CHARLES JAMES...
Let me advise you never to trap a fox inside your premises. They are very adept at hiding and will try hard to get out when you're not around, but have poor bladder and bowel control. I spent the best part of last week repeatedly censing the nave at St Mary Magdalene's in an attempt to cover up the pungent odour of fox. I was reasonably successful, but used a lot of charcoal and incense.
Originally, I had thought that someone had brought a dog into church and let it run amok at one of PDT's public events, as when I came into church one Sunday I found James (the organist)'s slippers distributed around the chancel, and one of the sedilia cushions on the floor of the sanctuary with the corner chewed off. On the cushion were tell-tale dusty paw marks, which indicated small dog or fox. Then the next day, Liz from PDT was in to supervise a group and discovered fox droppings, which was conclusive, and also demonstrated that the fox was staying over. I was mystified as to how it had got in, until I went down to the undercroft and found that the two openings connecting the undercroft to the new extension were no longer sealed, but boarded up from about a foot above the floor, an arrangement that would exclude most humans, but none of the wildlife to be found on the Warwick Estate. I then had the idea of closing the staircase doors, so that the fox was confined to the nave, and would be easier to flush out if it was still inside. The contractors organised a team of men to try to find it, but they failed. Nevertheless, the fox was still in the nave, and could not then get out. It made more than one vigorous assault on the plasterboard that sealed off the opening from the nave into the extension, and destroyed a brand-new doormat in trying to dig its way out of the north door. Eventually, the excellent Liz sat in her car outside the church after dark and lured it out with cat food, closing the door behind it when it came out.
GRANDE PARTENZA
Much of the fox saga took place while I was away. I had gone to Bologna for a long weekend, taking in the Grande Partenza of the Giro d'Italia, but was unable to escape from the fox. Some people seemed just amused by this, while others had sympathy for the trapped creature, but I knew what my church was going to smell like, so it was not relaxing.
They call it "Bologna the red", which is partly for politics, but partly also because it's largely built of brick. Last time I was there San Petronio, the great civic church in the Piazza Maggiore, was closed because they had recently had an earthquake and they weren't sure how stable it was. Well, I say it was closed; there weren't any services, but they would let visitors go inside, about ten metres in inside the main door, which didn't seem very rational. Anyway, the result was that I had never properly been inside San Petronio until my recent visit, when I put that right. San Petronio was started in the 1390s, and they went on building until the sixteenth century to the same Gothic plan, so the vaults are an anachronistic marvel. Like many great Italian churches they never finished the facade, but what they did complete is very lovely. The point, though, is that San Petronio is a vast brick basilica; it is said that the burghers of Bologna in the fourteenth century wanted to build the biggest basilica in the world. You could fit three or four of St Mary Magdalene's inside it, but looking at it you can see some of G.E.Street's inspiration.
IT ALL MAKES WORK..
No, the contractors haven't finished yet. There were nineteen vehicles on site today, seventeen yesterday, and twenty on Tuesday, so they are certainly putting men on the job. There are some polished concrete floors in evidence. All the faience is fixed, and looks beautiful. The lift shaft has acquired doors at most levels. All the glazing is in. The lights are fixed. Most of the joinery is fixed. But there still seems an unfeasibly large quantity of kit sitting in the undercroft waiting to be fitted inside the extension. They are working very hard, but it is touch and go for our education programme which swings into action after half-term. Just keep praying.
Thursday, 23 May 2019
Thursday, 25 April 2019
HE IS RISEN INDEED!
A Happy Easter
Importantly, we have now celebrated our first Holy Week and Easter in the newly-refurbished church. We still had to clean and polish everything, as the amount of dust in the atmosphere is still tremendous, but everything is looking much better, and I was not ashamed to welcome the Archdeacon of London, Fr Luke Miller, who spent Holy Week with us. Having someone else to share the preaching (and reading the Passion on Good Friday) makes a surprising physical difference.
With some repaired and refurbished candlesticks we were able to create a much better altar of repose on Maundy Thursday, and then to make a bigger, better splash on Easter Day, and frankly St Mary Mags looked splendid. We also used the old marble paschal candlestick for the first time since I've been here (as we had builders' labourers to move it) which looks impressive in the sanctuary. That still needs repair, but it's quite safe, so it's good to use it.
We also used our new Stations of the Cross, which I am very pleased with. I bought them in Palermo, and had them shipped over, which was fine, except that the package was just left on my doorstep. The old plaster-of-Paris ones were past repair, and looked very tatty. They would inevitably have got even more damaged, and if we had tried to put them up and take them down it would have been a terrible chore, resulting in more damage. They also take up a lot of space in storage. The new ones, on the other hand, are in silvered bronze (and so pretty resilient) and are virtually flat (and so store easily). They are also silver, which looks very striking on the dark walls of the church. Their design is contemporary, but not aggressively so, and they are framed by a stylized thorns pattern, which works very well in a gothic setting.
Deliverymen
The person delivering the Stations left them on my doorstep, but at least he delivered them in a timely fashion, unlike a Hermes deliveryman, who took a fortnight to find my house, despite having "The Vicarage" in six-inch-high letters outside. I discovered through this that Hermes is not really a delivery company at all, but essentially an internet device, matching up deliveries with self-employed deliverymen. This would be fine if they were all competent, but mine wasn't. I actually saw him on one of his failed visits, trying to get into the school one evening, little imagining that this was for me. His vehicle was distinctive, and it is even more ironic that I have since seen it overnight a few hundred yards away in St Peter's parish. He claimed to have tried to deliver, but never left a card, and simply failed to identify the house on repeated alleged attempts. Since there are only 3 buildings with my postcode, and the others are the church and the school, I was not impressed. Hermes of course takes no responsibility for failed deliveries and directs you back to the supplier you purchased from, so I had long email exchanges with Rapha (classy cycle clothing, ironically based about 4 miles away). The particularly annoying thing was that I have had numerous successful deliveries from Rapha before (via Royal Mail, I think) and so let them know that I didn't think much of their new contractor.
Nearly There
Of course the new building wasn't finished for Easter. Silly of me to have thought it would be. But we are genuinely close now. The scaffolding is coming down, and it looks terrific. New turf is going down where the compound has been. People are frantically fixing things. The lift car appears to have been manufactured the wrong size, which is more than a little vexing, but we trust that something can be done.There were a whole string of things that were meant to be done over the school holiday, to avoid annoyance, but which seem not to have happened then, which is a shame. I compared notes with my neighbour Jem, the Baptist minister, who has totally rebuilt his church (and has flats on top); his is even further behind than ours, and we should just about finish together!
