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Give Us This Day: a Toast to Toast at Gray’s in Leicester

What’s for breakfast?
Tea and toast? Well…
Fry up? Er…
Organic muesli and yoghurt? Hmm.. not sure.

All of the above plus lavish helpings of the most idiosyncratic contemporary music around complete with references to Delia Derbyshire, Kevin Coyne, Flaming Lips and all points bezerk? Ah yes, that’s for me, definitely.

If you’re one of those people who need an aural fix in the morning alongside their habitual brew, then Gray’s is for you. Snuck in off one of the main precinct streets in the City of Leicester, right in the heart of its cultural quarter, Gray’s is open from 8.30 and is guaranteed to open up your sound and taste buds from the off and get you in the swing for the day.

It’s a heartening change to the diet of greasy spoons and predictable chains that are scattered through the rest of the city and consequently is one of those businesses which defines Leicester’s character. And you get a decent bacon barm into the bargain.

My Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen and Members of the Jury, please raise a toast to Toast at Gray’s in Leicester.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Toast: read all about toasting here

Can we provide an excellent cultural education without involving schools?

As Nigel Molesworth might have said in Back in the Jug Agane ‘any fule kno’ that trying to involve schools in anything but their core business of delivering the national curriculum like milkmen used to deliver the daily pinta, teaching to the test, climbing up the league tables, providing full wrap around care 247, being the complete corporate parent, struggling to make their budgets balance, and avoiding, adapting or falling for the next policy imperative is a pointless task these days as they’re pretty busy already. Never-mind adding in things like additional sport, additional support, additional lunchtimes and additional adding up sessions. No wonder there’s no room in the school timetable for anything remotely cultural.

Most arts organisations experience schools ultra-busy business with something approaching despair which sometimes gets transformed into some ingenious ruse designed to get an artist in front of some youth come hell or high water.

But it’s no longer enough for a theatre company to promote themselves as having a riveting production of Pirandello’s 6 Characters in Search of an Author which all young people should experience before their hormones kick in. These days, any theatre director who wants to introduce young people to the work of Pirandello and simultaneously demonstrate their cultural education credentials, has to ensure their production of Six Characters in Search of an Author isn’t just a riveting theatrical experience, but that it meets many different curriculum objectives not only in literacy but also in numeracy, bio-physics and what was fondly called back in the day, domestic science aka cooking and ironing.

Not only that, but the riveting theatrical experience will probably have to accommodate a sponsored trampoline bounce half way through act one in order to generate the funds to pay the costs for the aforesaid riveting theatrical experience.

Budgets being what they are, schools can’t even begin to think about taking their charges out of school to experience riveting theatrical experiences in their natural homes i.e. theatres, let alone invest in the military logistics required to bring the outside world through the hallowed gates, hostile gatekeepers, barbed wire and booby traps that await any unsuspecting AOTs (adult other than teachers) who find themselves on school premises harbouring the delusion that a school might be delighted to have a theatre company join them for the day to help engage and shape the lives of the young people in front of them.

No, these days, the notion that a quality cultural education should be left to schools is something that has been well and truly buried by an age of austerity, academisation and neo-liberal accountability which knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The sooner our producers of Pirandello realise this and generate some other ways to engage with the cultural life of the child, the happier they and our young people will be. Schools will also be relieved to get on with their core business of implementing government policy and will be much the better for it.

Stories on Whalls: All Saints Church, Little Casterton, Rutland.

 

“The East and West windows are by Whall and are in memory of former tenants of Tolethorpe Hall. The east window depicts St Hubert, “Christ in Majesty” and St Francis and is in memory of Hubert Francis Christian Harrisson. The west window features St George and dates to 1919. According to legend, St Hubert was an eighth-century nobleman who was converted to a religious life by the vision of a stag bearing a crucifix between its antlers, seen when hunting in an Ardennes forest on a Good Friday.”  (List of works by Christopher Whall)

Psalm 22: King James Version (KJV)

1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations.
29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, –that he hath done this.

If a shorter text is preferred, use 1 – 11 or 1 -20.

Thank goodness for the shorter text. Whilst the King James Version bible has a certain commanding theological gravitas,  the people who translated it appreciated brevity over gravity, and understood that the average congregation member may be unfamiliar with the strong bulls of Bashan (v12), and may not have much time to find out about them either. Such is church life it seems these days. Huge texts to communicate and illuminate and such little time to do it in.

