Contractors
Regular readers will remember that I was struck, a month or so ago, by the rash of Morgan Sindall vans that were parked around St Peter's; the reason soon became clear. There was an estate agent's office in Goldney Road (about fifty yards away) which was vacated not so long ago, and this has now become an office for Morgan Sindall Property Services. They have a nice yard, where you can park half a dozen vehicles, but that is clearly not enough, and there are always vans parked on the single yellow lines at all hours of the day, together with others in residents' bays or on the double yellow from time to time. Now they each have a permit in the windscreen from Westminster Housing, but it is not clear what this actually permits. I would suppose it would enable them to park on the estate roads of Hallfield or Churchill Gardens, where parking is usually forbidden, and where Westminster Housing is the landowner, but does it give them a privileged status on the public highway? In the end, it is the City Council that administers street parking, and so it is perfectly able to permit its contractors to park in contravention of all normal regulations, but has it really decided to do that? And if it has, might it not be a good idea to think of the consequences, and perhaps ask for the views of the residents whose spaces are being occupied, not to mention the pedestrians and cyclists who are put at risk by dangerous parking?
Amid the Storm
We hosted a fundraiser for The Avenues Youth Project last Sunday at St Mary Mags, in the middle of the storm. Incidentally, was I the only person to be baffled and then irritated by the fact that what they were calling "Storm Kiera" was spelled "Storm Ciara"? That's not a name, in the first place, and in whose language is it pronounced that way? Not English, certainly! Anyway, the storm wrought chaos, by preventing some of the promised artists from appearing, as they could not reach us. One side effect of that was that the musical director whose train was cancelled was bringing the music with him that he was meant to play, accompanying a singer, so a student pianist (from Guildhall) was asked to accompany, and the music was sent electronically to me, and I then downloaded it and printed it out at home, on my cheap printer where I never bother to correct the alignment after I've changed the ink. I was anxious about that, but the pianist then had to sight-read this Stevie Wonder number and familiarise herself enough with it in about twenty minutes to accompany a West End star. I discovered that the tall, polite young man in a hat who forwarded me the music was Jamael Westman, who was the original West End "Hamilton". He sang nicely, and his two colleagues from the show performed really impressively. It was a great thing for the young people from The Avenues to be rubbing shoulders with these genuinely top-drawer performers, who were also quite charming and unaffected. We also had three young performers from Guildhall, who played and sang really well. Their rendition of "La ci darem la mano" was absolutely charming, and the meaning was perfectly clear without anyone needing a second language or surtitles.
The trouble with being the custodian of an ancient building is that you do have extra worries during extreme weather events. I sat there being entertained, but listening out for any sounds of damage. I noted that the dormer shutters were clattering, which they don't normally do, but didn't hear anything much else. We used the glass sliding doors in the extension rather than the Victorian church door because the gale kept on catching the old door and was making it unmanageable, so that was a useful experiment. I think the logic is that we shall do that as a matter of course, though when the glass porch over the north entrance is built then that will probably become our main door (though not for me).
Strange Lives
Yesterday we had an event I had long been anticipating. Years ago, when Will Stephens was our artist-in-residence (studio in the old sacristy) he introduced me to William Feaver, who had been art critic for the Observer, and was a tutor at the Royal Drawing School (where Will studied). Last year when Bill published the first volume of his monumental biography of Lucian Freud I saw a possibility for a Grand Junction event, and got Will to put us in touch, which he did. So Bill very generously came last night to talk to an audience of over a hundred about Lucian Freud in Paddington, because from 1944 to 1977 Freud had studios in, successively, Delamere Terrace, Clarendon Crescent, and Gloucester Terrace, and was evidently full of stories of the old Paddington.
The mere question of Bill's biographical method is interesting in itself, because Lucian Freud simply liked talking to him, and would constantly phone him up, quite apart from letting himself be interviewed. So, Bill soon started taking notes, and recorded lots of their conversations, which Freud was fine with, as he conceived the idea of Bill writing "the first funny art book", Then he read the first two chapters (which Bill had spent considerable time writing) and took fright, forbidding the enterprise in his lifetime, though clearly accepting that it would eventually appear. The volume of material was obviously vast, and Bill Feaver has compounded matters by being a most assiduous researcher, following up the most obscure and tangential figures in the story, which makes it a very big book, but fantastically interesting, and thoroughly gossipy. It is also genuinely funny, as the extraordinary life of Lucian Freud takes shape.
I was asked whether I thought it entirely appropriate for a priest to be discussing such a reprehensible life (in church) and I pondered that one. I think it's fair to respond that I certainly wasn't endorsing Freud's lifestyle, but neither was Bill, but that it's not necessary to be judgemental. Freud's behaviour was contrary to almost anyone's standards of morality, let alone Christian ones, and you can just let it stand for itself, and leave the observer to make their own judgements. Reading the biography, one is constantly struck by the remarkable lack of ill-will shown by most of the women whom Freud had wronged, and actually a sense of the artist's vulnerability. When we saw the show of his self-portraits at the RA recently that is not something that was evident at all; rather we felt the overbearing presence of the domineering artist, but one is just reminded that art and life are not the same. Of course, it's the Wagner question, whether the behaviour (or views) of the artist devalues the art, and Bill and I discussed that a little last night, but there's more that can be said, of course.
It was an excellent evening, at least I enjoyed myself in the role of interlocutor, which was initially very daunting, but then great fun. So all those evenings watching Graham Norton haven't been wasted! It was certainly more Graham Norton than Andrew Neill, which I hope is what people had come for. Stupidly I didn't suggest to Bill that he should bring a crate of books, because he'd certainly have sold some.
My only regret was that we didn't spend long enough on the odd, criminal world of Delamere Terrace and Clarendon Crescent in the 1940s and 50s, which comes out very strongly from the book. Kenneth Clark commented, "Strange lives" in reference to the people among whom Lucian Freud was living, and while they must have seemed strange to someone as cultivated (and buttoned-up) as Clark then, they sound like lives from another planet to us today. There's more to learn.
