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).