WHO IS SYLVIA, WHAT IS SHE?

Who Is Sylvia?

I went to see the ballet "Sylvia" at Covent Garden this week. Helen and I went to see it when they first revived it ten years or so ago, but I had no recollection of it. I should remember it, as the score, by Delibes, has several terrific tunes, some of them quite famous, and I realised as soon as the overture began that I ought to remember this. The ballet was choreographed by Frederick Ashton in 1952, though there are earlier French Romantic and Imperial Russian versions, and it's not generally regarded as one of Ashton's best works; he intended it as a vehicle for Margot Fonteyn, then at her height of stardom. The designs are also gorgeous, by Christopher and Robin Ironside.

"Sylvia" is a beautiful spectacle, but what people regard as unsatisfactory is the mixture of rather far-fetched classical mythology treated in a rather straight-faced fashion, with what is frankly pantomime (dancing goats, anyone?). I was struck by the seriousness with which Ashton treats the mythology, but started to wonder whether a new version ought to be attempted, making reference to contemporary sexual politics, because those questions certainly emerge. Sylvia is a hunting nymph, devoted to the goddess Diana, and is therefore pledged to chastity (Natalia Osipova was magnificent as the virginal huntress in the first act) but she is desired by two men, the shepherd Aminta, and the hunter Orion. Now Aminta's love for her is genuine, inspired by Eros, but Orion only wants to possess her. I have to say that when Aminta first declared his love and laid hands on her, it was clear that he was not understanding her lack of consent, because she was definitely saying "No". So she shoots him. Well, actually she's trying to shoot the statue of Eros, but he gets in the way (told you it was far-fetched). Eros then shoots her, and so she comes to reciprocate Aminta's love.

The really challenging thing, though, is Orion's characterization, because he's a piece of absolutely shameless orientalism, and the second act, set in his island cave (to which he has carried off Sylvia) becomes quite uncomfortable. Orion is depicted as an oriental potentate, complete with luxurious tent and scantily-clad concubines. It's all very mixed-up, as Orion's set-up involves Arabian, Chinese and vaguely Indian elements, compounding a sort of generalized English orientalism that was characteristic of the 1820s (see the Brighton Pavilion) rather than the 1950s. Now it's perfectly true that both Greeks and Romans regarded people from the East as their cultural "other", so it's not unreasonable to depict Orion in this way, putting him in voluminous trousers rather than the shifts and tunics the Greeks wear, and giving him villainous facial hair. His two concubines, in what are pretty much belly-dancer outfits, are a bit harder to take, but the real discomfort came for me in his two slaves, gorgeously dressed in red and yellow chinoiserie who then did a silly "Chinese" dance with tambourines, to a bit of plinky-plonk music. Now I presume Delibes wrote the music to deliberately sound "Chinese" so it's fair enough to make the dance Chinese, and to be fair it's not as grotesque as the Chinese dance in the Nutcracker, which has begun to embarrass the Royal Ballet, who changed the choreography last year, but the reason it feels uncomfortable is because it's racist! No-one would continue to use an "African" dance that depicted cannibals and blacking-up, but we appear to be less sensitive to grotesque caricatures of East Asians. It's meant to be funny (though I don't think I found this sort of thing funny even when seeing the Nutcracker as a child) but the amusement value comes from the humiliating depiction of a racial group according to a comic stereotype, so how is that okay? 

I don't want to seem po-faced about this, but this is beginning to feel like something that needs to change. One of the distinctive things about ballet is its ability to adapt, and there is enormous variety in the productions of even the most famous pieces, with whole dances being added and subtracted, so there's not really a "canonical" version of the great works in the repertoire. All of which should make it not too difficult. I really like some of the "authentic" versions of Imperial Russian ballets which try to re-create the spectacle of the 1890s (and no-one loved orientalism more than them) but that's a piece of cultural history, not a work of art for today. Sometimes "oriental" sounds appear in music just to suggest something exotic, and personally I think that's fine, because the "exotic" is a positive category, though I know some people would disagree, but what's really not on is the use of a national stereotype for comic or demeaning effect. Sorry, pretend Chinamen dancing sideways with hands at ninety degrees to their wrists are embarrassing at best, and frankly no longer entertaining in polite company.