Importantly, we have now celebrated our first Holy Week and Easter in the newly-refurbished church. We still had to clean and polish everything, as the amount of dust in the atmosphere is still tremendous, but everything is looking much better, and I was not ashamed to welcome the Archdeacon of London, Fr Luke Miller, who spent Holy Week with us. Having someone else to share the preaching (and reading the Passion on Good Friday) makes a surprising physical difference.
With some repaired and refurbished candlesticks we were able to create a much better altar of repose on Maundy Thursday, and then to make a bigger, better splash on Easter Day, and frankly St Mary Mags looked splendid. We also used the old marble paschal candlestick for the first time since I've been here (as we had builders' labourers to move it) which looks impressive in the sanctuary. That still needs repair, but it's quite safe, so it's good to use it.
We also used our new Stations of the Cross, which I am very pleased with. I bought them in Palermo, and had them shipped over, which was fine, except that the package was just left on my doorstep. The old plaster-of-Paris ones were past repair, and looked very tatty. They would inevitably have got even more damaged, and if we had tried to put them up and take them down it would have been a terrible chore, resulting in more damage. They also take up a lot of space in storage. The new ones, on the other hand, are in silvered bronze (and so pretty resilient) and are virtually flat (and so store easily). They are also silver, which looks very striking on the dark walls of the church. Their design is contemporary, but not aggressively so, and they are framed by a stylized thorns pattern, which works very well in a gothic setting.
Deliverymen
The person delivering the Stations left them on my doorstep, but at least he delivered them in a timely fashion, unlike a Hermes deliveryman, who took a fortnight to find my house, despite having "The Vicarage" in six-inch-high letters outside. I discovered through this that Hermes is not really a delivery company at all, but essentially an internet device, matching up deliveries with self-employed deliverymen. This would be fine if they were all competent, but mine wasn't. I actually saw him on one of his failed visits, trying to get into the school one evening, little imagining that this was for me. His vehicle was distinctive, and it is even more ironic that I have since seen it overnight a few hundred yards away in St Peter's parish. He claimed to have tried to deliver, but never left a card, and simply failed to identify the house on repeated alleged attempts. Since there are only 3 buildings with my postcode, and the others are the church and the school, I was not impressed. Hermes of course takes no responsibility for failed deliveries and directs you back to the supplier you purchased from, so I had long email exchanges with Rapha (classy cycle clothing, ironically based about 4 miles away). The particularly annoying thing was that I have had numerous successful deliveries from Rapha before (via Royal Mail, I think) and so let them know that I didn't think much of their new contractor.
Nearly There
Of course the new building wasn't finished for Easter. Silly of me to have thought it would be. But we are genuinely close now. The scaffolding is coming down, and it looks terrific. New turf is going down where the compound has been. People are frantically fixing things. The lift car appears to have been manufactured the wrong size, which is more than a little vexing, but we trust that something can be done.There were a whole string of things that were meant to be done over the school holiday, to avoid annoyance, but which seem not to have happened then, which is a shame. I compared notes with my neighbour Jem, the Baptist minister, who has totally rebuilt his church (and has flats on top); his is even further behind than ours, and we should just about finish together!
Wednesday, 10 April 2019
GLAZING
We're still putting windows into the new building; yesterday I found myself unable to watch as the glazing for the north lantern was being craned into place. The sheet of glass hung there from those huge suction caps in a way that seemed barely feasible, and it was all too much for my imagination. We walked around last Friday, with some senior officers from the City Council, and I was rather taken by surprise by how far from finished it all appeared, but apparently we are still due to finish in a couple of weeks. I was a bit disconcerted by one of the council officers asking me whether the exterior was going to be brick, but of course what they were looking at was a large section waiting for its glazing to be installed. When I pointed out that the main facade material is our glazed faience, which is already complete, they understood and were duly impressed. At that point the faience was still concealed by scaffolding, so we took them to a different elevation where it is more visible, and they loved it; whenever we take people to see the faience at close quarters they get excited by it. I'm just keen now to be able to reveal the extension in all its glory.
I am preparing a couple of children for First Communion, and the only practical way is to see them individually in their own (or their granny's) home. Not especially efficient use of my time, but actually the only way to get it done. The weekend before last I was perturbed to hear mention of one of those two venues on the television news, and when I looked into it I discovered that it was not only the same street, but actually the same block, that had been the site of a stabbing. The victim died. At the time there was talk of a dispute over a woman, but now drugs and gangs are mentioned. When I asked my candidate's granny (who is my age, I should point out) about it, she remarked that it was a reminder that "although we live in St John's Wood" awful things could still happen here, as anywhere in London.
This conversation brought home to me how much perceptions matter in these things, because I wouldn't have supposed her neighbourhood to be immune, but nor would I have called it St John's Wood. Yes, her flat is just off St John's Wood Road, but it's also not far from Maida Vale, and is part of a sprawl of social housing that runs through to Lisson Grove. I dare say estate agents would call it St John's Wood, but why would we believe them? The whole point of St John's Wood Road is that it leads TO St John's Wood (unlike St John's Wood High Street, for instance) so it actually isn't in St John's Wood itself. It is, in any case, a sort of boundary, with much more prosperous territory to the north, but more diversity to the south, at least going east until you reach Lisson Grove. I once had a parishioner who insisted on telling people that he lived in St John's Wood, despite the fact that his flat was just off Edgware Road, near Church Street Market. I'm not even sure that he was in the right postcode, but nothing would shake him from the belief that he must be in a smart area. London neighbourhoods are amorphous things, but what you call your area can be bound up with your own perception of it (let alone other people's perceptions). For instance, I always say that I am in Paddington, whereas I could perfectly justifiably say Little Venice, but the latter just doesn't reflect the reality of the Warwick Estate, or the whole diversity of the area.
Organising a wedding is quite a faff, isn't it? I had thought we would make this a simple and informal affair, but all sorts of stuff seems to have crept in that requires choosing and organising (and paying for). Meanwhile, I keep wondering whether there isn't something which we have simply both forgotten as we are pretty much doing this by ourselves, unlike young people who always seem to have a gaggle of family and friends advising and suggesting. Still, if we haven't thought of it, it can't be important to us, can it?
We've had a couple of "test events" in the refurbished church. They were meant to be test events for the new facilities in the extension, but since that isn't finished yet, it was all a bit provisional. Anyway, we managed to host an immersive theatre production involving local teenagers (which was attended by the Lord Mayor and the MP as well as all sorts of local worthies), and a training day for the Waterways Chaplaincy (who had brilliant cake). Nobody died. Nobody fused the lights. The portaloos coped. That, in my view, was success. And, of course, loads more people came into the church and went "Wow!"
