in the story, which makes it a very big book, but fantastically interesting, and thoroughly gossipy. It is also genuinely funny, as the extraordinary life of Lucian Freud takes shape.

I was asked whether I thought it entirely appropriate for a priest to be discussing such a reprehensible life (in church) and I pondered that one. I think it's fair to respond that I certainly wasn't endorsing Freud's lifestyle, but neither was Bill, but that it's not necessary to be judgemental. Freud's behaviour was contrary to almost anyone's standards of morality, let alone Christian ones, and you can just let it stand for itself, and leave the observer to make their own judgements. Reading the biography, one is constantly struck by the remarkable lack of ill-will shown by most of the women whom Freud had wronged, and actually a sense of the artist's vulnerability. When we saw the show of his self-portraits at the RA recently that is not something that was evident at all; rather we felt the overbearing presence of the domineering artist, but one is just reminded that art and life are not the same. Of course, it's the Wagner question, whether the behaviour (or views) of the artist devalues the art, and Bill and I discussed that a little last night, but there's more that can be said, of course.

It was an excellent evening, at least I enjoyed myself in the role of interlocutor, which was initially very daunting, but then great fun. So all those evenings watching Graham Norton haven't been wasted! It was certainly more Graham Norton than Andrew Neill, which I hope is what people had come for. Stupidly I didn't suggest to Bill that he should bring a crate of books, because he'd certainly have sold some.     

My only regret was that we didn't spend long enough on the odd, criminal world of Delamere Terrace and Clarendon Crescent in the 1940s and 50s, which comes out very strongly from the book. Kenneth Clark commented, "Strange lives" in reference to the people among whom Lucian Freud was living, and while they must have seemed strange to someone as cultivated (and buttoned-up) as Clark then, they sound like lives from another planet to us today. There's more to learn.

GONE ON PILGRIMAGE

I confess to a certain perverse pride when I was able to put "I am on pilgrimage" on my out-of-office reply. It certainly made an impression on some of my secular colleagues.

Of course, it was only what they call a "clergy familiarisation tour" where the pilgrimage operator (in this case McCabes) take clerics at a reduced rate in the hope that they will then lead their own pilgrimage, inspired by the experience. In fact, I would love to do so, but don't see much prospect of getting up a party from this neighbourhood. We are a small church community, and I don't think we'd ever get the numbers required. People might be interested, but £2000 is beyond most of my folk here. McCabes encourage you to announce it long in advance, so that people can save up for it, and pay in instalments, but that argues a degree of organisation which is not often found on the Harrow Road. Because we were being familiarised, the itinerary was one that took in all the big sites, and quite a few others, crammed into eight days, whereas I can see that you might want to tailor your own tour, and probably go for ten days rather than eight to have a bit more space to think and pray.

When we arrived in Jerusalem it was colder than London, grey and rainy. I remarked that since the city was grey and rainy and had trams it reminded me of Manchester. Early January was probably a good time to go from the point of view of crowds, but it did mean that you had to take lots of clothes. I travelled with a much heavier bag than usual, but the only thing I bought to bring back was a kilo of Palestinian dates.

We stayed in East Jerusalem, in a Christian-owned hotel, overlooking the walls of the Old City, which was an excellent position. From the hotel roof you could see the "Garden Tomb", and in fact the hotel was said to be the place that General Gordon was staying when he got the idea that the quarry wall behind the "Garden Tomb" looked like a skull. Our guide to the Garden Tomb, a jovial Ulsterman, told us that you would be able  to appreciate it better if the bus station were removed from in front of it, as that has raised the level somewhat. I thought the Garden Tomb interesting, but didn't feel anything.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the other hand, I felt much more moving than I expected. To be in there at dawn (on the Sunday) was a very special privilege. I didn't particularly notice the notoriously bad relations between the denominations, though the Copts were a bit brusque in defending their space. It was hugely moving to be at Golgotha, and see the rock, and to enter the sepulchre.

The biggest impression, though, was of the huge contrast between Galilee and Judaea. Why was that nice, gentle, fertile land ruled by that city in those harsh hills? The sense that God was somehow present in Jerusalem, that God had somehow marked the place out, was increased by the incongruity of the fit between the two parts. Of course Galilee enables you to see views that appear unchanged since the time of Jesus, and it is calm and lovely in a way that is never true of Jerusalem, but I won't say I liked it more, because I love those buildings with their layers of history and accumulated faith.

Of the contemporary state of the Land of the Holy One, not much to say. We drove up to the Separation Wall in Bethlehem, which separates Rachel's Tomb from the town, and saw all the Banksy-type paintings and graffiti on it. You could not help feel the crudeness and the brutality of it. We visited a rehabilitation centre in Bethlehem which has had to equip itself as a full-scale hospital, because their local hospital was in Jerusalem, and now Palestinians cannot easily go there (certainly not in an emergency). The settlements creeping over the hills are hideous, and an affront to international law, but you can understand the state of Israel's desire to survive. Someone said to  me afterwards, "So what is the solution, then?" to which I pointed out that better minds than mine have been working on this for years, but I can't feel optimistic, not while so many Palestinians seem determined to nurse a sense of grievance, and while Israelis insist that they are a special case.