ON MY BIKE

Hi-Vis

Last week several people told me that the government were going to compel cyclists to wear helmets and high-vis clothing. On investigation I find that this is fake news, which is just as well. Apparently, such a proposal is being investigated by government, but the evidence from Australia is compelling, where bicycle use has dropped dramatically since the imposition of compulsory helmet-wearing. Since bicycle use has enormous health benefits (as well as being good for traffic congestion and the environment) no rational policymaker wants bicycle use to decline.  There is also a philosophical point here about victim-blaming; if you compel cyclists to wear protective clothing, you are saying that cyclists are the problem, and the authors of their own misfortune. Sorry, not so. But I do realise that it is a lot cheaper and less politically difficult to make rules for cyclists rather than to actually enforce the existing traffic laws where they are routinely flouted by lorry and car drivers, or to enforce safe design principles on the bus and truck building industry, or to design safer road layouts. In fact, I think we all (cyclists included) need major re-education in conducting ourselves in a civilised manner.

Goslings and Cygnets

I probably mentioned before that a pair of swans on the canal have managed to keep seven cygnets alive, which is remarkable. When resting on my bike rides I regularly see a pair of Egyptian geese on the pond in Regent’s Park, and they have five goslings, not terribly old, which is very encouraging. I hope they are old enough to survive the winter cold. Sadly, the pair of Egyptian geese who live here on the canal show no sign of procreation. Charmingly, they were walking back and forth from the water to the grass, one following the other, each time I cycled past today, and they made little chuntering noises as you passed, as though concerned about your behaviour.

An Assault

I was punched while out riding recently. It happened as I was accelerating away from the pedestrian crossing at Clarence Gate, at the bottom of Regent’s Park; there was a group of people on the pavement, and as I passed them I received a blow on my upper arm, not hard enough to knock me over, or even to hurt, but just a total surprise. I didn’t stop, as my momentum had taken me a long way past before I properly registered what had happened, and what would I do? Get off my bike and wheel it along the pavement to ask, “Which of you hit me?” assuming they were still there? No, I just cycled on, wondering why, because this was completely out of the blue; I hadn’t done anything to upset anyone, nor had any cyclist in front of me. I came to the conclusion that it was because of the jersey I was wearing. Regular readers will be aware of my enthusiasm for brightly-coloured jerseys that have some significance; well, on this occasion I was wearing a recently acquired Team Euzkadi jersey, which is a brilliant lime green, bearing the word Euzkadi in black lettering, and with the left sleeve coloured in the design of the Ikurrina, the Basque flag. It had not occurred to me that wearing a Basque team jersey would be regarded as provocative in London, but I can only conclude that this was what was going on. The assault happened in the wake of the Catalan “independence” controversy, and I suspect I met a Spanish nationalist who was so enraged by the Catalans that he regarded my Basque jersey as just another threat to the integrity of his homeland. I should not, perhaps, add that I think the Basque claim to autonomy is much stronger than the Catalans’, but that the Spanish government are absolutely right in their interpretation of the constitution though they have been astonishingly clumsy in the way they have gone about addressing the matter.

Closed Estate Offices

You will remember that I voiced some apprehension about City West Homes’ (Westminster’s equivalent of the Kensington TMO) closure of their estate offices. They told us the few personal callers they actually received could be dealt with more efficiently on the phone to a call centre, and that this would free up housing officers to be present on the estates. Well, I can’t comment on the presence of housing officers out on the estates, but on this estate they were actually available in the office in the past. Meanwhile, tenants who try to phone find that they have to hold for ages (routinely ten minutes) and are then answered by people who have no local knowledge, which makes reporting anything very inefficient and frustrating. Those who turn up in person to the central office, at Westbourne Terrace, are made to feel very unwelcome, while if you try to email you find that you cannot email any named individual, and so pursuing an issue becomes very trying as it will be dealt with by different people on each exchange of emails. The tenants are left with the impression of an organisation seeking to evade responsibility, and to clothe all its actions in anonymity. Trying to keep the tenants at a distance is exactly what Kensington’s TMO used to do. There does seem to be a pattern of behaviour.

