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!"   

VICTORY!

Not Being Choaked

The big news is the success of the Royal Oak campaign. I was preparing a letter to Sadiq Khan when we heard that he had decreed that TfL would not locate the coach station here. It quite took the wind out of our sails, as we had been gearing up for a long and bitter struggle. Both Tory and Labour councillors, and the local MP, Karen Buck, were all part of the campaign, not to mention impressive Bayswater ladies, and we knew the proposal was ridiculous, but still it was a very pleasant surprise to succeed, and so quickly. Sadly I missed the victory drinks.


In the Home Straight

The windows are beginning to go into our new building, so it is starting to actually look like a building. This is positive, but less positive is the news that the lift doors were manufactured wrongly, and so have to be changed. The length of time that it takes to install a lift is extraordinary, so this may apparently delay us. Virtually all the equipment for the new building is now on site, and swarms of people are working very hard putting it in. The faience looks splendid, and is currently being grouted (or masticked, to be accurate). We are due to interview potential cafe operators next week, so everything is coming together and starting to feel real. There's still a significant repair to be done in church, but we're on track to be able to celebrate soon!


No Home

A story that I don't feel like celebrating has been playing out recently. There was a person who had been homeless, but was living in a flat near St Peter's, and came to our Lunch Club and Breakfast Club. Gradually, over many months, they started coming to church as well, and it seemed that they had sorted out their life; they were talking to me about faith, and I was happy that they found the church supportive. Then we saw them less frequently, and then suddenly, a few weeks ago, they appeared sleeping on a pavement, under some scaffolding. When we tried to engage we were told they couldn't talk, which was certainly partly shame, and so there was not much we could do. Fortunately the place they were sleeping was very public, and attracted a lot of attention, so they have now got some support. Disappointing. We ask ourselves how we failed them. In truth we were wrong to have been congratulating ourselves, because the situation was always more precarious than it appeared, and there was a very complicated back story.


Dog's Home

Meanwhile Angry Woman with Dog has loomed large again. Her housing provider sent her notice of eviction proceedings last August, and so I hurriedly helped her get a solicitor. Proceedings have still not started, but the housing association won't say that they are not going to.  Seven months it has been hanging over her. It is clearly being used as a threat, a device to try to get her to behave better. This seems to me to be cruel, and is deeply unreasonable for the solicitor, who won't get paid by Legal Aid if there are no actual proceedings. The trouble is that the main complaint against her is that she has a noisy dog, which is true. I have bought harnesses to try to make the dog  more controllable, and devices to try to stop it barking, even some sort of tranquilisers for it (for which I am confident there is no resale market, unlike horse tranquilisers). It's really not a suitable dog for her (too big for the flat, too strong for her) but she won't hear of getting rid of it, as although she shouts and curses at it, she really loves it. In a chaotic and dysfunctional life a companion animal is a lot more reliable than the humans around.  


Colour Wash

Last Saturday we went to the Bonnard show at Tate Modern, which caused us to discuss how modern is "modern", because Bonnard was a post-Impressionist who did his most characteristic work around the First World War and died in 1947. Of course it's the old Tate Gallery thing, that the Tate in the old days was the repository for British art, and international twentieth-century art, as the National Gallery basically turned its back on anything from after 1900. The other (more popular) show on at the moment is of the Surrealist Dorothea Tanning, and I guess she would seem more "modern", despite being practically Bonnard's contemporary, because Surrealism is recognisably "modern" because of its debt to Freudian ideas. Bonnard remained working in a way that didn't move on very far from Pissarro or Cezanne and so feels much more part of the great tradition. Still, he really wasn't very good. I am struck by the reverential hush that prevails in art galleries, and I fear I broke the hush with some critical comments. At one point I was giving my view when a young American woman next to me asked me a question, fortunately one which I was able to answer (I wasn't just talking out of my backside on this occasion). I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, but I think dialogue and discussion are an appropriate part of the gallery experience, and so I don't think one should be ashamed of having an opinion.