Friday, 14 February 2020
Monday, 10 February 2020
GONE ON PILGRIMAGE
I confess to a certain perverse pride when I was able to put "I am on pilgrimage" on my out-of-office reply. It certainly made an impression on some of my secular colleagues.
Of course, it was only what they call a "clergy familiarisation tour" where the pilgrimage operator (in this case McCabes) take clerics at a reduced rate in the hope that they will then lead their own pilgrimage, inspired by the experience. In fact, I would love to do so, but don't see much prospect of getting up a party from this neighbourhood. We are a small church community, and I don't think we'd ever get the numbers required. People might be interested, but £2000 is beyond most of my folk here. McCabes encourage you to announce it long in advance, so that people can save up for it, and pay in instalments, but that argues a degree of organisation which is not often found on the Harrow Road. Because we were being familiarised, the itinerary was one that took in all the big sites, and quite a few others, crammed into eight days, whereas I can see that you might want to tailor your own tour, and probably go for ten days rather than eight to have a bit more space to think and pray.
When we arrived in Jerusalem it was colder than London, grey and rainy. I remarked that since the city was grey and rainy and had trams it reminded me of Manchester. Early January was probably a good time to go from the point of view of crowds, but it did mean that you had to take lots of clothes. I travelled with a much heavier bag than usual, but the only thing I bought to bring back was a kilo of Palestinian dates.
We stayed in East Jerusalem, in a Christian-owned hotel, overlooking the walls of the Old City, which was an excellent position. From the hotel roof you could see the "Garden Tomb", and in fact the hotel was said to be the place that General Gordon was staying when he got the idea that the quarry wall behind the "Garden Tomb" looked like a skull. Our guide to the Garden Tomb, a jovial Ulsterman, told us that you would be able to appreciate it better if the bus station were removed from in front of it, as that has raised the level somewhat. I thought the Garden Tomb interesting, but didn't feel anything.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the other hand, I felt much more moving than I expected. To be in there at dawn (on the Sunday) was a very special privilege. I didn't particularly notice the notoriously bad relations between the denominations, though the Copts were a bit brusque in defending their space. It was hugely moving to be at Golgotha, and see the rock, and to enter the sepulchre.
The biggest impression, though, was of the huge contrast between Galilee and Judaea. Why was that nice, gentle, fertile land ruled by that city in those harsh hills? The sense that God was somehow present in Jerusalem, that God had somehow marked the place out, was increased by the incongruity of the fit between the two parts. Of course Galilee enables you to see views that appear unchanged since the time of Jesus, and it is calm and lovely in a way that is never true of Jerusalem, but I won't say I liked it more, because I love those buildings with their layers of history and accumulated faith.
Of the contemporary state of the Land of the Holy One, not much to say. We drove up to the Separation Wall in Bethlehem, which separates Rachel's Tomb from the town, and saw all the Banksy-type paintings and graffiti on it. You could not help feel the crudeness and the brutality of it. We visited a rehabilitation centre in Bethlehem which has had to equip itself as a full-scale hospital, because their local hospital was in Jerusalem, and now Palestinians cannot easily go there (certainly not in an emergency). The settlements creeping over the hills are hideous, and an affront to international law, but you can understand the state of Israel's desire to survive. Someone said to me afterwards, "So what is the solution, then?" to which I pointed out that better minds than mine have been working on this for years, but I can't feel optimistic, not while so many Palestinians seem determined to nurse a sense of grievance, and while Israelis insist that they are a special case.
Of course, it was only what they call a "clergy familiarisation tour" where the pilgrimage operator (in this case McCabes) take clerics at a reduced rate in the hope that they will then lead their own pilgrimage, inspired by the experience. In fact, I would love to do so, but don't see much prospect of getting up a party from this neighbourhood. We are a small church community, and I don't think we'd ever get the numbers required. People might be interested, but £2000 is beyond most of my folk here. McCabes encourage you to announce it long in advance, so that people can save up for it, and pay in instalments, but that argues a degree of organisation which is not often found on the Harrow Road. Because we were being familiarised, the itinerary was one that took in all the big sites, and quite a few others, crammed into eight days, whereas I can see that you might want to tailor your own tour, and probably go for ten days rather than eight to have a bit more space to think and pray.
When we arrived in Jerusalem it was colder than London, grey and rainy. I remarked that since the city was grey and rainy and had trams it reminded me of Manchester. Early January was probably a good time to go from the point of view of crowds, but it did mean that you had to take lots of clothes. I travelled with a much heavier bag than usual, but the only thing I bought to bring back was a kilo of Palestinian dates.
We stayed in East Jerusalem, in a Christian-owned hotel, overlooking the walls of the Old City, which was an excellent position. From the hotel roof you could see the "Garden Tomb", and in fact the hotel was said to be the place that General Gordon was staying when he got the idea that the quarry wall behind the "Garden Tomb" looked like a skull. Our guide to the Garden Tomb, a jovial Ulsterman, told us that you would be able to appreciate it better if the bus station were removed from in front of it, as that has raised the level somewhat. I thought the Garden Tomb interesting, but didn't feel anything.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the other hand, I felt much more moving than I expected. To be in there at dawn (on the Sunday) was a very special privilege. I didn't particularly notice the notoriously bad relations between the denominations, though the Copts were a bit brusque in defending their space. It was hugely moving to be at Golgotha, and see the rock, and to enter the sepulchre.
The biggest impression, though, was of the huge contrast between Galilee and Judaea. Why was that nice, gentle, fertile land ruled by that city in those harsh hills? The sense that God was somehow present in Jerusalem, that God had somehow marked the place out, was increased by the incongruity of the fit between the two parts. Of course Galilee enables you to see views that appear unchanged since the time of Jesus, and it is calm and lovely in a way that is never true of Jerusalem, but I won't say I liked it more, because I love those buildings with their layers of history and accumulated faith.