Fire Alarms

I don’t mention the Kensington TMO gratuitously, but you would hope that people would learn from the appalling experience of Grenfell Tower. It seems not. Keyham House is a tower block on the Brunel Estate, just over the tracks from us here, (and also in Westbourne Ward) and there the fire alarm is constantly going off. It rang for seven hours recently, and for four hours on another occasion. Residents are stopping up the alarms with paper to dull the sound. Everyone in authority seems completely accepting of this situation. City West have known about it for months. Have they no imagination? Have they not thought what it must feel like to live in a tower block where you know the fire alarm is malfunctioning? How can it be acceptable not to know whether a fire alarm sounding is real or not? This demonstrates a total lack of care, and I suspect that the “arm’s-length” nature of City West just encourages that ethos, because nobody really feels responsible. I am sad to say this, as I know some good people who work for them, but the contempt displayed by City West for their tenants makes me very angry.

PADDINGTON GRAFFITI

Taxing Questions

The big white hoarding round the building site at St Mary Mags attracts occasional graffiti. The other weekend a strange one appeared. The contractors painted over it on Monday morning and never mentioned it to me, but I had seen it for myself. It read. "St Mary Mags W2 why do churchs (sic) pay no tax ever?". That rather left me at a loss, because what tax does the writer mean? Of course churches pay tax, we pay VAT (and unlike a business have no way of passing that on to the public), we pay tax on our insurance premium, churches that employ people pay National Insurance, and so on. I pay income tax, and National Insurance. The church doesn't pay income tax, because a church is not an individual, and what are we supposed to be paying tax on, exactly? It is true that we can apply for relief from VAT on building works to listed places of worship, but we do actually pay the tax, it just gets refunded as some sort of recognition that we are maintaining the nation's architectural heritage. I presume there are some reliefs that operate because we are a charitable institution, and are not generating profits for any individual or corporation. So what's wrong with that? What is it that we might be paying tax on that the writer thinks we aren't?


Strange Objects  

An enormous wooden reel, of the sort that cables are wound around, was left at the entrance to the park, like a giant's cotton-reel. Where it had come from no-one seemed to know. After a while it vanished. Now in the same spot, a pizza delivery scooter has been left, somewhat damaged.


Boogie Nights

So Monday evening was the meeting of the Westbourne Forum Board, Tuesday evening was Paddington Deanery Synod, Wednesday evening was St Peter's PCC, and tonight is St Mary Magdalene's PCC. I thought yesterday evening's PCC went well, all very jovial and consensual, though interrupted by what appeared to be an aggressive beggar at the door, who was seen off by two Nigerian ladies, but it turns out that wasn't a beggar. It was a man from the Felix Project trying to deliver food to us (why didn't he say that?) and so my poor churchwarden, who runs the Support Services (and wasn't at PCC because she was at a Grenfell meeting) had to come back at 10pm to receive the delivery. So I feel like a worm. And then I look at my notes and find several items marked "Action Fr.H", so not such a good meeting after all.


Garden Thoughts

Helen's uncle Reg, who was a professional gardener, came and helped us with the garden around St Peter's many years ago. Among other things, he planted two tamarisks, which are now beginning to threaten the path. I am trying to weave their branches into the railings to make a hedge, but I keep forgetting to bring secateurs and gloves with me on occasions when I have half an hour to do it. Each time I lock up my bike beside them I remember eating a picnic lunch under tamarisks in Jordan last March and get all wistful. That was at Azraq, where Lawrence spent the winter of 1917 in the Roman fort, which is much as he left it. Surely our tamarisks won't grow into big trees, like those? The trouble is that Uncle Reg, like many competent gardeners, made the mistake of assuming competence in those left in charge of the garden, which was a mistaken assumption. Some people round here are flat dwellers who would love to garden, but they usually know nothing; then there are people like me, who have gardens and neglect them, but are expected to know something; and then there are those for whom gardens are something provided by the Council or the Queen. Together we're not great at looking after the garden, and it doesn't really repay us, because it's more a narrow strip of exposed earth, heavily shadowed, in a sort of trench between the building and the pavement. Still, the tamarisks seem to thrive there.  


