...my arse!
Do please forgive the extraordinary profanity, but I am compelled to speak and to swear in my wrath.
One is used to the Christian liturgical seasons having no purpose for the world of capitalist commerce other than as an excuse to boost sales. One accepts - with ill-grace of course - that Christmas begins in the shops about five minutes after one has unpacked the summer holiday suitcase.
But this has taken the utter biscuit and cannot be countenanced. Do you remember when a certain creme egg would appear in March to tempt the sweeter tooth? For certain it should have been held back until the sharp fasting season of Lent were done, but it was accepted as a reasonable pointer towards the great festival of rebirth and joy.
Tonight, however, on going to the local 'offie' for a couple of one's favourite cigars, there on rank display at the very front of the counter are boxes of these creme eggs. For the love of the Lord, we are not yet out of the Twelfth Day of this beautiful feast and they want to shove Easter down our throats! Literally!
Well I am sorry, but this cannot be so. Cannot be let be. I said to young Craig that my shock knew no bounds, that my ire was strong and that he must be telling his delightful manager Sarah I should be seeking my smokes elsewhere in future.
Not her fault at all, poor lady. She lays out what that Godless company - Threshers - sends her to display. But she may cut down on her ordering of cigars for a spell for I, her most loyal customer, shall not be returning.
Had, in fact, intended to quit smoking this coming New Year - as one always by fond tradition does - but I shan't this time, simply for the personal pleasure of buying my smokes elsewhere.
A boycott is not out of the question. Letters to Chairmen will most assuredly be written and with any luck an aghast question or two will be asked in the House.
Easter at Christmas? Bah humbug indeed! I spit upon their profane ways. I really do.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Dies Irae...
...A consequence of being a generally gloomy sort of cove (comes with the Scandinavian blood) of passing years, lived under the perpetual shadow of a potentially life-limiting illness, is that one from time to time lays out scoping plans for one's own funeral as part of the ending of it all.
Consideration indeed of 'The Four Last Things' is a proper clerical activity, one indeed I ought in truth - and in Truth - to be advocating all round. That though, in itself, is considered by many to be a somewhat dull thing. But if a certain reluctance among the living to think much of dying and death is perfectly natural, we church types don't help by oft misplacing the correct order and, thereby, mistaking the whole point and purpose.
We should not speak of 'Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell' as we tend, but rather have Heaven as the last of all. Quite changes the note of the whole thing you'll find if you run it through the mind. Heaven bound, indeed, is our journey's end - quite a pleasing prospect you'll admit. Yes, there is the question of Hell and that is a stark enough thought for any to baulk at contemplating, but it is not the last stop on the line.
And that whole Judgement thing. Who could not have a moment of teeth-sucking terror at the thought of one's whole life laid out before God and his angels?
Another happy consequence of being that gloomy cove aforementioned is that I lightly skipped the traditional and horrid post-diagnosis enquiry "Why me?", for as the question inevitably did begin to surface at once came the self-replying answer - "Well how would you like it boy: alphabetically, chronologically, by degree of appalling sinfulness or what?"
Now there may be some West-by-North-Western European males who do not instinctively think of sexual failings when put to the test of recalling one's moral lapses. I, however, as I would hope you know by now, am not one such.
There are too many musical references one could summons to seek to put that whole matter into any kind of nutshell. Best perhaps to leave it to the words of delightful Tom Paxton: "Should have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind." More last things!
Well back to the funeral thing. Can never forget James Joyce's spoofing 'funferal' as an alternative view. Yes, there should be a degree of mourning - of grief even - and for at least the host of the show - me - a degree of rank fright. But there must too be something of the 'celebration of his life' that is so much the vogue.
The mix then - and it is still yet an early recipe - is somewhat unclear, but there will be a full Tridentine (please if you will) Requiem Mass, with the 'Dies Irae' and sung by one's monastic ex-brethren. They of course may not be available, nor indeed can one guarantee a dark and a stormy day with awesome flashes and crashes to accompany the chants. (You might think aesthetically that to be somewhat over-egging the melodrama, but if you have - as I have - ever sung the quiet chant to the roar of a thunderstorm, you'll not dispute the majestic wonder of the thing.)
But then there must also be the lighter note. And I shall have mine. The back three rows are to be reserved for the women in black. They are the assembly of the ladies one has loved and - largely - lost. They will all be elegant, with veiled faces, soft sighs and quiet weeping.
None will know who they are - they slip into place without introduction - they will, of course, not know each other, though they will smile gently to each other as if to say "Ah you too felt that magic touch did you? You too are left wondering just what happened, yet happy that it did?"
They will not attend for baked meats but depart each in their chauffeured car, having first cast a flower or other personal memento into the grave. They will shake the officiating Vicar's hand, perhaps with a small expressed sentiment of personal loss and fond recall of the fellow.
I below - at least in mortal form - shall thank them for their love and their presence. I shall be wanting their prayers too, but they will know this and if there is to be wrath that day, as there must, then I am confident they will help its ease.
Consideration indeed of 'The Four Last Things' is a proper clerical activity, one indeed I ought in truth - and in Truth - to be advocating all round. That though, in itself, is considered by many to be a somewhat dull thing. But if a certain reluctance among the living to think much of dying and death is perfectly natural, we church types don't help by oft misplacing the correct order and, thereby, mistaking the whole point and purpose.
We should not speak of 'Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell' as we tend, but rather have Heaven as the last of all. Quite changes the note of the whole thing you'll find if you run it through the mind. Heaven bound, indeed, is our journey's end - quite a pleasing prospect you'll admit. Yes, there is the question of Hell and that is a stark enough thought for any to baulk at contemplating, but it is not the last stop on the line.
And that whole Judgement thing. Who could not have a moment of teeth-sucking terror at the thought of one's whole life laid out before God and his angels?
Another happy consequence of being that gloomy cove aforementioned is that I lightly skipped the traditional and horrid post-diagnosis enquiry "Why me?", for as the question inevitably did begin to surface at once came the self-replying answer - "Well how would you like it boy: alphabetically, chronologically, by degree of appalling sinfulness or what?"
Now there may be some West-by-North-Western European males who do not instinctively think of sexual failings when put to the test of recalling one's moral lapses. I, however, as I would hope you know by now, am not one such.
There are too many musical references one could summons to seek to put that whole matter into any kind of nutshell. Best perhaps to leave it to the words of delightful Tom Paxton: "Should have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind." More last things!
Well back to the funeral thing. Can never forget James Joyce's spoofing 'funferal' as an alternative view. Yes, there should be a degree of mourning - of grief even - and for at least the host of the show - me - a degree of rank fright. But there must too be something of the 'celebration of his life' that is so much the vogue.
The mix then - and it is still yet an early recipe - is somewhat unclear, but there will be a full Tridentine (please if you will) Requiem Mass, with the 'Dies Irae' and sung by one's monastic ex-brethren. They of course may not be available, nor indeed can one guarantee a dark and a stormy day with awesome flashes and crashes to accompany the chants. (You might think aesthetically that to be somewhat over-egging the melodrama, but if you have - as I have - ever sung the quiet chant to the roar of a thunderstorm, you'll not dispute the majestic wonder of the thing.)
But then there must also be the lighter note. And I shall have mine. The back three rows are to be reserved for the women in black. They are the assembly of the ladies one has loved and - largely - lost. They will all be elegant, with veiled faces, soft sighs and quiet weeping.
None will know who they are - they slip into place without introduction - they will, of course, not know each other, though they will smile gently to each other as if to say "Ah you too felt that magic touch did you? You too are left wondering just what happened, yet happy that it did?"
They will not attend for baked meats but depart each in their chauffeured car, having first cast a flower or other personal memento into the grave. They will shake the officiating Vicar's hand, perhaps with a small expressed sentiment of personal loss and fond recall of the fellow.
I below - at least in mortal form - shall thank them for their love and their presence. I shall be wanting their prayers too, but they will know this and if there is to be wrath that day, as there must, then I am confident they will help its ease.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Babes And Sucklings...
...As a child I can recall being invited onto the stage at a magic show. We - the little chosen girl and I - stood either side of the magician as he did a trick first with me and then with her.
When he turned to do his trick with the little girl I could see what no one else in the audience could see - his right hand sneaking into his pocket.
Being but an infant - keen of eye and noble in truth-telling - I was about to try calling out to Mum "Look, see what he's doing. He's cheating Ma!"
Sensing my planned perfidy - knowing full well the ways of little children - the magician employed one of his more crafty tricks. He shuffled just slightly backwards towards me and landed a great crushing heel on my tiny wee foot.
The only cry the audience then heard was my sharp yelp of pain. The trick was done.
