Monday 30 July 2018

THE GASMAN CAME TO CALL

It All Makes Work For The Working Man To Do...

My gas connection was re-established on Saturday, some forty-eight hours after it had been cut off. Initially three van loads of men from Cadent came, who made everything safe. Then, on Friday another two men came and dug a big hole in my garage floor, removed the meter, piled up rubble where the meter used to be, and failed to push a plastic pipe through the old metal pipe. Another man (called Gary) then came at teatime, who told me that he was an emergency crew, and so if he was to be notified of someone of higher priority than me, then he would have to leave my job and go to that one. I went out, expecting the worst. In fact, he called me later on to say that he had succeeded in reconnecting the pipework, and had booked the industrial/commercial team to come and purge and reconnect my meter between 8am and 10am on Saturday. I should say that each gas man looked at my meter and said, "Why've you got such a big meter? That's an industrial one, that is. You haven't got it heating a jacuzzi in the back garden, have you?" or variations on that theme. So, I got up for 8am on my day off. At 10am Gary phoned to ask how it was going. "They're not here!" I said. So he rang off, to chase them up. Meanwhile the site manager of our contractors was also chasing. The gas man who constituted the industrial/commercial team arrived at noon, complaining about the traffic; no-one had warned him about the road closures for RideLondon, the cycling festival. I didn't tell him that I'd have been doing that if I hadn't been waiting around for him. He grumbled about the rubble piled up where the meter should be, but he got everything sorted quite quickly, and was a perfectly pleasant man. He said another Cadent crew (perhaps one of the original ones) would be here on Monday to fill in the hole in my garage (and remove rubble). It is now Monday and there is no sign of them. Our own site manager is inclined to get our groundworkers to get on and do the work, which seems sensible. 


Retail Blight

I've just realised what a dismal place the crossroads on which St Peter's stands has become. There is a row of seven shops under the flats on the north side of Elgin Avenue, which have been gradually closing; now every single one is empty. The Squirrel pub, on the south side, has just closed down. This is what used to be the Skiddaw, where Francis Thompson sat by the fire in the 1890s. Opposite that on Chippenham Road, the shop which replaced the dodgy cafe (where allegedly you used to be able to buy drugs) seems also to have shut. The current incarnation of the Indian restaurant seems to be okay, but they must have spent a lot on their refurbishment, and trade seems quiet, so perhaps I should go there more often. Meanwhile only William Hill seems unaffected. When I was looking at this job, eleven years ago, this was described as a busy street corner; no longer.


A Glorious Tour

It is a source of deep joy to me that Geraint Thomas ("G" as he is universally known) has won the Tour de France. I confess I cried when he won on La Rosiere, and found myself in floods of tears when his victory became assured this weekend. The thing is that Helen and I had followed his career closely since 2007, when we had seen him in his first Tour de France. That was the year of the London Grand Depart, and we went down to the Park to stand by the bridge over the Serpentine to watch the Prologue Time Trial. As usual with Helen, we were there in very good time, and so were in place to see the riders taking their practice laps, among them the skinny young Welshman in the red and yellow jersey of Barloworld. We were delighted to see G stop on our corner; he had spotted some friends in the crowd, and simply came across to chat to them. His naturalness (and simple ordinariness) was obvious then, and charmed us. Helen always made a big thing of her Welshness (she had a Welsh grandfather, so she was as Welsh as most of their football team) and so was particularly fond of G, and was especially delighted when he won the Commonwealth Games road race in Glasgow in Welsh colours. Her joy at his triumph would have been tremendous. As I had stood with my friends beside the road to La Rosiere ten days ago, one of the things thrown from the publicity caravan was a folded cardboard banner with attached marker, for you to write your message of support; I was given this task. Auriel said, "You're going to put 'Go on Froomey' aren't you?" but I wasn't sure. We knew G could be in the lead by the end of the stage, so I was in two minds. Eventually I wrote "Go on G", as big as I could, so that was the banner Rob waved in front of them as they toiled up our hairpins. Right decision. It was what Helen would have wanted.