Of the contemporary state of the Land of the Holy One, not much to say. We drove up to the Separation Wall in Bethlehem, which separates Rachel's Tomb from the town, and saw all the Banksy-type paintings and graffiti on it. You could not help feel the crudeness and the brutality of it. We visited a rehabilitation centre in Bethlehem which has had to equip itself as a full-scale hospital, because their local hospital was in Jerusalem, and now Palestinians cannot easily go there (certainly not in an emergency). The settlements creeping over the hills are hideous, and an affront to international law, but you can understand the state of Israel's desire to survive. Someone said to me afterwards, "So what is the solution, then?" to which I pointed out that better minds than mine have been working on this for years, but I can't feel optimistic, not while so many Palestinians seem determined to nurse a sense of grievance, and while Israelis insist that they are a special case.
Monday, 6 January 2020
ON CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
Contractors
Some of us remember when local authorities and other public bodies employed their own workforce to do repairs and maintenance, and indeed work in general. Nowadays all that is contracted out, and private contractors do the work. I remember the justification for the change was that private contractors would be more efficient, having to compete for contracts. In practice, local authorities tend to award contracts for several years at a time, and so contractors often get complacent. They know they are unlikely to have any trouble from the council while they are doing its work, and that their level of performance won't actually matter until their contract comes up for renewal.
This explains why F.M.Conway, Westminster's roads contractor, have a compound occupying road space on Bourne Terrace that has been there for months while no work actually takes place. The compound, which is clearly storing materials, is placed on double yellow lines a few yards in from the junction with the Harrow Road, which makes turning into Bourne Terrace much more difficult than necessary, a situation which is exacerbated by some drivers' fondness for turning off the Harrow Road and stopping there. Complaints from borough councillors seem to have made no difference.
The complacency of contractors is demonstrated by the alacrity with which they get their vans repainted to proclaim that they are working for the council. They wouldn't do it if they were afraid of losing their contact. As I write this I am looking at a Morgan Sindall van, which is also branded City of Westminster, and is parked on a yellow line in Chippenham Road in the middle of the day, a place where it has been parked continuously for more than a week. One day last week I counted four Morgan Sindall vehicles illegally parked at various spots within yards of the crossroads of Elgin Avenue and Chippenham Road. Of course contractors sometimes need to park in abnormal places when doing emergency works, but that is not what is happening here; the drivers know that Westminster's traffic wardens will not bother them, and so they are completely contemptuous of parking regulations, parking where it is convenient to them.
Shameless
I have to say that I have been surprised by public exhibitions of shamelessness recently. A few days ago, walking home from St Peter's, I was passing a set of big black bins, as an employee emerged from business premises carrying large bags of rubbish. He could see me, but was entirely blatant about heaving these bags of rubbish into the household rubbish bin. He was wearing uniform, so I could hardly mistake which business he had come from even if I had not seen him come out of the door, and it was obviously commercial rubbish.
Meanwhile, a couple of hundred yards away, on Shirland Road, I was walking along one teatime when a man emerged from some flats. he was an upright gent in his seventies, with a tweed cap and a stick, and he proceeded to throw a plastic bag of rubbish at the base of a tree. He did this with no subterfuge or embarrassment; in fact the bag flew past me across the pavement, but he didn't turn a hair. I suppose I was the more shocked because he looked like the sort of person who might be vociferous in complaining about such anti-social behaviour, but instead was completely shameless.
This is the more vexing because at St Peter's we are constantly accused of being responsible for bags of rubbish against the trunks of trees. There are quite often bags left along the pavements near the corner, and people (particularly from the flats next door) assume that our hall users are the ones who do it, when in fact they are not. Our regular users know the rules and know that they are to take their rubbish away. In fact they produce little rubbish anyway. So now I am laminating signs to put up on trees asking people not to dump rubbish, which I expect will have as little effect as the ones I put up urging people not to feed the pigeons.
Some of us remember when local authorities and other public bodies employed their own workforce to do repairs and maintenance, and indeed work in general. Nowadays all that is contracted out, and private contractors do the work. I remember the justification for the change was that private contractors would be more efficient, having to compete for contracts. In practice, local authorities tend to award contracts for several years at a time, and so contractors often get complacent. They know they are unlikely to have any trouble from the council while they are doing its work, and that their level of performance won't actually matter until their contract comes up for renewal.
This explains why F.M.Conway, Westminster's roads contractor, have a compound occupying road space on Bourne Terrace that has been there for months while no work actually takes place. The compound, which is clearly storing materials, is placed on double yellow lines a few yards in from the junction with the Harrow Road, which makes turning into Bourne Terrace much more difficult than necessary, a situation which is exacerbated by some drivers' fondness for turning off the Harrow Road and stopping there. Complaints from borough councillors seem to have made no difference.
The complacency of contractors is demonstrated by the alacrity with which they get their vans repainted to proclaim that they are working for the council. They wouldn't do it if they were afraid of losing their contact. As I write this I am looking at a Morgan Sindall van, which is also branded City of Westminster, and is parked on a yellow line in Chippenham Road in the middle of the day, a place where it has been parked continuously for more than a week. One day last week I counted four Morgan Sindall vehicles illegally parked at various spots within yards of the crossroads of Elgin Avenue and Chippenham Road. Of course contractors sometimes need to park in abnormal places when doing emergency works, but that is not what is happening here; the drivers know that Westminster's traffic wardens will not bother them, and so they are completely contemptuous of parking regulations, parking where it is convenient to them.
Shameless
I have to say that I have been surprised by public exhibitions of shamelessness recently. A few days ago, walking home from St Peter's, I was passing a set of big black bins, as an employee emerged from business premises carrying large bags of rubbish. He could see me, but was entirely blatant about heaving these bags of rubbish into the household rubbish bin. He was wearing uniform, so I could hardly mistake which business he had come from even if I had not seen him come out of the door, and it was obviously commercial rubbish.
Meanwhile, a couple of hundred yards away, on Shirland Road, I was walking along one teatime when a man emerged from some flats. he was an upright gent in his seventies, with a tweed cap and a stick, and he proceeded to throw a plastic bag of rubbish at the base of a tree. He did this with no subterfuge or embarrassment; in fact the bag flew past me across the pavement, but he didn't turn a hair. I suppose I was the more shocked because he looked like the sort of person who might be vociferous in complaining about such anti-social behaviour, but instead was completely shameless.