So today comes another trick, but this one has come unstuck. Police arrive at a suspected villain's house. Said suspected villain does not care to be found at home and goes to hide in a cupboard. Girlfriend of same bewails the officers that she's not seen him for months.
But then up steps the little four year old son of the bloke in question and in the cupboard:
"I can show you where Daddy is hiding!" he cries out in happy, honest tones.
Babes and sucklings eh!
When he turned to do his trick with the little girl I could see what no one else in the audience could see - his right hand sneaking into his pocket.
Being but an infant - keen of eye and noble in truth-telling - I was about to try calling out to Mum "Look, see what he's doing. He's cheating Ma!"
Sensing my planned perfidy - knowing full well the ways of little children - the magician employed one of his more crafty tricks. He shuffled just slightly backwards towards me and landed a great crushing heel on my tiny wee foot.
The only cry the audience then heard was my sharp yelp of pain. The trick was done.
So today comes another trick, but this one has come unstuck. Police arrive at a suspected villain's house. Said suspected villain does not care to be found at home and goes to hide in a cupboard. Girlfriend of same bewails the officers that she's not seen him for months.
But then up steps the little four year old son of the bloke in question and in the cupboard:
"I can show you where Daddy is hiding!" he cries out in happy, honest tones.
Babes and sucklings eh!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Buchan Days...
...I have been escaping the pressing present to the comfort days of John Buchan. Rather like the ordinand who said he simply could not face the customary Gospels the night before he was priested, but sat up through the hours reading 'Wind In the Willows'.
"I simply couldn't do God that night," he told me. "I needed Ratty and Mole to feel safe." I know just what he means. Sometimes one simply must take that light yet potent escape route - an apposite image for Buchan's tales, as his heroes seem ever to be on the run from the terrible and cunning villains, and who are oft on the point of capture and certain death, yet who unfailingly ever manage the 'one bound and he was free' trick. Lovely stuff.
I believe I am thoroughly versed in most of the major Buchan 'shocker' oeuvre, though until last night I had not, I admit, read a single one. Before though the advent of 'talking books' one had 'reading housemasters', who would while away the post-prep pre-bed hours reading suitable classics to the imprisoned and bored boarders of the School.
Even that long ago, when the English world was essentially static and quite classic, Buchan's time had long passed. He was of one War and we were beyond another. Wish now one could journey back in time and ask of the housemaster what it was that he found so compelling about a man whose tempus et mores so preceded his own. Perhaps it was no more than the eternal love of a good yarn, or derring-do, or bashing a beastly enemy. That taste may vary in flavour, but it does not change in essential and we boys certainly loved it then.
Reading it now I can't pretend my heart doesn't too yearn for some mighty deeds to do, some dark and horrid enemy to be assailed and conquered. And then I look more closely at what Buchan was saying and my heart sinks somewhat at the utter relevance of it all.
For him - as uttered through his characters - there was but a thin veil between the social compact and barbarity in any and so many forms. He saw anarchy as the enemy, the wresting force that would tear it and us all down. As an ex-student, ex-anarchist I believe him more to be speaking of the nihilist. But also of the fanatic.
We have our nihilists. A boy is dead tonight stabbed, as so many others this year, on the streets of London by youths no more than his - or indeed E's - age. Random, bitter, impersonal violence is everywhere. And we too have our fanatics. They are worse than casual killers for they kill for the passion of a cause.
If I speak of Islamic fanatics it is not to single them out as such. There have been Christian fanatic killers and in time - God forbid - perhaps we shall have more atheistic mass murderers. But it is tonight, hearing of the ghastly assassination of Benazir Bhutto, that one particularly thinks of people who will kill for, and in the name of, Islam.
And where in all that does Buchan fit? Well, if you know it not then read his 'Greenmantle' as quick as you might. You might laugh to think there was ever a hope that a European power - his World War One enemy Germany - could ever control such a power of Islamic fundamentalism it sought to unleash. You might rightly baulk at his Anglo-centric notion that everything odd, peculiar and dangerous - never mind plain foreign - began at Dover. But you'd be hard pressed not to suck your teeth and think "Now there's a fellow who seemed to spot something significant in the offing."
I doubt too you would dispute his notion - from the mind of a man who was both a politician and a spy himself - that good intelligence is often if not always wasted on bad government.
My friend the ordinand, now priest, said that he realised the utter truth of his vocation that night as he read the chapter 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn': not the Sermon on the Mount, not the Last Supper, but the quiet pagan joy of Ratty and Mole as they basked in the saving love of their natural deity, that's what made it so right between him and his God.
I bet he reads Buchan. Probably preaches on the man too, much to the consternation of his very own Colonel X. We all have one. It's is God's way.
"I simply couldn't do God that night," he told me. "I needed Ratty and Mole to feel safe." I know just what he means. Sometimes one simply must take that light yet potent escape route - an apposite image for Buchan's tales, as his heroes seem ever to be on the run from the terrible and cunning villains, and who are oft on the point of capture and certain death, yet who unfailingly ever manage the 'one bound and he was free' trick. Lovely stuff.
I believe I am thoroughly versed in most of the major Buchan 'shocker' oeuvre, though until last night I had not, I admit, read a single one. Before though the advent of 'talking books' one had 'reading housemasters', who would while away the post-prep pre-bed hours reading suitable classics to the imprisoned and bored boarders of the School.
Even that long ago, when the English world was essentially static and quite classic, Buchan's time had long passed. He was of one War and we were beyond another. Wish now one could journey back in time and ask of the housemaster what it was that he found so compelling about a man whose tempus et mores so preceded his own. Perhaps it was no more than the eternal love of a good yarn, or derring-do, or bashing a beastly enemy. That taste may vary in flavour, but it does not change in essential and we boys certainly loved it then.
Reading it now I can't pretend my heart doesn't too yearn for some mighty deeds to do, some dark and horrid enemy to be assailed and conquered. And then I look more closely at what Buchan was saying and my heart sinks somewhat at the utter relevance of it all.
For him - as uttered through his characters - there was but a thin veil between the social compact and barbarity in any and so many forms. He saw anarchy as the enemy, the wresting force that would tear it and us all down. As an ex-student, ex-anarchist I believe him more to be speaking of the nihilist. But also of the fanatic.
We have our nihilists. A boy is dead tonight stabbed, as so many others this year, on the streets of London by youths no more than his - or indeed E's - age. Random, bitter, impersonal violence is everywhere. And we too have our fanatics. They are worse than casual killers for they kill for the passion of a cause.
If I speak of Islamic fanatics it is not to single them out as such. There have been Christian fanatic killers and in time - God forbid - perhaps we shall have more atheistic mass murderers. But it is tonight, hearing of the ghastly assassination of Benazir Bhutto, that one particularly thinks of people who will kill for, and in the name of, Islam.
And where in all that does Buchan fit? Well, if you know it not then read his 'Greenmantle' as quick as you might. You might laugh to think there was ever a hope that a European power - his World War One enemy Germany - could ever control such a power of Islamic fundamentalism it sought to unleash. You might rightly baulk at his Anglo-centric notion that everything odd, peculiar and dangerous - never mind plain foreign - began at Dover. But you'd be hard pressed not to suck your teeth and think "Now there's a fellow who seemed to spot something significant in the offing."
I doubt too you would dispute his notion - from the mind of a man who was both a politician and a spy himself - that good intelligence is often if not always wasted on bad government.
My friend the ordinand, now priest, said that he realised the utter truth of his vocation that night as he read the chapter 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn': not the Sermon on the Mount, not the Last Supper, but the quiet pagan joy of Ratty and Mole as they basked in the saving love of their natural deity, that's what made it so right between him and his God.
I bet he reads Buchan. Probably preaches on the man too, much to the consternation of his very own Colonel X. We all have one. It's is God's way.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Not Quite Peace On Earth...
...I blame myself - and so does H which more or less confirms the matter - I should have briefed the fellow more closely on local protocol. For the wires have been verily humming this merry Christmas Morn, though sadly the note has been one more of ire than, as it ought, of simple, joyous delight at the birth of Our Saviour.
You'll remember Curate Cuthbert, mentioned some while back, as he who has been posted to sojourn under my wing a while in a general learning-the-ropes capacity. (Haven't said much about him here, as he deserves some privacy while finding his way and his place in the scheme of things.)
And a thoroughly helpful soul he is too, for which mercy great thanks. Bit of an eager beaver in a 'God bothering' sort of way, as these young clerics tend to be - brings back even so many memories of one's own youthful enthusiasm - but fresh blood fired with true Gospel passion is never an ungodly thing despite leading as it must to the occasional unholy row.
Such as we have had today!