Friday 27 July 2018

DIGGING A HOLE

They're Digging a Hole

I returned from Provence and found that the contractors were beginning to dig the trench for the new drainage along the south side of the church. This is very good news, because the church has suffered so much damage from water ingress over the years, and this should improve that immeasurably. I yield to no-one in my admiration of G.E.Street, a great British architect (not merely a great Victorian architect) but I'm afraid he had a weakness when it came to rainwater disposal; he clearly didn't have anyone doing the calculations as to the volume of water he was dealing with, and he tried to be too clever by half. There are frankly too few downpipes for the vast expanse of roof we have, but of course medieval gothic buildings tended to have spouts to take water off  high roofs (often disguised as gargoyles) which was a solution that was not acceptable a hundred and fifty years ago, let alone today. Downpipes are not very aesthetic, so I guess he used as few as he could get away with. He also tried to dispose of all our rainwater on the south side, because it's downhill from the north side, which is logical, but complicates matters enormously.

On the north side of the church the downpipes did not issue into drains in the pavement, as you might expect, but went straight down into the ground. They then came through the walls of the undercroft, running down the inside wall, for the water to be collected in one drain, which ran under the floor of the undercroft and out to the mains drain in the road on the south side. As you can imagine, this gave immense scope for blockages that were impossible to clear, not to mention invasion by tree-roots as it turned out. It also appeared that the drain had collapsed on the south side, so whatever water was actually getting through (not much, probably) was just being deposited into the south wall of the church. So five years ago we dug a new land drain along the north wall, in a gravel-filled trench, and sent the rainwater into that, connecting with the mains on the south side by going round the east end of the church, thanks to the natural slope in the ground. That worked very well, except that we recently discovered that the contractors had filled the old underground pipes with cement, but not very effectively, and so those pipes were neatly conducting ground water into the undercroft brickwork (the superior option of removing the pipes was never really feasible, since they go at least three metres down vertically, and then at an angle into the wall). So we had to sort that out from the inside, removing as much pipe as possible, putting waterproof material in, and then replacing brickwork. It has to be said that this brickwork (by Cliveden Conservation) is so good you'd never know it was new. So the north side has been sorted out.

On the south side, however, we had commissioned a series of drain surveys over the years, which had never produced much enlightenment. Here's a hint: drain surveys aren't worth the DVD they come on. Now we have found quite conclusively that the connections to the mains drainage on the south side have been blocked with cement at some time. Why? As our downpipes on the south side also go underground, theoretically to connect with the mains via quite short underground pipes, this means that all our rainwater from the south side has simply been deposited in the earth immediately adjacent to the south wall. It is no surprise that the south wall of the undercroft (the Comper Chapel) has always been very wet. So now we're remedying that, with a new drain run down the road, that can run into an existing connection that isn't blocked up. It also gives somewhere for the drainage from various new basins that we are introducing into the building to go (though some, like my new sacristy, will need pumps).

So, it's good news that they are digging. I was less pleased to see Cadent vans outside my house yesterday, because Cadent are the gas board. It turns out that while digging their drain trench our contractors cut through the gas supply to my house. So yesterday my gas was cut off. Today, Cadent are working to restore my supply (with the customary bright yellow plastic piping, instead of old metal pipes). At best, this involves them excavating the concrete floor of my garage, at worst, a trench across the road and across my (concrete) yard, which will be more work than can be done today. I left the house when the pneumatic drill started. We shall see. Prayers are being offered.

Fortunately, hot water is not a big issue at the moment, and salad is quite attractive. 