My opinion is that Bonnard is a second-rank artist who painted a handful of very nice pictures and an awful lot of dull ones, and a number of real shockers. The Tate curators wanted to emphasise his use of colour,and that's why I went, but even that's not really very special; he's a great one for yellow and purple, but a lot of it just feels straight from the tube with no thought. My point which caught the attention of the American was that in his garden pictures he is too fond of viridian, a striking pigment which is not the colour of any plant in nature, but which he uses raw. He uses colour as a substitute for drawing, and the few drawings in the show reveal his draughtsmanship to have been strikingly weak. It's notable that his most convincing human figures have their faces obscured, because he really is very bad at faces, but sometimes his anatomy is rubbish as well. The curious thing about the show was that it was chronological, but only started in the artist's forties, when he had settled on his final style, and so there is no artistic development at all, though there are some very weak pictures from his last years which speak of declining powers. The trouble was that he thought he was Monet, and he wasn't.

I hadn't realised that he lived very near Monet in Normandy. Bonnard's house at Vernonnet (one of three homes, he was not a starving artist) is only a few miles from Monet's at Giverny; you'd get off the train at Vernon for both. Ian and I came very close to them on the cycle ride last summer, and perhaps I might do that one day in the future, but I'm not sure that Bonnard would detain me for long.  

PARKS AND RECREATION

Falling Leaves

The cycle path across the Green, alongside the canal, runs past our contractors' compound, and they have regularly sent blokes out to clean the path up, hosing down any mud that delivery lorries have brought onto it, and sweeping up rubbish and leaves. There are, of course, lots of leaves, as there is a row of black poplars between the compound and the path, so, back in the autumn, our people were quite busy sweeping them up. The remainder of the path, however, beyond our compound, is a very different matter. Westminster Parks finally cleared the fallen leaves from the path this week; at the end of February. They had spent a couple of days working on it earlier in the month, but one section was left untouched until this week. Now, I imagine that they justify this by saying that it would need repeated visits if they were to try to clear the leaves when they were actually falling, but they made repeated visits anyway! I am perfectly sure that leaves which have piled up and then been rained on, partially rotting them down, are actually more effort to clear because they are much heavier. More to the point, as a cyclist, I am fed up with (in places) half the width of the path being covered by a mound of slippery dead leaves. Still, I must be grateful that it has finally been done; it's boring just to moan about the stupidity of the Parks Department.


Blurred Lines

It's quite boring to moan about the stupidity of people's parking round here as well, but forgive me, I feel the need. Some time ago I was one of several people who agitated for double yellow lines to extend over the Harrow Road canal bridge on the east side of the road (they already existed on the west) because cars parked there completely blocked the view of anyone coming out from the Green, either to cross the road on foot or to pull out on a bike (which I do every day). That was done, which is a great help, but the problem is that people just ignore them, particularly at night. There seems to be a general view that single yellow lines are just advisory, and don't apply after lunchtime on the Harrow Road, and that as long as you are not parking overnight then it's fine to park on a double yellow line as well. It may simply be the calculation that Westminster never sends "civil enforcement officers" out after dark, and so you are perfectly safe from a fine. It may be that civil enforcement officers are seen so rarely in our area that people gamble on their absence anyway, or it may be that people have observed that when they are here they are only really interested in cars parked wrongly in marked bays, and pay little attention to yellow lines or dangerously parked vehicles.

I sometimes feel as I zigzag around illegally-parked cars that vigilantism is justified in these circumstances; if I possessed a paintball gun I would be very happy to splat the windscreens of miscreants. It's an ignoble impulse, I know, but it would be so satisfying. Self-righteousness is a very unattractive emotion, isn't it!