I am preparing a couple of children for First Communion, and the only practical way is to see them individually in their own (or their granny's) home. Not especially efficient use of my time, but actually the only way to get it done. The weekend before last I was perturbed to hear mention of one of those two venues on the television news, and when I looked into it I discovered that it was not only the same street, but actually the same block, that had been the site of a stabbing. The victim died. At the time there was talk of a dispute over a woman, but now drugs and gangs are mentioned. When I asked my candidate's granny (who is my age, I should point out) about it, she remarked that it was a reminder that "although we live in St John's Wood" awful things could still happen here, as anywhere in London.
This conversation brought home to me how much perceptions matter in these things, because I wouldn't have supposed her neighbourhood to be immune, but nor would I have called it St John's Wood. Yes, her flat is just off St John's Wood Road, but it's also not far from Maida Vale, and is part of a sprawl of social housing that runs through to Lisson Grove. I dare say estate agents would call it St John's Wood, but why would we believe them? The whole point of St John's Wood Road is that it leads TO St John's Wood (unlike St John's Wood High Street, for instance) so it actually isn't in St John's Wood itself. It is, in any case, a sort of boundary, with much more prosperous territory to the north, but more diversity to the south, at least going east until you reach Lisson Grove. I once had a parishioner who insisted on telling people that he lived in St John's Wood, despite the fact that his flat was just off Edgware Road, near Church Street Market. I'm not even sure that he was in the right postcode, but nothing would shake him from the belief that he must be in a smart area. London neighbourhoods are amorphous things, but what you call your area can be bound up with your own perception of it (let alone other people's perceptions). For instance, I always say that I am in Paddington, whereas I could perfectly justifiably say Little Venice, but the latter just doesn't reflect the reality of the Warwick Estate, or the whole diversity of the area.
Organising a wedding is quite a faff, isn't it? I had thought we would make this a simple and informal affair, but all sorts of stuff seems to have crept in that requires choosing and organising (and paying for). Meanwhile, I keep wondering whether there isn't something which we have simply both forgotten as we are pretty much doing this by ourselves, unlike young people who always seem to have a gaggle of family and friends advising and suggesting. Still, if we haven't thought of it, it can't be important to us, can it?
We've had a couple of "test events" in the refurbished church. They were meant to be test events for the new facilities in the extension, but since that isn't finished yet, it was all a bit provisional. Anyway, we managed to host an immersive theatre production involving local teenagers (which was attended by the Lord Mayor and the MP as well as all sorts of local worthies), and a training day for the Waterways Chaplaincy (who had brilliant cake). Nobody died. Nobody fused the lights. The portaloos coped. That, in my view, was success. And, of course, loads more people came into the church and went "Wow!"
Friday, 22 March 2019
VICTORY!
Not Being Choaked
The big news is the success of the Royal Oak campaign. I was preparing a letter to Sadiq Khan when we heard that he had decreed that TfL would not locate the coach station here. It quite took the wind out of our sails, as we had been gearing up for a long and bitter struggle. Both Tory and Labour councillors, and the local MP, Karen Buck, were all part of the campaign, not to mention impressive Bayswater ladies, and we knew the proposal was ridiculous, but still it was a very pleasant surprise to succeed, and so quickly. Sadly I missed the victory drinks.
In the Home Straight
The windows are beginning to go into our new building, so it is starting to actually look like a building. This is positive, but less positive is the news that the lift doors were manufactured wrongly, and so have to be changed. The length of time that it takes to install a lift is extraordinary, so this may apparently delay us. Virtually all the equipment for the new building is now on site, and swarms of people are working very hard putting it in. The faience looks splendid, and is currently being grouted (or masticked, to be accurate). We are due to interview potential cafe operators next week, so everything is coming together and starting to feel real. There's still a significant repair to be done in church, but we're on track to be able to celebrate soon!
No Home
A story that I don't feel like celebrating has been playing out recently. There was a person who had been homeless, but was living in a flat near St Peter's, and came to our Lunch Club and Breakfast Club. Gradually, over many months, they started coming to church as well, and it seemed that they had sorted out their life; they were talking to me about faith, and I was happy that they found the church supportive. Then we saw them less frequently, and then suddenly, a few weeks ago, they appeared sleeping on a pavement, under some scaffolding. When we tried to engage we were told they couldn't talk, which was certainly partly shame, and so there was not much we could do. Fortunately the place they were sleeping was very public, and attracted a lot of attention, so they have now got some support. Disappointing. We ask ourselves how we failed them. In truth we were wrong to have been congratulating ourselves, because the situation was always more precarious than it appeared, and there was a very complicated back story.
Dog's Home
Meanwhile Angry Woman with Dog has loomed large again. Her housing provider sent her notice of eviction proceedings last August, and so I hurriedly helped her get a solicitor. Proceedings have still not started, but the housing association won't say that they are not going to. Seven months it has been hanging over her. It is clearly being used as a threat, a device to try to get her to behave better. This seems to me to be cruel, and is deeply unreasonable for the solicitor, who won't get paid by Legal Aid if there are no actual proceedings. The trouble is that the main complaint against her is that she has a noisy dog, which is true. I have bought harnesses to try to make the dog more controllable, and devices to try to stop it barking, even some sort of tranquilisers for it (for which I am confident there is no resale market, unlike horse tranquilisers). It's really not a suitable dog for her (too big for the flat, too strong for her) but she won't hear of getting rid of it, as although she shouts and curses at it, she really loves it. In a chaotic and dysfunctional life a companion animal is a lot more reliable than the humans around.
Colour Wash
Last Saturday we went to the Bonnard show at Tate Modern, which caused us to discuss how modern is "modern", because Bonnard was a post-Impressionist who did his most characteristic work around the First World War and died in 1947. Of course it's the old Tate Gallery thing, that the Tate in the old days was the repository for British art, and international twentieth-century art, as the National Gallery basically turned its back on anything from after 1900. The other (more popular) show on at the moment is of the Surrealist Dorothea Tanning, and I guess she would seem more "modern", despite being practically Bonnard's contemporary, because Surrealism is recognisably "modern" because of its debt to Freudian ideas. Bonnard remained working in a way that didn't move on very far from Pissarro or Cezanne and so feels much more part of the great tradition. Still, he really wasn't very good. I am struck by the reverential hush that prevails in art galleries, and I fear I broke the hush with some critical comments. At one point I was giving my view when a young American woman next to me asked me a question, fortunately one which I was able to answer (I wasn't just talking out of my backside on this occasion). I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, but I think dialogue and discussion are an appropriate part of the gallery experience, and so I don't think one should be ashamed of having an opinion.