Cuthbert I striped down for the Dawn Mass - as we still like it call it round here. Midnight is mine of course as befits my station, and the main family mass also belongs to the senior cleric, plus wife and family. The Parish would have it no other way, so that is the way they get it.
Call it though what you will, it is ever the first service of a Sunday morn, taken quite early - around eight of the clock and no later - and attended by the quieter souls who prefer a less crowded venue for a more restful liturgy. (Some would argue that they come this hour to get it out of the way in as swift a time as possible, but that would not be an awfully charitable thought. So long as they come at all, is my concern!)
It - this early doors service - is what is known formally as a 'said Mass', differentiating it thus from the 'sung Mass'. The clue is in the title: no singing. Not everyone wants to sing, not all enjoy it for many reasons. Off-key bawling may be laudable in worshipful intent, but can be terribly hard on the ear and on the gentler soul wishing a quiet word with his or her Lord.
Now our Cuthbert has himself a fine natural voice and can hold a good tune in season and out of season, in shower and again out. (Should really have been a choir monk, but seems to prefer the 'outdoor' life of an active cleric.) But a gift or charism can be a tricky thing, leading to such syllogistic fallacies as: "I can sing, therefore they can sing. I want to sing because I can sing, therefore they too must want to sing."
But that is precisely the point. Some of them can't and none of them want. That is why they are there at that time, in order not to have to sing or be sung to.
So what does sweet Cuthbert do but announce to an instantly hostile crowd that as it is Christmas Morn they are to have three carols! Iris on the door handing out the sheets was the first to phone an advance warning. "There'll be trouble," she advised rightly H. "The Colonel was furious. Turned quite purple he did before he even got to his pew. Gladys needing help down the nave. Thought she was going to pass out on me." (Gladys has her place behind the third pillar where she can neither see nor be seen. That has been her custom these sixty years and it has kept her on the straight and narrow - if not entirely sane - path of life, so who am I to question?)
Blameless Cuthbert - as I say the fault was mine entirely - arrives back for his breakfast just as Colonel X mounts his charge. 'Tis he himself this time on the telephone. "What's all this bloody Darwinian nonsense doing here eh?!" That, I admit, threw me. Was expecting a rant about 'If I wanted to be a roaring Methodist I'd be down the chapel', but not some loud hectoring about evolution as the science of the anti-Christ - that being the Colonel's take on the subject. (Crisp, if a little unengaged with modern thinking on the matter.)
Seems then that not only did Cuthbert have them warbling - an irksome if venial sin - but he also mentioned something about how in God's plan for man He has turned us from four to two legged creatures in order that we might look up to Heaven and not down to Earth for the way forward.
Personally I've no theological problem with this. I am not persuaded by ardent Creationists that I must be either for them or against them and God. It was though perhaps more than the odd step too far for the early birds of The Wolds.
Cuthbert is beaming through his toast. He did give a cracking homily - this I know because he showed it me in advance and it was a belter - so he believes he has done nothing but sprinkle God's light and love this morning. Well yes he has. He has done the Lord's work mightily as ever. But like dear Saint Paul he has left a trail of havoc in his wake! 'Twill then be for me, though, to do the rounds today seeking to settle frayed nerves and irked spirits.
The turkey must wait until peace on earth is restored in The Wolds. Just a bite of cold turkey sandwich before Evensong shall be my festal lot I fear.
You'll remember Curate Cuthbert, mentioned some while back, as he who has been posted to sojourn under my wing a while in a general learning-the-ropes capacity. (Haven't said much about him here, as he deserves some privacy while finding his way and his place in the scheme of things.)
And a thoroughly helpful soul he is too, for which mercy great thanks. Bit of an eager beaver in a 'God bothering' sort of way, as these young clerics tend to be - brings back even so many memories of one's own youthful enthusiasm - but fresh blood fired with true Gospel passion is never an ungodly thing despite leading as it must to the occasional unholy row.
Such as we have had today!
Cuthbert I striped down for the Dawn Mass - as we still like it call it round here. Midnight is mine of course as befits my station, and the main family mass also belongs to the senior cleric, plus wife and family. The Parish would have it no other way, so that is the way they get it.
Call it though what you will, it is ever the first service of a Sunday morn, taken quite early - around eight of the clock and no later - and attended by the quieter souls who prefer a less crowded venue for a more restful liturgy. (Some would argue that they come this hour to get it out of the way in as swift a time as possible, but that would not be an awfully charitable thought. So long as they come at all, is my concern!)
It - this early doors service - is what is known formally as a 'said Mass', differentiating it thus from the 'sung Mass'. The clue is in the title: no singing. Not everyone wants to sing, not all enjoy it for many reasons. Off-key bawling may be laudable in worshipful intent, but can be terribly hard on the ear and on the gentler soul wishing a quiet word with his or her Lord.
Now our Cuthbert has himself a fine natural voice and can hold a good tune in season and out of season, in shower and again out. (Should really have been a choir monk, but seems to prefer the 'outdoor' life of an active cleric.) But a gift or charism can be a tricky thing, leading to such syllogistic fallacies as: "I can sing, therefore they can sing. I want to sing because I can sing, therefore they too must want to sing."
But that is precisely the point. Some of them can't and none of them want. That is why they are there at that time, in order not to have to sing or be sung to.
So what does sweet Cuthbert do but announce to an instantly hostile crowd that as it is Christmas Morn they are to have three carols! Iris on the door handing out the sheets was the first to phone an advance warning. "There'll be trouble," she advised rightly H. "The Colonel was furious. Turned quite purple he did before he even got to his pew. Gladys needing help down the nave. Thought she was going to pass out on me." (Gladys has her place behind the third pillar where she can neither see nor be seen. That has been her custom these sixty years and it has kept her on the straight and narrow - if not entirely sane - path of life, so who am I to question?)
Blameless Cuthbert - as I say the fault was mine entirely - arrives back for his breakfast just as Colonel X mounts his charge. 'Tis he himself this time on the telephone. "What's all this bloody Darwinian nonsense doing here eh?!" That, I admit, threw me. Was expecting a rant about 'If I wanted to be a roaring Methodist I'd be down the chapel', but not some loud hectoring about evolution as the science of the anti-Christ - that being the Colonel's take on the subject. (Crisp, if a little unengaged with modern thinking on the matter.)
Seems then that not only did Cuthbert have them warbling - an irksome if venial sin - but he also mentioned something about how in God's plan for man He has turned us from four to two legged creatures in order that we might look up to Heaven and not down to Earth for the way forward.
Personally I've no theological problem with this. I am not persuaded by ardent Creationists that I must be either for them or against them and God. It was though perhaps more than the odd step too far for the early birds of The Wolds.
Cuthbert is beaming through his toast. He did give a cracking homily - this I know because he showed it me in advance and it was a belter - so he believes he has done nothing but sprinkle God's light and love this morning. Well yes he has. He has done the Lord's work mightily as ever. But like dear Saint Paul he has left a trail of havoc in his wake! 'Twill then be for me, though, to do the rounds today seeking to settle frayed nerves and irked spirits.
The turkey must wait until peace on earth is restored in The Wolds. Just a bite of cold turkey sandwich before Evensong shall be my festal lot I fear.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Shooting The Past...3
...to complete then the tale of Anastasia's Doll.
It is a blazing hot summer's day at Tsarskoe Selo, where the Romanovs have come to escape the stultifying heat of the city. Alexander Palace is a favourite of the Romanov children. Tall, white, elegant yet not cramped with the formality of the Court. They love to play in the wide parklands and to pretend to camp out at the White Tower.
1909. A lull in time. For them, the Imperial family, the revolution has already happened four years before. There need not be another, nor indeed could there truly be a European war between the nations. Russia had been struck a blow but had not fallen. The children and the land were safe.
A picnic is arranged and Father is coming. The children are gleeful, too excited perhaps for the taste of their English nanny. But she cannot scold as they happily prepare a feast for all. And it will be for all, for servants, for soldiers guarding the family - at peace but alert to danger is their Father - for the whole Palace.
Tables are set by the White Tower. There is a High Table for Father and Mother, but other than that it is catch-as-you-can, sit where you please. The children are seated with Nanny of course and they are joined by Captains and Colonels from the regiments encamped nearby.
There is a photographer to record the day.
Anastasia is giddy with pleasure. She leans over to grasp her sister in a girl's joke at the soldiers' expense. Then laughing she topples backwards off her chair and in falling is caught by a fat and kindly Colonel.
As the photographer, keen to capture all moments and unafraid of any protocol, leaps forward to take his photograph of this silly, lovely moment, the English nanny glowers at him in distaste. She cannot countenance such behaviour. These are royal girls and her girls. This is a light summer's frolic. It is a private moment, not to be seen by others. She looks sternly straight into the lens chiding the man and his machine.
