******

As many of you
will know, the St Pancras Hotel has reopened as a tribute to Gilbert Scott, the
original architect, and has attracted enormous praise from everyone. It would
be wonderful to stay there sometime, but not a very cheap prospect! However,
Amanda discovered that you have ‘supper’ there at a very reasonable cost. So we
headed over there on a recent Sunday evening, as much as a way of getting a
look round as for the meal. Neither the building nor the supper let us down. It
is fabulously done out and no detail has been spared. The food was very English,
but excellent, as was the service. Not a cheap evening, but a very good one. ******
This week saw
me once again donning black tie and suit. A second funeral in 6 weeks is bad
enough, but the second for someone younger than me in such a timescale is
deeply disturbing. Kevin Warne, a
long-time hobby associate, and once John Harrington’s zine
co-editor died of a heart attack. Not a drinker or smoker his main foible seems
to have been liking his food too much. He has had a
cholesterol crisis before, but it seems that there were no further chances.
Life shows no sign of calming down, and we have continued a
fairly hectic pace since returning from Siena. It is
noted below that we went to the opening night of our new venue GLive. As it happens it was rather more interesting than
you might expect an evening of Tchaikovsky to be. Half way through the first
movement of the First Piano Concerto, played with stunning virtuosity by Daniil Trifonov, the lights went
out! In true performing spirit, the pianist and conductor never missed a beat.
One or two of the second violinists near us looked a bit put out, but various
torches and little lights appeared and the performance continued.
Unsurprisingly at the end soloist was treated to a rapturous standing ovation.
I think he’ll be welcome back at any time. I suppose any opening night may have
problems. We’re next here for Bill Wyman, who I suspect will put a slightly
higher demand on their power supplies!
Astonishing to return from
Italy in September and find the temperature higher at home. It has given us an
opportunity to tidy up the garden for winter and discover yet more lovely
waterside pubs – the latest, the Stag on the Water at Eashing).
We have also gone to a local theatre group performing The
Dolls House, an evening at Shalford Mill on
soup and breadmaking, and back in town a discussion
at the Jewish Museum on the Battle of Cable Street. There has also been Jacob’s
first birthday party, but apart from that....
******
On Tuesday we attended Hazel Beattie’s funeral.
I first met Hazel, wife of Molinare work colleague Malcolm, just over 30 years ago. I have a memory – quite possibly a false one – of Hazel suddenly appearing in the library at the end of my first week with the words ‘It’s Friday night and we’re going to PARTY!’ True or not, it would have been typical of Hazel who was always full of life and fun. She worked for many years in some of the better Soho and Covent Garden restaurants as a Maitre d’, so understandably liked good food and wine (she showed me the real way to taste the wine – just sniff it!). She adored dance and ballet and singing but her obsession was Wimbledon. For two weeks a year Hazel was unobtainable, either being at SW19 or laid out in front of the TV. Sadly she didn’t make it down for our party a few weeks ago, Malcolm coming by himself as Hazel was being ‘auntie’. We were looking for a time for them both to come to dinner. She would have been 56 the day after the funeral.
This is all just so wrong.
******
Joe Finnegan said on the phone the other day that we didn’t seem to be doing less since we moved, just in different locations. A very reasonable comment. In fact I am a bit puzzled as to why it is that after getting in a long walk virtually every weekend in the winter and spring, we haven’t done a decent walk in about three months. One reason is music; Guilfest, Beautiful Days and Weyfest have given us our best summer music in years. And we have tickets pinned on the board for another half dozen gigs over the autumn. We did just one Promenade concert this year (Mozart & Bruckner) and we are off to see some populist Tchaikovsky at the newly opened Guildford venue (GLive). We have been to a couple of exhibitions, most recently the Italian Alter Pieces at the National Gallery – superb! – and have been dashing around Surrey for Open House week (including the Lovelace Mausoleum in East Horsley, pictured). Family has been much in evidence too, with visits to and from babies Jacob and Ethan including Ethan’s ‘Naming Ceremony’ up at the gorgeous Burgh House in Hampstead. We have also had to find out way to deepest, darkest Acton to Kenny’s pub The Red Lion & Pineapple. Finally there have been domestic matters, including the great successes of our garden (brilliant beans, good squash, salad, potatoes and tomatoes, slightly disappointing courgette and no sign of the rhubarb!), pulling out the decking, completing blinds and curtains and now having the kitchen ripped out and replaced, which should be finished this week. Irritatingly, on our way back from a visit to my sister in Hove I picked up my first ever speeding ticket... After over 35years of driving! I have opted to go to a ‘driving awareness’ scheme, or something like that....