My opinion is that Bonnard is a second-rank artist who painted a handful of very nice pictures and an awful lot of dull ones, and a number of real shockers. The Tate curators wanted to emphasise his use of colour,and that's why I went, but even that's not really very special; he's a great one for yellow and purple, but a lot of it just feels straight from the tube with no thought. My point which caught the attention of the American was that in his garden pictures he is too fond of viridian, a striking pigment which is not the colour of any plant in nature, but which he uses raw. He uses colour as a substitute for drawing, and the few drawings in the show reveal his draughtsmanship to have been strikingly weak. It's notable that his most convincing human figures have their faces obscured, because he really is very bad at faces, but sometimes his anatomy is rubbish as well. The curious thing about the show was that it was chronological, but only started in the artist's forties, when he had settled on his final style, and so there is no artistic development at all, though there are some very weak pictures from his last years which speak of declining powers. The trouble was that he thought he was Monet, and he wasn't.
I hadn't realised that he lived very near Monet in Normandy. Bonnard's house at Vernonnet (one of three homes, he was not a starving artist) is only a few miles from Monet's at Giverny; you'd get off the train at Vernon for both. Ian and I came very close to them on the cycle ride last summer, and perhaps I might do that one day in the future, but I'm not sure that Bonnard would detain me for long.
The big news is the success of the Royal Oak campaign. I was preparing a letter to Sadiq Khan when we heard that he had decreed that TfL would not locate the coach station here. It quite took the wind out of our sails, as we had been gearing up for a long and bitter struggle. Both Tory and Labour councillors, and the local MP, Karen Buck, were all part of the campaign, not to mention impressive Bayswater ladies, and we knew the proposal was ridiculous, but still it was a very pleasant surprise to succeed, and so quickly. Sadly I missed the victory drinks.
In the Home Straight
The windows are beginning to go into our new building, so it is starting to actually look like a building. This is positive, but less positive is the news that the lift doors were manufactured wrongly, and so have to be changed. The length of time that it takes to install a lift is extraordinary, so this may apparently delay us. Virtually all the equipment for the new building is now on site, and swarms of people are working very hard putting it in. The faience looks splendid, and is currently being grouted (or masticked, to be accurate). We are due to interview potential cafe operators next week, so everything is coming together and starting to feel real. There's still a significant repair to be done in church, but we're on track to be able to celebrate soon!
No Home
A story that I don't feel like celebrating has been playing out recently. There was a person who had been homeless, but was living in a flat near St Peter's, and came to our Lunch Club and Breakfast Club. Gradually, over many months, they started coming to church as well, and it seemed that they had sorted out their life; they were talking to me about faith, and I was happy that they found the church supportive. Then we saw them less frequently, and then suddenly, a few weeks ago, they appeared sleeping on a pavement, under some scaffolding. When we tried to engage we were told they couldn't talk, which was certainly partly shame, and so there was not much we could do. Fortunately the place they were sleeping was very public, and attracted a lot of attention, so they have now got some support. Disappointing. We ask ourselves how we failed them. In truth we were wrong to have been congratulating ourselves, because the situation was always more precarious than it appeared, and there was a very complicated back story.
Dog's Home
Meanwhile Angry Woman with Dog has loomed large again. Her housing provider sent her notice of eviction proceedings last August, and so I hurriedly helped her get a solicitor. Proceedings have still not started, but the housing association won't say that they are not going to. Seven months it has been hanging over her. It is clearly being used as a threat, a device to try to get her to behave better. This seems to me to be cruel, and is deeply unreasonable for the solicitor, who won't get paid by Legal Aid if there are no actual proceedings. The trouble is that the main complaint against her is that she has a noisy dog, which is true. I have bought harnesses to try to make the dog more controllable, and devices to try to stop it barking, even some sort of tranquilisers for it (for which I am confident there is no resale market, unlike horse tranquilisers). It's really not a suitable dog for her (too big for the flat, too strong for her) but she won't hear of getting rid of it, as although she shouts and curses at it, she really loves it. In a chaotic and dysfunctional life a companion animal is a lot more reliable than the humans around.
Colour Wash
Last Saturday we went to the Bonnard show at Tate Modern, which caused us to discuss how modern is "modern", because Bonnard was a post-Impressionist who did his most characteristic work around the First World War and died in 1947. Of course it's the old Tate Gallery thing, that the Tate in the old days was the repository for British art, and international twentieth-century art, as the National Gallery basically turned its back on anything from after 1900. The other (more popular) show on at the moment is of the Surrealist Dorothea Tanning, and I guess she would seem more "modern", despite being practically Bonnard's contemporary, because Surrealism is recognisably "modern" because of its debt to Freudian ideas. Bonnard remained working in a way that didn't move on very far from Pissarro or Cezanne and so feels much more part of the great tradition. Still, he really wasn't very good. I am struck by the reverential hush that prevails in art galleries, and I fear I broke the hush with some critical comments. At one point I was giving my view when a young American woman next to me asked me a question, fortunately one which I was able to answer (I wasn't just talking out of my backside on this occasion). I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, but I think dialogue and discussion are an appropriate part of the gallery experience, and so I don't think one should be ashamed of having an opinion.
My opinion is that Bonnard is a second-rank artist who painted a handful of very nice pictures and an awful lot of dull ones, and a number of real shockers. The Tate curators wanted to emphasise his use of colour,and that's why I went, but even that's not really very special; he's a great one for yellow and purple, but a lot of it just feels straight from the tube with no thought. My point which caught the attention of the American was that in his garden pictures he is too fond of viridian, a striking pigment which is not the colour of any plant in nature, but which he uses raw. He uses colour as a substitute for drawing, and the few drawings in the show reveal his draughtsmanship to have been strikingly weak. It's notable that his most convincing human figures have their faces obscured, because he really is very bad at faces, but sometimes his anatomy is rubbish as well. The curious thing about the show was that it was chronological, but only started in the artist's forties, when he had settled on his final style, and so there is no artistic development at all, though there are some very weak pictures from his last years which speak of declining powers. The trouble was that he thought he was Monet, and he wasn't.
I hadn't realised that he lived very near Monet in Normandy. Bonnard's house at Vernonnet (one of three homes, he was not a starving artist) is only a few miles from Monet's at Giverny; you'd get off the train at Vernon for both. Ian and I came very close to them on the cycle ride last summer, and perhaps I might do that one day in the future, but I'm not sure that Bonnard would detain me for long.