Yet the photograph is taken. There is Anastasia falling to the ground. There is the fat Colonel catching her and there is Nanny, tight-lipped, round faced, very English and very disapproving.
On the table before Nanny is a doll. It is Anastasia's favourite doll and Nanny is keeping it safe for her. It is the very doll we now have in our house.
The Nanny was Auntie Margaret's friend. This we knew. Nanny was with the Romanovs. That we were told. The note said the doll she came home with was Anastasia's and we believed it.
And now I have seen the photograph, risen by chance from the pages of an archive collection just published, and now therefore belief is truth.
It is a blazing hot summer's day at Tsarskoe Selo, where the Romanovs have come to escape the stultifying heat of the city. Alexander Palace is a favourite of the Romanov children. Tall, white, elegant yet not cramped with the formality of the Court. They love to play in the wide parklands and to pretend to camp out at the White Tower.
1909. A lull in time. For them, the Imperial family, the revolution has already happened four years before. There need not be another, nor indeed could there truly be a European war between the nations. Russia had been struck a blow but had not fallen. The children and the land were safe.
A picnic is arranged and Father is coming. The children are gleeful, too excited perhaps for the taste of their English nanny. But she cannot scold as they happily prepare a feast for all. And it will be for all, for servants, for soldiers guarding the family - at peace but alert to danger is their Father - for the whole Palace.
Tables are set by the White Tower. There is a High Table for Father and Mother, but other than that it is catch-as-you-can, sit where you please. The children are seated with Nanny of course and they are joined by Captains and Colonels from the regiments encamped nearby.
There is a photographer to record the day.
Anastasia is giddy with pleasure. She leans over to grasp her sister in a girl's joke at the soldiers' expense. Then laughing she topples backwards off her chair and in falling is caught by a fat and kindly Colonel.
As the photographer, keen to capture all moments and unafraid of any protocol, leaps forward to take his photograph of this silly, lovely moment, the English nanny glowers at him in distaste. She cannot countenance such behaviour. These are royal girls and her girls. This is a light summer's frolic. It is a private moment, not to be seen by others. She looks sternly straight into the lens chiding the man and his machine.
Yet the photograph is taken. There is Anastasia falling to the ground. There is the fat Colonel catching her and there is Nanny, tight-lipped, round faced, very English and very disapproving.
On the table before Nanny is a doll. It is Anastasia's favourite doll and Nanny is keeping it safe for her. It is the very doll we now have in our house.
The Nanny was Auntie Margaret's friend. This we knew. Nanny was with the Romanovs. That we were told. The note said the doll she came home with was Anastasia's and we believed it.
And now I have seen the photograph, risen by chance from the pages of an archive collection just published, and now therefore belief is truth.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
It's A Wonderful Life?
They call Frank Capra's film of that name the ultimate 'feel-good' film, but having once more this evening watched it I find it more dark than light. A good darkness, but one so heavy as to be quite crushing.
Let us leave aside the wondrous ministrations of Clarence, Angel Second Class bless him, the towering performance of James Stewart - and that of Donna Reed - and the indeed heart-warming rescue from disaster by the generous gifts of money from all who know how much they owe to that great man of principle George Bailey, whose unbending yearning for social justice learned from his father has kept the town Bedford Falls and not Pottersville.
So far, so granted. This though is my other reflection.
Potter, the evil beast of Mammon, hits right through to George when he tells him to his face that he, George, has always hated the fate that kept him in his home town. In saving his family, the family business and the town George has sacrificed every personal ambition or desire he ever held dear from childhood. And this has not been a gift freely given, but one that has silently wracked his spirit and his soul every waking day and moment.
George has no reply or refutation to that charge, because he knows that in some part of his heart he can hear the words of St. Paul "Though I give my body to be burnt and yet have not love..." Yes, he resists the Devil's bargain, he stands for his principles against the offer of easy money, but within him he knows that he has had to suppress deep and precious internal yearnings in order to carry on wearing the hero's crown of thorns. Providence is his duty not his desire.
For then see what happens when Uncle Billy's ever absent-minded foolishness in misplacing the $8,000 leads to near disaster for the company and everything that George has striven for over so many self-sacrificing years.
He turns brutally on Billy, lambasting him for his eternal stupidity, a character foible that until now has been both tolerated and adored. Then George goes home and worse, so much worse, rants at his children who cannot comprehend why their loving father has turned so savagely against them. He tramples on, he physically breaks, the bonds that bind him and preserve them. He reduces his daughter to frightened tears, he smashes to pieces the very fabric of the place.
George hates himself for this terrible and terrifying betrayal, and his urge for self-destruction is as much a matter of self-loathing for that as it is for any threatened loss of his life's work.
Never mind recovery of assets and reputation through friendly donations of cash. What counts - what is the real redemptive act of the film - is the forgiveness of his wife and children for the horror he inflicted so suddenly upon them. (George Bailey has had his Colonel Kurtz moment: "You must make a friend of horror...")
That then is the power and the glory of the film. George is tempted as Christ was tempted. He was offered dominion and refused it. For that he too suffered a Crucifixion of the soul. Then George rose, as Christ rose, to new life.
But as St Paul once more reminds us, to pass to new life is to pass through a death. There is no other way.
It is a wonderful life, but the wonder is found in a dark place. Clarence, Capra, the film, the studio maybe - they all let James Stewart off the hook at the end. It is not because George has friends that his life is not a failure, nor is it even that his life has done so much good that would not have happened without him.
No, it is so much more than that. It is that George can be deeply, horribly - so humanly - flawed, so out of kilter between the good the world sees and the beast that lives inside, and yet with all that can be and is redeemed.
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that we should be saved. Saved from sin. Saved from Pottersville. Saved from our sinful ways of being. Saved from darkness into light. (I do wish sometimes I were Eastern Orthodox - they do so much understand the light.)
Merry Christmas to all. May the eternal, bright and wonderful Light of Christ shine in our dark places. We all have them.
Let us leave aside the wondrous ministrations of Clarence, Angel Second Class bless him, the towering performance of James Stewart - and that of Donna Reed - and the indeed heart-warming rescue from disaster by the generous gifts of money from all who know how much they owe to that great man of principle George Bailey, whose unbending yearning for social justice learned from his father has kept the town Bedford Falls and not Pottersville.
So far, so granted. This though is my other reflection.
Potter, the evil beast of Mammon, hits right through to George when he tells him to his face that he, George, has always hated the fate that kept him in his home town. In saving his family, the family business and the town George has sacrificed every personal ambition or desire he ever held dear from childhood. And this has not been a gift freely given, but one that has silently wracked his spirit and his soul every waking day and moment.
George has no reply or refutation to that charge, because he knows that in some part of his heart he can hear the words of St. Paul "Though I give my body to be burnt and yet have not love..." Yes, he resists the Devil's bargain, he stands for his principles against the offer of easy money, but within him he knows that he has had to suppress deep and precious internal yearnings in order to carry on wearing the hero's crown of thorns. Providence is his duty not his desire.
For then see what happens when Uncle Billy's ever absent-minded foolishness in misplacing the $8,000 leads to near disaster for the company and everything that George has striven for over so many self-sacrificing years.
He turns brutally on Billy, lambasting him for his eternal stupidity, a character foible that until now has been both tolerated and adored. Then George goes home and worse, so much worse, rants at his children who cannot comprehend why their loving father has turned so savagely against them. He tramples on, he physically breaks, the bonds that bind him and preserve them. He reduces his daughter to frightened tears, he smashes to pieces the very fabric of the place.
George hates himself for this terrible and terrifying betrayal, and his urge for self-destruction is as much a matter of self-loathing for that as it is for any threatened loss of his life's work.
Never mind recovery of assets and reputation through friendly donations of cash. What counts - what is the real redemptive act of the film - is the forgiveness of his wife and children for the horror he inflicted so suddenly upon them. (George Bailey has had his Colonel Kurtz moment: "You must make a friend of horror...")
That then is the power and the glory of the film. George is tempted as Christ was tempted. He was offered dominion and refused it. For that he too suffered a Crucifixion of the soul. Then George rose, as Christ rose, to new life.
But as St Paul once more reminds us, to pass to new life is to pass through a death. There is no other way.
It is a wonderful life, but the wonder is found in a dark place. Clarence, Capra, the film, the studio maybe - they all let James Stewart off the hook at the end. It is not because George has friends that his life is not a failure, nor is it even that his life has done so much good that would not have happened without him.
No, it is so much more than that. It is that George can be deeply, horribly - so humanly - flawed, so out of kilter between the good the world sees and the beast that lives inside, and yet with all that can be and is redeemed.