Paddington Graffiti

Those of a certain age will remember the extraordinary message "Far away is near at hand in images of elsewhere" which was painted on a wall beside the parcels depot on the approach to Paddington Station in the late 1970s, and which remained for many years, until the wall was demolished. For a while, just a fragment remained, but then that went as well. Michael Wharton, who wrote as Peter Simple in the Daily Telegraph created a legend for the artist he called "the Master of Paddington", but I've often wondered who did paint it, and in what circumstances. As I remember it, the words were about a foot high, block capitals, in white paint, and clearly painted with a brush not a spray. I remember once, as a student, sitting on a train with Dr William Oddie as he mused on the contrasting lives of those on either sides of the track as we approached the graffiti, little imagining that thirty-three years later I would be involved in some of those lives.

THE MONTH OF HOLY SOULS

Requiem

So All Souls’ Day came and went without disaster. This year we sang the Requiem by Gounod, and while you’ve probably heard of him (“Faust”, “Ave Maria”) you won’t know his Requiem (actually one of three he wrote, according to Nicholas, who runs the Music Society and knows his stuff). It is a fine piece, and parts are very lovely.

The problem with an elaborate musical setting is that you often find yourself sitting around being sung to at times when the logic of the liturgy is to move forward, rather than being static, so we try to use the settings creatively to produce an experience which has both liturgical and musical integrity. I confess to a particular discomfort with the prevailing high church practice of singing an elaborate Sanctus and Benedictus in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer, while the celebrant stands idly at the altar for several minutes. This fights against the unity of the Eucharistic Prayer, creates a great hiatus in the drama of the liturgy, and is totally alien to the intentions of the composers. The idea was that the celebrant would continue saying the Eucharistic Prayer while the music happened over the top, and so that is what we do. We print everything out, so the congregation know what’s going on, and of course they can see our movements at the altar. The synchronization between liturgical text and music is only approximate (I suppose it ought to work best with the Latin Roman Canon, but I’ve never tried that) but almost always you get a pleasing musical climax at an important moment.

Musicians often tell me that playing this music in its real setting makes sense of it, and I noticed that our soprano soloist made her communion this time. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of prayer for the dead, but it is the most natural thing in the world to continue to pray for those whom you love after they have died, as you prayed for them during their lifetimes. The setting of the Requiem, as Nicholas Kaye has often pointed out in his "programme notes" for the occasion, gets to the heart of a composer's spiritual outlook, and the result is often very profound. The combination of music and liturgy can be very powerful, and it is certainly very moving to be at the altar.

This year was special because we weren’t at St Mary Mags, since it is completely full of scaffolding, and so took over Holy Trinity, Prince Consort Road, thanks to the incredibly hospitable priest and people there. It was also memorable because we were running alongside the premiere of “Murder on the Orient Express” at the Royal Albert Hall, so our arrival at church was greeted with searchlights and rock music. The red carpet approach to the Albert Hall is from Prince Consort Road (up those rather fine steps which you never normally see) and so we were running the gauntlet of security men and black Mercedes. Apparently someone found themselves behind Dame Judi Dench. Blessedly, everyone seemed to arrive on time (including busloads of choirboys) and it all went beautifully. I came back the next day with my car to retrieve our candlesticks, vestments, thurible, gospel book and so on, and all was quiet once more.

Animal Rites

Yesterday, I was called out to tend to the dying, in this case a dying dog in a flat on the estate. I know my rigorist colleagues will sneer at the sentimental liberalism of this episode, but it had to be done. Here was an animal companion (in a household well-known to me, for we have baptized grandchildren) whose passing was causing immense grief to her owner. In that situation prayer was entirely appropriate, and I’m glad they asked me. The elderly Staffie knew she was surrounded by love, and we commended her to the love of God, her creator, which was obviously the right thing to do. The owner was comforted, and that was the point.

A Regular Caller

One of my regular callers is in despair as his wife has been arrested, and remanded in custody. What he says, about an assault, makes little sense and I assume there is more to it. I help him to get to court, miles away (why?) and am impressed by the politeness and helpfulness of the court officer on the other end of the phone; it is still possible to treat people with dignity and respect.