******
In all honesty, the riots
have largely passed me by; there has been no disruption in either my leafy homeplace or workplace. However, Amanda’s children have
been rather closer to the scenes of violence and Amanda herself was sent home
from a ‘very tense’ Holloway earlier this week. And the constantly televised
images of looting in Clapham focussed on a shop I have known very well for many
years, so perhaps not so far away as all that.
It took a while for a consensus
to emerge, but I think it is safe to say that, outside of Tottenham this has
been an exercise in criminality rather than politics; essentially a ‘law and
order’ affair. Even Al Jazeera commented that you don’t protest about an
unlawful killing by stealing trainers. The rioting has nothing to do with the
‘cuts’, lack of youth clubs, abandonment of EMA and so on.
And yet.... I didn’t expect to see riot
police outside Guildford station, and I was correct. Nor did I see signs of
disruption in Weybridge, or Beaconsfield or Winchester. Tottenham, Enfield,
Hackney, Clapham, Croydon... while there may be no causal link between
individual aspects of disadvantage, the cumulative result is there to be seen.
The rioters/criminals/gangs did choose deprived areas in which to assemble. It
is glib to ‘blame the Tories’ for the disorder, but equally glib not to accept
that disadvantage does not play some part.
The problem is that everyone
is to blame. Yes, the Tories for the lack of care they have shown in pushing through
their deficit programme, New Labour for failing to tackle any of these
long-term issues when times were good, preferring to simply paying off
non-working citizens with benefits and grants. As far as building a society
without moral values where making money is the only thing that counts, the list
is as long as you like: the media with its obsession with celebrity ‘values’,
the bankers who bankrupted the country but still retain their barely
conceivable salaries, footballers demanding more per week than most earn in a
year, politicians who stole public money to fund personal foibles (yes, I do
mean moats and duck houses), public sector chiefs with their excessive
salaries, the BBC for paying non-entities colossal fees and even an ex
Metropolitan Commissioner who didn’t see a problem in accepting a gift of
£12,000.... Don’t blame black men for not being decent role models, blame the
whole of society!
The other accepted view is
that the Police ‘got it wrong’.
If the Coalition Government
still possessed the energy of a year ago, they would be pointing out that the
policing of the riots has been a classic example of
New Labour target setting culture. The policy, which appears to have been to
not intervene when witnessing looting or arson but watch, ensure CCTV footage
is obtained and then arrest as many of the perpetrators later using
photographic evidence. As a policy dreamed up by senior officers in a policy
meeting it makes a great deal of sense: You don’t subject your officers to
unnecessary health and safety risks, you avoid the potential of being heavy
handed with rioters and being condemned for it, you maximise prosecutions and
probably conviction rates as well as you are prosecuting people you have
photographic evidence on. As an example of top-down, KPI centred approach it
really does make sense.
It would not, of course, have
last 10 seconds if passed by any small business; they see the police’s job as
protecting them and their business, not achieving policy targets. It seems to
me obvious that the public’s perception of the police is that it is there to
protect them from just such incidents and, as we are seeing all over London and
Birmingham. And if the police won’t protect you, there are plenty within the
community who are happy to do so themselves. Vigilantism may yet become part of
Cameron’s Big Society.