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that we should be saved. Saved from sin. Saved from Pottersville. Saved from our sinful ways of being. Saved from darkness into light. (I do wish sometimes I were Eastern Orthodox - they do so much understand the light.)
Merry Christmas to all. May the eternal, bright and wonderful Light of Christ shine in our dark places. We all have them.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Catholic Blair...
...so Tony 'Warmonger' Blair has become a Roman Catholic has he?
Not sure whether one should pray for him or for them.
One great mercy. Though chances were slim that he should ever have popped in to one of our services, I did fear the consequences. For had it so passed, I should have in all fairness have been obliged to slip out of my cosy seat in the sanctuary and slapped his face.
Not merely, you must understand, to show my disapproval of the man and all his works, but also to forestall H who avowed she would bite his leg if he ever dared to show his face in our place.
'Vicar hauled off to clink after PM slap' is a headline I could be proud of, but 'Vicar's wife eats PM alive' would be just too much to take.
Anyway, good luck to them all. Wonder who will be the first to offer him the 'Sign of Peace' at Midnight Mass!
Not sure whether one should pray for him or for them.
One great mercy. Though chances were slim that he should ever have popped in to one of our services, I did fear the consequences. For had it so passed, I should have in all fairness have been obliged to slip out of my cosy seat in the sanctuary and slapped his face.
Not merely, you must understand, to show my disapproval of the man and all his works, but also to forestall H who avowed she would bite his leg if he ever dared to show his face in our place.
'Vicar hauled off to clink after PM slap' is a headline I could be proud of, but 'Vicar's wife eats PM alive' would be just too much to take.
Anyway, good luck to them all. Wonder who will be the first to offer him the 'Sign of Peace' at Midnight Mass!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sidewinder...
You will not ordinarily - note that careful word - find me among the host of locals who actively deplore the recent inrush of migrant workers from Eastern Europe to these parts.
Ill befits it indeed a clergyman to be picky about the nationality of his flock, though I do own a tad of envy of my Roman colleagues who seem to garner the majority of new worshippers. (Not many Anglicans in Romania or Poland I believe and if there are, well then that is where they appear to be staying.)
It can be hard separating the real and genuine concerns for the impact of so many foreign workers and their families on our community and our services ('infrastructure' is the word I am told) from rank - in both senses - racism. Chat down the Dragon Inn does not always smack of the fullness of Christian spirit it ought - but then if this were a perfect world I for one would be out of a job!
By and large we try to jostle along together, taking the long view (it will not last) and the short (they're here so let's live with it), and if that is not the most openly welcoming it could be then it is a good and godly distance from the ferment the BNP and their like would have it so.
However - there is a big however tonight - should someone pop round the Rectory at this late hour to propose an armed uprising to repel all boarders, then I fear you would find me reaching for my cutlass to join 'em!
Why this sudden ire you enquire in shocked tones? Well, 'tis this.
This evening H and E ventured on one of those inevitable late-night, female shopping trips that are sadly an integral part of a modern semi-secular Advent. A road trip along a local main road was required. The telephone rings some half hour after their departure. 'Tis E in a state.
For it seems a wretched Portuguese - this much they could tell from the vehicle - lorry driver had nearly driven them off the road by pulling out of his lane into theirs totally oblivious of their presence.
The practice is, I am aware, known as 'side-swiping'. Left-hand drive drivers who cannot or will not see what they are doing on our roads. The Government it seems is offering voluntary extra side mirrors to such persons before crossing the Channel in the hope of reducing the carnage caused this way.
'Voluntary'! I'll give them voluntary! Not welcome in this Parish I can tell you any trucker who does not care what he is about, but calmly risks causing death to my family.
Apparently many other cars sounded their horns in alert and alarm. And the driver's response? To raise his arms in disgruntled unconcern as if a matter of no interest to him whatsoever.
Not a wise move on his part. My antipathy is fixed. At least for this evening.
Ill befits it indeed a clergyman to be picky about the nationality of his flock, though I do own a tad of envy of my Roman colleagues who seem to garner the majority of new worshippers. (Not many Anglicans in Romania or Poland I believe and if there are, well then that is where they appear to be staying.)
It can be hard separating the real and genuine concerns for the impact of so many foreign workers and their families on our community and our services ('infrastructure' is the word I am told) from rank - in both senses - racism. Chat down the Dragon Inn does not always smack of the fullness of Christian spirit it ought - but then if this were a perfect world I for one would be out of a job!
By and large we try to jostle along together, taking the long view (it will not last) and the short (they're here so let's live with it), and if that is not the most openly welcoming it could be then it is a good and godly distance from the ferment the BNP and their like would have it so.
However - there is a big however tonight - should someone pop round the Rectory at this late hour to propose an armed uprising to repel all boarders, then I fear you would find me reaching for my cutlass to join 'em!
Why this sudden ire you enquire in shocked tones? Well, 'tis this.
This evening H and E ventured on one of those inevitable late-night, female shopping trips that are sadly an integral part of a modern semi-secular Advent. A road trip along a local main road was required. The telephone rings some half hour after their departure. 'Tis E in a state.
For it seems a wretched Portuguese - this much they could tell from the vehicle - lorry driver had nearly driven them off the road by pulling out of his lane into theirs totally oblivious of their presence.
The practice is, I am aware, known as 'side-swiping'. Left-hand drive drivers who cannot or will not see what they are doing on our roads. The Government it seems is offering voluntary extra side mirrors to such persons before crossing the Channel in the hope of reducing the carnage caused this way.
'Voluntary'! I'll give them voluntary! Not welcome in this Parish I can tell you any trucker who does not care what he is about, but calmly risks causing death to my family.
Apparently many other cars sounded their horns in alert and alarm. And the driver's response? To raise his arms in disgruntled unconcern as if a matter of no interest to him whatsoever.
Not a wise move on his part. My antipathy is fixed. At least for this evening.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Bouncer R.I.P.
One must pause here to bring sad news that Bouncer has died. Bouncer indeed has been put down, shot of necessity today.
You who know enough of country ways may not be too hard pressed to guess that Bouncer was a horse, for animals are put down and horses shot.
Not our horse - for if it were I would not now have the steely determination needed to speak of the sorrow - but of a friend, a friend who tonight is heartbroken. (Auntie Margaret would have understood and stood by as needed.)
Bouncer was not elderly, it was not age that took him, but he was throughout his life a 'wind-sucker'. Again, if you know horses you will know how both silly and how lethal that is.
Many have been the times when Bouncer and I have shared a quiet chat across the stable door (the yard knows me as not the horse whisperer but the 'horse chatterer', which is a noble title and one I am proud to bear howsoever daft it may seem) about life and good grazing and so forth.
But as we have spoken thus, inevitably moment by moment Bouncer would break off the conversation to bite at his stable half-door. Silly, silly boy! And I would say so. For in biting he was sucking and in sucking he was pulling air into his innards. And in pulling air into his innards he was risking - and often suffering - colic.
Colic you say? Sounds a fine and ancient illness. Quite like a gout, something to be had by Squire Roger de Coverley of early Spectator days. Indeed yes, so it sounds a bad belly and no more. In a human.
But in a horse something utterly more horrid. For if you have ever seen a horse thrashing in agony, kicking the very bricks out of its stable, throwing itself to the ground, twisting and rolling in a vain effort to ease the pain of the twisted gut - if you have seen that then you have seen torment.
And so, I would be wanting to say to Bouncer each day, when will you stop doing the silly one thing - the endless habit - that may kill you? And he would look me in the eye as if to say "Perhaps soon."
In passing - you are taught if you study these things never to look a horse in the eye as this will cause the poor beast to believe you must be a predator. For certain, until a full rapport is established better it is to nod as the horse nods, to sway as the horse sways and not to be seen to be a threat by making direct eye contact.
But in time - often but not not always - one can go far beyond this. Once that connection has been made between man and beast (or is it rather 'beast and noble horse'? - I do sometimes wonder) the soul of horse and man can meet through their eyes.
If you knew not that, then you know it now and you are the luckier for it.
And back to Bouncer. Tall, quite lean with a true equine face - long, narrow but not sharp and light and high. I took him quite for an antiquarian, a lover of good past things. In touch with the world and yet not a little distant. Perhaps in truth somewhat of an autistic disposition, yet for all that kindly and communicative.
We chatted at length only the other day, he with head held high and ready for a tickle. (Many the horse there is that delights in a fond tickle. More than you might imagine from the haughty look of most. Try it in due season and if they like it they will.) Post-operative was Bouncer that day, surgery having been tried to fix the suffering innards. But calm as ever - wind-sucking as ever - he gazed out over his door at the yard and its passing traffic.