Royal Choak

The campaign against the ludicrous TfL plan to put a coach station at Royal Oak gathers pace. There is a public meeting at the Porchester Hall on Shrove Tuesday at 7pm, which I am encouraging people to go to.The campaigners have set up a website, www.stoproyalchoak.com which has links to the two petitions against the plan, which are still collecting signatures. They want to submit the petitions on 14th March, so we are urging people to sign up quickly. One odd feature of this is that no-one actually knows when TfL will be making a decision about this; everything is shrouded in mystery. The campaigners are rightly concentrating on the pollution issue, (hence "Choak") because the plan promises to bring hundreds of extra coaches daily onto the Marylebone Road, which already has the worst air quality of anywhere in the UK.  The number of schools within a few yards of the road is ridiculous, and they stand to find their air quality becoming even more dangerous. On the Warwick Estate we shall be right in the firing line; how will people feel using our excellent outdoor gym equipment when the air is full of diesel fumes?

The thing that nice, polite people are not saying publicly is that  they really fear the social fallout of a coach station, because we all know that one of the factors in Victoria being a centre for rough sleeping is the presence of the coach station. It is on the coach that the penniless newcomer arrives in London (when not actually trafficked). Over the decades Victoria has developed an infrastructure to deal with this, which we simply do not have in Westbourne or Bayswater. We already have rough sleepers of our own who we struggle to support, without adding in a whole lot of newcomers. The Leader of the Council is eloquent in questioning Westminster's responsibility for all the homeless people who actively choose to come here, and while I may be a bit uncomfortable with that approach, I suspect we would all be agreeing with her if they appeared on our pavements in Westbourne.


Predictive Text

Our new building is faced with panels of glazed terracotta, or faience as it is sometimes called, a characteristically late-Victorian material. I have run into all sorts of confusion recently because if you try to type faience into your phone you will inevitably find it "corrected" to fiance; now I have a fiancee it adds even more potential for bafflement. The good thing is that the specialist facade contractors are making really good progress, and are hanging the faience panels on the Rowington Close front now. The faience is wonderfully highly glazed, and looks really good, even though it's hard to see it properly as it is still obscured by scaffolding. It really glittered on the sunny days we have just enjoyed. There is a relief pattern in the faience, which is going to look splendid, and which picks up a detail of Street's brickwork, which I am very pleased with. There is only one manufacturer in the UK who makes glazed terracotta, so we are delighted to have them making these panels to our specification; they have just made a much larger quantity of white faience for the restoration of the Victoria Palace Theatre, and we were always a bit anxious that our rather small order might get bumped down the schedule by another really big one, so it's a relief to see it all on site, and indeed going up on the walls. Nearly there! 
   

CONTRACTS AND CONTRACTING

The breadth of our building project was demonstrated the other day when I passed the site and observed the vans of "Heritage Blacksmiths Partnership" and "London Concrete Polishing" both parked up. In fact the concrete polishers are there tonight, working through the night, as you clearly have to polish concrete at a particular point in its drying process. The heritage blacksmiths have been superb, rehabilitating all our Victorian doors, and even bringing to life an ancient door-closer that we thought beyond use. The loving care with which the ironwork on our doors has been treated is quite remarkable, and the results are great.

This is the season of spending out budgets, and so Westminster is full of minor works. There are road works all over the West End, while our neighbourhood is full of pavements being relaid. F M Conway, Westminster's preferred contractor, are suddenly very busy indeed. Inexplicably they turned up to repaint the Harrow Road bridge over the Canal, in order to do which they had to set up a little cabin on the entrance to Westbourne Green, and fence off each pavement in turn. Needless to say, pedestrians carried on walking, judging the bridge to be a small enough distance to brave the traffic, which was unwise.They departed this morning, called away to "an emergency at Marble Arch".

While Conways were at work on the bridge a green hire bike was left beside their works, on the road, on a double yellow line. This was the most extreme example I've seen of anti-social behaviour from hire bikes, but I do think we have reached saturation. Not only are there the Boris bikes with their docking stations, but now there are three different brands of free-floating ones, yellow, orange-and-silver, and green. These can just be abandoned wherever you fancy, because they contain a chip which will notify its location, which the user can then find on the app. I fear that we are becoming a sink for these, as they seem to linger a long time, often in tiresome places. I gather that the local young people have discovered that, with the yellow ones at least, a sharp blow to the lock will not only release the bike, but destroy (or dislodge) the chip, and so you can ride off with impunity (apart from the inherent shame of riding a clumpy canary-coloured bicycle).

