He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty computer...

We're sitting here at my usual spot in the Gotham City library on Buckingham Palace Road, and there are 4 Apple Mac's (including Brian) all tic-tap-netting away. Those far-off days when Apple was but a glitch in the market saturation of Bill Gates' mighty Microsoft monolith...

I've been composing a setting of the new translation of the Mass these past few weeks, and am quite pleased with how it's coming along. I can actually sing bits of it to myself from memory during the morning swim (in my head, obviously!) I've gone for a simple setting of the parts plus Alleluia and a Hail Mary, Glory Be etc. Still to do are the Creed and the Agnus. I've been listening to the Nelson Mass for a little while, partly as homework for Medici and also to get used to a setting that I don't know by one of the greats, that has essentially single word writing per note: the Haydn sorta rattles through a bit: I'm not ready for the Bach B minor style treatment as yet of multiple movements per part of the Mass - trying to be fairly practical for the moment.

I think if could do one strand of music work alone it would be composition: it contains all the other disciplines in a way, and such are the wonders of Sibelius 6 music writing software, it's all possible. The creativity is allowed pretty much free rein, and I've only felt hindered once or twice by my lack of a completely thorough knowledge of the system. Praise the Lord for providing the facility of the music library so close to home and just around the corner to my Belgravia office, Newton's Nest.

My Apple Mac, Brian, loves it here. Hanging with the younger models, surfing the net with the cool student crowd, the free power point, the free internet (that usually is working and is pretty quick): he's in a very happy mood, working nicely, doing his stuff, tic-tap-netting away. Good Brian, nice Brian.

One day I reckon these things will come alive and I don't think it's going to be good news... more like  book of Revelation than the gospel...

Better crack on with that Mass setting before Mass gets forbidden.

Barclays Bank Buskers

So we're at Barclays bank in Deptford High Street and there's 8 or so would-be theatre directors from Stonecrabs director traineeship programme and there's Harper and Simon Egerton both on keyboards and larynx and a few hangers on plus Kwong from the company and a journalist from the local rag and some bank staff and there's various hats being worn and leaflets being handed out and the coins and the notes just keep going into the collection boxes and, hey presto! about 3 hours later, there's £500 (including an undisclosed donation from Lucy's father)... then the magicians at Barclay's Bank have agreed to match pound for pound so that means there's a grand and the admin for the 9 shows is now paid for...

Not bad going!

QUITE A SING! Simon stayed for about an hour which meant I was doing a lot of the music (helped by Doris Day via the CD player): but it was great fun and a wonderful result. The present of a bottle of champagne went the way of the thirsty bookclub members that eve. Chasing the remarkable Hermitage Artichoke risotto cooked up by dear Sus.

Then on Saturday, breakfast at the Caledonia club with Julia and Geof and Alex hosted by Jonathan Sayers. See pics of Jonathan in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Rochester by train to meet Mama after the delicious smoked haddock. It's such a Dickensian city, lovely, narrow, car free streets, with endless bargain book and antique and junk shops. More than a dozen charity shops to choose from.

Jane Barran sold the family grandfather clock at auction in Cambridge for about £50 - YES! criminal isn't it - there was one at the Rochester Oxfam, made in about 1990, going for £400. May have had the advantage of being able to work (unlike the Barrans' one) but there was really just no comparison between them. It kind of hurt when she told me what hers had sold for.

Why that's only about 20 minutes busking in Barclays Bank!

Choir at St Ann's on Sunday recorded peak numbers of 8 (plus one honorary member - Leo, aged 4, a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan).

GRAZIE

Where did all the biceps go, long time pumping?

Harper bought a dumb-bell yestereve - much to his own amusement at the thought of dragging it across the tube notwork to Tooting Broadway. Don't ask the price! Worth it's weight in steel  - probably.

Also bought the Holland & Barrett men's health mag. 'Jeff' the personal trainer told me that the typical muscle-man you see on the glossy pages of such magazines quite often faint after they've done their posing. Apparently I'm a mesomorph... not an ectomorph or an esomorph. I'm a little wiser but not much: the human body, as we see it today, generally divides into these 3 types: fighters, runners and rugby players.

