A Monument

Over the weekend I enjoyed an afternoon's walking in Kent.
 'Kent, sir - everybody knows Kent - apples, cherries, hops and women' (as Mr Jingle so succinctly put it) - and indeed a providential punnet of fresh-picked cherries from a roadside stall was one of the highlights of this walk, through gently rolling orchard and arable country west of Faversham. But the grand climax came, fittingly, at the end, in the picturesque village of Lynsted. The parish church of St Peter and St Paul is an imposing, rather muddled flint building - a patchwork of various periods - that happens to contain one of England's greatest church monuments.
  The monument to Christopher Roper, 2nd Lord Teynham (died 1622), is a rare example of a signed work by that elusive genius Epiphanius Evesham. It stands in the South chapel of the church, and it's apparent at a glance that this is a work of startling originality, displaying a level of craftsmanship infinitely superior to the provincial Jacobean monuments around it. The composition is quite extraordinary, combining two standard monumental forms of the period - the reclining effigy and the kneeling mourner at prayer - and breathing dramatic life into them. These are entirely convincing naturalistic likenesses of individual human beings, not emblematic figures frozen in conventional hieratic gestures.

 Lord Teynham reclines as if asleep, his beautifully moulded right hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, his open but unseeing eyes turned to a point somewhere between the altar and the expected Heaven. His widow (who commissioned the monument) kneels behind and above him, praying at a priedieu - and grieving. This is no conventional 'mourning figure' but a woman of flesh and blood and soul, bravely enduring the agony of loss. The face is quite startling, even unsettling, in its lifelike expressiveness. It is hard to turn away from her.

 Those two figures alone would be enough to make this a most remarkable monument, but there are wonders below, in the form of two exquisitely carved alabaster panels depicting Lord Teynham's offspring. On most Jacobean monuments these are little more than a row of kneeling ninepins distinguished from each other only by conventional emblems of status. But here Evesham has carved individual, naturalistic portraits of each - the two sons on the right, turning their backs on hawk and hound to mourn their father, and the five daughters on the left, openly grieving (while still attended by their lapdogs). Each panel is beautifully composed and carved with quite extraordinary delicacy and skill, and each figure lives.

It is surely one of the great wonders of England that an obscure parish church can contain such a masterpiece.

Over there...

On The Dabbler, something on Cicadas.

It's Not a Bank, It's a Horse

I haven't been watching much television lately - and yet somehow I keep coming across this utterly nauseating ad for Lloyds Bank. It really has everything, hasn't it - apart from any content, that is, least of all any content suggesting that it is a bank commercial (it seems to be about, er, horses, if anything).
 Like most people, I have stuck with the bank I opened my first account with (such is our banking system that it's too hard, and anyway pretty pointless, to change) - and that first bank happened to be Lloyds. In the 40-plus years that Lloyds has been 'by my side', our 'relationship' has been characterised by sullen indifference punctuated with bouts of annoyance, from mild to raging - and I suspect that is true of most account holders and their banks. Which, no doubt, is why their advertising 'people' urge the banks to forge a heartstring-tugging emotional narrative that entirely ignores the dismal realities. Still, it's good to know that the banks - despite having by their reckless stupidity crashed the economy, and despite being in the process of paying billions in fines for having played fast and loose with their customers' money - can still afford to make glossy megabudget commercials to tell us how much they care, and always have done. Pshaw!

Visiting London

Having lived in and around London all my life, Visiting London is something I don't often do - visiting, that is, in the sense that a visitor, keen to see the sights, visits. Yesterday we had a visitor with us, in the shape of a three-year-old Wellington-raised grandson who has long been fascinated by the great London icons - the Tower, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, the Eye - and was eager to see them for himself. He'd already ticked off a few on this visit, and we thought we'd take him for a ride on the Eye as a post-birthday treat. Here's what happened, with a few handy tips for visitors - not necessarily three-year-olds.
 First we thought it might be a good idea to take the open-top bus tour, hopping off at the Eye. After ten minutes or more waiting in a shambolic quasi-queue (at Victoria) while the sales staff struggled to get their card readers to work, I found myself at last in a position to ask for three tickets. This, I was informed, would cost £90 - yes, £30 a head. You can take the wonderful Circle Line cruise around Manhattan Island (a journey that can reduce a man - well me anyway - to tears) for little more than half that. Welcome to London.
 Deciding against paying 30 sovs to enjoy the snarled-up London traffic and inhale the city's distinctive blend of particulates, we sped by Tube to the Embankment, crossed the rather beautiful footbridge to the South Bank, and took it from there. Here's a tip for three-year-olds: the London Eye looks fine in a view but, close to, it's too big to take in, the queues are epic, and the wheel turns way too slowly (also, at this time of year, once you're up there, most of what you see is trees - this is a wonderfully green city). Sam did not need to be told this; an icecream, a run around and a spot of lunch were clearly a much better idea.
 After that, we took to the water, taking a cruise boat from Festival Pier downriver to St Katherine's and then back to Westminster Pier (total cost for three: just over £30). This is the way to see London - from the river (especially on a warm summer's day) - and it was a novelty for us long-term Londoners too, as the city has only recently woken up to the possibilities of its river. In my childhood the London Thames was a toxic industrial drain, on which the city - then soot-black and skyscraper-free - understandably turned its back. Now, increasingly, it is the glory of London - and certainly the best way to get around. If only that skyline weren't so sorely disfigured by some of the most stupidly ugly buildings in the world. But, sitting happily near the prow of our boat, we took in the dome of St Paul's, the Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Monument... And, walking back through Westminster, the Abbey and Big Ben. All that was missing were bobbies on bicycles two by two, and the rosy red cheeks of the little chil-dren.

