Monday 31 October 2016

MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS




O, GIVE ME A HOME…

We have a Harrow Road Ministers’ Fraternal, which basically means that a bunch of us meet for lunch every six weeks or so, and arrange an ecumenical service for Good Friday (the one that attracted a noise complaint this year) and another for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (which is at the end of January). The make-up of the group is quite fluid, because it’s not as though we live in an area with clear boundaries; essentially it’s the northern half of the Anglican Deanery of Paddington (the ancient parish and former London borough of Paddington). Except that the two furthest parishes, St John’s, Kensal Green, in the west, and St Augustine’s, Kilburn Park, in the north, are not usually part of it, because they do ecumenical things with nearer neighbours in other boroughs (Kensal Town, in Kensington, and Kilburn, in Camden or Brent).
The choice of ecumenical partners is also a bit eccentric: at the heart of it is the Methodist Church in Fernhead Road (which we might call West Kilburn), whose former church is now the Maida Vale public library (in Shirland Road), which gives them a sort of sense of ownership of the whole area (and there isn’t another Methodist church for some distance). The other major partner is Our Lady of Lourdes and St Vincent de Paul, the Roman Catholic bunker on the Harrow Road, just across from Maida Hill Market, but the peculiarity there is that they are never actually represented by the parish priest; the ministers’ fraternal is attended by a Catholic layperson. We don’t include West Kilburn Baptist Chapel (a traditional-looking building on Carlton Vale, who would surely look towards Kilburn if they felt like being ecumenical) or the independent chapel on Kilburn Lane. My neighbours at Westbourne Park Baptist Church are felt to be out of the area (south of the railway) and their focus is definitely different from ours. Nor do we include my Roman Catholic neighbours on the Warwick Estate, Our Lady of Sorrows, but I’m not sure that Fr Sharbel, its Maronite priest, would find much need to work with us. We all (I think) have tenant churches who use our buildings, and we periodically talk about inviting them to things, but we all know that they wouldn't come to the Fraternal because they're all doing normal jobs as well as ministering to their congregations. We used to include the Queen’s Park United Reformed Church, in its modern building on the Harrow Road corner of Third Avenue, but sadly they have closed down; we didn’t get a chance to explore this with their last minister, who came and went quite quickly. 

So the Fraternal met the other day, at the Manse (for the very first time). The old Methodist minister, Alan, always entertained us in a room at the church, which felt very characteristic of its type, with formica surfaces and mismatched chairs, but Paul, the new man, invited us to his house.  Now the Manse is not adjacent to the Methodist church, oh no. The Manse is in Queen’s Park, but not “our” Queen’s Park, the Westminster ward of that name, basically comprising what people call “The Avenues”, the Artisans’, Labourers’ and General Dwellings Company estate of 1875-81, which is a planned estate of little gothic artisans’ cottages most of which are still social housing, and which is somewhat oddly in the W10 postcode. No, the Manse is in Queen’s Park NW6, north of the West Coast Main Line, and facing onto Queen’s Park, the Corporation of the City of London’s thirty-acre park dating from 1887. To avoid confusion, I call that Brondesbury, but estate agents insist on Queen’s Park. Anyway, Paul’s manse is a very fine late Victorian villa, beautifully presented (as the estate agents say), and he told us that he has a high court judge as a neighbour, and that the house next door went for £5.5 million the other week. The parakeets were screaming in the park. I had a sense of how the other half lives. That must actually be a bit of a challenge for Paul, who is a good guy, and thoroughly grounded. It is a charming house, but I can’t help feeling more comfortable here on the Warwick Estate.


ALL CHANGE

 The Indian restaurant across the road from St Peter’s has had a makeover, and has clearly changed hands. Opening offers are advertised. It used to be the Maida Vale Tandoori, but no longer. I saw people up ladders taking down the big white letters that proclaimed that name, and repainting the fascia board (curiously almost the same colour). I wondered what the new name would be; four letters were re-erected (almost straight) reading “Mala”. It’s a Bengali first name, but presumably means something as well, I know not what. But it rather appears that they looked at the array of letters, Scrabble-like, and made something out of what they had.