So it's high reps for me then...

Leona and Michael have had their first child - praise God! That's an answered prayer-and-a-half! Facebook 'o sphere has it's uses. Horribly addictive though.

The swimming at the gym is just great for sleeping well - I got to bed by 10pm and read for half an hour before lights out, the earliest for many a half moon. Legs feeling pretty tirrrred today though.

My dear Ma n Pa are heading to Nodnol today for teaching (mum) and supper (dad). Yet again, mum will probably manage a triple Eastenders and tonic - oh! forgive me: that's Sunday's post prandial. Tonight is merely a schooner of finest Walford. 'Jeff' mentioned (proudly?) that at 730pm at the gym, there are lines of dinner-dodgers running away as if their gym membership depended on it and watching the great British soaps on the new, hi-tech machines, screens on each display, plugged into the headphones.

Hmmmm.

There was an article in the Men's Health mag about music and fitness.


I can still do 20 pressups on my fingers - is that what they meant? But I've never been able to play the piano part of Schubert's Erlkonig...

The gym running machine/computers do have radio 3 (as well as facebook/twitter etc)

Meanwhile, winter seems to have got hold of the January thermostat.

GRAZIE

Like this one time, at Elf camp, we watched this great show called 'Chaffinch!'

Richfinch McMogerama, erstwhile co-writer on the great Harmer musical Magnum Opus (plus JMB) 'phoned on Saturday eve, the sweet potato just popped into the oven and the garlic and ginger biriani daal warming nicely - great recipe I downloaded from the Cambridge Chef Liz Cole - 'go on: give it a whirl!' - then Michael C buzzed the buzzerama here at St Anthony's and needed letting in - chaos ensued...

nearly as much chaos as when the phonecall from Susie MacInnes came in about 20 minutes later and dinner was almost done...

"Argh!"

(Dinner invite and HTCC Connect service band chat forgotten about... DOH!)

Anyhow, dinner eaten Chez Moi, and Carson victualled enough to make his journey over not a complete farago, the shamefaced Harper headed over to Number 94 and made his apologies and arrived in time for pudding (apricot tart seeing as you ask - very nice.)

Quite a house.

It's been a social whirl the last few days (- Saturday morning I was spotted (0: by one of the 3 year-old's from the Willow - the MacInneses also had one go there of their brood of 4 -) but the new gym just on Clapham High Road and one street back was great fun and assez relaxant! All sparkle and staff uncertain of what's going on - I went again this morn with Aviary and had another swim.

Is there a national standardisation for gym inductions possibly??? Having had one in September at Queen Mum Sports Centre, it all feels wearily like a cash-raising litigation-culture nonsense exercise rather than anything to do with your health to go through it again at a different venue in January. Groan! Still, it's nice to have a chance to see round the place and learn from the instructors - again!

Tidied the flat all afternoon Saturday which was a miracle of binbag filling - the ruthless sorter-outer of old Lavender Hill Town has been spotted burdening the Bin Men of Wandsworth Council. "Taking advantage of the window-of–opportunity before the rubbish starts being weighed he was- cheek!"

Now, I'm sure there is a small minority of readers who may be protesting that I should have dragged the detritus to the Oxfam. Believe me: Oxfam wouldn't have wanted it - the only salvageable goods were a white bow tie - faded, and about 30 shirt studs of dubious quality + range of bags of assorted dusty-'n -worse clothes and size ** trousers (modesty forbids) mostly dating from the Primark collections of the late 90's to mid noughties - and that's the highlights!

And then I found this Elf at the pub on Sunday after Connect at HTCC had finished and Whiting plus Nic the Baptist Vic and I had headed to the Sun to debrief. There she was sitting at the toadstool table with a bowl of soup and anecdote of how she'd been to see Jean Vanier in France for two days. And then the Aviary Tall Elf of Kindness was very good enough to run NtBV plus Harper home.

Be kind to your inner chaffinch...