Among Middle England

Yesterday to the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show as guests of the excellent Macmillan Cancer Support charity - Uh-oh, I've morphed into Jeffrey Archer. Must be the heat... Fact is Mrs N had a couple of free tickets to the show, courtesy of Macmillan, for which we and our fellow guests had only to be crocodiled to the press tent and submit to a presentation, before being released into the Show. The tent was hot, but the presentation was fine (and there were a few Small Skippers darting about inside, looking for the exit). And then we were free to see what we could of the show.
 The Hampton Court Flower Show is Chelsea for Mr and (especially) Mrs Middle England - on a larger scale than Chelsea and in a stunning location, on the banks of the magnificent Long Water, but not quite a fixed point of The Season, don't you know. Which is fine by me; I always find it immensely heartening to see Middle England enjoying itself, in its quiet, amiable, unassuming way. Hampton Court is a showcase not only of flowers and gardens and all that goes with them but of that sturdy, enduring niceness that is peculiar to Middle England. Decency, fair play, emotional reticence, good manners, leaving others alone and hoping to be left alone in return - there is a great deal, a very great deal, to be said for these social virtues, and all were on display (though display's hardly the word) at Hampton Court. As was the fact that flowers - like dogs and the weather - are among the very few things that help Middle England over the formidable hurdle of talking to people they don't know: 'Where did you get that beautiful Hydrangea?' It's hard to believe there's much wrong with the country - with the world - when among these people (though, alas, one knows otherwise)...

 I see that this day was, in 1976, the hottest day of a famously hot and long-lasting summer - nudging 97 degrees. At Lord's the MCC, for the first time ever, allowed its members to remove their blazers - though not, of course, their ties. I wonder if Jeffrey was there.

Yogurt, Amateurs and Admirals

Well, as I've remarked before, this has so far been one extraordinarily busy retirement - busy not with Work as I used to know it but, infinitely more agreeably, with a ceaseless whirl of family and domestic activity - so much going on that it's all a bit of a blur and I scarcely know what day of the week it is. As anyone who has spent much time with babies and toddlers will know, it's a delightful but draining business, one of the side-effects of which is that the brain turns to yogurt - in my case, strained Greek yogurt, teetering on the brink of expulsion from the neurozone. Add to that the effects of the current stupefying heat and the result is a pretty lamentable state of affairs in the old cerebellum. Indeed I have more than once found myself barely capable of coherent speech; what comes out at the first attempt is a kind of half-formed incomprehensible burble.
 Yesterday, however, I was for a while out of the whirl and taking a short walk on Ashtead Common, in the hope of finding White Admirals, Silver-Washed Fritillaries and even, if luck was on my side, perhaps a Purple Emperor. As I drew near a particular spot where on many years I have seen early Silver-Washed Fritillaries, I saw that an elderly (well, older than me) couple were looking intently at the oak trees and the undergrowth of flowering bramble - surely in the hope of seeing butterflies.
 Usually the only people I see looking for butterflies - and I don't see many anywhere - are rather joyless grey men in grey anoraks with fancy binoculars and cameras. I avoid them. But here today were a couple of kindred spirits - amiable amateurs, happy to look and hope and enjoy. I gave voice and was understood at the first attempt. The husband told me they were hoping to see a Purple Emperor, having had that pleasure a couple of times in previous years. We all looked around us for a while, with no luck on any front - Emperor, Admiral or Frit - before they moved off, still looking. After a while I followed at a distance behind them, on a usually rewarding woodland path - but still with no luck.
 After a while I caught up with them. They too had not been lucky. We commiserated briefly with each other - had we come too early? - and admired the mighty veteran oaks in our view. They told me of some lectures they had been to about Wimbledon and other commons (from which the lecturer had sometimes absented himself to attend to his marital difficulties, leaving a video presentation in his place). We agreed that London is singularly lucky to have so many of these ancient oak-studded commons preserved around its periphery (thanks, very often, to the far-sighted philanthropy of the Corporation of London - those were the days...).
 After we had taken our leave of each other, I headed off on a wide loop back to the railway station - and was rewarded with the sight of first one, then two beautiful White Admirals, one gliding away into the woods, flickering in and out of vision, and the other briefly ahead of me on the path, then out of sight among the trees.

Max

Max again on The Dabbler today - and Oscar...