But now he is gone. A sudden burst of colic, a terrible thrashing and torment, the vet summonsed and a mercy killing the only option. E tells me that his body lay covered by a blue tarpaulin at the back of the yard, the younger girls of the place in hysterics at the sight.
I am glad I did not hear the bullet fired, but I am sad not to have had the chance to say farewell.
No wind-sucking now dear boy. Beyond that silliness you are now. An eternal pasture for you and endless sorrow for Sam your rider and keeper.
And if you chide a Christian for avowing that animals have souls, then you chide in vain for you know not horses and if you know not them then little do you know.
You who know enough of country ways may not be too hard pressed to guess that Bouncer was a horse, for animals are put down and horses shot.
Not our horse - for if it were I would not now have the steely determination needed to speak of the sorrow - but of a friend, a friend who tonight is heartbroken. (Auntie Margaret would have understood and stood by as needed.)
Bouncer was not elderly, it was not age that took him, but he was throughout his life a 'wind-sucker'. Again, if you know horses you will know how both silly and how lethal that is.
Many have been the times when Bouncer and I have shared a quiet chat across the stable door (the yard knows me as not the horse whisperer but the 'horse chatterer', which is a noble title and one I am proud to bear howsoever daft it may seem) about life and good grazing and so forth.
But as we have spoken thus, inevitably moment by moment Bouncer would break off the conversation to bite at his stable half-door. Silly, silly boy! And I would say so. For in biting he was sucking and in sucking he was pulling air into his innards. And in pulling air into his innards he was risking - and often suffering - colic.
Colic you say? Sounds a fine and ancient illness. Quite like a gout, something to be had by Squire Roger de Coverley of early Spectator days. Indeed yes, so it sounds a bad belly and no more. In a human.
But in a horse something utterly more horrid. For if you have ever seen a horse thrashing in agony, kicking the very bricks out of its stable, throwing itself to the ground, twisting and rolling in a vain effort to ease the pain of the twisted gut - if you have seen that then you have seen torment.
And so, I would be wanting to say to Bouncer each day, when will you stop doing the silly one thing - the endless habit - that may kill you? And he would look me in the eye as if to say "Perhaps soon."
In passing - you are taught if you study these things never to look a horse in the eye as this will cause the poor beast to believe you must be a predator. For certain, until a full rapport is established better it is to nod as the horse nods, to sway as the horse sways and not to be seen to be a threat by making direct eye contact.
But in time - often but not not always - one can go far beyond this. Once that connection has been made between man and beast (or is it rather 'beast and noble horse'? - I do sometimes wonder) the soul of horse and man can meet through their eyes.
If you knew not that, then you know it now and you are the luckier for it.
And back to Bouncer. Tall, quite lean with a true equine face - long, narrow but not sharp and light and high. I took him quite for an antiquarian, a lover of good past things. In touch with the world and yet not a little distant. Perhaps in truth somewhat of an autistic disposition, yet for all that kindly and communicative.
We chatted at length only the other day, he with head held high and ready for a tickle. (Many the horse there is that delights in a fond tickle. More than you might imagine from the haughty look of most. Try it in due season and if they like it they will.) Post-operative was Bouncer that day, surgery having been tried to fix the suffering innards. But calm as ever - wind-sucking as ever - he gazed out over his door at the yard and its passing traffic.
But now he is gone. A sudden burst of colic, a terrible thrashing and torment, the vet summonsed and a mercy killing the only option. E tells me that his body lay covered by a blue tarpaulin at the back of the yard, the younger girls of the place in hysterics at the sight.
I am glad I did not hear the bullet fired, but I am sad not to have had the chance to say farewell.
No wind-sucking now dear boy. Beyond that silliness you are now. An eternal pasture for you and endless sorrow for Sam your rider and keeper.
And if you chide a Christian for avowing that animals have souls, then you chide in vain for you know not horses and if you know not them then little do you know.
Shooting The Past...2
Shot then. By the past, that is.
The story unfolds thus. Earlier you will - or will not - have read the story of 'Anastasia's Doll'.
The doll in question is a somewhat raggedy affair, plain of dress and look. The head is its only remarkable aspect in that it can be turned to one of three looks: she smiles, she cries, she sleeps. A baby in total really, all about that there is to say or note.
Of a German style we are told. Early Twentieth century they say. Well, they are right about the period for sure. This we know, for we also know that this doll was once the toy of no less personage than Princess Anastasia of Romanov fame and fate.
Gosh, you might well say. You are in possession of a doll once owned by the poor lost child who died - or not - when her family were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks? Yes, we would reply, we are.
Hot stuff indeed and the very making of our temporal fortune it would be. Had we the proof of provenance that is. Our proof is a narrative that we find both truthful and plausible.
There was once an ancient Auntie Margaret, spinster not just of this parish but of the entire County in that her beneficence and kindly ways supported not merely the poor of her immediate community but the semi-destitute far and wide. I am not suggesting, of course, that is a necessary prerequisite of saintly care for others that one should be both female and unmarried. (Being neither, indeed, I do not fear I am entirely excluded from such sanctity, though perhaps lacking in the necessary performance. For others to judge of course.)
But if not a necessity, it is certain that of disposition there was - one would hope will continue to be - once a generation of unmarried women for whom the world as they knew it was their family to nurture and love. A big ask, one might say as indeed it is. Big heart, strong arms and endless patience. Nothing less will carry one on and through indeed. Auntie Margaret had all three, mercifully, throughout a long life.
There were many then who mourned her passing some ten years back - 'promoted to Glory' she would say of others and certain we said it of her - we not the least of them.
From that demise followed in due order an inheritance. Part of a house and all of its contents. Among the effects was the doll. Had it not been the note that lay in the tatty shoebox with it, the doll should have not been of any great note.
But note there was and what a story that note told. In brief it was this.
A friend within the sisterhood of spinsterdom, not content with being spinsterly and goodly at home chose to venture abroad to serve as a nanny to whomsoever would have her. And as an English nanny much was she in demand in her chosen foreign land - Russia.
Russia of 1910. Pre-War, pre-revolutionary Russia. Imperialist Russia. An Imperial family much desiring a nanny, Auntie Margaret's chum was chosen for the post. Nanny to Anastasia.
Some years passed. Happy years perhaps, though with sufficient dark portents no doubt. Come the War, then came the Revolution. Time little enough for the English nanny to leave, seek safety in her own land. Or else perish with the Romanovs could have been her fate.
So she came home, and in leaving was gifted a present from her charge. The doll, Anastasia's favourite. And with the gift our note:
"Dear X, Thank you so very much for caring for me. I shall miss you. I hope we can see each other again after this is all over. Would you like me to come to England? Anastasia."
The doll and the note came home with the nanny, but never the child.
Some will say - have said - that our small note is but too light a thing to carry such a weight. But we have believed and now, the past having shot us, we also know.
How we know is to come....
The story unfolds thus. Earlier you will - or will not - have read the story of 'Anastasia's Doll'.
The doll in question is a somewhat raggedy affair, plain of dress and look. The head is its only remarkable aspect in that it can be turned to one of three looks: she smiles, she cries, she sleeps. A baby in total really, all about that there is to say or note.
Of a German style we are told. Early Twentieth century they say. Well, they are right about the period for sure. This we know, for we also know that this doll was once the toy of no less personage than Princess Anastasia of Romanov fame and fate.
Gosh, you might well say. You are in possession of a doll once owned by the poor lost child who died - or not - when her family were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks? Yes, we would reply, we are.
Hot stuff indeed and the very making of our temporal fortune it would be. Had we the proof of provenance that is. Our proof is a narrative that we find both truthful and plausible.
There was once an ancient Auntie Margaret, spinster not just of this parish but of the entire County in that her beneficence and kindly ways supported not merely the poor of her immediate community but the semi-destitute far and wide. I am not suggesting, of course, that is a necessary prerequisite of saintly care for others that one should be both female and unmarried. (Being neither, indeed, I do not fear I am entirely excluded from such sanctity, though perhaps lacking in the necessary performance. For others to judge of course.)
But if not a necessity, it is certain that of disposition there was - one would hope will continue to be - once a generation of unmarried women for whom the world as they knew it was their family to nurture and love. A big ask, one might say as indeed it is. Big heart, strong arms and endless patience. Nothing less will carry one on and through indeed. Auntie Margaret had all three, mercifully, throughout a long life.
There were many then who mourned her passing some ten years back - 'promoted to Glory' she would say of others and certain we said it of her - we not the least of them.
From that demise followed in due order an inheritance. Part of a house and all of its contents. Among the effects was the doll. Had it not been the note that lay in the tatty shoebox with it, the doll should have not been of any great note.
But note there was and what a story that note told. In brief it was this.