Curiously the little café in the same block has morphed, almost unnoticed, into a tiny convenience store. Perhaps its reputation will improve. William Hill shows no shadow of alteration.


FAREWELL TO ZEITA

On the last day before the half-term break we said farewell at St Mary Magdalene’s School to the remarkable Zeita, who has been working there, in various different roles, for thirty-seven years. Five years ago the Bishop of London came and dedicated a newly set-out garden at the school as “Zeita’s Garden”, and we all sort of assumed she would soon retire, but she didn’t, because she just loves the children. She has been working in the Nursery for the past few years, where her palpable faith and good nature have been invaluable in giving the children an impression of what a Christian life is meant to be about. That’s real Christian education.  Often in recent years I would see Zeita’s husband, Jody, dropping her off, having driven her over from Barking! For the farewell assembly Jody and other family members came to share the occasion, and everyone sang “The Irish Rover”. It was all terribly emotional. I took family members out to see Zeita’s Garden, and as we crossed the playground we smelt the distinctive scent of weed, presumably drifting down from the flats, but who knows? It certainly didn’t come from the garden, but it is indicative of the environment Zeita has worked in for so long. That sort of quiet devotion to the community is something you don’t see very often.


Wednesday 26 October 2016

JAILHOUSE ROCK

Jailhouse Rock

My nephew decided a few months ago that he was fed up with being a land surveyor, and wanted instead to become a prison officer, so that he could help rehabilitate criminals. We all applauded this socially-useful aspiration, and wished him well. To be fair, people who know people who have been in prison reacted with satirical laughter. He has now thoroughly investigated the prison service and finds that as a  married man with children and a mortgage he simply can't afford to do it. The pay cut (to some 60% of what he's earning now) would  be too great, and it would be 5 years before he was back to a similar pay grade, and sadly family life can't sustain that. It should come as no surprise that the prison service finds it hard to attract quality applicants given how poor the pay is. It is also no surprise that corruption results. Anyone with experience of "third world" countries will testify that the first step in eliminating corruption is paying public servants well enough that they do not need to be corrupt. Do we not learn these lessons when we dish out aid?

Meanwhile the young man of our acquaintance with the gunshot wound is still on remand. The good news is: he's been moved from Wormwood Scrubs. The bad news is: he's been moved to Pentonville. Yes, that Pentonville, where an inmate was murdered last week. News reporters sounded surprised as they announced that it seemed that gang rivalries were carried on inside the gaol. Really? You'll be telling me that it's news that prisoners can get hold of drugs inside next. This is a scandal, of which the Justice Department is well aware, and about which it chooses to do nothing. There are no votes in prisoners' welfare, and worse still, you'd provoke the atavistic bile of the Daily Mail. So clearly nothing can be done.


Widower of this Parish

When the Independent ceased its print edition I stopped buying a daily paper, but began to pick up the Guardian when I went to Waitrose on a Saturday. I was a little spooked to find a column in the "Family" section headed "Widower of the Parish". This (signed "Adam Golightly", an obvious pseudonym) is an account of life as a new widower in middle age. His wife died last autumn (I think) from cancer, in her forties, she was called Helen. In other respects he is quite unlike me; he has two children (and did have a nanny) and goes abroad for work. But several of the columns have made me cry, from recognition, I suppose. I promised that this wasn't going to be a "living with cancer" blog, though it didn't really get a chance since the living didn't last very long, but now I have to promise that it won't become a "life as a widower" blog. This is just life, though I suppose widowerhood comes through occasionally.


Opus Anglicanum

As a birthday treat I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the show "Opus Anglicanum", which is of English medieval embroideries, mostly ecclesiastical. Obviously I was not the only cleric there drooling and making excited little whimpers, but actually it's for the general visitor as well, and is full of extraordinary stuff, works of exquisite beauty. I was struck by how far this felt from the Harrow Road, but of course it shouldn't, because St Mary Magdalene's was built precisely to bring that sort of beauty into these gritty urban lives. We even have embroidered seraphs after the medieval pattern (6 wings, standing on wheels) because Ninian Comper was such a thorough antiquarian. My companion remarked how amazing it must have been to step out of a medieval hovel and into a church full of beautiful things, to which I responded that this was exactly what St Mary Mags was all about. People's lives today contain a lot more colour and entertainment than in the slum 150 years ago, which makes our impact less, but I think there's still an absence of real beauty, which means our amazing building still has something to say. When our conservation work is finished (in maybe 18 months' time) I suspect the colour will make an impact too, once all the paintwork is cleaned. The sense of being enfolded in the worship of heaven should become very hard to avoid.    

