SPRING IS SPRUNG

In the Springtime

It is genuinely warm. Hooray! I was able to cycle in a normal jersey and shorts on Saturday. The urchins (sorry, dear little children) have started their summer game of ringing my doorbell and running away. The overwhelming sickly scent of the laurel blossoms keeps me out of the garden, and, if I open the back windows, invades the house. There was a dapper gent walking along the Harrow Road the other day in a smart pearl-grey suit and a yellow fedora (matching his yellow tie).  Cricket books are being published: I see there’s one about E.W.Swanton and John Arlott (sort of “compare and contrast”) which I’d quite like to read. I wonder whether the author has picked up the fact that both were active Christians. Jim Swanton was an Anglo-Catholic, and lodged at Pusey House when he was an Oxford undergraduate. John Arlott wrote hymns (one quite often sung at harvest, which is pleasing to imagine in his Hampshire burr).

The weather has been pleasant enough for someone to be willing to clear the garden at St Peter’s (for payment, of course). He worked very diligently on Monday, but did not finish. I didn’t really register the fact that he left bags and piles of dead leaves on the ramp down to the church door, or rather, I dismissed this as a potential problem, because I didn’t think it would inconvenience anyone. That was because I didn’t know that the Brownies have a member with cerebral palsy. To be fair, I’d forgotten the Brownies would be there at all: it’s hard to hold all the bookings in one’s mind, and ones that aren’t there every week I find especially hard to remember. So, when on Monday evening I took a young woman down to see the church, who had just filled in a banns certificate for us (she’s not getting married here, but at the Grosvenor Chapel, so I expect she wanted to be reassured that she had made the right choice) I was seriously told off by the Brownie leaders. I wasn’t sufficiently apologetic, but I was a bit confused.

A Surprise

One of London’s surprises to me is the way that contractors can just close roads without warning. So, on Monday I cycled out onto the Harrow Road perplexed by a queue of stationary traffic, only to find that it was caused by the fact that Sutherland Avenue was closed, entirely, at the Harrow Road end, so lots of vehicles were approaching, expecting to turn in, and then going on with great uncertainty. The next option for them is Marylands Road, and that is being dug up outside the undercover Greek restaurant, so I imagined we would have total chaos, but in fact very few have been trying to go that way (which is just as well, as it would only get you to Elgin Avenue).

A Conundrum

I spent some time the other day listening to a parishioner’s story. It’s complicated, so please bear with me. They are a member of one of my congregations, with a spouse (who doesn’t come) and children (who do). Now, my parishioner was brought up as a Christian (of another denomination) but has another religious heritage, which they regard as important to them. Their spouse was brought up in a third faith (and observes it to an extent). They don’t feel able to go to worship in their “heritage” religion, because of all the questions that they would be asked, and because their spouse would be very uncomfortable about that, but this makes them feel sad, as they have found that very culturally affirming in the past. Now, though, they listen to spokespeople of the “heritage” religion on satellite TV, who say that people like them are traitors to the faith. They are happy coming to church, but don’t feel the same depth of mutual feeling as in the “heritage” faith, which now seems to be rejecting them. I am disappointed that they don’t feel we are more supportive, but I am more exercised by the exclusivist religious attitudes that give them such pain. We live in a world where religious groups, feeling threatened (by secularism and by each other), draw ever more rigorous boundaries; it doesn’t have to be like that.

Historically, in many societies, people of different faiths have coexisted without demonizing each other but have lived with mutual respect and harmony. However, most of us come from societies which have historically been more or less monocultural, and broadly uniform in faith, and that makes us ill-equipped to deal with other faiths. Western Christians mostly met other faiths in a colonial context, and so our understandable reaction was to try to convert them; we’ve mostly moved beyond that, but other faiths have had very different experiences. If, historically, you’ve always been a minority (periodically oppressed) then that breeds a particular mindset. Equally, if your history has been of always living in societies ruled by your co-religionists, then it’s hard to find resources in the tradition to equip you for living as a minority (beyond an imperative to convert the majority or rule them). Our conversation reminded me of how very Christian the idea of choosing your religion for yourself is; most faith traditions assume something quite different, that one way or another, your birth gives you a religious identity.