Friday, 1 March 2019
PARKS AND RECREATION
Falling Leaves
The cycle path across the Green, alongside the canal, runs past our contractors' compound, and they have regularly sent blokes out to clean the path up, hosing down any mud that delivery lorries have brought onto it, and sweeping up rubbish and leaves. There are, of course, lots of leaves, as there is a row of black poplars between the compound and the path, so, back in the autumn, our people were quite busy sweeping them up. The remainder of the path, however, beyond our compound, is a very different matter. Westminster Parks finally cleared the fallen leaves from the path this week; at the end of February. They had spent a couple of days working on it earlier in the month, but one section was left untouched until this week. Now, I imagine that they justify this by saying that it would need repeated visits if they were to try to clear the leaves when they were actually falling, but they made repeated visits anyway! I am perfectly sure that leaves which have piled up and then been rained on, partially rotting them down, are actually more effort to clear because they are much heavier. More to the point, as a cyclist, I am fed up with (in places) half the width of the path being covered by a mound of slippery dead leaves. Still, I must be grateful that it has finally been done; it's boring just to moan about the stupidity of the Parks Department.
Blurred Lines
It's quite boring to moan about the stupidity of people's parking round here as well, but forgive me, I feel the need. Some time ago I was one of several people who agitated for double yellow lines to extend over the Harrow Road canal bridge on the east side of the road (they already existed on the west) because cars parked there completely blocked the view of anyone coming out from the Green, either to cross the road on foot or to pull out on a bike (which I do every day). That was done, which is a great help, but the problem is that people just ignore them, particularly at night. There seems to be a general view that single yellow lines are just advisory, and don't apply after lunchtime on the Harrow Road, and that as long as you are not parking overnight then it's fine to park on a double yellow line as well. It may simply be the calculation that Westminster never sends "civil enforcement officers" out after dark, and so you are perfectly safe from a fine. It may be that civil enforcement officers are seen so rarely in our area that people gamble on their absence anyway, or it may be that people have observed that when they are here they are only really interested in cars parked wrongly in marked bays, and pay little attention to yellow lines or dangerously parked vehicles.
I sometimes feel as I zigzag around illegally-parked cars that vigilantism is justified in these circumstances; if I possessed a paintball gun I would be very happy to splat the windscreens of miscreants. It's an ignoble impulse, I know, but it would be so satisfying. Self-righteousness is a very unattractive emotion, isn't it!
Royal Choak
The campaign against the ludicrous TfL plan to put a coach station at Royal Oak gathers pace. There is a public meeting at the Porchester Hall on Shrove Tuesday at 7pm, which I am encouraging people to go to.The campaigners have set up a website, www.stoproyalchoak.com which has links to the two petitions against the plan, which are still collecting signatures. They want to submit the petitions on 14th March, so we are urging people to sign up quickly. One odd feature of this is that no-one actually knows when TfL will be making a decision about this; everything is shrouded in mystery. The campaigners are rightly concentrating on the pollution issue, (hence "Choak") because the plan promises to bring hundreds of extra coaches daily onto the Marylebone Road, which already has the worst air quality of anywhere in the UK. The number of schools within a few yards of the road is ridiculous, and they stand to find their air quality becoming even more dangerous. On the Warwick Estate we shall be right in the firing line; how will people feel using our excellent outdoor gym equipment when the air is full of diesel fumes?
The thing that nice, polite people are not saying publicly is that they really fear the social fallout of a coach station, because we all know that one of the factors in Victoria being a centre for rough sleeping is the presence of the coach station. It is on the coach that the penniless newcomer arrives in London (when not actually trafficked). Over the decades Victoria has developed an infrastructure to deal with this, which we simply do not have in Westbourne or Bayswater. We already have rough sleepers of our own who we struggle to support, without adding in a whole lot of newcomers. The Leader of the Council is eloquent in questioning Westminster's responsibility for all the homeless people who actively choose to come here, and while I may be a bit uncomfortable with that approach, I suspect we would all be agreeing with her if they appeared on our pavements in Westbourne.
Predictive Text
Our new building is faced with panels of glazed terracotta, or faience as it is sometimes called, a characteristically late-Victorian material. I have run into all sorts of confusion recently because if you try to type faience into your phone you will inevitably find it "corrected" to fiance; now I have a fiancee it adds even more potential for bafflement. The good thing is that the specialist facade contractors are making really good progress, and are hanging the faience panels on the Rowington Close front now. The faience is wonderfully highly glazed, and looks really good, even though it's hard to see it properly as it is still obscured by scaffolding. It really glittered on the sunny days we have just enjoyed. There is a relief pattern in the faience, which is going to look splendid, and which picks up a detail of Street's brickwork, which I am very pleased with. There is only one manufacturer in the UK who makes glazed terracotta, so we are delighted to have them making these panels to our specification; they have just made a much larger quantity of white faience for the restoration of the Victoria Palace Theatre, and we were always a bit anxious that our rather small order might get bumped down the schedule by another really big one, so it's a relief to see it all on site, and indeed going up on the walls. Nearly there!
The cycle path across the Green, alongside the canal, runs past our contractors' compound, and they have regularly sent blokes out to clean the path up, hosing down any mud that delivery lorries have brought onto it, and sweeping up rubbish and leaves. There are, of course, lots of leaves, as there is a row of black poplars between the compound and the path, so, back in the autumn, our people were quite busy sweeping them up. The remainder of the path, however, beyond our compound, is a very different matter. Westminster Parks finally cleared the fallen leaves from the path this week; at the end of February. They had spent a couple of days working on it earlier in the month, but one section was left untouched until this week. Now, I imagine that they justify this by saying that it would need repeated visits if they were to try to clear the leaves when they were actually falling, but they made repeated visits anyway! I am perfectly sure that leaves which have piled up and then been rained on, partially rotting them down, are actually more effort to clear because they are much heavier. More to the point, as a cyclist, I am fed up with (in places) half the width of the path being covered by a mound of slippery dead leaves. Still, I must be grateful that it has finally been done; it's boring just to moan about the stupidity of the Parks Department.
Blurred Lines
It's quite boring to moan about the stupidity of people's parking round here as well, but forgive me, I feel the need. Some time ago I was one of several people who agitated for double yellow lines to extend over the Harrow Road canal bridge on the east side of the road (they already existed on the west) because cars parked there completely blocked the view of anyone coming out from the Green, either to cross the road on foot or to pull out on a bike (which I do every day). That was done, which is a great help, but the problem is that people just ignore them, particularly at night. There seems to be a general view that single yellow lines are just advisory, and don't apply after lunchtime on the Harrow Road, and that as long as you are not parking overnight then it's fine to park on a double yellow line as well. It may simply be the calculation that Westminster never sends "civil enforcement officers" out after dark, and so you are perfectly safe from a fine. It may be that civil enforcement officers are seen so rarely in our area that people gamble on their absence anyway, or it may be that people have observed that when they are here they are only really interested in cars parked wrongly in marked bays, and pay little attention to yellow lines or dangerously parked vehicles.