A friend within the sisterhood of spinsterdom, not content with being spinsterly and goodly at home chose to venture abroad to serve as a nanny to whomsoever would have her. And as an English nanny much was she in demand in her chosen foreign land - Russia.
Russia of 1910. Pre-War, pre-revolutionary Russia. Imperialist Russia. An Imperial family much desiring a nanny, Auntie Margaret's chum was chosen for the post. Nanny to Anastasia.
Some years passed. Happy years perhaps, though with sufficient dark portents no doubt. Come the War, then came the Revolution. Time little enough for the English nanny to leave, seek safety in her own land. Or else perish with the Romanovs could have been her fate.
So she came home, and in leaving was gifted a present from her charge. The doll, Anastasia's favourite. And with the gift our note:
"Dear X, Thank you so very much for caring for me. I shall miss you. I hope we can see each other again after this is all over. Would you like me to come to England? Anastasia."
The doll and the note came home with the nanny, but never the child.
Some will say - have said - that our small note is but too light a thing to carry such a weight. But we have believed and now, the past having shot us, we also know.
How we know is to come....
Monday, December 03, 2007
Shooting The Past....1
...a Stephen Poliakoff fan I, from the moment haughty Peggy Ashcroft and self-obsessed Michael Kitchen so marvellously clashed in 'Caught on a Train'.
I, to this day, cannot ask for a railway 'ticket' without attempting the clipped Mittel-European accent and aggressive intonation of Dame Peggy's character. (Quite off-putting that to the average BR - as was - Inspector of Tickets, which of course adds to the innocent fun.)
See it if you haven't, but skip for now along to a much later work 'Shooting the Past'. There you will find the heavenly Lindsay Duncan grappling with the wonderful Timothy Spall, curators of a great and decaying photographic archive, as they both seek to thwart the evil archive-closing American Liam Cunningham. (And, in passing to note, Emilia Fox with more gumption than ever she shows as that drippy little pathologist in latter-day 'Silent Witness'. H and I are at one in wanting to give her a good shake in that show, but not here.)
These three, Poliakoff and photography as recorder and keeper of the past. It really doesn't get much better. The nub of the piece is that hard times having fallen, the archive must go, must be dispersed, to make way for a thrusting new Business School.
Duncan, through Spall, eventually though persuades Cunningham that the archive must be preserved as a unity - not the best creamed off for auction to art or ad houses with rest discarded as so much waste - because they can lead him, by their photographs of ordinary people, from his present to his grandmother's past.
She - following Spall's clues - takes Cunningham on a journey through three generations of his family (a complex, emotionally charged and possibly murderous past) until before his until then doubting eyes he is shown a photograph of himself as a young boy with his mother meeting this magnificent grandmother.
Proof positive. Seeing is indeed believing. All there in black and white. And so forth.
Naturally the archive survives. Though Spall doesn't quite. In making so many connections he has become quite disconnected. A sacrifice. Touch of the Tarkovsky's there, and no worse for that.
Is there though, you ask, a point to this Poliakoff paean other than that in itself? Well yes there is, though this is not it. For today I have 'done a Cunningham' and my past too has been well and truly shot. Oh yes indeed it has.
But do not rush me to these connections or I too, as Spall, shall disconnect. A moment to frame the print before the exhibition....
I, to this day, cannot ask for a railway 'ticket' without attempting the clipped Mittel-European accent and aggressive intonation of Dame Peggy's character. (Quite off-putting that to the average BR - as was - Inspector of Tickets, which of course adds to the innocent fun.)
See it if you haven't, but skip for now along to a much later work 'Shooting the Past'. There you will find the heavenly Lindsay Duncan grappling with the wonderful Timothy Spall, curators of a great and decaying photographic archive, as they both seek to thwart the evil archive-closing American Liam Cunningham. (And, in passing to note, Emilia Fox with more gumption than ever she shows as that drippy little pathologist in latter-day 'Silent Witness'. H and I are at one in wanting to give her a good shake in that show, but not here.)
These three, Poliakoff and photography as recorder and keeper of the past. It really doesn't get much better. The nub of the piece is that hard times having fallen, the archive must go, must be dispersed, to make way for a thrusting new Business School.
Duncan, through Spall, eventually though persuades Cunningham that the archive must be preserved as a unity - not the best creamed off for auction to art or ad houses with rest discarded as so much waste - because they can lead him, by their photographs of ordinary people, from his present to his grandmother's past.
She - following Spall's clues - takes Cunningham on a journey through three generations of his family (a complex, emotionally charged and possibly murderous past) until before his until then doubting eyes he is shown a photograph of himself as a young boy with his mother meeting this magnificent grandmother.
Proof positive. Seeing is indeed believing. All there in black and white. And so forth.
Naturally the archive survives. Though Spall doesn't quite. In making so many connections he has become quite disconnected. A sacrifice. Touch of the Tarkovsky's there, and no worse for that.
Is there though, you ask, a point to this Poliakoff paean other than that in itself? Well yes there is, though this is not it. For today I have 'done a Cunningham' and my past too has been well and truly shot. Oh yes indeed it has.
But do not rush me to these connections or I too, as Spall, shall disconnect. A moment to frame the print before the exhibition....
Lost In Translation...
...Have you ever tried to describe a dipstick? Ever sought even to explain in words what the head of a dipstick looks like, or where abouts in relation to a particular car engine it is to be located?
Sounds not too difficult in principle perhaps, though one has to factor in the assumption that the person to whom you are seeking to give such information and illumination has requested it, thereby striping herself - note that - down as a person of severely limited life-skills or faculties.
Is it indeed possible for a grown adult not to know what a dipstick looks like and where to find one on - or in - any particular engine? Should it not in fact be a necessary test to pass for anyone aspiring to the noble title of adulthood that they can be shown seven car engines and spot seven dipstick heads in a trice?
If you add to this volatile mix that one is attempting to provide such information whilst slumbering in complete mental and emotional exhaustion upon the sofa, having the moment before returned safe and sound from Town the all clear [see previous] having once more been given one, if then one lets slip a little temper would it be a matter of any great surprise?
Let us merely record the final printable part of this bitter exchange:
H [herself]: "I still can't see it."
Self: "As I have oft repeated it is at the front of the engine. Now would you kindly let me rest, I am shattered. It has been a testing day all round. Go forth and find your own ruddy dipstick."
H: "Front of the engine? Which bit is the engine?"
The rest is not for preserving in print, though the memory will be seared deep into the soul for ever more.
Which bit is the engine! No jury would convict I tell you.
Ten mins later E arrives to disturb the same fretful slumber. She wants fifteen pounds to treat herself to an Indian meal for the evening, so does Papa have such a sum about his person?
Papa is not overly impressed at such profligacy, but sets aside any domestic fiscal concerns merely to remark that no, actually, Papa does not have fifteen quid to hand. A fact, not a judgement on or denial of the request, but merely a statement of fact. Fifteen quid requested. Fifteen quid not passed over as it was simply not there to be so passed. End of. As I believe E would say.
Poor E though. You could tell from her sweet little shocked look that this simply did not compute. Papa not handing over dosh on demand? An a priori impossibility silently said the sad face of the child.
You could tell my words had about as much meaning to her as H's to me about which particular bit of the engine is actually the engine. There was no aspect of content that in any way resembled a universe she recognised, no purchase could she find on the words with any conceptual cognitive tool or experientially learned capacities.
It could not be that Papa did not have money on demand, any more than that H could require of me that I enlighten her as to the matter of engine qua engine.
Impossible really to translate meaningful speech from the language of male to that of female. Two completely separate species. Might just as well expect a pea to converse with a strawberry, or a gibbon with a bison, or a brick with a spoon. It cannot happen.
All is lost in translation.
Sounds not too difficult in principle perhaps, though one has to factor in the assumption that the person to whom you are seeking to give such information and illumination has requested it, thereby striping herself - note that - down as a person of severely limited life-skills or faculties.
Is it indeed possible for a grown adult not to know what a dipstick looks like and where to find one on - or in - any particular engine? Should it not in fact be a necessary test to pass for anyone aspiring to the noble title of adulthood that they can be shown seven car engines and spot seven dipstick heads in a trice?
If you add to this volatile mix that one is attempting to provide such information whilst slumbering in complete mental and emotional exhaustion upon the sofa, having the moment before returned safe and sound from Town the all clear [see previous] having once more been given one, if then one lets slip a little temper would it be a matter of any great surprise?
Let us merely record the final printable part of this bitter exchange:
H [herself]: "I still can't see it."
Self: "As I have oft repeated it is at the front of the engine. Now would you kindly let me rest, I am shattered. It has been a testing day all round. Go forth and find your own ruddy dipstick."
