Off the air

My last expedition to St. Luke's, a week or so ago now, started rather badly by my realising that I had forgotten my telephone when I got to Meadway. The call was that I did not have time to go back and fetch it: in the event, I probably would have had, but it would have been a bit of a stretch. Reminded how dependant one has become of having one's telephone about one's person at all times in the twenty years or so since they were invented.

[another WEBP file]

While this morning the poster for this piano concert made me think of the east window of St. Martin's in the Fields, the work of a deceased Iraqi artist. A window which I do not care for at all, with my take being that the church bosses had fallen prey to the all-too-common drive to be trendy and to connect to young people. But, to be fair, given their catastrophic loss of customers over the past fifty years, I suppose they are going to thrash about a bit.

However, the window turns out to be the work of a living Iranian flavoured artist, Shirazeh Houshiary. I had confused here with a dead Iraqi flavoured architect, Zaha Hadid. Given the relations between the two countries, almost the two religions, I don't suppose that either of them would take, would have taken, kindly to my confusion. And while the distorted grid is vaguely suggestive of the distorted letters, one could not really put it any stronger than that. But see reference 3 for a fuller story, from which the snap above was lifted.

Back with St. Luke's, get off the train at Waterloo and onto the ramp to have my Bullingdon key red-lighted, as reported earlier at reference 1. Shanks' pony to Whitecross Street to arrive at the Market Restaurant at 12:45 rather than 12:15, so no time for the traditional bacon sandwich.

Push on to a fairly full St. Luke's to hear Chopin from one Christian Ihle Hadland, new to me but to be found at reference 4. Furthermore, this morning I find that he is not new to me at all, having heard him at the Wigmore Hall getting on for ten years ago and noticed at reference 5. Clearly all the business of noticing is not a fool-proof way to lock something down in memory.

The audience struck me of having a rather Islington flavour about it, the new Islington that is, not the slums of old. Including an older lady immediately in front of me whose dress, demeanour and generally intimate behaviour with her accompanying gentleman suggested that she had been a bit of a goes in her time, probably the early 1960's.

The lady from BBC gushed a little about the crystal clarity of the music in the hands of our Norwegian. And for once I found the gushing appropriate: there really was a very attractive clarity about the whole business. All in all, a much better concert than I had been expecting. The absence of both the famous nocturnes and the famous preludes notwithstanding.

Out to stroll down to Old Street tube station, past the branch of Wetherspoon's which we used to use in the past. Back in the days when I brought tuna or sardine sandwiches for lunch, then still made with the fine white bread to be had from the baker in Cheam, now departed in favour of the place snapped above. Which still appears to sell lots of bread, so perhaps I ought to give it a try. Could I still make it up Howell Hill, once part of a near daily trip?

The Old Street roundabout was in the throes of a major refurbishment, but I got down to the Northern Line fast enough, to be carried off to Stockwell. Which turned out to be a much quicker way to the Estrela than the Bullingdon I had intended to take.

Needing to make contact, I tried one of the pay phones outside Stockwell tube station, which manage eat up two fifty pence pieces without providing a dialling tone. Ditto my credit card. Must check that it didn't take any money. Along the way finding that I had forgotten what the London dialling codes were, only rarely having occasion to actually tap them in these days. 01? 0207? 0208? 020? This morning I find that the 0207 and 0208 area codes introduced with some fanfare some years ago have now been dropped in favour of 020, with the 7 and 8 now being considered part of the number proper. All very complicated, all documented at reference 8.

So headed off to the Tate Library opposite the Estrela, from where I was able to use my Lambeth library card to send an email. Perhaps the first time since I acquired the card back in February, as noticed at reference 7.

Traditional menu at the Estrela: bread, olives, pork belly strips (slightly overcooked on this occasion), Portugues tiramisu (rather good), my now usual white wine and brown aguardiente. The white wine - Alvarinho Deu la Deu - possibly taken for the first time on the occasion noticed at reference 9. The days before the Estrela had taken to pork belly strips.

At one point the conversation turned to President Putin's fondness for very large, very traditional churches. Perhaps more a vehicle for projecting Russia all over the Russian empire than for prayer. It seems that rather than repair all the (NATO) bomb damage in Belgrade he thought it better to build a very large church, very large on the clear understanding that it was ecclesiastically subordinate to the Arch Patriarch (Russian for Pope) of Moscow. 

But clearly not a good day for memory, as checking this morning suggests that the church in question is probably the Cathedral of Saint Sava, completed in the 1980's, in the dying days of communism in Serbia. It is indeed a very large church and has been visited by President Putin, but he did not pay for all of it, just some of the finishing touches to the mosaics inside. The church is now the central attraction of a spatial cultural-historical unit, which I suppose to be a bad translation of a bit of Serbian heritage speak.

Not sure if it is better considered as a bit of national showing off or as a bit of religious revivalism. Both being things that we would be better off without - with the communist vision & mission to do away with both having failed miserably.

Very pretty blue sky while all this was going on. Some high cloud, vapour trails and aeroplanes. Like the Chopin, all very clear. 

One pick me up at Raynes Park, a bit of chick-lit for BH, for once in a while. Not her usual fodder at all. But now read and recycled. Small prize offered for the first reader to correctly parse the picture.

A different puzzle at Raynes Park where I was unable to decide whether a light in the sky to the east was a star or an aeroplane. No flashing landing lights for Heathrow, but not quite right for a planet either. My usual source for stuff of this sort, reference 11, suggests that it could have been Jupiter or Saturn, but certainly not Venus as I had thought possible.

[The burning of Saint Sava's relics by the Ottomans after the Banat Uprising, on April 27, 1595. Painting by Stevan Aleksić (1912)]

PS: a little later: I thought to inquire about St. Sava, who turns out to be something like a patron saint for the Serbs. A younger son of a Serbian prince who took to the church rather than to the army, where in the course of a long and successful career he steered the Serbs away from Rome and into the arms of Constantinople. There must have been family money as, according to the Wikipedia article he made lots of gifts during his travels. So a camel who did make it through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). He died in Bulgaria but his remains eventually made it back to Serbia only to be burned by the Turks a few centuries later. A hand which escaped the holocaust (illustrated above) is presently held by the monastery at Mileševa. The present cathedral is said to be near the site of this burning. Perhaps they will ask for the hand back.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/access-denied.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/st-lukes.html. Last outing to St. Luke's - where the problem was lack of access to the former church itself.

Reference 3: https://mymodernmet.com/shirazeh-houshiary-east-window-st-martin-in-the-fields-london/. The start point of the window story.

Reference 4: https://www.christianihlehadland.com/.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/01/saucepan-hunt-concluded.html. The day we bought the saucepans which have continued to serve well ever since. The matching frying pan, featured at reference 6 below came a little later.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/new-sausage.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/a-real-post.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialling_codes_in_the_United_Kingdom.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/battersea-beef.html.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Saint_Sava.

Reference 11: https://www.timeanddate.com/.