This is all so obscure I should elucidate: Richard Mogendorf, (sometimes known on this Blog as various combinations of similar sounding syllables) is a big chaffinch fancier (or something...): in other words he has a fixation with small garden birds - and has concocted some theory that it is the most ridiculous word in the English language to patina his veneer of respectability.

Couldn't comment on the statistics of silly words, but chaffinch is a great word for all purposes. He said on FB this morn that a worthy successor to the musical 'Cats' would be 'Chaffinch!' (exclamation essential) and he may be right! but then again he may not be. His comment was that it was no more ridiculous a title than A.L-W's own.

I suggested Moggy! but he hasn't seemed to have noticed.

Grazie.

The words of the prosperity prophets are written on the subway walls

We Mediciers at the Cov Gar hostelry last night were hearing about 'The World".

Not the thing you promise -or have promised on your behalf- to renounce at your Baptism, along with the flesh and the devil 'and all his lies' ( - it's the half truths that are the tricky ones to spot I find - )... no: not that world - rather the boat by the same name that perpetually sails 'World without end', upon which one purchases an apartment and sojourns with princes and oligarchs, until shufflin' off the mortal plank or sellin' up. (I wonder where they bury you?)

Susan and Richard de la choer Medici, had very fortuitously been granted a 10 days on board using the apartment of one of the folk with said accommodation. Susan told me that a number of the folk on board are fairly modest (by oligarch standards) and have sold their London or similar property and bought an interest and live there year round. The travel sounds wunderbar exciting. In other ways it sounds like a sort of endless game of pilgrim ping-pong.


The company varies a great deal apparently, as a number of people come and go who are not owners and there's a bit of a change from week to week which sounds interesting. All the typical perks of cruise ship dining I suppose - and a good tailor to let your trousers out every three weeks maybe...?!


Penny Baird and I were chatting about it after the sun-kissed travellers had left and she warned me of the sting in the tail - the maintenance bill: her and John's timeshare (long since abandoned) in a converted castle somewhere a l'Europe had modest running costs at first, but these soon spiralled several fold and the Bairdian Baronetcy fizzled to a halt.





There was a part of me that was intrigued by the ship idea - good way to see the world and all that: but I wonder, I wonder, I wonder...

I wonder if they ever have the same situation, however occasionally, as Aviary's Gloucester Road living Mama: one of the great unwashed camped out on the doorstep for a week or so... guess it was pretty annoying, the shopping bags being carried inside bumping into the sleeping bag plus their shopping bag-person occupant outside. We had someone pitch camp in the St Anthony's Harpertage bin room for a couple of nights a while back which rather disturbed the mice... The World had to skip round Somalia for fear of gunmen on the trip in question.

The Gloucester Road drop in at St Paul's Onslow Square round the corner to Ma Aviary can't have been a popular idea with the locals; Ant told us there were 150 there 2 days ago. The Poles keep their booze hidden somewhere nearby, and go and lubricate the free coronation chicken course with a large vodka: the Polizei interrupted them on route to the bar this particular time and escorted several of the gentlemen of the road to the station for a night under cover.

'The poor will always be with you'


Except if you're a resident on a cruise ship...


Psalm 49 vs 16-20
'Do not be overawed when someone gets rich and lives in ever greater splendour;
when he dies he will take nothing with him, his wealth will not go down with him.

Though he pampered himself while he lived

-and people praise you for looking after yourself-

he will go to join the ranks of his ancestors, who will never again see the light.

In prosperity people lose their good sense,
they become no better than dumb animals'


(ahem!)


'Do not love the world
or what is in the world.
If anyone does love the world,
the love of the Father finds no place in him.'
1 John 2: 15


Guess they don't quote that on the ship's advertising.


Watch out for those half-truths.... there's quite a few on the prosperity gospel TV channels these days, let alone the subway walls, next to the words of the prophets!

Did you ever wonder what happened to Christmas?

The tall, walrus elf, known on these blog pages as Aviary has been being true to her secret identity as God's Tall Elf of Kindness. Now I'm not saying anything, but I know that Ant has had a few parcels appear by the door (note 'by' not 'through' the door) over the past couple of days. I guess that perenial comment applies though - it looked bigger on e-bay!

