Tuesday 20 February 2018

FRAGILITY

Fragile

I am reminded of how fragile everything really is. Just now in our intercessions we are praying for two young men who have been stabbed. One, the nephew of a congregation member, was stabbed in the street in broad daylight in Luton, where his family had moved, ironically in order to get him away from all the nonsense that confronts teenage boys in London. It seems to have been nothing to do with gangs, but a vengeful ex-boyfriend of the classmate he happened to be walking along the street with. Fortunately he is recovering. Not so fortunate was the son of someone who works at one of our schools, who was killed in Earls Court on Sunday morning, the victim of what the Standard says was a fight between gangs who were attending two nearby parties. If that's the case then I am confident that this young man was the victim of something that was nothing to do with him, which is all the more tragic. His family are, of course, devastated.

Yesterday I spent quite a while with a labourer on our building site, who was rather unwell. His colleagues clearly thought his crisis was religious in nature from the way he was talking, which is why they called me in, but I'm not so sure: I think a lot of that was cultural. The poor man has come to London from a very troubled country, whose former president was frequently named in his conversation with me. I think this chap has a number of reasons to be troubled, and the fact that he came to work carrying a Bible was more about his attempt to deal with his problems. I hope he's able to get some proper help, but I was impressed by the way that his colleagues reacted; they were all keen that he should be looked after.


The Star-Spangled Banner

I noticed on Saturday that the flag was at half-mast outside the US Ambassador's residence, presumably in respect of the Parkland school massacre. The cynical side of me thinks they must be doing that fairly frequently, though I've never noticed it before. I may be noticing the flagpole because they've cut down trees recently, so that may be no indication. I have previously wondered whether the flag flew to indicate that the Ambassador was in residence, but I had already reached the conclusion that it would need to be a personal standard (like the Queen's) for that to be true, not the US flag.

I did wonder whether the Ambassador might be moving house now that the US Embassy is moving to Nine Elms, after all Regent's Park is hardly convenient. He might go to Wimbledon, like the Papal Nuncio, which would surely be handier for Nine Elms. That said, though, I can't imagine anyone wanting to move out of Winfield House, which is supposed to be very splendidly appointed, and has the largest private garden in London after Buckingham Palace. In truth it's a rather stolid, ill-proportioned house, red-brick, Neo-Georgian, built for the Woolworth's heiress Barbara Hutton in 1936, to replace a Decimus Burton villa, which had once been rather spectacular, but which had fallen on hard times, but a succession of multi-millionaire ambassadors has seen to it that it is full of precious works of art and has been regularly refurbished. The lawns are of course large enough for Marine One to land when the President comes to stay, and that, I suppose, is why they won't move out, because with twelve and a half acres of garden and no neighbours, it's pretty secure. Mr Trump is, of course, quite right that Nine Elms is not nearly as grand as Grosvenor Square, but perhaps he thought the residence was there as well, in which case I can understand his anxiety, because it's always a bit hairy being a pioneer in a gentrifying area.


Contributory Negligence

You will be aware that I get very cross about cyclists being blamed for getting killed on the roads, but sometimes you do see things that shock you. This afternoon I was waiting behind a concrete mixer at the traffic lights on Chippenham Road. The concrete mixer was waiting to turn left, around The Squirrel, which is sharper than ninety degrees, so he was sat in the right hand lane, with his indicator flashing, and the audible warning saying he was turning left. As the light turned to green a female cyclist came up the left hand lane and went straight across the junction; fortunately for her, the concrete mixer was slow to move, but that was one of the stupidest bits of cycling I've seen in a while.

I just sat here in the Office and watched as three boys from Paddington Academy interfered with my bicycle. The first two just wiggled the bars in passing, but the third stopped and had a good attempt at wrestling the bike away from the fence to which it was locked. I did go out and remonstrate, but he'd already got bored and was walking off. I congratulate myself in being careful about security. A previous bike was written off by a thief who tried to do the same thing and found the lock was stronger than the aluminium frame, which bent under torsion (as did the railing).      