Up the Scaffold

A day of leading tours yesterday, taking some of our local supporters up the scaffold to see the saints in the roof at close quarters (among other things). It was notable how warm it was in the top of the roof, which can’t be very comfortable for the conservators (who have worked for the past few months in barely tolerable cold). Everybody is thrilled to see the conservators at work with their cotton buds, and it was particularly good to be able to show people the change in appearance of the saints happening before your very eyes. The scaffolders were just bringing down a floor in the chancel, so now conservation is moving lower there, which at least means that you can visit the vault while remaining upright, which is a pleasant change (the conservators had brought a couple of Sunday school chairs up there, which at least enabled you to sit for a while). Without the conservators’ lights the chancel vault still looks muddy, so how we light it is going to be crucial. Anyway, we had lots of enthusiastic reactions; it's going very well.

LOW WEEK

Easter Break

My colleague Toby Gale, who is the Director of the development project, has gone off for several weeks' break, to Indonesia and Australia (he has gone all the way to Australia not to go to the Commonwealth Games, which, to be fair, are happening a thousand miles away from where he's staying). This causes us all some anxiety, as he is the person who pulls all the various aspects of the project together (and so there are lots of things he would normally do that the rest of us are trying to keep on top of and feeling very inadequate about), and he's very keen for us not to make particular decisions without him. In the meantime, everyone keeps copying him in to emails, and so every so often he responds to something, which is not the idea at all. You are on holiday! Ignore it all!

The trouble is that it is really hard to do that. Last summer in France I used to check mail but only actually read a few things that looked both urgent and important, but the result of that was that I came home to a backlog of a hundred messages, but still hadn't switched off properly from work. Working through the backlog was the first thing to do on return, and absorbed a whole day, and there were loads of time-limited messages that were pointless by then. It was all fine in the past, when we weren't available anywhere in the world, so why do we have to remain connected now? Why do we feel obliged to do so?

It's not just Toby who is away. We had a "Family" Mass on Sunday with hardly any families present, so my preacher reverted to the adult sermon she had just preached at St Mary Mags. With most schools still on holiday, London remains quieter than usual, and I can lie in, not being disturbed by noise from the school breakfast club, and not having to do things to fit into the school timetable.

The second Sunday of Eastertide is traditionally called "Low Sunday", despite the insistence of liturgists that it is the end of the Octave of Easter, and should be celebrated like Easter Day, as a truly "high" day. In the Roman observance the title "Divine Mercy Sunday" is being encouraged, but I've never heard anyone actually call it that. The Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference traditionally meets this week, and it's always referred to as their Low Week meeting! General Synod meetings happen according to the months of the year. not the ecclesiastical calendar.


Works on the Green

The installation of the gym equipment is still not finished. One day recently they had three vans, three pieces of motorized plant and a full-size lorry all parked on the Green, and last Saturday morning they were once again driving vehicles across the path, with fences removed and no regard at all for pedestrians. I hope it's worth it. The equipment all looks very large, designed for adults, and large adults at that. We shall see.


Can I ask Whether we can Count on your Vote?

I was asked this outside Waitrose a couple of Saturdays ago, to which I responded, "Of course you can ask, but I couldn't possibly comment." It seems that the recent YouGov poll putting Labour ahead in Westminster has energized campaigning for the local elections. The Sunday Times ran a scare story saying that Jeremy Corbyn was on course to run Wandsworth, Barnet and K & C as well as Westminster, which should put the wind up complacent Conservatives (though I seriously doubt whether he will have any input himself, never having run anything, as far as I can see). I notice that efforts are going on to get EU nationals to register to vote, as they are entitled to do in local elections, which surely cannot be good news for the Conservatives, who seem to have embraced the xenophobic line rather too enthusiastically.