H: "Front of the engine? Which bit is the engine?"
The rest is not for preserving in print, though the memory will be seared deep into the soul for ever more.
Which bit is the engine! No jury would convict I tell you.
Ten mins later E arrives to disturb the same fretful slumber. She wants fifteen pounds to treat herself to an Indian meal for the evening, so does Papa have such a sum about his person?
Papa is not overly impressed at such profligacy, but sets aside any domestic fiscal concerns merely to remark that no, actually, Papa does not have fifteen quid to hand. A fact, not a judgement on or denial of the request, but merely a statement of fact. Fifteen quid requested. Fifteen quid not passed over as it was simply not there to be so passed. End of. As I believe E would say.
Poor E though. You could tell from her sweet little shocked look that this simply did not compute. Papa not handing over dosh on demand? An a priori impossibility silently said the sad face of the child.
You could tell my words had about as much meaning to her as H's to me about which particular bit of the engine is actually the engine. There was no aspect of content that in any way resembled a universe she recognised, no purchase could she find on the words with any conceptual cognitive tool or experientially learned capacities.
It could not be that Papa did not have money on demand, any more than that H could require of me that I enlighten her as to the matter of engine qua engine.
Impossible really to translate meaningful speech from the language of male to that of female. Two completely separate species. Might just as well expect a pea to converse with a strawberry, or a gibbon with a bison, or a brick with a spoon. It cannot happen.
All is lost in translation.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Scanxiety...
...you'll not find me at the head of any queue to applaud or to use a neologism. Modern, new fangled in quite that sense, words are mostly rubbish. An OED from the late 1950s is generally all I ask or need.
There is, though, one such word I cannot avoid acknowledging quite hits the spot and that word is 'scanxiety'.
Not come across it? Lucky you then say I. For it has but a single, narrow usage in circumstances that the user cannot call in any way a pleasure.
A swift analysis points the way clear. Not hard to unravel that scanxiety is a simple conflation of 'scan' and 'anxiety'. Any further explanation necessary?
Well if it is, then this is it. When one might have, has or did have cancer - or in my situation that far more rare disease of soft tissue sarcoma - one will be subjected to a pretty unending sequence of scans of one kind or another. An X-ray here, a CT scan there and everywhere there is the MRI tube waiting for custom.
Each of these various scanning devices is planned to take that greatly needed look into the very inside of one. That way, and only truly that way, can any decent medic worth his or her white coat tell what is there deep in one's very being.
Signs and symptoms of cancer/sarcoma are legion, but true diagnosis requires that scan. So a scan - or dozen - one has to have, and when one does have it as I shall tomorrow one tends to be somewhat anxious as to the outcome. Just what will the films and plates show? All clear and on one's way back to ordinary living, or au contraire, not all clear, something ghastly and lethal found, and now on one's way to - well not to put too fine a point on it in my own particular situation - perdition and doom.
The terrorist has said - rightly if horridly - "You have to be lucky every time. We only need to be lucky once." Metastatic sarcoma says it too.
So far, so lucky. Whether one is to be lucky once more tomorrow we simply do not yet know.
Hence, not unsurprisingly, the scan anxiety and hence, neologically speaking, the 'scanxiety'. Even seven years from initial diagnosis and two years after one was told not to expect or anticipate a recurrence, one still frets when the moment to scan once more comes as it does.
Not a happy word, but then not a happy feeling.
"Drink, feck!" as dear Fr. Jack would say. This fellow here rarely takes his scans without a hangover. Has worked so far, so why break a good pattern? Cheers!
There is, though, one such word I cannot avoid acknowledging quite hits the spot and that word is 'scanxiety'.
Not come across it? Lucky you then say I. For it has but a single, narrow usage in circumstances that the user cannot call in any way a pleasure.
A swift analysis points the way clear. Not hard to unravel that scanxiety is a simple conflation of 'scan' and 'anxiety'. Any further explanation necessary?
Well if it is, then this is it. When one might have, has or did have cancer - or in my situation that far more rare disease of soft tissue sarcoma - one will be subjected to a pretty unending sequence of scans of one kind or another. An X-ray here, a CT scan there and everywhere there is the MRI tube waiting for custom.
Each of these various scanning devices is planned to take that greatly needed look into the very inside of one. That way, and only truly that way, can any decent medic worth his or her white coat tell what is there deep in one's very being.
Signs and symptoms of cancer/sarcoma are legion, but true diagnosis requires that scan. So a scan - or dozen - one has to have, and when one does have it as I shall tomorrow one tends to be somewhat anxious as to the outcome. Just what will the films and plates show? All clear and on one's way back to ordinary living, or au contraire, not all clear, something ghastly and lethal found, and now on one's way to - well not to put too fine a point on it in my own particular situation - perdition and doom.
The terrorist has said - rightly if horridly - "You have to be lucky every time. We only need to be lucky once." Metastatic sarcoma says it too.
So far, so lucky. Whether one is to be lucky once more tomorrow we simply do not yet know.
Hence, not unsurprisingly, the scan anxiety and hence, neologically speaking, the 'scanxiety'. Even seven years from initial diagnosis and two years after one was told not to expect or anticipate a recurrence, one still frets when the moment to scan once more comes as it does.
Not a happy word, but then not a happy feeling.
"Drink, feck!" as dear Fr. Jack would say. This fellow here rarely takes his scans without a hangover. Has worked so far, so why break a good pattern? Cheers!
Deep Cover....
....I have worked it all out! This Labour Party funding mess that is. That is, it is a mess and I have worked out why it is a mess. Rather clever really.
This Mr. Abrahams, do we not hear him everywhere called 'a lifelong Labour supporter'? Why yes we do. And do we believe what we are told? Why, again, yes we docile souls tend to of course.
But - this is so cunning - of course he is not and never has been. How indeed could a true supporter, who wants nothing but good for Labour, have acted in this way? In truth he could not.
And the truth of it is that he did not! For - and this is the clever part I have worked out - he has all along been a Conservative, recruited many years ago to go into 'deep cover' - like all the best spooks - living the life of a Labour man to the hilt, but just waiting for that one order to come through, when the time was most ripe, to unleash himself in a way that would do the most harm.
The time came and the way was clear: Gordo was morphing - in that glorious phrase - from Stalin to Mr. Bean. All it needed was one more push and so here it is: Abrahams comes out from under deep cover and Labour teeters to the very edge of self-destruction.
I imagine the original plan had been to use him during the Blair years, but when it became clear that Blair and his ways were so totally corrupted yet invincible that no other scandal could touch him, Abrahams was kept for better times.
It is a marvellous wheeze and hats off to the Cameron boys for their tactical nous. Timing is perfect. (There must be a list somewhere of other such names. Dave alone knows. That would be an interesting dinner discussion chez Dave!)
And if you doubt me - though you could not deny the plausibility - I can offer proof. How so you reasonable enquire? Well it is this. Apart from being a Labour man, how else is Mr Abrahams described?
As - the quote I believe from the Mail - "a confirmed bachelor with a taste for musical theatre.' Now you tell me what that is code for.
Obvious. 'High Tory' of course!
QED.
This Mr. Abrahams, do we not hear him everywhere called 'a lifelong Labour supporter'? Why yes we do. And do we believe what we are told? Why, again, yes we docile souls tend to of course.
But - this is so cunning - of course he is not and never has been. How indeed could a true supporter, who wants nothing but good for Labour, have acted in this way? In truth he could not.
And the truth of it is that he did not! For - and this is the clever part I have worked out - he has all along been a Conservative, recruited many years ago to go into 'deep cover' - like all the best spooks - living the life of a Labour man to the hilt, but just waiting for that one order to come through, when the time was most ripe, to unleash himself in a way that would do the most harm.
The time came and the way was clear: Gordo was morphing - in that glorious phrase - from Stalin to Mr. Bean. All it needed was one more push and so here it is: Abrahams comes out from under deep cover and Labour teeters to the very edge of self-destruction.
I imagine the original plan had been to use him during the Blair years, but when it became clear that Blair and his ways were so totally corrupted yet invincible that no other scandal could touch him, Abrahams was kept for better times.
It is a marvellous wheeze and hats off to the Cameron boys for their tactical nous. Timing is perfect. (There must be a list somewhere of other such names. Dave alone knows. That would be an interesting dinner discussion chez Dave!)
And if you doubt me - though you could not deny the plausibility - I can offer proof. How so you reasonable enquire? Well it is this. Apart from being a Labour man, how else is Mr Abrahams described?
As - the quote I believe from the Mail - "a confirmed bachelor with a taste for musical theatre.' Now you tell me what that is code for.
Obvious. 'High Tory' of course!
QED.
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