Thursday 15 February 2018

MAKING PROGRESS



Inspection

I inspected the cleaning of the ceilings last week, which was very exciting. The conservators have now started work on the chancel ceiling, which is quite different in technique from the nave ceiling. The chancel ceiling is painted directly onto the plaster covering the vault, with a rather rough surface. It even looks as though a little sand has been added to the paint in order to make the surface glitter in the light. Or possibly the opposite; an expert on Victorian painted schemes thinks they deliberately added texture to their paint because they were afraid that there would be too much reflection from shiny oil paint, as opposed to the flat matt colours of renaissance fresco. Either way, the result is the same, a desirably varied surface texture which will reflect light unevenly. The 1890 account of the church says the chancel was painted in oil, but that’s really no help, because the nave ceiling is done with oil paints as well, but the technique is very different. One of the conservators was suggesting today that marks in the surface suggest that the chancel was actually painted in proper fresco technique, onto wet (or at least damp) plaster. Proper, renaissance, buon fresco was done with the pigment mixed with just a little water or limewater, I believe, so I’m not sure how adding linseed oil would work, and anyway, the conservators’ report doesn’t suggest that this was really what was done, because there is a solid white paint ground under the colour. Certainly Victorian church decorators were genuinely interested in the techniques of fresco; the infamous episode of the Oxford Union murals, which Rossetti and friends undertook in the late 1850s is an example. The Union Society murals would never have looked much good in daylight, because they are painted onto a sort of clerestory wall punctuated with big windows, so the daylight overwhelms the wall paintings, but the point was that the Pre-Raphaelites had no idea of the technique required, and those are painted straight onto the bricks. We have some painting directly onto brickwork as well, in the westernmost bay of the chancel, around the window, but ours is fairly simple, floral and vegetal patterns on a creamy-yellow ground (rather than elaborate Arthurian romances in dark colours). Part of the issue for our conservators is to keep the whole composition looking of a piece when it is painted on three different surfaces which respond differently to cleaning. The fact that the Victorian artists were probably trying out techniques as well doesn’t help (though it is exciting).


Tiles

One of our central principles has been to involve local people as much as possible in the Project, and it has been frustrating that the conservation of the ceilings has proved to be too technical and delicate to let volunteers loose on. Just to make the point, when I went up to the nave roof, all the conservators were wearing respirators. However, one successful piece of community involvement has been the tile workshops. Lots of us went along one Saturday and designed tiles, based on images and designs from the church, which will end up in the cafĂ© and in the lavatories. There was also a six-week workshop, though, where a number of people designed tiles to illustrate events or personalities from the history of Paddington, and the idea has always been to put those tiles, with captions, in the stair well of the new building. We shall have dates on the stairs (cast into the nosings on the steps) and then tiles from that period of time will be set into the wall. So the design for the fair-faced concrete of the staircase incorporates a number of recesses, into which the tiles will have to fit. So one of last week’s enjoyable tasks was to sort out the tiles and make a final choice of which will go where, and to compose the captions. Happily, the group had made tiles illustrating more or less all of the most significant events in Paddington’s history, and many of the most interesting personalities. I can live without the ones they omitted. My anxiety is whether the designers of the tiles which we haven’t actually chosen to use will be terribly hurt. I don’t know who designed what, so I hope we have a tile from everyone involved in the group. They all knew that all the tiles could not be used, but it would be natural to be disappointed, so I hope they will be happy that all their names will be on a credits list. I’m very happy with what we’ve got, as it has a pleasing symmetry, and covers a very diverse range of subjects.


More Kites

Driving along the M40 I saw three red kites about a mile east of the Beaconsfield Services, so that’s perhaps seventeen miles from here, as close as I’ve seen them.


Charles the Martyr

I marked the feast of Blessed Charles Stuart, King and Martyr, by going to see the show of his picture collection at the Royal Academy. There are some lovely things. It is impressive the see the Louvre “Roi en Chasse” alongside the two great equestrian portraits, and you are just reminded of what a magnificent painter Van Dyke was. There are three Titians hung together (two from the Louvre, one from the Prado) none of which I knew, and all are top-notch. There is an exquisite Rubens allegorical landscape, which I’d never seen before. Holbein, of course, stands out as usual, but it is instructive to be reminded that it was Charles who bought all the Holbeins, not Henry VIII at all. What is also notable is how many of the pictures are actually in the royal collection now, having been bought back by Charles II. The Mantegna “Triumph of Caesar” pictures are easier to see here than they are at Hampton Court, but no more likeable; you can acknowledge their greatness without finding much to delight in. Of course it’s also special to see the Mortlake tapestries which were made for Charles from the Raphael Cartoons (which are normally in store somewhere in Paris) but I find it hard to get too excited about them, because they’re not actually doing the things that tapestry does best, they really are just paintings translated into tapestry. This is a magnificent show, though. It’s wonderful what you can see in London.


Comic Opera

I even went to Islington to see three comic operas, at the King’s Head Theatre (behind a pub). My friend John Whittaker had written one of them, “The Proposal”, based on Chekhov, and it was great to see that. It’s only a short piece, (not as short as the 4-minute middle one) but it stands happily alongside a piece by Offenbach which was the third. These were put on by three singers and two musicians (one of them John, which was not what he had planned) so it was hardly grand opera, but it was good fun. The singers sang very nicely, and I think we laughed when we were supposed to (and not when we weren’t). A really entertaining evening. 