Father Christmas has made a scheduled appointment to make a small visit to St Anthony's Harpertage in a few weeks time (courtesy of Mum and some long term savings discipline - not his greenclad TEofK this time) and so there is a possibility - if the plans work out - of a trip to parts American with a senior poetry executive to do some sittin' at the feet of Christopher West and his presentation of Blessed Pope John-Paul II's teaching on the Theology of the Body: I bought Male and Female He Created Them with book vouchers I was given by the Royal Hospital and absolutely loved what I read but never finished it. It's on the long-term back burner.

Well; we shall see what transpires, and if last year taught me anything at all, it was that

'Man proposes - God disposes'.

The Theology of the Body (ToB) is a seismic shift theology: it had that effect on my dear friend Rosie from CARJ when we went to a day conference about 2 and a half years ago. One phrase has stuck with me particularly -

"Marriage is the meaning of the Universe"

And that union will not be barren or self-serving. From the Kiss of the Father and Son the Spirit proceeds - and from the union of man and woman it is implicit that there must be (or have been) the possibility of children: even if the possibility is only chromosomic compatability. To deny or frustrate the possibility of the processes of fertilisation is to 'eat the fruit without swallowing' (as Jack put it or something like in Mere Christianity.)

Why did the Mystic share her last Rolo with the Lord?


Because He had become her sweet Lover...

Okay, so what shall I write about today?

Don't you find a lot of the art you see is similarly motivated? "I want to make art..." Aviary has just announced...

And she does and I really like what she's doing: that whole creative thing though needs to find something to believe in other than "Pizza or cakes or wine or coffee" and the Esca Breakfast table committee has agreed as much - but I suppose that pizza or cakes or wine or coffee believe in companionship and friendship and giving life and sharing life with the other person(s).

A friend said to me once that he felt that companionship was the thing he wanted most in life. Makes sense if you think about breaking bread together, com (with) pane (bread), or sharing in the fellowship of the table of heaven.

We're sitting here at the long table with Brian my newly christened Apple (and the others are silent for a moment while I type this - an angel has passed) and we're having the fellowship of the wayfarers and the pilgrims: we don't know who's going to sit within conversational reach of the discussion and what might spill over to feed or spoil from our friendship.

(I've now been accused of having computionship with Brian - I asked if I could change his name to Bryonee as we seem to spend so much time together these days and I might have to confess to my Priest about our relationship - Bryonee would be easier to say in the confessional than Brian; still...)

Aviary was commenting that amongst the un-privileges of the South Kensington Cafe classes (when she was living there) was the solitary trip to Pret a Manger, looking around at the other solitary pretters. Seems it was almost always the opposite of a visit to the real manger.


But too often, to recapitulate, the motivation of the management loses the vision of the firestarters... the Ben and Jerry's and the Seattle Coffee company folk and the Walt Disney's and the rest, and then the dark morning constellation of the Starbucks riseth from the cash-till altar fires of vision with less than healing in it's wings...

Meanwhile, Aviary is wondering how many Robbie's are in Coltrane - (Ant taught Hagrid fly fishing we've just discovered - for Salmon apparently.)

Oh well...

This needs a little explanation (for those who were born after Kate and Wills); the Seattle Coffee company used to be this great cafe chain in about 1996 or 7ish - then the mighty megalith of Deathstarbucks bought them out and transformed this homegrown wonder into corporate nonsense.

Maybe that's the eyes of nostalgia.

(also, Robbie Coltrane used to collect classic American cars - Buicks and the like - guess Hagrid would need something with a bit of extra dragon room.)

Still, I think the point is that our common humanity is the building ground of our relationships - not our political or economic usefulness. Is this incredibly obvious? I think we may have lost sight of the fact in society that....


"We are all the honoured guests on the jewelled dance floor of God"

Every one of us. Even if our dance card is empty and our gown a bit ragged.


Be kind to your fellow guests!