So why isn’t the
Government out explaining how this is a product of the New Labour managerial
approach? Presumably because they have no alternatives to
offer. Their conviction that the Police service
(force? Or service? It is suddenly a relevant question) can save money
without reducing ‘front-line staff’ is based on a similar managerial approach.
Personally I have yet to see a better example of the perverse results of
over-using targets and KPIs. We know that schools have become adept at getting
their students through valueless qualifications just to inflate their own
targets, and that hospitals know where to deposit patients while allowing them
to meet waiting time requirements. Now we see the police would prefer to let
the City burn and simply pick up the guilty at a later date.
The fallout over the
events of the past few days suggest many things in UK public life are in need
of examination, and the discredited target culture
must surely be added to them.
********
Interesting
how busy we seem to be, but in different ways. In the past month we have had
various friends round for lunch/dinner, been to Guilfest,
visited Wanborough Barn, the oldest barn in Surrey (1388)
where Amanda decided she wants to spin wool as a hobby, been to a Civil
Ceremony, been to see Surrey play Warwickshire in a 40 over game of cricket,
visited the Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum, the
archaeological dig at Woking Palace, not to mention
finished painting the bathrooms and started excavating the decking in the
garden.... And on it goes!
As cricket fans may know, Surrey CC decamps to Guildford for a week every summer; to be precise they go to the cricket ground at the bottom of Recreation Road, several minutes away. We took Amanda’s parents (despite lines form Ken like – not as good as when I was in Sabina Park) to a very close and exciting 40 over game against Warwickshire. It was a hot and sunny day, there wasn’t a spare seat and either side could have won down to the last few deliveries. Who says County Cricket is dead? Next year I may look to take a day off and go to the County Match as well.
Treasures from Heaven was typically excellent, given that British Museum has a good choice of the best artefacts in the world. It was top quality stuff, lots of reliquaries for bits of the ‘True Cross’ and the ‘Crown of Thorns’, and some very high quality Roman material. Well captioned and explained it only started to get a bit silly when you get relics of Charles I or even Martin Luther! Really good, but perhaps lacking the commonplace; Relics worship was universal throughout most of the Middle Ages, and every tiny little church will have had relics and reliquaries, but in this exhibition there was no sign of the non-elite or popular religion.
I can’t say that visiting Woking Palace was one of the features that drew us to Guildford. In fact, I never knew Woking had a Palace. Quite a decent one though, largely built by Henry VII, much used by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and based on a 12th Century Manor House. We went to the Surrey Archaeology Society talk after this year’s three-week dig. It was both extremely well done – we spent three hours on the site – and extremely interesting. As local history goes, this was very high end. Perhaps next year we should go down and get the trowels out....
********
Good to see (feel?) that
summer has returned to normal. After the glorious weather of April, the drought
of May we are back to wet, cold, windy weather in June. I am writing this in a
tiny cottage on the West Sussex coast where we have retreated for a few days to
get away from – well, everything! Luckily we weren’t really requiring good
weather so we have not been disappointed. But what exactly are we retreating
from? Work – very hectic for both of us, working on the house – currently
painting the upstairs bathroom, the decking needs to be ripped up, there is a
kitchen to plan, curtains to make, garden to be weeded and still stuff to sort
out. Essentially a lot to do!
We had a really lovely little
gathering a few weeks ago, and lots of people found their way to our new house.
Our fist guest arrived at 12.20 and the last one left at 9.30pm and there was a
constant flow of people in between. As good a party as I can remember.
I have also now done my
second history paper, at the South East Hub for History at the University of
Kent in Canterbury. Really good fun and the paper was
well received. For me a lot of this is about getting some confidence and
feeling I can be taken seriously as a Historian. After giving two papers inside
a month and indeed being taken far more seriously by others than I do myself,
perhaps I have got there? Next time I may try something slightly more serious.