When in Leeds

Let me recommend Akbar's restaurant in the centre of Leeds (Eastgate). Open all hours, a vast menu, and (to this Londoner's eyes) jolly cheap. It was also excellent food. They brought an extraordinary metal hatstand sort of affair to the table, on which they then hung your naan, which was a novelty to me. We had dinner after the ballet with Javier Torres of Northern Ballet and his family, Javier having just danced in "Las Hermanas". I'd never seen it before, but studied "La Casa de Bernarda Alba", on which it is based, for A level, so knew what was coming. Fairly standard Kenneth Macmillan themes (sex and death) but all very compressed. They carried it off well, but it's not a particularly enjoyable piece, unlike "Gloria" which they also danced, which is quite upbeat despite being Macmillan's evocation of the Great War. Javier apparently goes regularly to Akbar's.

HOLY WEEK

More Pubs

I had thought of saying something about the Truscott Arms, in Shirland Road, which closed some time ago, but now it has been pointed out to me (by a social-media enabled friend) that this is undergoing a refurbishment and looks to be going to reopen under the name of the Hero of Maida, which is great for the perpetuation of a historic pub name, but will be very confusing for people in the future.

It may be worth pointing out that the Royal Oak, after which the tube station is named, was the pub which is now called the Porchester, on the corner of Bishop's Bridge Road and Porchester Road. No idea why it was renamed. There was a pub right by the station, on the corner of the Harrow Road, of which old photos exist, but that was the Red Lion, curiously.


Meanwhile, on the Green

The works to install the new outdoor gym equipment are proceeding very slowly. Their contribution to the delight of our Easter weekend was to have blocked the storm drains on the path across the green, resulting in a puddle inches deep across the path and saturated grass beside the path producing ankle-deep mud. At least when going towards Royal Oak one could divert out onto the Green and go behind the contractors' fenced enclosure on the grass, which although a bit poached was still reasonably solid. If one was coming from Royal Oak unawares one would meet the puddle after walking for fifty yards between the contractors' fences, and have no unmuddy means of progressing.

More serious, though, is the contractors' cavalier attitude to safety. Their working site is to the east of the path, their compound, with storage containers, is to the west. Every morning they open the gate from Bourne Terrace and drive a van up onto the path, which they usually then park on the grass. During the day they manoeuvre a small digger and a small dumper truck across the path, often at speed, with no banksman or supervision of any kind. There are no signs warning that this might be taking place, and frankly no evidence of safety-consciousness at all. They seem to have embarked on this job on the basis that it was in a private place, whereas in fact it straddles an important pedestrian route (though that may have been the fault of the WCC Parks Department, who often close their eyes to important routes across their parks). What vexes me in particular is that we have insisted that our contractors employ two traffic marshals to look after the interaction of vehicles with pedestrians around our site, whereas these people working for the Council do nothing.


Holy Week

Our Holy Week services were not much curtailed by the building works. On Palm Sunday we always walk in procession from St Mary Mags to St Peter's, and we were able to start the procession from the Vestry just as well as from the main body of the church, so that was fine. We were a respectable number, but I never thought we would be so many as to make the Vestry uncomfortable, and we weren't. I forgot my biretta, but we had a good number of robed servers, so I think we put on a decent show. We also had incense, for the first time in months (since we were outside for all but two minutes).

Stations of the Cross was again a success in the Vestry, though in truth I think it was actually better when we did it over at St Peter's, so I think we shall have to do that again in future years.