Up the road at Tolethorpe Hall, they have a similar issue to contend with: huge Shakespeare texts to perform in a venue which is susceptible to the weather and liable to curtail their expressive tendencies at the drop of a Easter snowflake.

It was comforting to note that Christopher Whall’s work in the church was made in memory of the former tenant of Tolethorpe Hall – which in turn has memorised his work by installing their own stained glass windows in their splendid building.

Whether Tolethorpe Hall will produce a full rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – all 30,557 words of it – is probably as likely as the church congregation singing the full 31 verses of Psalm 22 – but they are both tasks worth stepping up to the dramaturgical ecclesiastical plate for. Even if the potential audience is likely to doze off after a short while.

Tips for Travellers: how to capture your intimate moments

Capturing trains kissing is a precarious business. Watching it happen is all very well but if you’re a certain type of enthusiast, you want to share that moment with your peers, if not your nearest and dearest who may just look at you with that upturned eyebrow that interrogates you: just why would you want to?

Sharing will inevitably mean capturing the moment and this will involve a camera which has the facility to take short busts of images in a mini movie moment. Trouble is, there’s no guarantee you can capture the exact kissing moment if you randomly strike a pose on a platform and point and shoot.

More often than not, you’re going to get the pre-coital or post-coital kissing moment – and not the moment itself. To get the exact moment, you’ll need to know the net rate of approach of the trains (particularly complicated if one is decelerating whilst the others accelerating), the image capture rate of your camera and factor in the time at which you lift your camera to shoot. If you knew all these things, chances are you’d get the exact kissing coital moment.

The great unknown in all this though is the effect that the train timetable has on your calculations. It’s all very well knowing the net rate of approach if the trains are doing what they’re supposed to. But we’ve known since 1830 and the launch of the first intercity train between Liverpool and Manchester that the lack of punctuality is built into the rail network’s DNA – a late train is a normal train and the extent of that lateness is always 100% unpredictable.

So, for all your calculations of rate of approach, shutter speed and platform position designed to give you the optimum chance of capturing the coital train kissing moment, the behaviour of trains and the railways will always thwart your best intention. You may just as well curl up with that pre or post coital cigarette in resignation rather than stress out at your inability to capture the moment two trains kiss.

Tips for Travellers: find your train’s kissing point.

Train enthusiasts frequently get a bad press given their perceived tendency to loiter on railway platforms, camera in one hand, thermos in the other; but what the un-enthusiastic don’t know about the enthusiast is their ability to understand train behaviour in ways in which ordinary Joe or Josephine Commuter never sees in their normal hustle and bustle to work and all stations to Bletchley. Take a train’s kissing point for example.

A train’s kissing point is when two trains pass each other and their noses almost – but don’t actually – touch. You can see the kissing point best at railway stations when two trains travelling in opposite directions are scheduled to arrive at more or less the same time. If the northbound train arrives slightly ahead of the southbound train then the kissing point is towards the north end of the station, and vica versa if the southbound train is first.

If they’re timetabled to arrive simultaneously then the kissing point is around the central point of the platforms.  Most frequently kissing points occur at the end of platforms, hence the location of the enthusiast there, camera in one hand, thermos in the other.

If you’ve not had the chance to see two trains kiss then you should find the time and enjoy what enthusiasts have known for nearly 200 years: there’s nothing as romantic as watching two trains approach each other, giving the impression initially that they’re about to crash into each other, only for them to gently glide by each other, having exchanged a tender kiss in the process.

This is why you hardly ever see enthusiasts at the side of the railway track deep in the remotest part of the country: not because it’s dangerous to get close up and personal to a Virgin Pendelino rocketing along at 150mph (although of course it is – very) but because its kiss with its oppositional cousin equates to no more than a smack on the jaw and a kiss to forget. Enthusiasts may wear ill-fitting anoraks and dirty brown loafers but they know a good romantic train moment when they see one and waiting patiently next to the high voltage line for two West Coast Pendolinos to cross each other isn’t one of them.

One of the most famous railway romances of course is the story of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in the film, Brief Encounter, which was filmed at Carnforth Station in Lancashire. All repressed emotion, unrequited love and surging Rachmaninov, Brief Encounter is nowt but a B movie to the full time enthusiast. They know that the real romance of the railways lays in the moment when trains kiss: moments of heightened suggestion brushing gently against thwarted reality which linger long into the memory well after the 17.47 to Bletchley has trundled on up the line to meet its maker.