Monday 5 February 2018

A MILESTONE IS REACHED

And There Was Concrete...

Finally, the first load of concrete was poured on Friday. So now we have begun to give substance to the new building (though I suppose you could say having inserted reinforcing rods into the ground, which happened last week, was the first step). I was on site, admiring progress on the ceiling, and happened to ask the site manager, who told me that concrete had been expected earlier, but now they were expecting it imminently. Half an hour later I cycled past and saw a subcontractor pacing around, talking on his phone, never a good sign. It was a good while later that it finally came, but it did come, and was poured.

I asked the site manager whether he knew where the concrete was actually coming from, but he didn't; the groundworking sub-contractor orders it from whoever he has an account with. I only asked because the concrete batching plant at Westbourne Park (belonging to Tarmac) is such a prominent feature of life round here. I can sit in the office and see concrete mixers and bulk carriers crossing the traffic lights every few minutes. In fact, this morning, on two consecutive phases of the lights inbound concrete mixers jumped amber-to-red lights. It would be perverse if we have a batching plant less than half a mile away and turn out to be buying in concrete from elsewhere, but of course Tarmac's production may all be going to Crossrail, or similar vast undertakings. I only know there is rather a small window of time after you put the ingredients in the mixer during which you have to use it, so a local plant is handy. No doubt I shall learn more, as there are four more pours to go, to say nothing of "fair-faced concrete". 

I cycle past a building site on the corner of Goldney Road and Maryland Road every day, and had to negotiate my way past a delivery from a concrete mixer one day last week, exactly on the junction. It is clear that those contractors have not attempted to suspend any parking bays, and so all their deliveries produce incredibly dangerous situations which cause a lot of congestion. I am reminded of the large number of licences and permissions that our architects and contractors have obtained for our work, and it strikes me that not everyone is quite as conscientious.


An Inspector Calls

A couple of weeks ago I came out of the Tuesday morning Mass at St Peter's to find a pleasant African lady sitting in the lobby. After the congregation had gone, she announced that she was an environmental health inspector from Westminster (and showed me her card), but she thought she had been misled because we were a church. She had already been to St Peter's School, thinking that the entry in her register must be for them, but they don't have a kitchen, only a servery. I assured her that she was in the right place, because despite its small size we do cook for the public in the kitchen here, but she wanted to see it in action, so I suggested she come back for Saturday Lunch Club (she doesn't work Saturdays) or for the Thursday Breakfast Club. Well, last Thursday she was back.

I was in the office when the cleaner came in and apologetically told me that she had let in "this woman, who says she's an environmental health inspector". So I went down and greeted her cheerily. Of course, neither Jacqui (who is in charge) or any of her volunteers were there yet, so I left the lady doing her emails. I texted Jacqui, who was still at home in Ladbroke Grove, having just been visited by an asbestos inspector. She texted me back to say she had warned her number two, Suzie. The next time I went downstairs some of the users had arrived and had set up the tables, and were beginning to put out the cutlery. The lady inspector had donned a white coat and was putting on a hairnet, which was frankly scary, but Suzie was not yet there. Now Suzie is lovely, but can be quite emotional, so I was beginning to get nervous, and when she did arrive she was frantic with anxiety. One of the volunteers (who's very willing, but has issues) rushed up to get our phone number, in a state of high excitement, as the lady needed it for her forms. I felt it prudent to print out our agreement with the pest control firm which shows that we had begun to take action on the mouse problem before this visit, but I needn't have bothered. Before Jacqui could get here and show off her paperwork, the nice inspector had signed us off with five stars. Big sighs of relief. Congratulations to the whole team.


Pests

The warden of the flats above St Peter's tells me that they have pest controllers coming in practically daily, so she was not surprised when I told her of our (apparently) solitary mouse, and our summoning of Wez, the rat man (don't call him that, obviously). It seems that they have been disturbed by having the boiler  room turned upside down.

Meanwhile, at home, Wez continues to visit, but the school rats don't come into my garden, and all the building work is pretty unfriendly to rodents. There was, however, a large fox in my garden at 8 o'clock this morning. I shooed it away, as I really don't want them to get the idea that they can hide away here. Casimir has chased a fox out of the garden before now, but I don't want to push his luck.

When we cleared the pigeons out of the north porch of the church I guess we thought they'd just go away, but they haven't. They've taken to perching on windowsills instead (which never used to happen), so our conservation architect instructed pigeon wires to be installed. Now they just perch higher up and defecate on the wires. My respect for my fellow human beings is sorely tested by those who feed these pigeons!