But the next priority must be to get the Clerical Celibacy web site finished,
so I can start to refer to some of my evidence.
My move towards establishment
respectability is confirmed by my becoming a Governor of the Royal Grammar School in Guildford. This
is very similar to my own old school in being a direct grant grammar which
opted to go public rather than embrace the comprehensive ideal. My few visits
have already provided me with plenty of food for thought, and I look forward to
my time working with the school.
Baby Update:
We haven’t seen baby Ethan
recently, but we can report that baby Jacob is now a fine crawler. Non parents
may not realise the difference between putting a baby on the floor and they
stay there, and putting a baby on the floor and they are in control of their
space, knowing where they want to e and how to get there. Kenny, Justyna and
Jacob are off to Poland tomorrow and by the time they return i am sure Jacob will be walking. What fund!!!
********
Whitsun: another weekend,
another bank holiday. At least there was a return to normality when, half way
through Monday afternoon, it actually rained! It has been a long time since it
rained in drought-stricken Surrey!
On Saturday I attended a BirkBeck conference called Angles 3 which was concentrating on unusual approaches to topics.
It was really very interesting, far more than I was expecting, with some
excellent papers and mostly really well presented. I was there largely to
present a paper I had written looking at the effectiveness of using statistical analysis on
medieval sources. This is part of my new campaign to ‘become an academic’;
I have another paper to present (errr, and write!) in
Canterbury on June 15th.
Thereafter it was family,
with Amanda’s grandson Jacob paying us a visit (accompanied by his parents I
should add!) leading to lots of family visits and an amount of
babysitting. I have to say, I find Grand parenting (or pseudo-grand
parenting) a lot less stressful than the real thing.
*********
March already and a
whiff offspring in the air as I write this on a train heading back from a day
in Newcastle. What have we been doing with ourselves, you may wonder? Certainly not writing up
the website, that’s for sure. Well, we have been quite busy. Firstly I
had forgotten how much there is to do when you move into a house – it being
some years since I last did it. Currently we have both bathrooms being done
over = or possibly done in since one is just a shell at the moment. We have
also largely finished decorating the living room – curtains (Amanda). Curtain
rail (Amanda’s brother), Picture rail (me), wallpapering (Amanda) and painting
(both of us). Just lighting and flooring to be done. We have also bought
furniture for the room which should be delivered in the next few days, and no
weekend is complete without a visit to Homebase – and we have yet to start on the garden!
While the commute is fine, it still takes time. We get up 45 minutes earlier of a morning and arrive home 40 minutes later of an evening. The good side effect is that I have been walking from Waterloo to work, which when combined with the walk to Guildford Station makes 90 minutes walking a day. All good – but it takes time. And there is the small matter of work. So far this year I have been to Arbroath, Plymouth (twice), Exeter, Portsmouth and Newcastle and there are a few more trips left to do in the next couple of weeks. My overnight in Plymouth was interesting as I stayed in the Wardroom – essentially the Officer’s Mess. Very pleasant rooms and an excellent 3 course dinner. I spent the evening in the bar being bought drinks by a group of nuclear physicists....
We have been trying out different places of entertainment too. So far we have been to Gainsborough (vie heroique) - a French ‘art’ film (well, it was subtitled and suitably surreal in places) - at The Electric Theatre, the National’s tour of Hamlet with Rory Kinnear at the New Palace Woking, the Tallis Scholars at the Cathedral, True Grit at the local Odeon and the traditional Mummers at a selection of pubs on the High Street.music.htm I’ve booked a gig in Havant (!) and hope to visit The Maltings in Farnborough soon. And finally there is walking. One of the aims of this move was to spend a lot more time walking, and so far most weekend’s we have managed a fairly decent walk, usually on the Downs somewhere. It is an area of breathtaking beauty and it is very easy to get completely away from everyone. We have also found some amazing pubs; perhaps I should flashback to the NMR! Pub Guide and share some of the best with you?