I sometimes feel as I zigzag around illegally-parked cars that vigilantism is justified in these circumstances; if I possessed a paintball gun I would be very happy to splat the windscreens of miscreants. It's an ignoble impulse, I know, but it would be so satisfying. Self-righteousness is a very unattractive emotion, isn't it!
Royal Choak
The campaign against the ludicrous TfL plan to put a coach station at Royal Oak gathers pace. There is a public meeting at the Porchester Hall on Shrove Tuesday at 7pm, which I am encouraging people to go to.The campaigners have set up a website, www.stoproyalchoak.com which has links to the two petitions against the plan, which are still collecting signatures. They want to submit the petitions on 14th March, so we are urging people to sign up quickly. One odd feature of this is that no-one actually knows when TfL will be making a decision about this; everything is shrouded in mystery. The campaigners are rightly concentrating on the pollution issue, (hence "Choak") because the plan promises to bring hundreds of extra coaches daily onto the Marylebone Road, which already has the worst air quality of anywhere in the UK. The number of schools within a few yards of the road is ridiculous, and they stand to find their air quality becoming even more dangerous. On the Warwick Estate we shall be right in the firing line; how will people feel using our excellent outdoor gym equipment when the air is full of diesel fumes?
The thing that nice, polite people are not saying publicly is that they really fear the social fallout of a coach station, because we all know that one of the factors in Victoria being a centre for rough sleeping is the presence of the coach station. It is on the coach that the penniless newcomer arrives in London (when not actually trafficked). Over the decades Victoria has developed an infrastructure to deal with this, which we simply do not have in Westbourne or Bayswater. We already have rough sleepers of our own who we struggle to support, without adding in a whole lot of newcomers. The Leader of the Council is eloquent in questioning Westminster's responsibility for all the homeless people who actively choose to come here, and while I may be a bit uncomfortable with that approach, I suspect we would all be agreeing with her if they appeared on our pavements in Westbourne.
Predictive Text
Our new building is faced with panels of glazed terracotta, or faience as it is sometimes called, a characteristically late-Victorian material. I have run into all sorts of confusion recently because if you try to type faience into your phone you will inevitably find it "corrected" to fiance; now I have a fiancee it adds even more potential for bafflement. The good thing is that the specialist facade contractors are making really good progress, and are hanging the faience panels on the Rowington Close front now. The faience is wonderfully highly glazed, and looks really good, even though it's hard to see it properly as it is still obscured by scaffolding. It really glittered on the sunny days we have just enjoyed. There is a relief pattern in the faience, which is going to look splendid, and which picks up a detail of Street's brickwork, which I am very pleased with. There is only one manufacturer in the UK who makes glazed terracotta, so we are delighted to have them making these panels to our specification; they have just made a much larger quantity of white faience for the restoration of the Victoria Palace Theatre, and we were always a bit anxious that our rather small order might get bumped down the schedule by another really big one, so it's a relief to see it all on site, and indeed going up on the walls. Nearly there!
Wednesday, 13 February 2019
CONTRACTS AND CONTRACTING
The breadth of our building project was demonstrated the other day when I passed the site and observed the vans of "Heritage Blacksmiths Partnership" and "London Concrete Polishing" both parked up. In fact the concrete polishers are there tonight, working through the night, as you clearly have to polish concrete at a particular point in its drying process. The heritage blacksmiths have been superb, rehabilitating all our Victorian doors, and even bringing to life an ancient door-closer that we thought beyond use. The loving care with which the ironwork on our doors has been treated is quite remarkable, and the results are great.
This is the season of spending out budgets, and so Westminster is full of minor works. There are road works all over the West End, while our neighbourhood is full of pavements being relaid. F M Conway, Westminster's preferred contractor, are suddenly very busy indeed. Inexplicably they turned up to repaint the Harrow Road bridge over the Canal, in order to do which they had to set up a little cabin on the entrance to Westbourne Green, and fence off each pavement in turn. Needless to say, pedestrians carried on walking, judging the bridge to be a small enough distance to brave the traffic, which was unwise.They departed this morning, called away to "an emergency at Marble Arch".
While Conways were at work on the bridge a green hire bike was left beside their works, on the road, on a double yellow line. This was the most extreme example I've seen of anti-social behaviour from hire bikes, but I do think we have reached saturation. Not only are there the Boris bikes with their docking stations, but now there are three different brands of free-floating ones, yellow, orange-and-silver, and green. These can just be abandoned wherever you fancy, because they contain a chip which will notify its location, which the user can then find on the app. I fear that we are becoming a sink for these, as they seem to linger a long time, often in tiresome places. I gather that the local young people have discovered that, with the yellow ones at least, a sharp blow to the lock will not only release the bike, but destroy (or dislodge) the chip, and so you can ride off with impunity (apart from the inherent shame of riding a clumpy canary-coloured bicycle).
Last night I went to the extraordinary Playground Theatre in Latimer Road, to see Steven Berkoff in "Harvey" (Weinstein, not the rabbit). This theatre has been going a year, in an old bus depot towards the North Pole end of Latimer Road, a very odd location indeed; I get my car serviced a few doors down. The theatre has a very smart cafe-bar, and does seem to attract a more prosperous clientele than you might imagine. Unsubsidised, they put on some very ambitious things; last summer I saw "Shirleymander", the play about Dame Shirley Porter and her shameful stewardship of Westminster Council, which was attended by a number of people who looked as though they might have known Dame Shirley, and many who clearly remembered her. Last night's show attracted a rather glamorous crowd, with a very tall, androgynous, white-haired young man in leather trousers, high heels and dark glasses only the most extreme. A "famous paparazzo" was also pointed out to me.
The director of the theatre was at pains to tell us that this was a "workshop production" of a "work in progress", and they gave us all free drinks at the end (a free gin does help one's critical faculties) but I'm afraid it wasn't a total success. Steven Berkoff is a remarkable performer, but this was a very disappointing evening. He has great physical presence, but for all but thirty seconds of the play he was simply slumped in a chair. Only for a moment did you see those extraordinarily scary pale blue eyes glitter. Steven Berkoff has written and directed this show, as well as being the only performer, and I fear that there is no-one to tell him that it's a turkey. We were all expecting to be shocked, I think, but his take on Weinstein was really rather one-dimensional, and while the vocabulary was explicit there was no provocative insight on the issues involved. It was a performance, rather than a play, a monologue from Berkoff with a few recorded extracts from victims' witness depositions. It had no structure, no variety of tone, no dramatic development, and offered nothing very memorable. Still, I've now seen Steven Berkoff in the flesh, and I commend the Playground Theatre for having the nerve to put this on.