Ant (which is short for Anthony which means all seeing)

Man judges the outward things but the Lord sees the heart...

Many are the false judgements of us men (and women.)

I asked Ant (see picture) if I could put his photo up. Aviary is trying to ghost write his story. The time will come (hopefully) for a part of that tale to appear on tfots.blogspot but let's just say he's 'been through the mill'.

Keep on truckin' Ant, keep on truckin'.

Back at Newton's nest...

Any tentative casuists for my canonisation could well take a peep at the now empty washing-up bowl here at Newton's Nest/my Belgravia Office/the trading floor of Dreth's Bookshop... Randy McDandy just asked if Andreth had any copies of Hitler books: what a ridiculous question!!!

Andy bought a bulk order of random 2500 books for £170 (which had to be brought up to the 4th floor at 5 in the morning...) SOME MONTHS AGO, and while a few dozen or so have winged their way across the cybershoppage doormat the majority are, a bit like the washing-up bowl usually is, rather full and annoying and getting ever so slightly in the way of the health and safety of us 4pm traders.

Amongst Andy's schemes along the way of the bookstore idea have been chasing meteors in Russia and setting up a record label, dealing in art and banknote trading.

While he has had scant luck with the wizard schemes to ensure a retirement home in the Bahamas, he is probably the most reliable person I know if you need to borrow a £ or ££. Andy has often housed homeless guys for the night (guess he can see how it might feel to be sleeping on the streets) and I know that, though he has less cash (or space) than almost anyone I know, he's much more likely to put me - or a stranger for that matter - up for the night (or month) if push came to shove, than many a resident of the same borough with a spare bedroom or two, or three or four or five or six.

Blessed are the poor... not because of their poverty, but because God is their riches..

Guess there's a lesson in there somewhere...

Egash and egesh, enak and enak...

They didn't warn me that monks go on holiday...

All was uncommonly quiet at St Mary's, Clapham Common this morning. Leaves were piled up against the chained gates as the 7am commuters swept past towards the City. We faithful but misadvised few gathered around the notice board to lament that the Bridegroom's wise virgins were already mustered around the banquet hall table - we left, our several ways, to bemoan our foolishness... teeth were provided enough for a Cafe Nero croissant (gnashed a couple of hours ago...) as I type, alone in the basement, serenaded by the sounds of Bach in their mocking symmetry...

The year seems to have got off to a very poor start for this massaholic-cathoholic. I've been trying to feed and assuage my addiction since January 1st with no results. Argh! Hungry! Thirsty too!

Father M and I were chatting of Marthe Robin and her 50 years sustained merely by the Eucharist: (thanks for the excellent book dear Sarah). He mentioned that there is a lady in this very Parish (or very nearby) who is similarly victualled. His Grace is aware. These things are hidden from the world's eyes partly by our cowardice, and partly by the general guilt and idolatry.

"Moan moan, gripe groan groan, weep not alone-lone
pay credit card loan, big bills for phone phone"

(To the tune of 'Let's call the whole thing off')

Unc M and Aunty B plus nephers headed to Nancy Lam's Enak Enak restaurant on Lavender Hill last night (due to currently needing Indonesian cuisine as well as Israeli Mount Zion Lamb.) As expected, Nancy Lam(b) appeared a la table to query her customer's enjoyment of the (delicious) repaste.

"They think I'm crazy oriental"

('They" being every TV chef you care to mention.)

Unc and Nanc had a Chef-off which she won, having started at 9, (by compare he was a positively senescent 14) and an age-off which he won (being a year or two the senior.) It was all a bit silly, but the food was exquisite.

BUT IT WASN'T MASS, AND I'M STILL HUNGRY!

Feed my sheep... tend my lambs... feed my lambs...


Man cannot live on Lam alone.

Back to the Batt(ersea) cave...

Well here we are.

January.

Just about says it all.

