Another year almost over. I am so grateful for all it has brought with it.
Most important of all for me, a grand daughter arrived in early June. We treasure her more than we could have possibly imagined. As a woman at a supermarket checkout remarked, looking at the tiny girl, then aged four months, "Children are the joy of the world." Certainly for our family.
Almost equally thrillingly, in February I became a Catholic, thanks to the kindness of Father Benedict Kiely, who risks life and limb to travel to dangerous places to support persecuted Christians and whose charity - https://nasarean.org - is well worth supporting, and of Father Eddy Tomlinson, in whose church I was received.
The church is St Anselm's Pembury and it is part of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. The place is a wonder. From the outside, it appears to be a 1970s community hall, without any adornment or beauty, apart from the vegetation that grows around it. Inside, it is a sumptuous space, furnished entirely from the things thrown out by others, including pews commissioned for the Anglican Church of St Mary and St Nicholas in Littlemore by Saint John Henry Newman when he was still an Anglican priest. Those now running things at Littlemore had decided to modernise and replace the pews with chairs and were therefore throwing away the 19th century pews:
(That last is from the Twitter feed of Father Eddy Tomlinson - I have not yet investigated but I think he also has a regular podcast)
One thing I particularly love about being a Catholic is the obligation to go to mass on Sunday, no matter where you are. This obligation has taken me into all sorts of different churches as this year has been overflowing with travel, and I love the new angle going to church gives you on different places.
Most recently while in Fremantle, Perth, I attended mass at this church:
While waiting for the service to begin, I noticed in the notes at the end of the order of service that there was to be a Christmas party for the congregation after mass. On the way in, I had admired the spacious priest's house next-door to the church and had even gone so far as to take a picture of it:
It therefore amused me to read that the party was not to be accommodated anywhere within that building or even in the shade of its verandahs, but in the presbytery carport. "How modern", as my dear departed Aunt Prudence might have said.
On the way back from the church, I was struck by this scene, which had a faint look of War of the Worlds.
Barely visible on the left is a rather nice old railway station that the Fremantle authorities seem keen to disguise behind billboards and buses:
This remained one of the great mysteries that I did not solve in 2022 - why did the Western world so definitely and firmly turn against beauty, from the 20th century on? Someone suggested to me the other day that it was the Frankfurt school and their Marxist inclinations that were to blame, but, if so, how did they become so influential? Since the theory first appeared, Marxism does seem to be at the root of so many disasters. If the book Francis Wheen wrote about Marx is to be believed, the creator of the influential M theory was a really nasty piece of work.
Is it thanks to Marxism that craftsmanship is no longer considered worth paying for, so that things provided for public use, like this water trough and fountain in Fremantle, are no longer made with any thought given to ensuring a pleasing appearance? It is as if decorativeness has become a cardinal sin:
As for modern sculpture, don't get me started. All I can say is that John Curtin did not deserve to be portrayed via this appalling effigy, also in Fremantle:
The human is not designed to change time zones radically and, having been barred from making the journey to Australia for a long time, (during the coronavirus health restrictions), I got out of practice. All the same, the journeys had to be done. As always, when over that side of the world I felt wonder at the light and space and emptiness that is a kind of freedom, but I missed the challenge of foreign languages and the beauty of ancient buildings. On the other hand, there was the sea:
Once I would have been amused by the very Australian way in which Coronavirus tests, officially known as "rapid antigen tests", have been shortened to be referred to fondly as "RATs":
However, I've lost my sense of humour a bit as Australia's policies on coronavirus, and the attitude of most of the people I am fond of there, were more extreme than I thought necessary - and I think offering free RATs is a pretty good way of keeping the panic stoked and going, by suggesting it might be necessary to test and test and test and ... You get the idea.
On this last trip, I was heading to the Eastern states where my mother celebrated her 97th birthday. I am not normally a baker but I thought the occasion deserved an effort so I made her a cake. In the process, I gained new respect for even the worst contestants on the UK's bake-off television competition. Needless to say, my mother, being so old, could hardly eat any of my cake, particularly as it was the kind that seems light and airy when you get it straight from the oven but by the time it has cooled and sat in the fridge overnight, becomes rather toward the solid end of the spectrum:
I have neglected this blog for too long and there is so much more to report from this last year, but time and the patience of anyone who might read this is surely running out. Right at the start of the year, we spent a few days in Venice, en route to England, then, on the return journey, a night in an impossible to remember the name of Basque place where, we later discovered, Carl Habsburg lived for some time, two nights in Concarneau and the same in Menton, all new territory for us, all places I planned to blog about but didn't. On another trip back to England we went via Baden Baden, also new to us, also unblogged despite good intentions. Additionally, while waiting for the grand daughter we got to know Bristol and its environs, including making a visit to Glastonbury, (the town, rather than the festival.) Alas, again, many photographs were taken but no blog written.
Instead of blogging, while bouncing back and forth between Bristol and Budapest, with side trips to Australia, I mainly read lots of books. Those I remember especially fondly include -
1. from contemporary fiction: Cressida Connolly's Bad Relations and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These;
2. from serendipity, (that is, found on one of Budapest's book stalls or in a 20p box on Bristol's Gloucester Road):
Julian Fellowes' Past Imperfect, Kent Haruf's Plainsong, the Patrick Melrose series and, by far the best and most surprising find of all, The Leaves of Southwell by Niklaus Pevsner.
In the new year, I may try to write about that last one at least. I am hoping 2023 will be at least as joyous but not quite as distracting as 2022, so that I have some time to revive blog writing as a habit.
Meanwhile, I am trying not to regret not buying this painting, which, because it was expensive I thought I'd think about while away in Australia. I did think about it and when I returned two weeks later I went round to the shop where I'd seen it and discovered it had already been sold:
I was dithering about whether the figure on the right was a bit kitsch. I still think she is, but the light and shadow and the way the windows to the left are painted make the whole thing work for me. I thought it would look wonderful on a big wall in my kitchen and bring sunlight into the room in the depths of winter. Presumably it is doing that for someone else, somewhere. I hope they really love it.
Goodbye, 2022 and hello 2023. Happy New Year to all.