Stories on Whalls: St. Mary’s Church, Stamford, Lincs.

 

 

Whall designed the Lady Chapel East window in 1891. This was Whall’s first independent commission and was given to him by John Dando Sedding. Whall described the window as “the foundation and beginning of everything”. Indeed Whall designed and made the window, with the help of one assistant, in a cowshed at Stonebridge, near Dorking in Surrey which Whall was using as a workshop. Meticulous preparation was said to have gone into producing the window, including the making of a suit of armour for the St Michael figure from papier-mâché – which his assistant had to wear! The window shows Adam and Eve in the outer main lights flanking Gabriel and St Michael with the Virgin & Child in the centre light. The tracery lights are based on the Mysteries of the Rosary. At the apex of the tracery is the Coronation of the Virgin. The firing and glazing were carried out by Britten & Gilson. The image in gallery below is shown courtesy Peter Jones. In The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire by Nikolaus Pevsner and John Harris they say of this window “in a style derived from the Pre-Raphaelites but more hard edged and Impressionist”. There is a second window dating to 1893 in the North side of the Lady Chapel this completed jointly with Louis Davis. (List of works by Christopher Whall)

“Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything. God loves admiration.”
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”  (Alice Walker, The Color Purple)

(Thanks to John Smith for all his help and insight on the Christopher Whall window.)

Stories on Whalls: Trinity House, Leicester.

These almshouses were founded in 1331 by Henry Earl of Lancaster and Leicester and were rebuilt in 1901. The original almshouses were known as the “Hospital of Annunciation of the Virgin Mary”. They were for a warden, 4 chaplains and 50 poor and infirm people, 20 of whom were to be resident there. By 1354 the number of resident poor people had doubled to 40. The almshouse survived the dissolution and was renamed Trinity hospital in 1614. Whall executed an East window for the Chapel. (List of works by Christopher Whall)

You never know who’s looking over your shoulder.

“The Vice-Chancellor and his senior staff are delighted that you are able to join them for lunch. The lunch will take place after the ceremony in Trinity House at 12.00 for 12.20pm.”

So I sit down amongst the finery and refinery sporting my guest badge meeting with a laudable gent from the Guild of Patten Makers (inserts in shoes not templates for sheet metal) and a lecturer in photography and before you know it there’s a very decent three course meal and then someone gives a welcome speech and then I’m chatting to someone from the arts and humanities department about the cross overs between arts and science education and evaluation processes and what’s causal and what isn’t then someone points to the bread and something in a bowl next to it and we’re not sure whether it’s pate or butter and then there’s a very nice glass of wine on offer but I’m not drinking as it’s midweek and if I have a glass now I shall be out like a light and then there’s some very appetising chicken so I give the wine a miss but the elderflower cordial is pretty lovely and think I’d better get off to work as it’s a busy day and I have a meeting in thirty minutes and then I have a train to catch and then there’s loads to do and it’s fifteen minutes until the next meeting and then and then and then and then.

What I didn’t do was stop in my tracks. Turn a corner and look up at the altar at the end of the chapel. If I had, I would have seen the magnificent window by Christopher Whall, benignly staring at us assembled hoards, albeit around the corner, just feet from where I was sitting.

I didn’t have a clue who or what was looking down as this whole stained glass window thing was news to me and anyway I was far to busy to stop in my tracks this time but I should have stopped I should have done and taken it in for a few minutes how something in our past can be just around the corner out of sight but benignly present if we were so inclined to see it.

We don’t stop often enough to take stock of what’s just around the corner, wishing us all good grace and offering to be an angel in the midst of our day. And we lose out, being engulfed in the mist of our daily routines.

Stories on Whalls: Church of the Holy Cross, Sarratt

Whall was responsible for the “Charity” window in this church. It is the East window in the North Transept. The window dates from 1923. The Church dates back to circa 1190. Whall was responsible for two other windows, “St Cecilia” and “Bringing the children to Christ”. The “Charity” window comprises two lights featuring angels. There is a panel below each light and in the panel below the left hand light is a heart and below the words “Deus Caritas Est”. “Bringing the Children to Christ” is the earliest of the three windows and was installed in the West of the tower in 1913. It is a two-light window and in the left hand light we see a mother with two children. They look towards the right hand light in which we see Jesus with a third child. In a roundel above the two main lights, two angels are shown and the inscription “In Heaven their angels do always behold the face of the Father.” The window “St Cecilia” was installed in 1921 and is the South window, South Aisle. St Cecilia sits at a piano. The window was commissioned in her memory by the children of Emily Catherine Hamilton Ryley. (List of works by Christopher Whall)

And then, there’s the M25, always present, always humming, always flowing. Or trying to. 50 years it wasn’t. It might have a glimmer in a planner’s eye but when we were growing up in the area, the challenge that the M25 was to become and the traffic it would generate was beyond our imaginations.