On Maundy Thursday we always just have one service, which alternates between the churches, so this year we were at St Peter's, so the works made no difference to that. The only slight clumsiness was the Sufis arriving for their meditation session in the Hall well before we had finished, but everyone was sensitive to each other's needs, so that was fine. I then ran my churchwarden home as she was carrying loads of bags, and then got home to find that she had lost her handbag, so I cycled back up to the church and searched everywhere I could think of, and asked the Sufis, but all to no avail. Churchwarden walked back up to the church, asked the Sufis and was told, "Oh, yes, we found that when we started and put it in the cupboard." So she was fine; all was well. But why couldn't they tell me that?

Good Friday was slightly altered, as we didn't have the usual Children's Stations at St Mary Mags. It was just as well, since I had no assistance, and so had to do the 11 o'clock at St Peter's alone. Straight after that finished there was the Ecumenical Service at Maida Hill Market, which I was leading, and then the Liturgy at 2 o'clock at St Mary Mags (with no prostration, owing to the restricted floor space). The service at the Market still managed a crowd of fifty or so, despite the horrible weather, but the lashing rain decided us against using an electronic keyboard, and so the hymns were hard work. Frankly, leading without a microphone was hard work too. The nice little sheets for us to hold up, saying "Jesus is Lord" (prepared by one of my neighbours) sadly just became a soggy mess. Cloak and hat kept me relatively dry, but we were all pretty cold. The volunteer holding up the cross put a Sainsbury bag over his head at one point, but my churchwarden came and held an umbrella over him. There was only one market stall and hardly any shoppers, so I'm not sure how much impact our witness made. Someone managed to turn up an hour late for the Liturgy because of a confusion over times (but then someone came a week early for the Palm Sunday procession, and so arrived at the end of the Mass for Lent 5). Not really my fault, but I feel really bad about it, because I try quite hard to see it doesn't happen.

The one thing we didn't do this year was the Easter Vigil, on Holy Saturday (with its accompanying party in the Vicarage). It just seemed logistically impossible in the Vestry, while St Peter's is in use by a Brazilian Pentecostal church on Saturday evenings. The result was that I was able to take two confirmation candidates to the Cathedral, for the confirmation at their Easter Vigil. It was great for them, and I found myself somewhat moved. The full choir were there, singing Mozart, so that helped. Fr Graham Buckle (St Stephen's, Rochester Row) sat beside me. He was at St Peter's as his first incumbency, and it dawned on me that he had presented, on Easter Eve 2000, the mother of one of my candidates this time. He was very excited by this, and they met up afterwards.

Not doing the Vigil meant that we lit the Paschal Candle on Easter morning, in each place. I hadn't anticipated how dark the Vestry would be with the lights turned off (on a very overcast morning) so that was a bit more hamfisted than I had expected. I also sang the Exsultet for the first time in many years, not very well. The second time, at St Peter's, was better, but not by much. At the Cathedral I had heard a choirman do it properly, so I had had a recent reminder of how it's meant to sound, but that doesn't stop your voice doing things you can't control. A decent turnout in both places, and I take refuge in the certainty that very few of them have any idea of how the Exsultet is meant to sound (though some may suspect that it is at least meant to sound nice).

After I came home I went out on the bike for an hour or so just to wind down, and to disperse the adrenaline.       

LOCAL PUBS FOR LOCAL PEOPLE

I read in the SEBRA news that The Redan, on the corner of Queensway and Westbourne Grove, is threatened with closure. This is very bad news. Apart from anything else, it's a living connection with the Crimean War. The Redan was a celebrated feature of the battlefield of Sebastopol, and the storming of the Redan by Windham's Brigade on 8th September 1855 was one of the great British feats of arms of that shabby war, which was the first to gain modern media coverage and so created legends and celebrities in a very modern way. The trouble with a redan is that it's a military earthwork which is open at the back, so it's not actually defensible once you've stormed it; you need the whole enemy army to run away, otherwise they will just regroup and come back at you, which sadly is what happened to Windham's Brigade. Nevertheless, the Russians withdrew the next day, and the battle was won, so it became a great triumph, and it was certainly the scene of much bravery. The pub sign has a painting of the battle, and this was clearly the original name of the pub, from the time of its building, so it would be a shame to lose it.