This is the more vexing because at St Peter's we are constantly accused of being responsible for bags of rubbish against the trunks of trees. There are quite often bags left along the pavements near the corner, and people (particularly from the flats next door) assume that our hall users are the ones who do it, when in fact they are not. Our regular users know the rules and know that they are to take their rubbish away. In fact they produce little rubbish anyway. So now I am laminating signs to put up on trees asking people not to dump rubbish, which I expect will have as little effect as the ones I put up urging people not to feed the pigeons.
Monday, 30 December 2019
CULTURE AT CHRISTMAS
Another mark of age is the discovery that an event that you think of as quite recent actually occurred thirty-five years ago. This happened to me on Saturday when I visited the current Stubbs exhibition, "George Stubbs: all done from nature", which announced itself as the first major show of the artist's works for thirty-five years. "Surely not," I said, "I went to the last one, at the Tate, and the catalogue is in the sitting room. It wasn't that long ago." So I checked from the catalogue when we got home; the last Stubbs show was indeed at the Tate in 1984 and in Yale in 1985. You may not have noticed the current show, because it is at MK Gallery, the municipal art gallery in Milton Keynes, but make no mistake about it, this is a serious show, put on in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it moves in a month's time. Sadly, the MK Gallery doesn't seem to have a publicity budget, so the gallery was virtually empty when we went, for a show that in London would be attracting thousands. It's ridiculous, it's only half an hour from Euston on the train (and admittedly a stiff walk up Midsummer Boulevard once you get there) and it's a brilliant show. Go while you can! They've even got the skeleton of Eclipse, the first great racehorse, which I think used to be in the horseracing museum in Newmarket, and which belongs to the Royal Veterinary College. Stubbs painted Eclipse at least twice and as they are showing a lot of the material from his "The Anatomy of the Horse" it is particularly appropriate to have the skeleton in the show. I still remember the impression that the Tate show made on me all those years ago, a great sense of wellbeing flowing from those serene embodiments of Whig Britain, and this show did much the same on Saturday. Stubbs is still a really top-notch artist, persistently undervalued because he painted so many dogs and horses, but he's so exciting with his bold plain backgrounds and radical compositions. Those are classical friezes there. And how on earth does he get aerial perspective while painting in enamels, for goodness' sake? His people are usually convincing portraits, too, but I suspect he found animals rather better company than the Whig landowners he was working for. In the end, a lot of those pictures are just absolutely ravishing, and it will enhance your life to spend a couple of hours looking at them.
Milton Keynes, on the other hand, is not so life-enhancing. It's a demonstration of how far we have come that this place, which seemed so progressive and futuristic in the 1980s now seems like a dinosaur. I remember passing through it by various different routes in the years when I used to take the bus from Oxford to Cambridge (and vice-versa); the bus company seemed not to have settled on the best route, and so you saw different bits of Beds and Bucks each time, but I remember pausing outside Milton Keynes Central more than once. Now the whole place seems hopelessly dated and very uncongenial, totally lacking a human scale, and devoted entirely to the motor car. I would have supposed that it would be a good place for cycling, being flat and spacious, but there was no evidence of that when we were there.
"Rembrandt's Light" at Dulwich was the other recent show. Another excellent piece of work, brilliant curatorship, making something quite special out of quite a small show. The highlight is the Queen's "Christ and Mary Magdalene", which is shown on its own under changing light conditions. The picture of course depicts dawn, and so they bring the lights up to replicate dawn. You see a tremendous amount that way, not least because the lights end up being brighter than you would normally have in a gallery, and so you see things you wouldn't otherwise notice. It's one of my favourite pictures anyway, but I loved that. My friend John painted an "hommage" to it, in the style of Van Gogh, which now hangs in our Sacristy at Mary Mags, as his thank you to us for giving him a show.
Our other Christmas treat was "La Traviata" at Covent Garden, beautiful. Simon Keenlyside on good voice as Germont, and two young Armenians as Alfredo and Violetta. Terrific music, beautifully played, and a great staging (by Richard Eyre, twenty-five years old). I reminisced about seeing the Zeffirelli film, with Placido Domingo as Alfredo, but I knew that was back in the eighties, 1982, as it turns out. We treated ourselves to dinner in the opera house restaurant, and I was amused to see that the menu is ten pounds more for the opera than it is for the ballet. Of course they will be able to justify it, but I rather suppose it's just more expensive because everything connected with opera is routinely more expensive.
Milton Keynes, on the other hand, is not so life-enhancing. It's a demonstration of how far we have come that this place, which seemed so progressive and futuristic in the 1980s now seems like a dinosaur. I remember passing through it by various different routes in the years when I used to take the bus from Oxford to Cambridge (and vice-versa); the bus company seemed not to have settled on the best route, and so you saw different bits of Beds and Bucks each time, but I remember pausing outside Milton Keynes Central more than once. Now the whole place seems hopelessly dated and very uncongenial, totally lacking a human scale, and devoted entirely to the motor car. I would have supposed that it would be a good place for cycling, being flat and spacious, but there was no evidence of that when we were there.
"Rembrandt's Light" at Dulwich was the other recent show. Another excellent piece of work, brilliant curatorship, making something quite special out of quite a small show. The highlight is the Queen's "Christ and Mary Magdalene", which is shown on its own under changing light conditions. The picture of course depicts dawn, and so they bring the lights up to replicate dawn. You see a tremendous amount that way, not least because the lights end up being brighter than you would normally have in a gallery, and so you see things you wouldn't otherwise notice. It's one of my favourite pictures anyway, but I loved that. My friend John painted an "hommage" to it, in the style of Van Gogh, which now hangs in our Sacristy at Mary Mags, as his thank you to us for giving him a show.
