PADDINGTON GRAFFITI

Taxing Questions

The big white hoarding round the building site at St Mary Mags attracts occasional graffiti. The other weekend a strange one appeared. The contractors painted over it on Monday morning and never mentioned it to me, but I had seen it for myself. It read. "St Mary Mags W2 why do churchs (sic) pay no tax ever?". That rather left me at a loss, because what tax does the writer mean? Of course churches pay tax, we pay VAT (and unlike a business have no way of passing that on to the public), we pay tax on our insurance premium, churches that employ people pay National Insurance, and so on. I pay income tax, and National Insurance. The church doesn't pay income tax, because a church is not an individual, and what are we supposed to be paying tax on, exactly? It is true that we can apply for relief from VAT on building works to listed places of worship, but we do actually pay the tax, it just gets refunded as some sort of recognition that we are maintaining the nation's architectural heritage. I presume there are some reliefs that operate because we are a charitable institution, and are not generating profits for any individual or corporation. So what's wrong with that? What is it that we might be paying tax on that the writer thinks we aren't?


Strange Objects  

An enormous wooden reel, of the sort that cables are wound around, was left at the entrance to the park, like a giant's cotton-reel. Where it had come from no-one seemed to know. After a while it vanished. Now in the same spot, a pizza delivery scooter has been left, somewhat damaged.


Boogie Nights

So Monday evening was the meeting of the Westbourne Forum Board, Tuesday evening was Paddington Deanery Synod, Wednesday evening was St Peter's PCC, and tonight is St Mary Magdalene's PCC. I thought yesterday evening's PCC went well, all very jovial and consensual, though interrupted by what appeared to be an aggressive beggar at the door, who was seen off by two Nigerian ladies, but it turns out that wasn't a beggar. It was a man from the Felix Project trying to deliver food to us (why didn't he say that?) and so my poor churchwarden, who runs the Support Services (and wasn't at PCC because she was at a Grenfell meeting) had to come back at 10pm to receive the delivery. So I feel like a worm. And then I look at my notes and find several items marked "Action Fr.H", so not such a good meeting after all.


Garden Thoughts

Helen's uncle Reg, who was a professional gardener, came and helped us with the garden around St Peter's many years ago. Among other things, he planted two tamarisks, which are now beginning to threaten the path. I am trying to weave their branches into the railings to make a hedge, but I keep forgetting to bring secateurs and gloves with me on occasions when I have half an hour to do it. Each time I lock up my bike beside them I remember eating a picnic lunch under tamarisks in Jordan last March and get all wistful. That was at Azraq, where Lawrence spent the winter of 1917 in the Roman fort, which is much as he left it. Surely our tamarisks won't grow into big trees, like those? The trouble is that Uncle Reg, like many competent gardeners, made the mistake of assuming competence in those left in charge of the garden, which was a mistaken assumption. Some people round here are flat dwellers who would love to garden, but they usually know nothing; then there are people like me, who have gardens and neglect them, but are expected to know something; and then there are those for whom gardens are something provided by the Council or the Queen. Together we're not great at looking after the garden, and it doesn't really repay us, because it's more a narrow strip of exposed earth, heavily shadowed, in a sort of trench between the building and the pavement. Still, the tamarisks seem to thrive there.  


Paddington Graffiti

Those of a certain age will remember the extraordinary message "Far away is near at hand in images of elsewhere" which was painted on a wall beside the parcels depot on the approach to Paddington Station in the late 1970s, and which remained for many years, until the wall was demolished. For a while, just a fragment remained, but then that went as well. Michael Wharton, who wrote as Peter Simple in the Daily Telegraph created a legend for the artist he called "the Master of Paddington", but I've often wondered who did paint it, and in what circumstances. As I remember it, the words were about a foot high, block capitals, in white paint, and clearly painted with a brush not a spray. I remember once, as a student, sitting on a train with Dr William Oddie as he mused on the contrasting lives of those on either sides of the track as we approached the graffiti, little imagining that thirty-three years later I would be involved in some of those lives.