Last night I went to the extraordinary Playground Theatre in Latimer Road, to see Steven Berkoff in "Harvey" (Weinstein, not the rabbit). This theatre has been going a year, in an old bus depot towards the North Pole end of Latimer Road, a very odd location indeed; I get my car serviced a few doors down. The theatre has a very smart cafe-bar, and does seem to attract a more prosperous clientele than you might imagine. Unsubsidised, they put on some very ambitious things; last summer I saw "Shirleymander", the play about Dame Shirley Porter and her shameful stewardship of Westminster Council, which was attended by a number of people who looked as though they might have known Dame Shirley, and many who clearly remembered her. Last night's show attracted a rather glamorous crowd, with a very tall, androgynous, white-haired young man in leather trousers, high heels and dark glasses only the most extreme. A "famous paparazzo" was also pointed out to me. 

The director of the theatre was at pains to tell us that this was a "workshop production" of a "work in progress", and they gave us all free drinks at the end (a free gin does help one's critical faculties) but I'm afraid it wasn't a total success. Steven Berkoff is a remarkable performer, but this was a very disappointing evening. He has great physical presence, but for all but thirty seconds of the play he was simply slumped in a chair. Only for a moment did you see those extraordinarily scary pale blue eyes glitter. Steven Berkoff has written and directed this show, as well as being the only performer, and I fear that there is no-one to tell him that it's a turkey. We were all expecting to be shocked, I think, but his take on Weinstein was really rather one-dimensional, and while the vocabulary was explicit there was no provocative insight on the issues involved. It was a performance, rather than a play, a monologue from Berkoff with a few recorded extracts from victims' witness depositions. It had no structure, no variety of tone, no dramatic development, and offered nothing very memorable. Still, I've now seen Steven Berkoff in the flesh, and I commend the Playground Theatre for having the nerve to put this on.

The Burne-Jones show at Tate Britain, on the other hand, was more successful than I expected. Yes, there were a lot of those rather drippy women he painted so many of, and some really bad pictures, but there were also some good ones. I found it interesting to see so many together and spot some themes. His treatment of architecture, for instance, is always really poor. He's most comfortable with some sort of shed, like in Botticelli's "Mystic Nativity", but once he has to construct anything more it falls into fantasy. Look closely at "The Golden Stairs" for instance; not only does the staircase defy all laws of construction, but the middle section is so steep and precipitous that it is impossible to imagine all those girls getting down safely. He quite likes girls, and there's a charming portrait of the daughter of George Lewis, Oscar Wilde's solicitor, but he really doesn't like women, he's afraid of them and regards them as sinister. He also follows Michelangelo and basically gives women male bodies (but then some of his men are pretty androgynous too). All this seems quite interesting. And "The Briar Rose" is exquisite, even if it is better in situ at Buscot. Really remarkable are the sequence of Perseus pictures he did for A J Balfour's house, most strikingly the one of the Graeae (look them up). There is a well-worked up painting of this, and then there is the same scene worked as a low relief in wood, gilded and silvered, with a massive gilt Latin inscription above it. This is a piece of decorative art of the very highest quality, and a real innovation. Rather surprisingly it is from the National Museum of Wales, which seems to have several decent works of his. 

I announced on Sunday that I am engaged to be married, which caused a good deal of surprise and confusion, and a lot of genuine joy, which was very pleasing. People are very kind.