ON THE ROADS

On the Roads of Flanders

One of the striking things about spending a few days in Flanders was seeing how civilized the roads were. This came as a surprise, as my friend Robert, living in France, has completely absorbed the French view of Belgian drivers as aggressive and dangerous, and Robert has passed this insight on to me. In reality, though, apart from a fondness for tailgating (which may be what annoys the French) we found Belgian drivers quite harmless. That said, we did pass a series of major shunts on the motorway north of Ghent one morning, in which tailgating was no doubt a major factor. What struck me, though, was an absence of apparent aggression, both on the open road and, especially, in town. For the Londoner, this came as a revelation. Urban driving was remarkably considerate, and as a visitor you had to adapt to that quite quickly, because co-existence is clearly the basic principle in Belgium. As a cyclist, I was very pleased to see the way that cars took care of bicycles, but it was clear that the cycling and motoring cultures are both different in Belgium from the UK. We looked carefully as we drove and walked around Ghent, and saw hundreds of cyclists, of whom only two were wearing helmets. Those two were also the only ones riding what we in England would now call road bikes (what we called racing bikes when we were children); there were a few hybrids, but the great majority were riding what we call Dutch bikes, the sit-up-and-beg style, relatively heavy-framed and slow, but comfortable and equipped for carrying stuff. I presume that this means that lots of Belgians have a second bike at home, which they just get out at the weekend for long leisure rides (or to go fast) as I suppose I do. Most Brits, though, seem to have just the one bike, which they use for commuting as well as fun, and so they want it to be capable of speed. The difference, though, is not just about the bikes, but about the attitude,  because most cyclists in London are desperate to get from one place to another as fast as they can, and so the serene progress of a Dutch bike would be unacceptable. It wasn't just that the Flemish motorists were better-mannered than you would find in London, so were the cyclists. It strikes me that a bit of serenity would improve the urban environment all round!


Essex Road

I had plenty of opportunity for car-borne contemplation a couple of Fridays ago, when I drove to see my family on the Essex-Suffolk border. I normally take the train, but Network Rail were doing something that meant that the return journey on Saturday would involve an hour on a bus and then being deposited at Newbury Park (for the uninitiated, it's a station on the Central Line in the outer Essex suburbs, famous for having been built with a car park covered by a spectacular roof). I can understand the rationale for this, but that's not what I call getting home. I have a visceral aversion to the train/bus combination, because it always involves a vast amount of waiting in line (as it is bound to, when you consider the relative capacities of train and bus) and the disturbance in mid-journey is just really tiresome. It's my choice, and I regretted it on this occasion. In favourable conditions (as on the return journey on Saturday evening) the journey to my brother's house should take a little over two hours; on that Friday it took me over four hours. I was already over an hour behind schedule before I reached the M25, and that was without any real problems on the Finchley Road; thereafter there was a delay at every opportunity. Now, I suppose I would have been agitated if I had an appointment I had to get to, and I would have got tense if I had had a passenger, but on my own, just going to see my family with no particular agenda for the evening, I was able to regard the delays with more equanimity. I began to feel that this could be an opportunity for cultivating an attitude of serenity rather than anger, so I worked at that. When totally stationary on the M25, and with the engine off, I called my brother to let him know how I was doing. That gave him an idea of my arrival, but then there was an accident on the A12 (a horrid road at the best of times) and by the time I came off the dual carriageway, to make my way through country lanes, it was pitch dark, and so I got lost a couple of miles from my destination, a journey that in daylight (as planned) I would have done with no problem. I confess that my equanimity was shot to pieces by that, since it was my mistake, and I was theoretically in control of putting it right.  So I did not arrive as calm and serene as I had hoped, and they were just about to start eating dinner, so guilt was added to the mixture!