Our other Christmas treat was "La Traviata" at Covent Garden, beautiful. Simon Keenlyside on good voice as Germont, and two young Armenians as Alfredo and Violetta. Terrific music, beautifully played, and a great staging (by Richard Eyre, twenty-five years old). I reminisced about seeing the Zeffirelli film, with Placido Domingo as Alfredo, but I knew that was back in the eighties, 1982, as it turns out. We treated ourselves to dinner in the opera house restaurant, and I was amused to see that the menu is ten pounds more for the opera than it is for the ballet. Of course they will be able to justify it, but I rather suppose it's just more expensive because everything connected with opera is routinely more expensive.
Friday, 27 December 2019
I GROW OLD...
Obviously, one of the signs of getting older is that people stand up to give you a seat on the tube, but I am still very surprised when a young woman offers me her seat. Just possibly wearing the collar may have something to do with it as well, but that doesn't seem very likely in contemporary London.
More alarming though, is to discover that your contemporaries are now occupying great offices in the land which are positions of eminence and seniority. This is very concerning when you have always believed, as I have done, that these are positions for grown-ups, who are a distinct species, quite different from you. So, as you can imagine, it was a bit disconcerting to discover that Bishop Stephen Cottrell (the current Bishop of Chelmsford) has been chosen to be the next Archbishop of York, because I knew Stephen very well when we trained together at St Stephen's House. He is two or three years older than me, and was in his final year when I started at Staggers, and he was my group leader. Groups were a feature of institutions in the 1980s; we were all organised into groups across the years, with a tutor vaguely supervising us, and we were expected to socialise and support each other. Mostly, though, it was a way of ensuring that certain domestic tasks got carried out (like serving dinner). You got to know your group pretty well. Your group leader could make your life less than pleasant. Stephen was my bishop for a while in Reading, having been appointed to the post instead of the unfortunate Fr Jeffrey John, when the irony was that their views and theological approach were virtually the same, but Stephen was judged acceptable because he is married with children, while Jeffrey was not because he is a gay man in a (celibate) relationship. From Reading Stephen was advanced to the diocese of Chelmsford, which is his (and my) home diocese, for he grew up in Southend, or rather Anglo-Catholic Leigh-on-Sea (which is posher than Southend). I am slightly surprised that Stephen should be put in charge of the Northern Province, as he has spent almost the whole of his working life in the south-east of England, and has always been rather the professional Londoner, speaking a sort of Estuary English that comes very naturally to him. To be fair, he was diocesan missioner in Wakefield for a while (a diocese which no longer exists), but that's his only contact with the north. I have no doubt that he has been an effective Bishop of Chelmsford, and clearly the Archbishop of Canterbury sees him as a suitable collaborator for York, but you would have expected someone with more experience of the north (especially after Archbishop Sentamu, who is also pretty un-northern). It is amusingly ironic that a life-long Socialist like Stephen should be sent to York at exactly the time that vast swathes of the north turn Tory.
For me, the Archbishop of York should be someone older than me, whom I can respect. Still more does this apply to the Governor of the Bank of England, and I exclaimed with surprise on the tube the other day when I realised from the report in the standard that the Andrew Bailey who has been appointed the next Governor was the same Andrew Bailey whom I knew at university. I remember he was jolly bright, and he was certainly the sort of person who would have gone to work there, but it still came as a jolting surprise, mainly in realising how ancient I must have become. I remember bumping into Andrew in Florence in the summer of 1981, when we were both doing the cultural thing, thanks to cheap student rail fares, but we weren't ever particularly close. We both read History; he was at Queen's, I was at Emma, and he was in the Labour Club while I was in CUCA, but we moved in similar political circles. As I recall, we had common enemies, a coterie of "moderates" in both organisations who hung around together and shared backgrounds of similar wealth and privilege (among them, amusingly, Sir Bernard Jenkin, who is now my brother's MP). We provincial grammar school products gravitated together.
More alarming though, is to discover that your contemporaries are now occupying great offices in the land which are positions of eminence and seniority. This is very concerning when you have always believed, as I have done, that these are positions for grown-ups, who are a distinct species, quite different from you. So, as you can imagine, it was a bit disconcerting to discover that Bishop Stephen Cottrell (the current Bishop of Chelmsford) has been chosen to be the next Archbishop of York, because I knew Stephen very well when we trained together at St Stephen's House. He is two or three years older than me, and was in his final year when I started at Staggers, and he was my group leader. Groups were a feature of institutions in the 1980s; we were all organised into groups across the years, with a tutor vaguely supervising us, and we were expected to socialise and support each other. Mostly, though, it was a way of ensuring that certain domestic tasks got carried out (like serving dinner). You got to know your group pretty well. Your group leader could make your life less than pleasant. Stephen was my bishop for a while in Reading, having been appointed to the post instead of the unfortunate Fr Jeffrey John, when the irony was that their views and theological approach were virtually the same, but Stephen was judged acceptable because he is married with children, while Jeffrey was not because he is a gay man in a (celibate) relationship. From Reading Stephen was advanced to the diocese of Chelmsford, which is his (and my) home diocese, for he grew up in Southend, or rather Anglo-Catholic Leigh-on-Sea (which is posher than Southend). I am slightly surprised that Stephen should be put in charge of the Northern Province, as he has spent almost the whole of his working life in the south-east of England, and has always been rather the professional Londoner, speaking a sort of Estuary English that comes very naturally to him. To be fair, he was diocesan missioner in Wakefield for a while (a diocese which no longer exists), but that's his only contact with the north. I have no doubt that he has been an effective Bishop of Chelmsford, and clearly the Archbishop of Canterbury sees him as a suitable collaborator for York, but you would have expected someone with more experience of the north (especially after Archbishop Sentamu, who is also pretty un-northern). It is amusingly ironic that a life-long Socialist like Stephen should be sent to York at exactly the time that vast swathes of the north turn Tory.
