Sunday In London

I've had the best of times.

The best.

Nu is a panacea for most ills and meeting her lightened my heart more than anyone else in this world could possibly do.

On Friday we went to Hawksmoor on Air Street for dinner followed by WALDEN which is a sort of Syfy drama staring the glorious Gemma Alderton. The theater felt safe and welcoming and the play proved to be thoughtful and well acted. 

We went back to Ealing for too much gin and conversation so was muzzy headed for the start of Kew Gardens on Saturday 

Kew, as always was a delight and sunburnt and tired we followed that with cinema inBrentford

Where we saw a fantastic movie called AFTER LOVE staring the comedian actress Joanna Scanlon as a middle aged Muslim Convert who finds out her recently deceased Pakistani husband had led a secret life for 14 years.

Set around Dover, this brooding drama is wonderfully shot and impeccably acted with the dumpy and fallorn Scanlon as a true standout. Her performance, which wavers between stark grief to quiet acceptance literally breaks your heart.

It was Nu's first visit to the cinema post lockdown and she cried when the film started

We both did.

 After the pics we met up with Nu's hubby Jim for a fantastic " Street meal" in an Indian in Northfields which just about set me up for today.

Big breath

Today we had brunch near soho with Nu's sister Margie who I've known nearly as long as Nu

Then it was a quick run to a Tapas bar off Charing Cross Road to meet Sitges John and his boyfriend Geoff.

It's two years since me properly met up.

Tonight, I'm resting with my old friend Going Gently. I've been upgraded at my hotel and window overlooks St Paul's Church in Central Covent Garden .

I was tickled pink.

So what's happening right now?

I'm people watching

As I write this with fat fingers and my phone.

Covent Garden is busy, but not overly crowded

I'm sat with a bottle of wine , calamari and tended to by an over protective Italian waitress who strangely thinks I am deaf. 

I'm on my own , but I'm happy to be here.

Happy that I am loyal to friends who are loyal to me

Happy to be feeling human again

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3x1CNS1

Choirboy

Truro choirboy by Suzi Stephens.

Lying abed this morning with BBC Radio 4 playing on our radio alarm clock, vague memories of when I was a choirboy came to the surface of my mind. On Sunday mornings, Radio 4 focuses upon religion and there are church services complete with hymns, sermons and prayers. Memories returned like flotsam on waves.

I was a choirboy from the age of ten to fourteen. I can't remember how I ended up in our village church choir but I have always loved singing and my father was a church warden and regular churchgoer so that may explain it.

As a choirboy, I had to attend choir practice every Friday evening ready for  Sunday. When "The Sabbath" arrived there were two services. One began at ten in the morning and the other was I believe at six thirty in the evening.

In those four years, several hymns became very familiar  and I knew some of them by heart. Even today I can still sing whole verses from memory. One of my favourites was "Ye Holy Angels Bright" written by Richard Baxter in 1681 but sung to an even older tune called "Darwall":-

Ye holy angels bright,

Who wait at God's right hand,

Or through the realms of light

Fly at your Lord's command,

Assist our song,

For else the theme

Too high doth seem

For mortal tongue

The hymns were filled with archaic language and strange notions - such as angels flying through "realms of light" like an angelic air force commanded by their omnipotent leader - the unseen "God" figure who seemed to get everywhere. The echoes of those hymns with their unmodern English have remained with me and have certainly influenced my appreciation of language.

As a choirboy, I had to wear a ridiculous outfit and I am very pleased that there are no surviving photographs of me in this garb. First there was a long black cassock that reached the floor and was buttoned up the front. Over this you wore a white surplus - a loose kind of smock that reached just below the waist and had baggy sleeves. Last there was the white ruff which I wore round my neck. Our outfits hung on pegs in the vestry and I have no idea if they were ever laundered. I guess they must have been once in a while.

Being a choirboy was not just about the singing. There were interminable prayers and even longer sermons to endure - delivered by vicars and canons whose voices droned on and on from the stone pulpit. Would they ever end? You would think that religious belief would instil believers' hearts with animated, radiating  joy but those prayers and those sermons were so tiresome, so dull, so very unconvincing. To me they added weight to my growing but unspoken belief that it was all one enormous confidence trick, played out over centuries of tomfoolery and communal arm-twisting.

Just as I don't recall how I became a choirboy, I don't remember how I extracted  myself from the role. By fourteen, my atheism was now pretty well-formed and I had for example spoken about it with my mother who was also unconvinced by all the religious rigmarole though she kept this quiet for my father's sake.

No longer would I sing in the village church where I was christened in the springtime of 1954 and where I delivered my mother's funeral eulogy in  September 2007. No more a choirboy was I, but even now the hymns still echo and my interest in church buildings and the impact of Christianity upon this kingdom persists. You can take the boy out of the choir but you can't take the choir out of the boy.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/3w9DSY5