We were able to ride our bikes through the narrow country lanes out of Heronsgate, around Chorleywood, down Solesbridge Lane and up to Sarratt without having to dodge lumbering articulated HGVs which had taken the wrong SatNav instruction and now found themselves squeezing through bushes and demolishing rabbit warrens before they were forced to reverse perilously, jack-knife and bring the whole of South East to a gridlocked halt. It’s amazing how one errant truck can take a wrong turning and seize up the nation’s supply chain.

In those days, Holy Cross Church in Sarratt would have looked very much like it does today – and probably how it looked like 800 years ago. Motorways may wax and wane but these older churches are made of hardier infrastructural policies.

But these days, the M25 helps you makes a trip to Sarratt by car in a hop skip and a jump and within minutes you can find the village’ s now empty duck pond, the Village Hall (scene of my first young farmers disco) and the Cricketers Arms (home of beautiful cobalt blue cutlery which is unfortunately not for sale).

A ten minute walk down Church Road – greeted politely by locals (“lost your way? You’re not from ‘ere are you?”) making it clear there’s nothing more suspicious than a couple of blokes walking down a country lane – leads unsurprisingly to the church, in which Christopher Whall is present, jostling for attention with the likes of Powell and Alfred Fisher. In the Baptistry, there’s St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians, dating from 1921; in the Bell Tower, Bringing the Children to Christ (1913) and in the North Transept, Charity (1923).

Back outside, you clock that the Church of the Holy Cross  is opposite another pub, The Cock Inn, with its promise of ‘fab fish weekends’, which no doubt complement the fish and loaves Sunday mission of Holy Cross itself. The pub and the church: constants in an ever changing flux of articulated lorries, traffic diversions and speed cameras.

What comes first, the window or the wall?

The PTA of my old school recently invited me to see a ‘Wall of Honour’ they had installed on the main school corridor which, over the years, must have witnessed millions of pupil, parent and teacher journeys all in the search for the holy grail of a perfect education.

Part of the lead up to the installation was a request by the PTA to send in photos of what its alumni had done since they had stopped patrolling that corridor in search of the perfect girl or boy friend and left the school for good.

I duly obliged with a few photos of my own and as I approached the school became increasingly intrigued with what they had done with the photos on the corridor walls.

How would they frame this ‘wall of honour’? How would they stop errant 4th formers from making they own marks on the august faces beaming at them from the privilege of their post-school hide-aways? Would the ‘wall of honour’ be accompanied at some point by a floor of concrete which everyone would be invited to put their own footsteps into, making the corridor full of indelible marks on both its walls and floor?

All that would be needed to complete the effect would be a ceiling of the most anointed: those alumni who had developed stellar careers – or serious drug habits – which would mean they could only be found by being dragging them off a different ceiling or out of the heavens.

So as I was escorted down to the corridor of a million journeys, it’s fair to say that calling the experience underwhelming would be an understatement. It’s six pictures in frames underneath the PTA title board: the complete antithesis of what telling a good story on a wall might look like: something the Whalls were both pretty good at.

It’s amazing how we think that just sticking something on a bare wall is better than nothing. Actually, it’s worse than nothing as at least a bare wall has some sense of purity to it. Desecrating it with some half-thought out plan demeans both the plan and the wall. Better to do nothing than just gesture, aimlessly.

Trouble is, a wall invites you to make a mark. Challenges you to add Something where nothing’s actually needed. It says, go on then, if you think you’re so important, beat this. Make your mark count more than my empty space. And more often than not we get it wrong, especially in public spaces where getting the marks right is even more important, given you’re speaking to far more many people than you would do than if you were in the privacy of your own living room.

The Whalls though weren’t simply about stories on walls – but in windows which were part of the wall; or a different type of wall with a different purpose. You wonder, does the brick work support the glass? Or does the glass determine what kind of brick work is needed? What comes first, the window or the wall?

Whatever the answer, the PTA of the old alma mater could do with some serious rethinking of what the purpose of the walls, floor and ceiling of a school corridor is all about.