For me, the Archbishop of York should be someone older than me, whom I can respect. Still more does this apply to the Governor of the Bank of England, and I exclaimed with surprise on the tube the other day when I realised from the report in the standard that the Andrew Bailey who has been appointed the next Governor was the same Andrew Bailey whom I knew at university. I remember he was jolly bright, and he was certainly the sort of person who would have gone to work there, but it still came as a jolting surprise, mainly in realising how ancient I must have become. I remember bumping into Andrew in Florence in the summer of 1981, when we were both doing the cultural thing, thanks to cheap student rail fares, but we weren't ever particularly close. We both read History; he was at Queen's, I was at Emma, and he was in the Labour Club while I was in CUCA, but we moved in similar political circles. As I recall, we had common enemies, a coterie of "moderates" in both organisations who hung around together and shared backgrounds of similar wealth and privilege (among them, amusingly, Sir Bernard Jenkin, who is now my brother's MP). We provincial grammar school products gravitated together.
Thursday, 12 December 2019
GUNS AND HOUSES
It was horrible to learn of a shooting on Walterton Road last week, on the edge of the parish. A young man remains in hospital, critically injured, after being shot in the neck by someone passing, apparently on a moped at 8.30 in the evening. Details remain sketchy, and contradictory, as some people thought a car was involved, and either two shots, or seven were mentioned. A member of the congregation who lives on the street had heard and seen nothing unusual. The previous evening we had been told by the local police that our silly youths on the Estate have decided that they want to have their own gang, instead of being disputed territory between the Harrow Road Boys, the Lisson Green Men, and whatever they are called on the Mozart Estate (the virtuosi perhaps?) and so they have taken to taunting other postcode dwellers on social media. The result of these taunts apparently was that ten of the Lisson Green "Men" turned up at the youth club on the Amberley Estate with machetes. We really do not need this. Of course we can reassure people that you are unlikely to have any problem if you are not a young black male, but young black men are actually human beings too, and part of the community.
Bizarrely the line that the Evening Standard chose to take on the shooting was that this was a nice street in prosperous Maida Vale, where "Regency townhouses sell for £3 million". This is laughably misleading. First they need a history lesson; nothing on Walterton Road dates back to the Regency (1811-1820). This area was developed after 1870. And when I looked on Zoopla, the average price of a house was £1.3 million, but that was only an estimate because so few houses are actually sold; almost all the houses are divided into flats, and almost all the property is social housing. Most of the property belongs to our local housing association, WECH (Walterton & Elgin Community Homes, the clue is in the acronym) which is a remarkable thing, a well-run housing association, run for the benefit of the residents. Many of those in Walterton Road are Bangladeshi families, as the older Caribbean families are gradually moving out, but the street is pretty diverse; it was one of the great centres of squatting back in the 1970s, and several of The Clash lived there before they achieved success.
WECH was set up in the wake of the "Homes for Votes" scandal, the notorious episode of gerrymandering by Dame Shirley (later Lady) Porter, when as Leader of Westminster City Council in the 1980s, she moved council tenants out of marginal wards and sold off those properties. Many of those moved out were transferred into the Harrow Road and Westbourne Wards, which were regarded as hopeless, and some homeless people were even housed in two semi-derelict blocks of flats on Elgin Avenue which were full of crumbling asbestos (a fact well-known to council officers). The Thatcher government had created mechanisms to encourage housing associations, and tenant buyouts, but Lady Porter was much discomfited when the council tenants in Elgin Avenue and Walterton Road (and streets round about) organised themselves to acquire the property. So WECH was born, and it has remained tenant-controlled and has worked hard to improve housing conditions (the asbestos-riddled flats were demolished). Lady Porter was found to have acted illegally and ordered to pay a surcharge of over £42 million, but the council later accepted a settlement of £12 million, on the basis that legal action would not be cost-effective. She fled to Israel.
In my experience most housing associations are pretty unresponsive to their tenants' problems, and are in fact more difficult to put pressure on than council housing departments (which at least respond to complaints from councillors) as they are not actually accountable to anyone. They pose as community-focussed organisations, but are in fact raising money by mortgaging their properties and playing the US property market. Anyone involved with community issues in this part of London will tell you horror stories about Genesis and Notting Hill, which have now merged (into an organisation whose two computer systems are incompatible). but they seem to be typical. Sadly, Genesis began life as the Paddington Churches' Housing Association, but the churches gradually lost interest, and the management manipulated the rules to take control from them, with the result that an organisation that had been set up on Christian principles (in the wake of Rachman) turned into an entirely secular and indeed entirely godless company, which asset-stripped former Church property. Both St Peter's and Emmanuel churches are built into blocks of Genesis flats, which gives us endless troubles, as witness the spectacular damp here in St Peter's House, which Notting Hill/Genesis are doing nothing about, as our cupboards fill with mould, and the paint drops off the corridor walls. I'm just glad I don't have to live there, as some of my predecessors did.
Bizarrely the line that the Evening Standard chose to take on the shooting was that this was a nice street in prosperous Maida Vale, where "Regency townhouses sell for £3 million". This is laughably misleading. First they need a history lesson; nothing on Walterton Road dates back to the Regency (1811-1820). This area was developed after 1870. And when I looked on Zoopla, the average price of a house was £1.3 million, but that was only an estimate because so few houses are actually sold; almost all the houses are divided into flats, and almost all the property is social housing. Most of the property belongs to our local housing association, WECH (Walterton & Elgin Community Homes, the clue is in the acronym) which is a remarkable thing, a well-run housing association, run for the benefit of the residents. Many of those in Walterton Road are Bangladeshi families, as the older Caribbean families are gradually moving out, but the street is pretty diverse; it was one of the great centres of squatting back in the 1970s, and several of The Clash lived there before they achieved success.
