PINES EXPRESS

A Coat of Wealthy Firs

I spent a couple of days in Bournemouth, to preach and attend a meeting. This was at the invitation of the Rector of Bournemouth, who is developing a Heritage Lottery Fund bid for the town-centre church, St Peter's, a church designed by G E Street, and with a chapel by Ninian Comper (sound familiar?), and it was a very pleasant stay. St Peter's, Bournemouth, is not Street's most adventurous church in terms of plan, but the details are gorgeous. It is mostly of a pale, silver-grey stone, but the clerestory is cream and red brick. The tower is massive, all of this silver stone, square, with big pinnacles on the parapet bearing statues of saints and holding flying buttresses going back to the spire. The spire is a lot like ours, but with more detailed decoration. The excellent Thomas Earp ("Street's hands") was responsible for lots of fine carving, both inside and out, particularly an exuberant pulpit and a fine churchyard cross. I got particularly excited at the lychgate, which has a rather domestic tiled roof and a series of seven black, ogee-shaped roof braces, which just make a wonderful sight.

The congregation on Sunday was quite large, and laughed generously at my jokes. I reminded them that John Betjeman loved both my church and their town and repeated his famous description of Bournemouth as a recumbent old lady "wearing a coat of fine and wealthy firs" (it's in "First and Last Loves") which is just such a good joke that I had longed to repeat it out loud. Read it, and laugh. I also pointed out various specific similarities between our buildings, and the bizarre coincidence that the choir were singing Durufle's "Cum Jubilo" Mass, which had its English premiere here at Mary Mags.

I made rather a lot in my sermon about Victorian Anglo-Catholics going to Bournemouth to die (which is of course unfair, they went when very ill, hoping to recover) which got a laugh, but it's true. They have a chapel dedicated to the memory of Blessed John Keble, who worshipped there in the winter of 1865-6, when it was his wife who was supposed to be ill, but him who died. They have a plaque on the choir stall in which Mr Gladstone sat for his last Communion in church (he was actually whisked off home to Hawarden to die). And of course, my great predecessor, the founder, Fr Richard Temple West, also went to Bournemouth and died, exhausted by his labours. All those high-church folk went to Bournemouth because they knew they could get sound religion there, which wasn't true of some resorts. Of course it's Brighton that was the famous Anglo-Catholic stronghold (what they called "London, Brighton and South Coast Religion") but actually Fr Wagner didn't transform Brighton's churches until much nearer the end of the century; for the mid-Victorians Bournemouth was the place for exotic religion.


Summer Heat

It has been hot in London the last two days, and madness seems to be in the warmth. Yesterday I watched a young man on a bicycle pull a wheelie down Chippenham Road, from the traffic lights almost to the end. Today a young man on a motorbike was also doing wheelies; I worried that he could not see me as he came towards me in Marylands Road, but that turned out to be fine. Then two minutes later he appeared at the Chippenham Road lights and pulled away, doing a wheelie, whereupon he turned round and came back through the lights at red. Quite bizarre.


No Need To Ask Why

I was struck by a BBC reporter in Manchester struggling over the reason why the terrorist should have killed so many young girls; surely there's no need to ask why. First of all, people were enjoying themselves, which puritans hate. Secondly, it was music, which is forbidden by the puritans. Thirdly, it was a shameless female pop singer encouraging young girls to behave in similarly unsuitable ways. We should never underestimate the deep hatred of these puritans for female liberation. In the bomber's mind, these girls were being corrupted, and their behaviour was shameful; they should have been at home learning to cook and clean and know their place. Remember, they shot Malala for getting an education (and she's actually pretty conservative). Remember the Beslan siege. They aren't sentimental about children like us, which they no doubt regard as one of our weaknesses. So, not difficult to understand. Entirely of a piece with their misogynist ideology. 