Friday 6 July 2018

FLAMING JUNE AND JULY

Festival News

The Westbourne Festival was a splendid success. I was mostly preoccupied with conducting a public consultation about tree planting (the things one gets roped into!) but it seemed a genuinely enjoyable afternoon for everyone. The attendance picked up after England's match against Panama finished, and there must have been over a thousand people there at one time or another. I wore my blazer, which always gets comments (it now has moth damage and cannot be buttoned, but it is 36 years old) but this year I felt it inappropriate to accessorize it with a Panama hat, and so had to wear the boater. I hope I contributed to the gaiety of proceedings. At least the Westbourne Forum stall was well away from the stage, so we could actually talk to people, which hasn't always been the case. In fact, the music was pleasingly varied, all local performers, and mostly young. Lots of talent out there. The creepy-crawlies were under a gazebo just opposite us, which was quite fun. They had been meant to be on the Electric Barge, as last year, but unfortunately the barge broke down (not enough shillings for the meter?) so we got to see some fine lizards and snakes at close quarters. Our local MP put in a game appearance, despite suffering from a dreadful cold.


Grumpy Neighbours

I was waiting for someone on the corner of Senior Street the other afternoon when one of the neighbours started berating me. He had just parked his car on Senior Street (maybe 40 metres from his front door) and was complaining that we were taking away the parking, "Not content with whoring it out at weekends, now you're taking our parking in the week!" I'm afraid I didn't respond at all adequately, just smiling and saying sorry, because I didn't really assimilate what he was saying until he'd gone past me, so no doubt he now thinks me an idiot as well. The reason the parking was obstructed that day was to enable the scaffolding round the east end of the church to be taken down without any danger of damage to parked cars, which I didn't think unreasonable; our contractors hadn't suspended the parking, so you could have parked there, but the scaffolders had put notices explaining what was happening, and when they arrived put bollards around. And as for "whoring the place out", actually no, that's not me. The school have a regular let (to a German school) on Saturday mornings, and (to an Arabic school) on Sundays, both of which have caused me a little irritation in the past through people blocking my gate, but in truth most of them just drop off and pick up, which is only a temporary issue. Our regular tenants on Sunday afternoon don't generate much traffic.The particular oddness of the conversation was that the place he had parked was barely any further from his door than the places the scaffolders were obstructing. Lesson: one can never overestimate how exercised people will get about parking.


Gosling News 

Sadly, one of the goslings was killed. I saw the parents and the other four standing around some bloodied remains one morning, looking bewildered. Anyway, now the goslings are a good size, and beginning to turn brown, and I imagine they are becoming less vulnerable. It is extraordinary how quickly they grow.


At the Conference

My colleague Toby Gale (from Paddington Development Trust) and I were asked to give a presentation at the Conference of the National Churches Trust, also addressed by Bill Bryson and Caroline Spelman MP. I was very shocked to find that I was the only priest scheduled to be speaking (though that turned out to be not quite true, as Lucy Winkett, from St James, Piccadilly, who is one of their trustees, was on a panel, and Lucy always has plenty to say, and does so elegantly). I got a bit of feedback from participants that they were glad to see me, but the implication was that there should have been more clergy there. NCT is a largely lay organisation, though there are plenty of clergy involved with the board, and there seemed to be a lot of grumpy churchwardens present. There were also some aggrieved Roman Catholics, who thought it was all too Anglican, but sorry, guys, it's a question of numbers. They also displeased me by implying that we have no notion of sacred space; I need to write something about that. True, we don't hedge it around with law as they do (but actually, that's not true, either) but I suspect I have as high a doctrine of sacred space as any Roman Catholic. In fact NCT is scrupulously cross-denominational, and the previous day I had been present at their awards ceremony where they gave their top award for a project to a Roman Catholic church (Ss Peter, Paul & Philomena, New Brighton, since you ask). It amuses me that there are two organisations called NCT, and both are very middle class, but they have quite different age profiles.

Toby and I were speaking for 15 minutes under the title "Raising £7 million" which was an exercise in compression, and of course we didn't attempt to tell them how to raise £7 million (which we haven't yet succeeded in doing anyway). I hope we made some useful points about partnership working, and the Mission & Pastoral Measure (2011). It was regarded as a positive story, which is very good, and we were suitably grateful for having won the NCT Friends' Vote last year, which got us an extra £10,000 on our grant from them. We had a nice picture of the giant cheque being given to John Julius and me. NCT are being very kind to us (though I continue to have to make sure they don't call us St Mary's, Paddington).