WORDS AND MUSIC

We finally launched Helen's book last week, many months after it was actually published. We had hoped to have all three editors present, but since Ed Vickers now works in a Japanese university this was always going to be a challenge, and it was one that we failed. Attempting to accommodate Ed, and Sadaf Rizvi, a colleague of Helen's who now works for the Open University and lives away from London, contributed to our delays, and in the end neither of them were there. Germ Janmaat, Helen's supervisor (the other editor) had arranged a room in the Institute of Education, and had arranged for their research group to provide wine and nibbles. No sumptuous publishers' party for an academic volume like this, "Faith Schools, Tolerance and Diversity", but a few bottles of cheap plonk in an anonymous teaching room on the eighth floor of the IoE. I got there first and moved the chairs out of the way (it's what clergy do). Germ spoke authoritatively about how important a book it is and then I said a bit about the process of the research and writing. Germ said I would be speaking "in a lighter vein" but I warned him there would be no jokes. I made the point that when Helen sent the thesis to people at the Department for Education they showed no interest at all, despite that being the era of "evidence-based policy". I hope I was suitably grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for actually publishing the book, and I didn't rehearse publicly my astonishment at the fact that they didn't routinely provide an index; I had to pay an Italian lady in the Netherlands £600 for the privilege. I do find it rather extraordinary that academic publishers should think it acceptable to publish a book without an index.

I had invited various luminaries of the Anglican education world, most of whom at least sent apologies, but none actually came. I should say, in fairness, that the Rector of Bournemouth (who is a former diocesan director of education, and included in my category of luminaries) tried to get there but couldn't find the room. He was in the building at the right time, but no-one he asked knew anything about it, and unless you got up to the eighth floor corridor there weren't any notices. He didn't have my mobile number, but sent an email, which reached me, but since I had (like a good, well-socialized human being) turned my phone to silent for the duration, I didn't actually read it until much too late. I dread that sort of thing happening to me and so usually carry the invitation with me, or a piece of paper with transcribed details: I once failed to do that and had the shame of taking the Superior of the Delhi Brotherhood to entirely the wrong place for a reception and then having no means of finding out the correct address without coming home, by which time, of course, the moment had passed.


Isn't London wonderful? I take it for granted too often, but after the book launch  I walked my brother-in-law down to Waterloo Station for his train back to Exeter, and was able to go to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I hadn't booked, because I didn't know when we would be finished, but I had checked online and seen that there were plenty of seats left, so I just turned up at the box office with confidence, and was able to have a choice of cheap seats. The London Philharmonic, under Sir Roger Norrington, were doing Handel's Water Music and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and it was a splendid evening. Helen and I sang in Dido and Aeneas with the Plymouth Polyphonic Choir some twenty-five years ago, and so it seemed very appropriate. The LPO's was semi-staged, as ours had been, though the Festival Hall is a lot grander than Plymouth Guildhall, though actually I think we "acted" a bit more than they did, and we even had the odd bit of costume (I remember creating a helmet with wings for "Mercury"). I rather expected to be in floods of tears, but I wasn't. Partly this was because the LPO had a man singing the role of the Sorceress, which Helen sang back then, which is common practice, but frankly a bit odd, and partly it was because I didn't much care for the woman singing Dido, who was (I think) French, and didn't have the clarity of diction you want in Purcell. The result was that "Remember Me" was not the tear-jerker that it should be, but a bit florid and comfortable.

I was shocked by how much of the words I still have by heart; why can't I remember things like that nowadays? I was only in the chorus, and our high point was marching around as we sang, "Come away, fellow sailors, come away". I remember us slapping our thighs as we did so, but I think that was only in rehearsal, because I for one certainly couldn't have slapped in time successfully, and that would just have looked comical (as well as camp). Our Dido was a teenage girl called Alison Chryssides, whose mother was the director of the choir, and she was superb. I got her to sing Mozart for me at an anniversary Mass I celebrated in Reading a few years later, but she has not become a professional singer, but a social psychologist. This is not so surprising, as her father was a fairly eminent sociologist, but I hope she still sings.     

ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

Alarms

Last Friday evening the Vicarage phone rang at quarter past seven. My heart sank; mid evening calls are usually from people with a problem at St Peter's, requiring me to go up there and sort it out. This, however, was from Jacqui, our Lunch Club mastermind, so I felt immediately relieved. The relief, though, was short-lived, as Jacqui reported that she was preparing for Lunch Club at St Peter's and the fire alarm was going off. She said that she had checked, and could find no fire, and asked whether I knew how to turn it off. In twelve years the alarm has never gone off, or, to my knowledge, been serviced, so I had no idea. I said I thought it would stop by itself, as surely they are required to do (after twenty minutes, I think) but she then told me that it had been sounding for an hour and a half.

So, I got my bike out and went up to St Peter's, expecting to be assailed by lots of angry residents from the old people's flats next door, who were surely being disturbed. When I arrived I could hear nothing, so I was confused, but when I went down to the church and hall it became audible. In the lobby the bell was audible, but not intolerable, and the same was clearly true of the hall, where Jacqui's volunteers were peeling potatoes. It was only when I went out into the outer foyer that the noise became intolerably loud, and it became clear that it was barely noticeable outside the building. I fetched a stepladder, and with the aid of pliers, screwdriver and blu-tac, silenced the bell.

I then started wondering how useful this system actually is. The bell is meant to be activated by smashing a glass panel (there are no smoke or heat alarms). There are three panels: one immediately under the bell, in the foyer; a second in the church, beside the organ (on the back of the same wall as the first one); the third in the hall, at the far side, beside the fire escape. It is impossible to imagine a situation in which someone walking around shouting, "Fire! Fire!" would not be just as effective as trying to activate this alarm. It's a fairly small space, and a few steps enable you to see it all, and certainly shouting would be effective. There are also plenty of ways out. I had always assumed that our system was a branch of the system in the flats above us, but evidently not, as they did not have an alarm on Friday evening. So, if it had been a fire, the flats above the church, who did need to know, wouldn't have been alerted anyway. We have lots of extinguishers (which are serviced regularly) and plenty of fire exits; I think we have just demonstrated that the alarm adds nothing to our well-being. A conversation with our inspecting architect is required.


Coach Trip

The big story of last week was the public meeting over the TfL proposal to site a coach station at Royal Oak. The Bayswater councillors organised a meeting, expecting a couple of dozen to turn up, but over a hundred people did. Emily Payne (a fellow governor) chaired it, and the excellent Graham King, from the City Council, explained the proposal. It appears that the lease on Victoria Coach Station will come up in a few years, and the Grosvenor Estate wants it back, so as to build more lucrative housing. TfL unimaginatively wants to provide a new coach station and would prefer to do so on land it already owns, hence its interest in the area north of Royal Oak station platform. This slice of land (in St Mary Magdalene's parish) used to contain the sidings leading to Paddington Goods Station, which were removed prior to the digging of Crossrail underneath it. It is at the level of the rail tracks, and so perhaps thirty feet below the level of Lord Hill's Bridge to the west, Ranelagh Bridge to the east, and the Harrow Road (itself beneath the Westway) to the north. Just describing those levels makes it clear how unsuitable this would be. Apparently, Ranelagh Bridge would be removed to make this possible, and so we would lose our access to the A40. Of course it would also be necessary to close Royal Oak station at least while the work was done, and quite possibly permanently, which would hardly be to our benefit. In order to fund the scheme, TfL would build shops, offices and housing in a block over the top of the coach station. What a lovely place to live, alongside the Westway, with the Great Western mainline on the other side.

Of course, this is only one of a number of sites TfL are considering. It is manifestly foolish, even without considering issues of traffic, pollution, infrastructure and so on (which are damning), but my point is that this is a futile exercise. In civilized cities (and actually lots of pretty uncivilized ones too) coach stations are on the edge of the urban sprawl, at suitable transport nodes, where passengers can transfer to rapid urban transport while the coaches go swiftly on their way without having to battle through urban traffic. Lots of British cities do this already, (though admittedly some without necessarily providing the public transport connections) and it has to make sense. No-one would build Victoria Coach Station where it is today, and it is only because it is there already that there is any feeling that it should be replaced by something equally central; if we were starting from scratch we would build it on the periphery, since London has excellent public transport.