The Burne-Jones show at Tate Britain, on the other hand, was more successful than I expected. Yes, there were a lot of those rather drippy women he painted so many of, and some really bad pictures, but there were also some good ones. I found it interesting to see so many together and spot some themes. His treatment of architecture, for instance, is always really poor. He's most comfortable with some sort of shed, like in Botticelli's "Mystic Nativity", but once he has to construct anything more it falls into fantasy. Look closely at "The Golden Stairs" for instance; not only does the staircase defy all laws of construction, but the middle section is so steep and precipitous that it is impossible to imagine all those girls getting down safely. He quite likes girls, and there's a charming portrait of the daughter of George Lewis, Oscar Wilde's solicitor, but he really doesn't like women, he's afraid of them and regards them as sinister. He also follows Michelangelo and basically gives women male bodies (but then some of his men are pretty androgynous too). All this seems quite interesting. And "The Briar Rose" is exquisite, even if it is better in situ at Buscot. Really remarkable are the sequence of Perseus pictures he did for A J Balfour's house, most strikingly the one of the Graeae (look them up). There is a well-worked up painting of this, and then there is the same scene worked as a low relief in wood, gilded and silvered, with a massive gilt Latin inscription above it. This is a piece of decorative art of the very highest quality, and a real innovation. Rather surprisingly it is from the National Museum of Wales, which seems to have several decent works of his.
I announced on Sunday that I am engaged to be married, which caused a good deal of surprise and confusion, and a lot of genuine joy, which was very pleasing. People are very kind.
This is the season of spending out budgets, and so Westminster is full of minor works. There are road works all over the West End, while our neighbourhood is full of pavements being relaid. F M Conway, Westminster's preferred contractor, are suddenly very busy indeed. Inexplicably they turned up to repaint the Harrow Road bridge over the Canal, in order to do which they had to set up a little cabin on the entrance to Westbourne Green, and fence off each pavement in turn. Needless to say, pedestrians carried on walking, judging the bridge to be a small enough distance to brave the traffic, which was unwise.They departed this morning, called away to "an emergency at Marble Arch".
While Conways were at work on the bridge a green hire bike was left beside their works, on the road, on a double yellow line. This was the most extreme example I've seen of anti-social behaviour from hire bikes, but I do think we have reached saturation. Not only are there the Boris bikes with their docking stations, but now there are three different brands of free-floating ones, yellow, orange-and-silver, and green. These can just be abandoned wherever you fancy, because they contain a chip which will notify its location, which the user can then find on the app. I fear that we are becoming a sink for these, as they seem to linger a long time, often in tiresome places. I gather that the local young people have discovered that, with the yellow ones at least, a sharp blow to the lock will not only release the bike, but destroy (or dislodge) the chip, and so you can ride off with impunity (apart from the inherent shame of riding a clumpy canary-coloured bicycle).
Last night I went to the extraordinary Playground Theatre in Latimer Road, to see Steven Berkoff in "Harvey" (Weinstein, not the rabbit). This theatre has been going a year, in an old bus depot towards the North Pole end of Latimer Road, a very odd location indeed; I get my car serviced a few doors down. The theatre has a very smart cafe-bar, and does seem to attract a more prosperous clientele than you might imagine. Unsubsidised, they put on some very ambitious things; last summer I saw "Shirleymander", the play about Dame Shirley Porter and her shameful stewardship of Westminster Council, which was attended by a number of people who looked as though they might have known Dame Shirley, and many who clearly remembered her. Last night's show attracted a rather glamorous crowd, with a very tall, androgynous, white-haired young man in leather trousers, high heels and dark glasses only the most extreme. A "famous paparazzo" was also pointed out to me.
The director of the theatre was at pains to tell us that this was a "workshop production" of a "work in progress", and they gave us all free drinks at the end (a free gin does help one's critical faculties) but I'm afraid it wasn't a total success. Steven Berkoff is a remarkable performer, but this was a very disappointing evening. He has great physical presence, but for all but thirty seconds of the play he was simply slumped in a chair. Only for a moment did you see those extraordinarily scary pale blue eyes glitter. Steven Berkoff has written and directed this show, as well as being the only performer, and I fear that there is no-one to tell him that it's a turkey. We were all expecting to be shocked, I think, but his take on Weinstein was really rather one-dimensional, and while the vocabulary was explicit there was no provocative insight on the issues involved. It was a performance, rather than a play, a monologue from Berkoff with a few recorded extracts from victims' witness depositions. It had no structure, no variety of tone, no dramatic development, and offered nothing very memorable. Still, I've now seen Steven Berkoff in the flesh, and I commend the Playground Theatre for having the nerve to put this on.
The Burne-Jones show at Tate Britain, on the other hand, was more successful than I expected. Yes, there were a lot of those rather drippy women he painted so many of, and some really bad pictures, but there were also some good ones. I found it interesting to see so many together and spot some themes. His treatment of architecture, for instance, is always really poor. He's most comfortable with some sort of shed, like in Botticelli's "Mystic Nativity", but once he has to construct anything more it falls into fantasy. Look closely at "The Golden Stairs" for instance; not only does the staircase defy all laws of construction, but the middle section is so steep and precipitous that it is impossible to imagine all those girls getting down safely. He quite likes girls, and there's a charming portrait of the daughter of George Lewis, Oscar Wilde's solicitor, but he really doesn't like women, he's afraid of them and regards them as sinister. He also follows Michelangelo and basically gives women male bodies (but then some of his men are pretty androgynous too). All this seems quite interesting. And "The Briar Rose" is exquisite, even if it is better in situ at Buscot. Really remarkable are the sequence of Perseus pictures he did for A J Balfour's house, most strikingly the one of the Graeae (look them up). There is a well-worked up painting of this, and then there is the same scene worked as a low relief in wood, gilded and silvered, with a massive gilt Latin inscription above it. This is a piece of decorative art of the very highest quality, and a real innovation. Rather surprisingly it is from the National Museum of Wales, which seems to have several decent works of his.
I announced on Sunday that I am engaged to be married, which caused a good deal of surprise and confusion, and a lot of genuine joy, which was very pleasing. People are very kind.