The Batt cave had the look of a hurriedly deserted ghost flat on returnval this morning at 1000h following high speed Priest Powered lift from the Eastern Marches of Thanet and 8 days of hols with Ma and Pa plus visitors. Pot plants looked distinctly dead/in need of emergency treatment. Aviary suggested by text that Batt man should ZAP! them with Robin. (As in l'eau Robinet...) I liked but didn't get the joke till it was explained. Bi-linguist wot I ain't.

So, farewell then,
Christmas 2011.
You were really fun.
And very warm
and wet
and
windy.

The Thanetshire coast was in bracing form along the prom last night, when Jack Russell Harmer was receiving his final walk of the Harper hols. I'm sure that dog has hypnotic powers - why else would you agree with someone, who has no powers of speech or writing or sign language, to take them on a 20 minute walk at 10pm on a night that had the weathermen reaching for their thesaurii. (Another word for thesauruses I hope?)

We peeked through the wind-ow, Jack and I, at Rodin's statue of the doomed Danteish lovers - the Kiss is still on display in Margate and they've relaxed the rules on photographing it after lots of complaints. I took loads when Ma A and Ma B and I popped in last week. One or two of the shots felt as though one was trespassing on others' intimacy: the sculpture has a lot of presence. Ma B was comparing early Turner picture in the Turner gallery, with her memory of the picture that might be an early Turner back at the Chelsea homestead: maybe the Barrans will yet return to the Hermitage!

Jane Bishop of the Walpole Bay Hotel asked when I was moving in when I turned up on Tuesday for arfter-high noon tea plus incognito Father M. Something about the place is somewhat addictive - the breakfast is better than the tea and the tea is excellent. Lunch is the weak-point in their armoury of fare but still decent by 5th Avenue Standards...

Birenirenaby (I'm fast getting through the vowels) and I arrived at 1130am for the 1030am Mass - mildly irritating, seeing as I'd made a special point of looking very carefully at the noticeboard. There's none so blind as those who cannot read... B enjoyed the lengthy 5 minutes we were there for, followed by Eats and Takes in the church hall plus Sarah Jane and Christian, and their grandad Joe. Wendy and Michael behind the Keys and Toffees hatch suggested that St Ann's (C'ville) might be ripe for musical gatherings. Hmmm. Sarah Jane (sweet!) said, very spontaneously and naturally, that she thought Barnaby was a lovely name. Charmant.


Breeneeenaby and I arrived at the Dog and Duck in Margate Old Towne at 1030pm for New Years Eve Karaoke the night before our late appearance at Sunday Mass. The rootin tootin, tuneful twosome treated the locals to Queen 'Somebody to love' plus a duet version of 'Rawhide' and my party piece 'Born to be wild!!!' These last two are genuinely among the only popular beat combo songs I know all the words to, and I've known them for over 20 years, since I was a young lead singer in a Ukelele band at Westminster School known as the D.F.G's, and we used to perform them "somewhat ironically" at formal dinners in the Abbey dining room and school and house concerts. Y.M.C.A. was also another swan song. (Well - more goose standard maybe.)

(The Darn Funky Groovers if you're wondering.)

Our tentative album cover was supposed to be representative of the instruments of the band: 2 Uke's and a pair of bongos accompanied by a bleeding, torn-out-of-throat larynx (plus eggshaker). I was never sure (and didn't think or like to ask) where the voicebox was supposed to be procured from. Will Grove-White was our Uke player par excellence and general Uke Orch of Grea Brit aspirant. There's a video online of him doing his dream-realising stuff at the RAH proms. Leigh Melrose, also then on Uke, was (and is and will be?) a regular soloist at ENO for a while. (As a Baritone singer - not a Ukelele player.) 

"I knew them when they were nobodies!"

I still vaguely (i.e. a bit more than Facebook friendship) know Ed Stern, our Bongo-comedianist, now deeply embroigled in the games industry as a guru to all things shootemup. He's no shootemuppet, that's for sure. (Couldn't resist: apols Ed.) 

So, January cometh and February loometh. What shall the year hold we all wonder, nervously checking the share prices and the train fares, the supermarket shelves and the petrol station dot matrix displays. I gather the veil of the temple has always been a bit dodgy round this time of the century... 

Get your motor running....

Grazie