Saturday 15 October 2016

SLEEPERS WAKE!




When I got to the office door yesterday, hurrying to try to open up for the breakfast club in place of the organiser who had been delayed, I met not only a volunteer for the club, but also a complainer, and I’m afraid I didn’t give him the attention he wanted. This gentleman, a resident in the sheltered flats beside St.Peter’s, wanted to complain that we had a rough sleeper in the church doorway. I needed to know that this was a good neighbourhood, (hmm, matter of debate) a residential neighbourhood (not strictly true) and that this was very bad. I would have agreed that it was very bad that in a staggeringly wealthy city, in one of the richest countries on earth, some people are forced to sleep on the street, but that wasn’t what he meant. I might also have said that the rough sleeper had been in the vicinity for several days, but he’d only become noticeable when he’d come under the church porch when it poured with rain. Clearly his presence wasn’t so bad when he didn’t make the place look untidy. The rough sleeper has very little English and is some sort of refugee, which is ironic, since the gentleman complaining about him is himself the son of Jewish refugees.


Not Melodious At All

As I was crossing to the church the other day there was a tremendous racket from magpies, several of whom were swooping around. Now and again I heard a different call, once from one of the trees, and then closer, and then I saw the source of that call, a handsome jay, and it became clear that there was another one nearby. The second jay looped out of the tree and came to rest beside the first, on the planters beside the school carpark. Almost at once the magpies started to mob them, and the jays flew off. I’d never supposed that there would be this degree of aggression between jays and magpies, who are, after all, sort of cousins in the corvid family, but it was clear that the magpies objected to having the jays on their patch. Today, I spotted it happening again, in the trees on the Green.

The magpies, despite their numbers, never seem to try to impose their will on the crows which have recently appeared on the Green. At least I say they are crows, but I remember being told in Cornwall, “If ‘ee see an old rook on ‘is own, ‘a’s a crow; but if ‘ee see a load o’crows all together, they’m rooks”. They are there in quantity, but I’m pretty sure they’re crows, neater trousers and no bald patch on the face. But why are they here? They are scavengers, so where is the carrion they feed on? And why were they not on Westbourne Green in the past?  One of the favourite films of my youth was “Excalibur”, and there is an extraordinary scene in a wintry forest with the decaying bodies of knights hung from bare branches, being pecked at by rooks. One always thinks of them as crows, but from memory I’m pretty sure they are rooks (which are noticeably more unattractive). I don’t think there are any decaying medieval corpses to attract the crows to Westbourne Green, so their appearance is a bit strange. I notice that they are patrolling the grass, and probing with their big, strong beaks, so they are presumably looking for live food in the ground, so perhaps the newly turfed area contains lots of nourishing leatherjackets and worms.


Prison Chaplains

Had an excellent session with Muslim and Christian chaplains from Wormwood Scrubs this week; we are planning an inter-faith event in church. They are very impressive people. I contemplated, but in the end didn’t ask them about a young man currently inside the Scrubs, who is known to me. He’s a relation of a church member, and was recently shot by two boys on a moped, not far from here. I’m being deliberately vague, as these things have unknown ramifications. But it may have had to do with where he was, or he may have “been a naughty boy” as it has been reported. Either way, there is a whole life going on beside us of which we know nothing, only bumping up against it when it bursts in on the lives of people like my church member.  Wormwood Scrubs, despite its fame, is only a local prison these days, so it’s full of men on remand from local boroughs; the only trouble is that if someone wants to hurt this young man he has nowhere to run to now, and is intensely vulnerable. The local prison just reproduces the life on the local streets, but with all the law-abiding bits taken out. It’s all very worrying for our member.