The Marquess of Anglesey is a pub that has disappeared, but at least the building remains, because it has an important part in social history. It was on the corner of Ashmill Street and Daventry Street, between Edgware Road and Lisson Grove, and on my cycle route home from Bloomsbury or the City. This was the pub (it's now architects' offices) where the campaigning journalist W T Stead bought a thirteen-year-old girl for £5 in the summer of 1885. Stead was exposing child prostitution, and was sent to prison for three months for his pains, but the series of articles he wrote was instrumental in getting the age of consent raised from thirteen to fifteen. The girl was called Eliza Armstrong, and the pub was where her mother met Stead's accomplice, a reformed brothel-keeper, to effect the transaction. If you remember "My Fair Lady" (which is the musical of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion", written in 1912) you may recall that Doolittle offers to sell his daughter Eliza to Henry Higgins, and that Higgins when he first meets Eliza identifies her accent as being from Lisson Grove: Shaw was one of Stead's closest supporters.

The Squirrel, across the junction from my office at St Peter's, is what used to be The Skiddaw (it was still that when we were first here) and never seems terribly busy. I hope it survives, because it is where the Victorian poet Francis Thompson used to spend his evenings when he lived in various sets of lodgings along Elgin Avenue and Goldney Road in the 1890s and 1900s. Thompson, who was a failed seminarian and morphine addict, used to sit in the corner by the fire to keep warm. He was kept afloat in his career as a poet by the wealthy Roman Catholic man of letters Wilfrid Meynell, who lived in Palace Court, off Bayswater Road, and it gave shape to Thompson's days to walk down there to see him.    

I don't think I ever saw The Yorkshire Stingo, but it was in the list of pubs in my "Nicholson's London Guide" which I was given as a child and continued to use through teenage and student visits to London. Mother and I never came that far north, because it was on the Marylebone Road, just at the angle where Old Marylebone Road turns south-west; and it was demolished in 1970 as part of the works for the Marylebone Flyover, which takes off at that point. The Yorkshire Stingo was the western terminus of Shillibeer's Omnibus, London's first scheduled bus service, in 1829; the bus is always described as going from Paddington to the Bank of England, but although the pub was on the edge of Paddington it was technically in St Marylebone, being the wrong side of Edgware Road, which is the historic boundary (being the Roman Watling Street). Not only that, but The Yorkshire Stingo also had a place in London's black history, as it was one of the places where the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor handed out relief to the unfortunate black loyalists who had fought for Britain in the American War of Independence (and who didn't qualify for relief under the Poor Law because they weren't born in an English parish). It seems that in 1786 it was somewhere that black Londoners met.  

The Waterway, my nearest pub, used to be The Paddington Stop, a landmark for canal boaters. It was totally rebuilt and given a new character shortly before we moved here, and I'm not sure you would call it a pub today. I have received a very grudging welcome when only wanting drinks, and they seem to employ some of the least well-informed bar staff you could imagine. Essentially it's an eating place, under the same management as the Summerhouse, further along Blomfield Road; you sometimes see kitchen staff wheeling trolleys from one to the other. It does staggeringly good business when the weather is pleasant.

The Elephant and Castle, on Elgin Avenue, just before the Harrow Road, has finally been redeveloped as flats, an enterprise that must have taken seven years. It was a nasty 1970s building that is little-mourned, but I imagine it perpetuated an older name, because that's not the sort of name breweries were giving new pubs at that time. The elephant and castle was the badge of the Royal African Company, one of the pioneers of the slave trade between West Africa and the West Indies. Lest we forget. 

ROADS AND PARKS

Autumn Leaves Part 2

I am pleased to report that the pedestrian footpath has now largely been cleared of autumn leaves. The leaves and leaf-mould have been shovelled into large white plastic sacks that have been sitting on the grass for the past week (so that will be good for the grass!) and the path is nearly clear. Jolly good.