SHORTS

Goslings

I read an article recently that said that all sorts of Hollywood stars were trying to look like Ryan Gosling, and that ordinary men should follow their example. My problem is that I don't know what he looks like, but I suspect there's no point in finding out. Real goslings, though.. we do have them! A genuine sign of spring is the appearance of baby waterfowl, and a pair of Canada geese on the canal have produced two goslings, slightly comical fluffy yellow-and-charcoal things. I was fascinated to see one of the adults getting very aggressive, standing up and hissing, with wings akimbo, apparently because of a dog, which ironically was wearing a muzzle and paying them no attention whatsoever.


School Clubs

I was told the other day about a local primary school (with which I have no connection) which has a maths club for gifted and talented children. This club is run by a teaching assistant, who happens to be very well qualified; so well-qualified in fact that they offer private tuition in maths. Nothing remarkable about that, except that the only people allowed to be part of the club at school are those who employ the private tutor outside school. Let's just say that I'm pleased that the schools I'm involved with would regard that sort of thing as very foreign to their ethos.


Flower Arrangements

One of the things I enjoy least about being a parish priest is having to ask people to take on jobs for the parish; I'm just temperamentally bad at it. I'm embarrassed to ask someone to do a job I wouldn't want to do myself, and don't want to burden already busy and committed people. I'm also a poor talent-spotter compared to many clergy. The added complication, in parishes like my last one, is that sometimes someone is sitting there waiting to be asked, and so you run the risk not only of heaping an unwanted burden on the person you do ask, but of offending the person you didn't ask (despite the fact that you had no idea they wanted to be asked). Well, this week I had to find a new flower arranger for St Peter's. Our existing flower arranger has developed a painful medical condition that makes it all rather burdensome and she finally threw in the towel when she found that all her Easter arrangements had been interfered with, and the water removed from some, and hence expensive flowers that should have lasted three weeks were all wilted after a few days. As she had spent four hours doing them she wasn't best pleased. Our problem is that the building is in constant use, and most particularly three other worshipping communities use the church, none of whom have much interest in flowers, and two of whom move almost everything, and one of whom has children who hare around, poorly-supervised. It's one of the perils of having a modern all-purpose building that people just don't behave with the same respect as they might have for a more obviously churchy space. Christians from other traditions have other priorities: the Pentecostalists are uninterested in things of beauty but very exercised about big amplifiers, while the Ethiopian Orthodox have no place for anything not mentioned in their traditional formularies (though they'll happily burn any candle you leave available for them). Our normal defence is to lock things away, but obviously we don't lock away flower arrangements, and hence they got messed up. So, retirement of angry flower arranger. I have been successful, though, in recruiting a new flower arranger, who seemed happy to be asked.  


On the Doorstep

It seems to have got very busy on the doorstep since Easter. Among others recently I've had  the very drunk homeless man (who only ever wants a cup of tea and a sandwich), the Pakistani Christian who is also now homeless and was in court for allegedly causing criminal damage to a police cell, the Irish, Arsenal-supporting, self-harmer who needed to get back to his psychiatric in-patient unit, the plump man with missing fingers and stab wounds who needed help with his gas and electric, the big West Indian with multiple health issues who now has TB, and a young Hungarian who was looking to do odd jobs (and observed of one of the others, "Father, I think some people don't want to work.") And as I was writing this, the wife of the man who now needs a liver transplant.

FREEWHEELING

Changing Seasons

For me the mark of the real onset of spring is when my hay fever starts. This year we have moved seamlessly from cold to hay fever, and I never noticed the change. Cycling on Saturday I suddenly realised that the wind was blowing all sorts of pollen and tree debris into my eyes, which was all very unpleasant. It was an annoyingly cold wind as well. So there I was, in a winter jersey, with eyes watering from hay fever. Not fair!