WECH was set up in the wake of the "Homes for Votes" scandal, the notorious episode of gerrymandering by Dame Shirley (later Lady) Porter, when as Leader of Westminster City Council in the 1980s, she moved council tenants out of marginal wards and sold off those properties. Many of those moved out were transferred into the Harrow Road and Westbourne Wards, which were regarded as hopeless, and some homeless people were even housed in two semi-derelict blocks of flats on Elgin Avenue which were full of crumbling asbestos (a fact well-known to council officers). The Thatcher government had created mechanisms to encourage housing associations, and tenant buyouts, but Lady Porter was much discomfited when the council tenants in Elgin Avenue and Walterton Road (and streets round about) organised themselves to acquire the property. So WECH was born, and it has remained tenant-controlled and has worked hard to improve housing conditions (the asbestos-riddled flats were demolished). Lady Porter was found to have acted illegally and ordered to pay a surcharge of over £42 million, but the council later accepted a settlement of £12 million, on the basis that legal action would not be cost-effective. She fled to Israel.
In my experience most housing associations are pretty unresponsive to their tenants' problems, and are in fact more difficult to put pressure on than council housing departments (which at least respond to complaints from councillors) as they are not actually accountable to anyone. They pose as community-focussed organisations, but are in fact raising money by mortgaging their properties and playing the US property market. Anyone involved with community issues in this part of London will tell you horror stories about Genesis and Notting Hill, which have now merged (into an organisation whose two computer systems are incompatible). but they seem to be typical. Sadly, Genesis began life as the Paddington Churches' Housing Association, but the churches gradually lost interest, and the management manipulated the rules to take control from them, with the result that an organisation that had been set up on Christian principles (in the wake of Rachman) turned into an entirely secular and indeed entirely godless company, which asset-stripped former Church property. Both St Peter's and Emmanuel churches are built into blocks of Genesis flats, which gives us endless troubles, as witness the spectacular damp here in St Peter's House, which Notting Hill/Genesis are doing nothing about, as our cupboards fill with mould, and the paint drops off the corridor walls. I'm just glad I don't have to live there, as some of my predecessors did.
Friday, 15 November 2019
THE DAYS GO QUICKLY
It's been a heavy fortnight. We hosted the AGM of the Ecclesiastical Architects' and Surveyors' Association, which happens alongside a joint awards ceremony with the National Churches Trust, and I had to speak to them, with Biba Dow, our architect, about the Project. We were also shortlisted for the Presidents' Award, which we didn't get. The winner was St Augustine's Priory Church, in Fulham Palace Road, which was a worthy winner. The field was a lot stronger than last year, though I do think it is hard to judge new work inside old buildings against whole new buildings. Last year I thought the runner-up, a lovely brand new church in Scotland, which was the only actual new building, should have won. This year there were beautiful refurbishments, like the winner and St Andrew's, Holborn, as well as whole new buildings, like the runner-up, in Bethnal Green, and ourselves, all of high quality, so I wasn't surprised no to win (though obviously I thought we should have done). The logistics of this event were very complex, involving keeping the people just coming for the awards ceremony separate from the EASA members' AGM, and feeding them first, so that EASA members could look at the shortlisted projects in their lunch break, along with the Duke of Gloucester and Prince Nicholas von Preussen, the chief judges. Obviously, HRH had to have special provision as well. All went off very smoothly, (though the royal protection officers grumbled about the size of lunch) and people were very kind about our talk. NCT still like us, which is very good.
The next day we had the boys of Sussex House School rehearsing for their processions at the Requiem, which is always a bit of a circus. This year, they have a new music master, much younger and less scary than his predecessor, so some of the dynamics were different. Then the excellent Sheila, who arranges flowers and cleans, had to be let into the church (and let out again) late at night to prepare for the Requiem. I successfully unset and reset alarms, and Sheila made wonderful, huge flower arrangements. The Requiem is always a little easier when All Souls' Day falls on a Saturday, as it did this time, because you can devote the day to preparations, and also we do it at 6pm, rather than the normal 7.30pm, and so clearing up afterwards is much less traumatic. They sang Durufle, which is lovely, and I was joined by the Vicar of St Augustine's, Kilburn, who brought a competent thurifer with him. All very good. The sanctus and benedictus of this setting work tremendously well with the canon of the Mass in the (deeply old-fashioned, but authentic) way we do it. The only down-side of Saturday is that fewer of the Sussex House families turn up than they would on a weekday. Still, it was a big congregation, and a superb act of worship. Also our new heating worked wonderfully well.
Then on the Sunday, after our own worship, we went along to All Saints, Margaret Street, for Fr Alan Moses's final service, Solemn Evensong and Benediction. Fr Alan has been there a long time, and has always been a good friend to St Mary Mags, looking after our huge monstrance when there was nowhere secure to store it here (and kindly restoring the lunette). There was a real sense of reverence and joy about the worship, although I was sorry not to be able to hear much of the sermon, seated at the back of the nave. The preacher was Bishop Allen Shin, who is suffragan bishop of New York, and was attached to All Saints twenty years ago. He was Chaplain of Keble when I first came here, so he presented me when I was licensed. Fr George Bush, seated at the side, but mush closer to the pulpit, heard it all, and said I didn't miss much. I thought it was a problem with the sound system, but old members of All Saints said they could never understand what he said when he was a regular preacher.
On the Monday morning after that, it was straight off to France for the Two Cities Area Clergy Conference, held at Merville, near Lille, in what had been the seminary of the Archdiocese of Lille, a vast, echoing brick pile of the 1920s. The rather handsome chapel had clearly been stripped of all decoration in the reforms, and there were a couple of mosaics in corridors just to tantalize you with how it might have been, but it suited our gathering, seventy clergy from the cities of London and Westminster. It was a surprisingly enjoyable few days with excellent input from Malcolm Guite, poet and Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge.
Straight off the Eurostar I put on smart clothes and mingled with donors at an Emmanuel College drinks party in St Mary Mags. I arrived just in time to give a little talk about the Project, which the Master, Dame Fiona Reynolds (who used to run the National Trust) was very kind about. The lead up to this had been bizarre, as the Emma development office had arranged the event with our caterers without realising that it was my church, and then didn't invite me. I sent in a donation I had long promised, but the penny didn't drop until Robert Folkes emailed them to point it out. I was in France when the development office finally emailed me to invite me along, so I thought I should make the effort. There were a couple of old faces I knew, and other people were kind about our works.