Meanwhile, on the main section of the Green, a large area is fenced off by contractors who are apparently installing gym equipment. This involves digging up grass, levelling the surface, installing kerbstones and presumably will involve putting some sort of surface down, though they haven't got that far yet, despite being there for three weeks. A significant area of grass will be lost. When I first saw this, I asked the councillors what was going on, and after they explained, I was told that there had been consultation; well, I wasn't consulted, and nor were my neighbours; I imagine they only consulted people in flats adjoining that section of the Green, as the people who would be affected by the works, and whose view would be altered. Not really keeping the community informed, but never mind. Apparently Westminster have been given money for this purpose. Now, I'm sure this is a good thing, or would be if people know that the equipment is there, though we already have the equipment for a "fitness trail" around the Green, which gets little use. It will be interesting to see how much use this new equipment will get. The thing is, though, that local young people do actually use the grass to take exercise, playing football. Westminster Parks Department cannot recognise that fact, though, because they forbid ball games on the Green, and so they pretend that installing this equipment will improve people's fitness levels, when in fact it may inhibit young people from taking the exercise that they already do.

The Parks Department's self-defeating regulations are a particular bugbear of mine. Why ban football, exactly? On a large stretch of grass ball games can be accommodated alongside other activity. There are no flower beds to destroy. Similarly, cycling is theoretically banned on the Green, but Westminster allowed the creation of the cycle path through the canalside section (with mayoral money) some ten years ago, while the path down towards Royal Oak is regularly used by cyclists (not just me) and is wide enough to allow that without any threat to pedestrians. In fact, the local cycle training for children (which may perhaps get a little funding from WCC) takes place on the paths of the Green. It seems futile to put up notices prohibiting harmless (indeed beneficial) activities, particularly when you have no intention of enforcing those prohibitions.


Conservation

The conservators have just about finished work on cleaning the upper register of the nave ceiling, and very splendid it looks. That's forty-eight saints, with twenty-four more to go in the lower register. At the same time, obviously, the background panels (with a pleasing mauve among the most prominent colours) and the elaborately patterned ribs are also being cleaned. One or two of the saints have been badly damaged by past scrubbing, and there are tricky decisions about what detail to put back in, but our conservators (and conservation architects) are very judicious. It is noticeable that several of the saints seen in profile have large noses; are we dealing with a Victorian nose fetishist?

As soon as we put in our new uplighters five years or so ago, which enabled the nave ceiling to be seen reasonably well for the first time in decades, people remarked on what looked like painted flames. I would say, "The ceiling's depicting heaven, with all the saints," and after a pause someone would ask, "Why are there flames?" I have always tried to talk about it being rays of light, rather than flames, but people always sound unconvinced. I hope that when we have the chancel ceiling visible as well (just lighting revealed nothing of that) then the continuation of the motif there may make it more intelligible as the divine light. Because in the chancel the rays of light emerge from the centre into a roughly semi-circular ceiling the image of a sunburst makes sense, but in the nave, the rays emerge from either side of the ridge, which doesn't immediately suggest the sun. 


Heavy Traffic

I realise that it annoys motorists when cyclists skirt round puddles, but the problem is that you never know how deep a puddle may be, or how sharp the edge of the concealed pothole may be. When the snow was melting this was a particular issue on the Harrow Road, as you couldn't be sure how much new damage had been made by the ice. Still, Kilburn Park Road is much the worst road surface in the neighbourhood, which may be because it comes under Brent rather than Westminster (the boundary runs up the middle), but also because it has constant buses and a regular flow of cement lorries and concrete mixers, not least because of the redevelopment of the South Kilburn Estate. It's all very well applauding the amount of building going on in London, but the heavy vehicles that building works require take a real toll on the local roads. Our little building site actually generates very little, as the new build element is tiny, but all these new blocks of flats and offices contain vast amounts of steel and concrete which have to be shipped around on large, heavy vehicles, destroying the road surface. Remember, cyclists are actually killed by potholes!

