Atheists & Dolphins

If you like fonts, babies, and have one that needs Christening, then I should think it's worth getting in with the High Anglicans in Wellingborough. At first sight this Northamptonshire town doesn't appear to have an awful lot going for it, until you scratch beneath the surface a bit. And scratching around in the streets high above the railway station (a real Gothic bargeboarded treat) reveals a rather plain Perpendicular church in gingerbread Finedon ironstone with Weldon stone dressings. But to walk inside is to realise what John Betjeman meant when he said that the interior of St.Mary's is enough 'to force even an atheist to his knees'. This is Sir Ninian Comper's masterpiece of 1908-30, marooned amongst the terraced back streets of this boot and shoe town. Built with money given by three spinster sisters, you'll need to track down the key to get inside, but if you love this kind of thing then you will be overwhelmed. Golden angels trumpet over sumptuous screens, fan vaulting soars up to great heights to where Christ in Majesty presides over the nave. There's simply too much to talk about here, but the font is worthy of particular mention. We saw it on a flower and music festival afternoon, a brilliant blue and gold canopied structure completed by Comper's son Sebastian in the 1960s as a memorial to his father. And around the base is an octagonal screen swimming with gilded dolphins. So, all you atheists, get hold of the key and strap on your rubber knee pads.

Unexpected Alphabets No 5

There I was, enjoying a spectacularly good party on Sunday night in a Leicestershire village, and, just as I'm getting stuck into another green bottle, my very attractive host crooks her finger at me and says "Come on, there's something I think you'll find interesting up here". Never one to shirk my responsibilities I eagerly steered through the throng towards a dark alleyway that runs through between the house and next door.

The current thinking is that this was the old village police station, and the alleyway is certainly wide enough to park a Black Maria or a chrome-belled Wolseley. So the walls were the obvious place to stick up notices, wanted posters and the like. Being enclosed and out of the rain the continuous bill-sticking, layer upon layer, has survived in tantalising fragments. One date proclaims the tenth of February in a disappointingly missing year, but the Act of Parliament quoted on the poster ordering the restriction of livestock movement during an outbreak of swine fever is dated 1908. So these posters have gone up on this wall, one after the other, at least since then and the late 40s I should think. Old brick, lovely wooden type, and a glass of cold flinty Chablis in the hand. And of course a pretty girl in the dark. Good day all round really.

Low Light, High Hopes

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..." Keats knew what to say, and although we're not supposed to even think that autumn is approaching, the tell-tale signs are there and I for one welcome them. "Oh don't say that" people say "We haven't even had a summer yet". Well I have, and not being one to lie about on a beach with seven million others I can't wait now to get the stove going with my new coffee maker perched on it, and the button sewn on to my blue serge pea jacket. It's not that I haven't enjoyed myself these last few weeks- the same rain that has thwarted my farming friends from safely gathering everything in has also meant that the countryside has kept greener and fresher than usual. And there have been some spectacularly cloudy skies, very good for photographs. So the farmers could all be grateful for that. I look out over my neighbours' manicured park (they're out there now under one of those big green umbrellas drinking Pimms) and up across the rougher pastures to the ironstone manor half-hidden in trees and shadowed by the gradually lowering sunlight. But the best thing, apart from the boys fishing snails out from under the shed in order to enlist them as Lego spaceship captains, are the restless swallows lining-up like music notes down the telephone wires. A tuneful ode to a coming autumn. Oh, and thankyou to Tess of the d'Urbervilles for letting me get near her tempting apple.

Bristol Fashion

Driving out of Market Harborough this week I chanced upon a stunning shiny black motor car climbing quickly up Gallow Hill. I can't tell you how much I lust after this car (and its stable mates- Inspector Lynley drives one), and I'm only surprised that a) I didn't drive into the ditch in some kind of respectful homage, or b) that I haven't gone on about them on the blog before. This is a Bristol 403, pictured here some years ago in deep cherry red at a location I've forgotten. Charles Oxley in his Bristol: The Quiet Survivor calls it the 'definitive' Bristol, and you can see it on the Bristol Owners Club website. Here you can find out all about Bristols old and new, and on Bristol's own web pages (yes, they still make them, but not like this one). The 403 was made between 1953-5, possibly only 275 models costing £2,976.2s.6d. each. I expect the 2s.6d. was for one of the aeroplane-style push-button door openers. Bristol still have a showroom on Kensington High Street, and when I worked on the same street a few years ago I continually stared through the plate glass windows like a 12 year-old. I did go in once, and was told by the septuagenarian salesman that every secondhand Bristol sold by them had to be brought back to ex-works standard. Dear God, I know I haven't been very good lately, but please, if you can find your way to letting me have just one, any model, I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks.

A New Leicestershire Landmark

Not far from here is a road junction at the top of a hill that some of us call 'Whistle Top' Just behind the hedge on the north corner of the crossroads is one of the now sadly defunct triangulation pillars, marking the height above sea level here as 518 feet. Well, last week they had to close the road to Uppingham at this spot, and when I went to the town on Saturday to get the papers I found that the road was open again, but the road men had left a stack of traffic cones on the grass verge. I drove by them a couple of times, but then had to succumb to temptation.

Fizzzz Pop!

Out on the Fen again yesterday. Ended up photographing stuff I'd done before but with more clouds. However, a stop-off for a melting Kit Kat in a post office near Wisbech revealed two of these signs on the walls. Actually the Kit Kat was just so that I could go in and explain why I was lying on the pavement outside. I said "I remember Corona being delivered on a lorry to my house" and the bloke behind the bandit screen just rubber-stamped something loudly and sighed "So do I", without looking up. And indeed it did come on a lorry. Four or five bottles a week, each with that funny white ceramic and red rubber stopper that we now associate with Grolsch. Well, some do. But ooh the flavours. Ginger Beer, naturellement, but other favourites were Dandelion & Burdock and Clarade, a cherry-coloured liquid of indeterminate flavour. The drinks appeared to be restricted in our household to Sunday lunchtimes when my father stood with his back to the fire with a ginger wine and went on either about the sermon we'd all just suffered or the local butcher, who always incurred his wrath over the size and quality of the joint of beef appearing on the table. Since he probably only gave my mother sixpence to buy it he shouldn't have been surprised. Oh. Sorry. All that from just one rusty old sign. I do apologise.

Cricket & All That Gas

Funny where you end up sometimes. I've just been writing about gasholders for Classic Constructs, and talked about the famous ones that pop up in our peripheral visions. The mighty Victorian iron frames that have always greeted trains slowing up into St. Pancras station, now also enjoyed by those arriving from La Continent. And then probably the most high profile one of all, caught in the slips at the Oval cricket ground in Kennington. So I took the tube down there and had a word with security at the gate, to see if I could get a shot of them across the grass. I might as well have said "Can I tip a bucket of creosote over the wicket?" and was unceremoniously tipped-out into the street. I'd forgotten that a test match was going to kick-off at the end of the week. So I wandered round Kennington Oval and came across this boarded-up pub with its batsman mural which did everything I wanted. Click. Click. But the really curious thing was seeing the Foster's sign lying on its back on the chimney. I designed these illuminated signs in the late eighties as part of a huge project to stop Ozzie brewer Elders painting every Courage pub blue and gold. I hated the thought of putting 'lager' on the bottom part of the roundel, so merely did 'Foster's' again. Just doing my bit.