Monday, 4 February 2019
WORDS AND MUSIC
We finally launched Helen's book last week, many months after it was actually published. We had hoped to have all three editors present, but since Ed Vickers now works in a Japanese university this was always going to be a challenge, and it was one that we failed. Attempting to accommodate Ed, and Sadaf Rizvi, a colleague of Helen's who now works for the Open University and lives away from London, contributed to our delays, and in the end neither of them were there. Germ Janmaat, Helen's supervisor (the other editor) had arranged a room in the Institute of Education, and had arranged for their research group to provide wine and nibbles. No sumptuous publishers' party for an academic volume like this, "Faith Schools, Tolerance and Diversity", but a few bottles of cheap plonk in an anonymous teaching room on the eighth floor of the IoE. I got there first and moved the chairs out of the way (it's what clergy do). Germ spoke authoritatively about how important a book it is and then I said a bit about the process of the research and writing. Germ said I would be speaking "in a lighter vein" but I warned him there would be no jokes. I made the point that when Helen sent the thesis to people at the Department for Education they showed no interest at all, despite that being the era of "evidence-based policy". I hope I was suitably grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for actually publishing the book, and I didn't rehearse publicly my astonishment at the fact that they didn't routinely provide an index; I had to pay an Italian lady in the Netherlands £600 for the privilege. I do find it rather extraordinary that academic publishers should think it acceptable to publish a book without an index.
I had invited various luminaries of the Anglican education world, most of whom at least sent apologies, but none actually came. I should say, in fairness, that the Rector of Bournemouth (who is a former diocesan director of education, and included in my category of luminaries) tried to get there but couldn't find the room. He was in the building at the right time, but no-one he asked knew anything about it, and unless you got up to the eighth floor corridor there weren't any notices. He didn't have my mobile number, but sent an email, which reached me, but since I had (like a good, well-socialized human being) turned my phone to silent for the duration, I didn't actually read it until much too late. I dread that sort of thing happening to me and so usually carry the invitation with me, or a piece of paper with transcribed details: I once failed to do that and had the shame of taking the Superior of the Delhi Brotherhood to entirely the wrong place for a reception and then having no means of finding out the correct address without coming home, by which time, of course, the moment had passed.
Isn't London wonderful? I take it for granted too often, but after the book launch I walked my brother-in-law down to Waterloo Station for his train back to Exeter, and was able to go to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I hadn't booked, because I didn't know when we would be finished, but I had checked online and seen that there were plenty of seats left, so I just turned up at the box office with confidence, and was able to have a choice of cheap seats. The London Philharmonic, under Sir Roger Norrington, were doing Handel's Water Music and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and it was a splendid evening. Helen and I sang in Dido and Aeneas with the Plymouth Polyphonic Choir some twenty-five years ago, and so it seemed very appropriate. The LPO's was semi-staged, as ours had been, though the Festival Hall is a lot grander than Plymouth Guildhall, though actually I think we "acted" a bit more than they did, and we even had the odd bit of costume (I remember creating a helmet with wings for "Mercury"). I rather expected to be in floods of tears, but I wasn't. Partly this was because the LPO had a man singing the role of the Sorceress, which Helen sang back then, which is common practice, but frankly a bit odd, and partly it was because I didn't much care for the woman singing Dido, who was (I think) French, and didn't have the clarity of diction you want in Purcell. The result was that "Remember Me" was not the tear-jerker that it should be, but a bit florid and comfortable.
I was shocked by how much of the words I still have by heart; why can't I remember things like that nowadays? I was only in the chorus, and our high point was marching around as we sang, "Come away, fellow sailors, come away". I remember us slapping our thighs as we did so, but I think that was only in rehearsal, because I for one certainly couldn't have slapped in time successfully, and that would just have looked comical (as well as camp). Our Dido was a teenage girl called Alison Chryssides, whose mother was the director of the choir, and she was superb. I got her to sing Mozart for me at an anniversary Mass I celebrated in Reading a few years later, but she has not become a professional singer, but a social psychologist. This is not so surprising, as her father was a fairly eminent sociologist, but I hope she still sings.
I had invited various luminaries of the Anglican education world, most of whom at least sent apologies, but none actually came. I should say, in fairness, that the Rector of Bournemouth (who is a former diocesan director of education, and included in my category of luminaries) tried to get there but couldn't find the room. He was in the building at the right time, but no-one he asked knew anything about it, and unless you got up to the eighth floor corridor there weren't any notices. He didn't have my mobile number, but sent an email, which reached me, but since I had (like a good, well-socialized human being) turned my phone to silent for the duration, I didn't actually read it until much too late. I dread that sort of thing happening to me and so usually carry the invitation with me, or a piece of paper with transcribed details: I once failed to do that and had the shame of taking the Superior of the Delhi Brotherhood to entirely the wrong place for a reception and then having no means of finding out the correct address without coming home, by which time, of course, the moment had passed.
Isn't London wonderful? I take it for granted too often, but after the book launch I walked my brother-in-law down to Waterloo Station for his train back to Exeter, and was able to go to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I hadn't booked, because I didn't know when we would be finished, but I had checked online and seen that there were plenty of seats left, so I just turned up at the box office with confidence, and was able to have a choice of cheap seats. The London Philharmonic, under Sir Roger Norrington, were doing Handel's Water Music and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and it was a splendid evening. Helen and I sang in Dido and Aeneas with the Plymouth Polyphonic Choir some twenty-five years ago, and so it seemed very appropriate. The LPO's was semi-staged, as ours had been, though the Festival Hall is a lot grander than Plymouth Guildhall, though actually I think we "acted" a bit more than they did, and we even had the odd bit of costume (I remember creating a helmet with wings for "Mercury"). I rather expected to be in floods of tears, but I wasn't. Partly this was because the LPO had a man singing the role of the Sorceress, which Helen sang back then, which is common practice, but frankly a bit odd, and partly it was because I didn't much care for the woman singing Dido, who was (I think) French, and didn't have the clarity of diction you want in Purcell. The result was that "Remember Me" was not the tear-jerker that it should be, but a bit florid and comfortable.
I was shocked by how much of the words I still have by heart; why can't I remember things like that nowadays? I was only in the chorus, and our high point was marching around as we sang, "Come away, fellow sailors, come away". I remember us slapping our thighs as we did so, but I think that was only in rehearsal, because I for one certainly couldn't have slapped in time successfully, and that would just have looked comical (as well as camp). Our Dido was a teenage girl called Alison Chryssides, whose mother was the director of the choir, and she was superb. I got her to sing Mozart for me at an anniversary Mass I celebrated in Reading a few years later, but she has not become a professional singer, but a social psychologist. This is not so surprising, as her father was a fairly eminent sociologist, but I hope she still sings.
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