THE TWO-FOLD PATH

Autumn Leaves

When our contractors started work on site, there was a lot of concern from parents about traffic and congestion on the paths at 8.50 and 3.30, because the site compound was taking away one path, and the canalside path has parallel cycling and walking sections. So, the contractors bought warning signs for cyclists and put them up, and undertook to make sure that the cycle path was clear of rubbish, so that cyclists could always use its full width and didn’t have to stray onto the pedestrian section. This has worked very well. They have kept the cycle path absolutely clean where it runs alongside the site compound. Westminster Parks Department on the other hand have not done the same. A couple of council workmen were beginning to clear the piles of autumn leaves last week, and I heard one complain that the leaves were very heavy. Well, that’s the consequence of leaving them for four or five months to absorb large quantities of rain and snow. In my garden I can claim that they will rot down and put valuable organic matter into the soil (I know, it doesn’t actually happen that quickly) but that benefit is not available on a tarmac path. I expect that it was cost-cutting that meant that the autumn leaves were left until the spring, but the drawback with that is that the gang clearing them last week didn’t finish the job (presumably because it was hard work). So there are still sections where cyclists have to come wide. The other problem that drives cyclists onto the pedestrian path, brambles and other branches growing through the fence from the towpath, is rarely addressed either.   

An Odd Vehicle

Seen parked on the pavement outside the West London Buddhist Centre’s palatial premises in Porchester Road: a mobility scooter, with a pretend registration plate bearing the letters “VEGAN”. I expect they extrapolate their faith in veganism from Buddhism, because that is quite a common (western) connection to make. I would have supposed that the Buddha’s way of moderation implied something a bit different, but that’s only an observation.

I remember when we took a group of Helen’s sixth-formers to Nepal (eighteen years ago) and were to stay in a Tibetan refugee school, we assiduously warned the girls to expect the food to be vegetarian, since our hosts were Tibetan Buddhists. In fact (rather unattractive) meat featured regularly in the diet. The fact is that people living in harsh conditions tend to eat what is available and safe. Later on during that trip we stayed at a hotel in the Terai, and I didn’t go out with the group one afternoon, and so I was the only one there to see the kitchen staff dragging our dinner round to the back of the building to butcher it. I thought it best not to tell the girls.

Not So Angry

Angry Woman with Dog appeared at church on Sunday (obviously after Mass had finished) but she was cleaner than usual, and didn’t have the dog in tow. Nor was she angry. She was still looking for money, but was in a better state. Apparently her housing providers have moved her out into a flat in Tower Hamlets, but this is seemingly only temporary while they do the repairs necessary to her flat here. She had photos of a flat that I wouldn’t have believed was hers, and seemed proud of it. In truth, it would be better for her to move out of this area permanently, as she has so many feuds locally that having her as a neighbour will never be enjoyable, and people will always be trying to sell her drugs. She also seems to be engaging with some of the support agencies, which I have never known her do before. That is all good news. She apparently still has the dog, as there were photos, and she is still besotted with it. She says she wants me to write a letter to say she shouldn’t come back here, as apparently her excellent GP is doing; I would be delighted to do so.

Oy! No, Under Armour!

Is there a nastier home kit in the Premier League than Southampton’s this season? Seeing it in close-up in the post-match interview last Saturday I was struck by how misguided it all is. They traditionally wear stripes; red with a broad white panel is not the same, and this panel is much too broad. The shirt is effectively white in front, and red at the back and sides (I don’t like the current fad for striped shirts to have solid-colour backs, so West Brom appear to be in navy blue shirts when seen from behind; it’s not the only way to make numbers stand out, and is visually confusing). But it’s not just that white shirtfront, it’s the collar, or rather the neckline, because there is no collar. The white panel ends in a V-neck, which “reveals” a red section, as though of an undershirt, but the white panel doesn’t go all the way to the shoulders, but stops at collar-bone level, so there are red “epaulettes” connecting sleeves and sides; that red section is then edged with a white “collar”, which of course abuts the red “undershirt”. It takes a long time to describe because it is very fussy, a series of misguided solutions to design issues that should never have arisen. I admit the shirt manufacturer’s logo stands out nicely, though; perhaps that is the point.  