Local Deliveries    

Today is our biggest event of the year, the Solemn Requiem for All Souls' Day, which St Mary Magdalene's has done for the past forty years or so with a full orchestra and choir, performing a French Romantic setting (this year it is Gounod, and no, you won't have heard it). Since St Mary Magdalene's is full of scaffolding, and St Peter's much too small (and to be truthful, lacking in atmosphere) we had to find another venue. I had to find a church in West London that was not having its own All Souls' Day service, (so probably not Anglo-Catholic) but would not have theological objections to one (so probably not Evangelical). The vital feature was an absence of pews, so we could have space for the orchestra, and of course simply a church that was large enough for orchestra, choir and say two hundred worshippers. Everyone also wanted somewhere Victorian and atmospheric, to suit the spirit of what we do. I found one very suitable church, and was confident I could answer the Vicar's theological queries, but gave up when he told me he would have to take it to the church council, because the idea of trying to convince an entire PCC was just too much. Instead I was directed to Holy Trinity, South Kensington, which is in Prince Consort Road, just behind the Albert Hall, and fits the bill splendidly. They are hugely helpful, but last week they told us that they had just learnt that the road would be closed today because there was a film premiere at the Albert Hall this evening; o joy! So instead of spending today driving around delivering things from here to there, I did it yesterday, and am now on tenterhooks in case I forgot something. I became acquainted with how particularly pushy Kensington drivers are, while I cultivated my equanimity. It all took longer than I had assumed, because I am used to doing these journeys by bike, not car. Today I shall wear my best reflective clothing and ride my bike over there. 

HIGH LEVEL WORK

More on the Tower Blocks

There was a pause in the removal of cladding from the tower blocks, and we wondered what was going on. Then it became clear; they had gone as high as they could with a cherry-picker from the ground. I imagined scaffolding would not be the next step (think of how long it would take to build, and the hire charge) and I was right. Instead, in the last few days cradles have appeared, dangling down from the tops of the blocks, and men with harnesses. Abseiling is now an established way of dealing with high buildings, but it is certainly not something I choose to watch. I now notice that they are removing the fixings that held the cladding panels onto the walls, as well as the panels themselves, and the rockwool insulation, so the whole installation is going. It is of course good to reassure the residents, but this looks a bit wasteful. Perhaps they are going to replace it with a whole new system. Anyway, this winter the tower block residents will feel safe, if cold.


Different Hands

Now that the conservators are up close to the painted ceiling, one of them is beginning to think that she can see different hands in the work. The patterns on the panels were presumably stencilled, so there is little scope for variation there, but the busts of saints (and Old Testament figures as we must now say) show distinct variety. Now some of those may be copied from conventional images of the saints, but there seem to be varieties in style, which might suggest that they are not all from the hand of Daniel Bell himself. We have no idea what sort of a studio he operated, but he must have had plenty of assistants on hand to do the stencilling, if nothing else, and since there are seventy-two figures they would have been a lot of work for one person as well. Clearly the figures were completed back at the studio and then brought to St Mary Mags to be stuck on to the flat panels, which I would imagine were stencilled first (though our inspections will show whether that is true).

Meanwhile, at a lower level, there is a bit of a mystery with the Stations of the Cross. These are in roundels, high up on the north and west walls of the nave, carved by Thomas Earp, who was responsible for most of Street's sculptural requirements (and known as "Street's hands").. I have always maintained they were only decorative, and not actually for use, because they are only half a set (of the conventional number, which was well-established by 1865 since Fr Bennett had already used them at Frome) and they are so high up the wall that you really couldn't use them for devotional purposes, because you couldn't read the scenes from the ground. We have photographs from long ago that show a set of enormous painted stations hanging much lower on the walls, which demonstrate that the need was felt for a legible, full set quite early on. I have now had a brief look at the carved Stations, and I have to say that some of them are pretty hard to decipher even close to, being crowded with figures. The one that you could always make out from the ground, however, was the scene of Christ before Pilate, where the seated figure of Pilate is very distinctive. Now, though, having got up close, I have real doubts as to whether this particular sculpture is actually by Thomas Earp. I've been telling everyone how good Earp is (and his carvings at St Peter's, Bournemouth, demonstrate that) but this particular sculpture stands out from the others by differences in style: the figures are much more static, the faces more conventional, the drapery much plainer, and the whole composition is flat and empty (which is why it was easier to read from the floor). I find it hard to believe that this is really Earp's work. Perhaps our volunteer researchers will be able to pursue that question, and indeed how these great Victorian artist-craftsmen organised their studios.          