This week we hosted a visit from the Ancient Monuments Society, who had to be divided into three groups, so many of them were there, so Oliver Caroe (our conservation architect) and I had to do our tours three times over, as well as an introductory double-act. This was good fun, but it would have been more enjoyable had it not been arranged for the same day as the Grand Junction Launch Party, which meant that preparations for that were going on around us. Still, AMS said they wanted to see the church at work, and they certainly did.
The Launch Party was well-attended, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Blondel Cluff CBE spoke for the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and we were very impressed with her (except that she continually referred to us as "St Mary's"). Bill Jacob did the thanks, and I just welcomed everyone and reminded them how far we had come. The community team had produced a nice little 3 minute film about the community projects. The Area Dean, Fr Paul Thomas, spoke for the Diocese, and the excellent Graham King spoke for Westminster City Council. At least some of the major donors were there, which was good, along with lots of our volunteers. We had a singer and a poet perform, before an interval at which most people left, which was a shame, as we then had a hip-hop artist called Kitch, who was quite remarkable, as he had a terrible stammer when speaking, but became entirely articulate when rapping. The last band were just a bit weird for my taste. A fair amount was drunk, and lots of the people involved with the Project were there and were able to celebrate together, which was nice. One of the designers presented me with two little tiles, uniform with our signage, of my initials, which was sweet.
In the meantime, I have had two PCC meetings, a management board meeting, First Communion preparation and anxious discussions with a school head about the mental health of a member of staff. Now I've got a funeral to arrange.
The next day we had the boys of Sussex House School rehearsing for their processions at the Requiem, which is always a bit of a circus. This year, they have a new music master, much younger and less scary than his predecessor, so some of the dynamics were different. Then the excellent Sheila, who arranges flowers and cleans, had to be let into the church (and let out again) late at night to prepare for the Requiem. I successfully unset and reset alarms, and Sheila made wonderful, huge flower arrangements. The Requiem is always a little easier when All Souls' Day falls on a Saturday, as it did this time, because you can devote the day to preparations, and also we do it at 6pm, rather than the normal 7.30pm, and so clearing up afterwards is much less traumatic. They sang Durufle, which is lovely, and I was joined by the Vicar of St Augustine's, Kilburn, who brought a competent thurifer with him. All very good. The sanctus and benedictus of this setting work tremendously well with the canon of the Mass in the (deeply old-fashioned, but authentic) way we do it. The only down-side of Saturday is that fewer of the Sussex House families turn up than they would on a weekday. Still, it was a big congregation, and a superb act of worship. Also our new heating worked wonderfully well.
Then on the Sunday, after our own worship, we went along to All Saints, Margaret Street, for Fr Alan Moses's final service, Solemn Evensong and Benediction. Fr Alan has been there a long time, and has always been a good friend to St Mary Mags, looking after our huge monstrance when there was nowhere secure to store it here (and kindly restoring the lunette). There was a real sense of reverence and joy about the worship, although I was sorry not to be able to hear much of the sermon, seated at the back of the nave. The preacher was Bishop Allen Shin, who is suffragan bishop of New York, and was attached to All Saints twenty years ago. He was Chaplain of Keble when I first came here, so he presented me when I was licensed. Fr George Bush, seated at the side, but mush closer to the pulpit, heard it all, and said I didn't miss much. I thought it was a problem with the sound system, but old members of All Saints said they could never understand what he said when he was a regular preacher.
On the Monday morning after that, it was straight off to France for the Two Cities Area Clergy Conference, held at Merville, near Lille, in what had been the seminary of the Archdiocese of Lille, a vast, echoing brick pile of the 1920s. The rather handsome chapel had clearly been stripped of all decoration in the reforms, and there were a couple of mosaics in corridors just to tantalize you with how it might have been, but it suited our gathering, seventy clergy from the cities of London and Westminster. It was a surprisingly enjoyable few days with excellent input from Malcolm Guite, poet and Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge.
Straight off the Eurostar I put on smart clothes and mingled with donors at an Emmanuel College drinks party in St Mary Mags. I arrived just in time to give a little talk about the Project, which the Master, Dame Fiona Reynolds (who used to run the National Trust) was very kind about. The lead up to this had been bizarre, as the Emma development office had arranged the event with our caterers without realising that it was my church, and then didn't invite me. I sent in a donation I had long promised, but the penny didn't drop until Robert Folkes emailed them to point it out. I was in France when the development office finally emailed me to invite me along, so I thought I should make the effort. There were a couple of old faces I knew, and other people were kind about our works.
This week we hosted a visit from the Ancient Monuments Society, who had to be divided into three groups, so many of them were there, so Oliver Caroe (our conservation architect) and I had to do our tours three times over, as well as an introductory double-act. This was good fun, but it would have been more enjoyable had it not been arranged for the same day as the Grand Junction Launch Party, which meant that preparations for that were going on around us. Still, AMS said they wanted to see the church at work, and they certainly did.
The Launch Party was well-attended, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Blondel Cluff CBE spoke for the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and we were very impressed with her (except that she continually referred to us as "St Mary's"). Bill Jacob did the thanks, and I just welcomed everyone and reminded them how far we had come. The community team had produced a nice little 3 minute film about the community projects. The Area Dean, Fr Paul Thomas, spoke for the Diocese, and the excellent Graham King spoke for Westminster City Council. At least some of the major donors were there, which was good, along with lots of our volunteers. We had a singer and a poet perform, before an interval at which most people left, which was a shame, as we then had a hip-hop artist called Kitch, who was quite remarkable, as he had a terrible stammer when speaking, but became entirely articulate when rapping. The last band were just a bit weird for my taste. A fair amount was drunk, and lots of the people involved with the Project were there and were able to celebrate together, which was nice. One of the designers presented me with two little tiles, uniform with our signage, of my initials, which was sweet.
In the meantime, I have had two PCC meetings, a management board meeting, First Communion preparation and anxious discussions with a school head about the mental health of a member of staff. Now I've got a funeral to arrange.
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