WINTER SPORTS

Public Sessions

On Friday I conducted a confirmation preparation session in Costa Coffee, which seems rather trendy. It was not solely done with safeguarding in mind, but that was a major factor. It's really not sensible to have one-to-one sessions in an otherwise empty house, even with young adults (as in this case). We have to proceed with care, so a public venue was a good idea. I remember when I was a Curate, the Archdeacon of Exeter telling us in his Visitation Charge that we should be careful to keep a coffee table between us and anyone we were counselling,(he meant adults of the opposite gender in those days) so being careful about these things is not new. It's just a good thing that today's young people are a great deal more relaxed about speaking of matters of faith in public than I would have been.


In The Snow

We had two days of closed schools, and then on Saturday the snow was melting. It's nice and quiet for me when the Primary School next door is closed, but the trouble was that with no traffic the road was completely snowed over; a delivery driver battled through and so I had to take a package in for the school, but that was all. The result was that I had to wheel my bike through the snow before I could start cycling. The roads on the estate were never gritted, but apart from Rowington Close, there was enough traffic just to keep them, passable. The Harrow Road, meanwhile, was absolutely fine, having been repeatedly gritted. It was pretty cold and uncomfortable for cycling, but I got around safely. The main problem was having to take longer routes, because the two normal routes off the estate are on paths through the park, and I knew from experience that these would never be cleared of snow. The last time we had snow it remained safer to walk on the grass than the paths for several days after the last snowfall because the Parks Department didn't touch them. I'm not sure what Westminster's park keepers do when it snows, but they certainly don't clear paths, which might not matter if the parks were only places of casual resort, but does matter when they contain important thoroughfares, as here. In striking contrast are the Westminster street-sweepers, employed by Veolia, who were issued with grit in their little carts and were out in the snow gritting pavements. Well done!

By Sunday afternoon you would hardly know there had been any snow. I went for a ride and found I was able to try really hard; I hadn't really worked out that I was being inhibited by the cold for the last couple of weeks, but that was how it had been. I saw a quote from Greg Van Avermaet (pro cyclist) after Saturday's Strade Bianche race in Tuscany (which was cold and very muddy) in which he said that his body hadn't allowed him to dig deep. Not a remotely similar case, but I understand what he meant.


Heating

Bizarrely, someone has been turning the radiators off in St Peter's Church. I came in to say Mass last Tuesday, and found the place cold, radiators off. I cursed and turned them all on again. Then it was the same for the Women's World Day of Prayer on Friday, according to my (female) churchwarden. This evening I am leading Stations of the Cross, so I just went down to check, and it had happened again. This is very odd, and more than a bit frustrating, as we have only just got working radiators after years of them noisily blowing out cold air. Our landlords, Genesis Housing, announced that they were renewing the boilers in the block and as a consequence would be able to send out accurate heating bills; we responded that we were disinclined to pay heating bills until we had radiators that actually produced heat. There then followed many months of nothing much happening, while various contractors and surveyors came in, looked, sucked their teeth and went away again. Then, finally, we suddenly got a result. An engineer came and changed all our radiators, so all of a sudden we had warmth. The old radiators dated from the mid 1970s, so it was hardly surprising that they weren't working well, but it was handy to have said goodbye to them at just the right time.   


TV Drama

I've started watching "Call The Midwife" again, which Helen and I used to watch together. It often makes me cry, but last night's was really difficult as they killed off the Curate's wife. I just bawled and bawled. You think you're okay, and then something comes along and opens the wound again.