I was struck by the sight of a fellow-cyclist on Saturday wearing full current Movistar team kit (not usual in The Regent's Park). Most people wear anonymous black, but then there are the club jerseys, and the randomly assembled obsolete team items (which is my style). Seeing this chap reminded me of possibly the worst replica kit I have ever seen, worn by a middle-aged (presumably Spanish) couple at the Tour de France last year.Now the thing you need to know about Movistar is that their kit is dark navy blue, with a blobby lime-green M (for Movistar, the mobile arm of the Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica); not the most striking kit in the peloton, indeed some might say dull, but with more dignity than many teams. Full disclosure: I own a Movistar jersey from about five years ago, but it's a team issue one made for Giovanni Visconti when he was Italian national champion, and so much of it is in Italian colours, with only portions in navy blue. The offending replica kit, a matching pair, spotted at the Ardeche time-trial, was firstly very shiny (which didn't seem quite authentic) but most strikingly, purple. Not navy at all, but violet. Vivid, glossy, mauve. Surely this wasn't sold by Movistar's real kit manufacturers? In which case are there really pirated cycle jerseys out there? We've all seen dodgy Manchester United and Real Madrid shirts  (you can buy them in every street market in the developing world) and obviously there are Chinese factories turning out millions of the things, but cycling jerseys? Really? Is there truly a big enough market? Actually, thinking about it, the really surprising thing was that they weren't just jerseys, but the full kit, with proper matching cycling shorts. Churning out a counterfeit jersey isn't so different from a football shirt (though it does have pockets and a zip) but shorts are different, being a very odd shape, but more significantly also containing an anatomically-shaped pad. Manufacturing those is not a trivial business, and would take a bit of investment. So can there really be sweatshops turning out counterfeits? You'd surely need to be manufacturing kosher cycling kit, and surely any European supplier would go bananas if they found their manufacturer was ripping off someone else's kit. Of course, it could just be that this was perfectly legitimate replica kit from the proper manufacturer, but really badly produced, but that seems unlikely in the perfectionist world of cycling accessories.


Sights and Smells

I routinely cycle around the Outer Circle of The Regent's Park, just doing laps, which means that I become accustomed to the environment. On a bike you notice smells, for instance. There is a place, just before the entrance to the Zoo, which is routinely enveloped in a miasma of fish-and-chips, but then as I was passing last week I realised it now smelt of chargrilled meat, which came as a surprise, but then (on a subsequent lap) I spotted that the Zoo was hosting someone's wedding reception, so perhaps that made for different catering. Most of the time there is no real olfactory sign of the Zoo's real purpose, but just occasionally, if the wind is in the wrong direction, you do get a pungent sense of the giraffes and warthogs. Catering is more obvious.

I was cycling round on Friday lunchtime, and suddenly found unexpected congestion where the road runs down behind the London Central Mosque. A bright gold Porsche made a series of unfeasible manoeuvres before parking on the double yellow lines, a few places down from a maroon Rolls-Royce, and straight after a BMW with diplomatic plates. At the weekend everyone parks legitimately down that stretch, but on a weekday the London Business School seems to attract illegal parking, and I was pondering why they thought they could get away with it when I came upon what was clearly the rush to Friday midday prayers. It occurred to me that I've never noticed a Westminster traffic warden round that side of the Park, though you do see Camden ones quite regularly on their stretch, though to be fair, it may just be that the Camden ones are more visible, in their green overalls.

I did several circuits past a parked funeral cortege, clearly killing time before collecting mourners, parked up near the old St Katharine's precinct. Not funeral directors I knew, and presumably from far away, given how much time they sat there. I wondered where they were heading, possibly St Marylebone, but you couldn't be sure because they hadn't picked up the family yet. The first time I came round I crossed myself and prayed for the departed, but then felt a little self-conscious repeating the gesture the next time round. On the third circuit I touched the peak of my cap as well, and was preparing to take my cap off the fourth time, but they'd gone by then, which was a shame.

On Saturday afternoon, in a secondhand bookshop, a man in a morning suit said to the girl at the till, "I'm sorry, I've lost philosophy?" which somehow seemed a very Bloomsbury thing to say.

Is there any more beautiful British bird than the jay? When the scaffolding was up round my house a jay took advantage of it to get up close to poke around for insects around my window frames and cladding, and clearly net curtains worked so he couldn't see me. It was absolutely stunning, that extraordinary pinky-buff colour, and finely-chiselled head. There seems to be a pair of them nearby, so I imagine they are nesting, but I don't know where.