There are petitions against the proposal from both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, and Nicky Hessenberg, who has been helping with our fundraising for the Project, is co-ordinating opposition, so I think TfL have a fight on their hands.        


Global Food

Another thing that brought the local community together last week was the Westbourne Global Food Festival, organised by the Westbourne Forum, and held in the Stowe Centre on Saturday afternoon. We had arranged for an array of local restaurants to bring samples of their food, which when combined made a decent plate, which locals could have for free. Then several groups provided entertainment. We ended up having to turn people away, as the hall was just too full. A very good use of the councillors' ward budget. Fish and chips was available alongside Greek, middle eastern, Asian and African food, and the entertainment included African, Bollywood and Albanian dancing, as well as zumba (done by people I can only describe as Londoners). All wonderfully various, and very good humoured.

A CHRISTMAS REVIEW

Sorry that December passed without a single blog post, but the month became (enjoyably) busy. It's part of the clerical profession that we become a bit singleminded in December (which I appreciate doesn't always make us easy to live with) and so it was this year. I also found distraction in my free time. So here's a review of what went on over the last month.


A Fairer Christmas

December began with the Christmas Fair at St Peter's, which blessedly raised £900 despite poor attendance. Most of the profit comes from selling raffle tickets to people outside the parish, usually people's work colleagues; some lawyers and call-centre operatives must dread this time of year! The Fair was much improved this year by a portion of the St Peter's School Choir coming to sing carols on the pavement outside, which boosted the atmosphere and gave an infusion of new customers. It was really good to feel some positive collaboration from the school.

Santa Claus comes and visits St Peter's, holding court in a grotto laboriously constructed in the Meeting Room, to which his "little helper" escorts the children. This year Santa had a new suit, which turned out to be much thicker than the old one, and since the temperature was 15 degrees outside, Santa got very hot. When he removed his big, black belt the inside of it was beaded with sweat! I had gone to buy the new suit in the summer, thinking myself very shrewd, only to be told that they didn't get their stock in until after Hallowe'en, which basically gave a panicky three week window to carry out this errand. Still, Santa appreciated it, and it did its job, as he went unrecognised by a ten year old, not to mention a seven year old at whose house Santa often dines. Santa's confidence was so improved by this new suit that he's contemplating making a festive arrival with bells next time, instead of just sneaking round the back. In the old suit, Santa basically had to remain seated for fear that his trousers would fall down and his jacket flap open (to say nothing of his beard coming adrift, secured as it was with blu-tac). 


A Feast of Carols

The Carol Service was a resounding success, largely thanks to the Corisande Singers, who joined us for the fifth time. We weren't able to have them in 2017, because we had to have the service at St Peter's, where there is no room for a choir, but this year we were back in St Mary Magdalene's, and so they were back with us. The arrangements were a bit provisional, but we learnt for the future. Because our new boiler will be in the plant room in the new extension we are having to use temporary heating, with electric overhead radiant heaters. These are a bit disconcerting; one of the readers at the service remarked afterwards that she had been lovely and warm sitting under the heater, but when she stood at the lectern to read, she could suddenly see her own breath. They don't heat the atmosphere, but solid things in range of them. People ask how early they should put them on and I have to explain that all that achieves is warming up the seats, possibly to an uncomfortable degree, so it's really not worth it. The fringe benefit of the radiant heaters is that they emit a pleasing amber glow, which turned out to be very useful as we didn't have an appropriate setting for the lights. I had spent some time discussing settings, and then going through programming with the engineer, a couple of months ago, but I seem to have omitted to plan one which works for a "candlelit" service. It was either too bright or too dark, until the heaters rescued the dark setting. I need to get the engineer back to sort that out.