ROOFS

Up The Scaffold

Last week the scaffolding inside the church finally reached the painted ceiling, and I was able to go up and discover that much of what I have been repeating to visitors for years is simply not true! My explanation (taken from Fr Stephenson's history of the church) was that the roof was divided into twelve compartments, and that each represented a month of the year and had saints depicted, each in the month in which their feast falls. I didn't have to get to the top to discover that this was not true, as on the lower level of figures some were from the Old Testament, so not saints at all! It turns out that Adam and Eve appear at the west end, and then there are a number of Old Testament figures before the saints start. We do seem to be correct that the north side are female figures and the south side male, though there is an Annunciation group about halfway down the north side, which is a bit odd. They don't appear to be in months either. It may be a more complex scheme, or possibly just random! One thing that the conservators have discovered is that the figures are painted onto canvas that has then been stuck onto the boards. I had always said we thought everything was painted directly onto the boards, as the boarding seemed visible once we got decent lighting a few years ago, but no-one was sure. The conservators' other big discovery of the first couple of days is that they are not the first to go up there. Someone has removed varnish from the flat sections of the ceiling, apparently by scrubbing, and this has clearly removed paint as well at times. The whole roof was originally varnished, and the ribs and frames are clearly still covered in dark varnish, which in places seems tacky to the touch, though I wonder whether that might be the result of incense residue rather than just the varnish itself. The varnish was a surprise, though I suppose it shouldn't have been, as the conservators' trials in the chancel vault a few months ago had revealed that not only was there a layer of twentieth century varnish (as I had always said) but that this was on top of nineteenth century varnish that was probably original. At some point in the past they clearly had a go at cleaning the roof.  

We had no idea that there had been a previous restoration of the roof, and it's hard to imagine when that might have been. The point at which gas light was replaced by electricity seems most likely, as you would presumably want to get up to the gas pipes which ran through the tie-bars at roof plate level. We don't know when that was, though, so that's not much help. It might not be so long ago, as the flat sections of ceiling don't seem very dirty. The ribs and frames, on the other hand, are clearly very colourful under the varnish, in fact the flat surface of each rib seems to be gilded, and there are little flowers with gilt centres on the sides of the ribs, so there is plenty to be revealed. The varnish may make it more complicated, though, as that will presumably require the use of solvents, which makes it much more difficult for volunteers to do (and raises health and safety issues), and we had hoped that cleaning the nave ceiling was going to be the big volunteering opportunity. Hey ho.


Street's Inspiration

I had a week away in Belgium, in Flanders to be accurate, and had a great time. I hadn't realised how much I would like Flanders, but that was dense of me: bike racing, art, architecture, beer, chips, chocolate, marzipan, what's not to like? The other thing that I hadn't realised was how far G E Street was inspired by medieval Flemish buildings. I kept on going round saying, "Now I see," to my friends, who must have got a bit bored with it. I came back and fulsomely went on about it to our architect, who just said, "Yes." Clearly this was not news to people who genuinely knew about architecture, but it was an eye-opener for me.

In Flanders you see churches with immensely steeply-pitched slate roofs, like ours, which is very unEnglish (St Amand, Geel, for example) and indeed the churches in general are very lofty, towering over their urban settings. It's easy to forget how St Mary Mags must have towered over the surrounding houses, now that there are tower blocks around, but its principal feature is still its great height. In those steep Flemish roofs they often have little dormers with pointed gables, presumably for ventilation, as we do (Bruges, Geel). You also see polygonal apses, like ours, again very unEnglish. Most striking was to see, in Geel, medieval churches built of brick and stone; in fact St Amand is "streaky bacon" all over, Street's famous decorative effect. I've always mentioned Siena in this context, but it turns out Flanders is a much more obvious precedent, using the very same materials. The final eureka moment was when I saw statues above nave pillars, very like ours, at St Walburga, Oudenaarde. The church of Our Lady in Bruges has a similar arrangement as well, but they're lower down the pillars, and rather less pleasing. It's unquestionably a baroque device, but Street gives them little gothic canopies, and I dare say there may be medieval examples as well. So, although I was away, I was thinking of home, but in an energising way, for a change.