Among the readers we had the heads of both primary schools, the chairman of the Music Society, the organiser of the Lunch Club, and a St Peter's young person, so there was a reasonable cross-section of who we are. The choir also sang a composition by a member of the congregation, Marcus (who is actually a professional violinist) which was lovely. In fact they sang it two years ago as well, but I'm not sure Marcus has actually been present to hear it on either occasion. It was very pleasing that several people who have got involved in the Project over the past couple of years, through volunteering or fundraising, were in the congregation, and joined us for mince pies and mulled wine afterwards.Everyone was very excited by how the church looks now. 


Christingle at Fifty

"So what is a Christingle?" they say. Well, huge numbers of people who have attended (or worked in) a C of E primary school in the last forty years or so will know the answer, because the Christingle Service  (first introduced to the UK by the Church of England Children's Society in 1968) has become a part of Christmas tradition in many schools. The combination of oranges, candles and sweeties is a powerful one. It's also found its way into parish life, particularly where there are lots of children. Long ago, in Plymstock, I was introduced to the idea of doing it at 5pm on Christmas Eve, as a time that was socially useful (one parent would wrap presents while the other took children to church for a while). It was the youth group leaders who had that insight, and quite right they were. I did it that way until 2017, when Christmas Eve was Sunday and I didn't think it was fair to ask the organist to do 9.30 and 11am, then come back for 5pm, as well as 11pm. I also didn't think many people would turn up, so I brought it forward to the Friday before Christmas, and numbers were halved. I was told people had already gone away. This year I brought it forward to the Thursday, when most schools hadn't yet broken up; same numbers as last year. Next time we shall go back to Christmas Eve.  I hope we shall have a better collection to send to the Children's Society.


A Midnight Clear

The congregation at Midnight Mass was well-behaved; that's the first thing for which to give thanks. In Exeter, when I was a curate, we were next door to the Prince Albert and across the road from the Sawyers' Arms, and it helped to have a large sidesman standing just inside the door to keep order and effect removals. St Mary Magdalene's no longer has an adjacent boozer, so we don't have that problem, and the drunks in the regular congregation have known how to behave. It's best if the regulars have their wits about them, as we all have loads of strangers at Midnight, who of course don't know when to stand or sit (despite it being perfectly clear on the sheet) or when to respond, which can be a bit disconcerting. You never really know how many people will come on Christmas Eve, but it was a good turnout, in response to minimal publicity.

I have gained myself more tellings-off for music choices at Midnight than any other occasion, and it is clear that some carols are regarded by some members of the congregation as permanently fixed in particular spots in the Mass. So this year I was unadventurous. I ensured that we did sing some of those that make me cry, but not merely all my favourites. We even sang "While Shepherds" to "Winchester New", which is generally agreed to be the dullest  carol known to mankind (I was nearly assaulted after setting it to "Lyngham" once) and I smiled cheerily.

We now have the altar at the top of the chancel steps, and it is tremendous presiding there, as you look out at the painted ceiling of the nave and up at the painted chancel vault and think of all the saints joining you in worship. The restoration has certainly been worthwhile from my point of view! Lots of the visitors have also been impressed, of course.   


Morning Glory

There's always the chance that the morning Mass on Christmas Day will feel like an anti-climax after the excitement of Midnight, and it's often a struggle to get servers to turn out, but we usually get a decent congregation at St Peter's, and we sing some different (but still familiar) carols. As my brother-in-law stays, and actually listens to sermons, I have no chance of  saying the same thing twice, so I usually spend the afternoon of Christmas Eve hoping to gain inspiration for the morning's sermon from the King's College Carol Service. I think we managed all right for ideas this year, but it can be a struggle to say something new (or something familiar in a new way). In fact the service was lovely, and special in its own terms. I was given more presents, including a couple of white teeshirts, which might seem odd, but that family have given me vests in the past, and it's terribly kind of them. At the end you can really say "Hodie Christus natus est!"