I detoured this evening.<\/p>\n
Spur of the moment, probably brought on by the hailstones.<\/p>\n
Partway en-route to Brixton I turned left on a whim.<\/p>\n
In to Vassal Road, SW.<\/p>\n
And pulled up outside the church I used to attend.<\/p>\n
Saint John the Divine, Kennington.<\/p>\n
SJDK is a large, red-brick structure topped with an imposing spire that stretches upwards to almost pencil-thinness.<\/p>\n
My head began playing tricks.<\/p>\n
I believed I could smell the dusty\/clean scent; the perfume that the wood polish gave off, but with a hint of dustiness from the vaulted places that no cleaner could ever reach.<\/p>\n
The smell was a powerful jog to my memory.<\/p>\n
My brain revelled in its memory focus, my mental\u00a0view\u00a0shifted from the knave to the vestry which brought a new smell; freshly washed and ironed robes.<\/p>\n
In those days I was less ‘not religious’ than I am now; I used to go to church for the booze and the singing.<\/p>\n
We had an excellent choir.<\/p>\n
The organist\/choirmaster Floss (his nickname lies in an unflattering story involving the wickedly barbed wit of Fr Geoffrey Kirk); the Divine Helen and her lovely sister Mary, the saintly-voiced Caroline Lenton Ward, Laura McGeary and her husband Peter, Andy Stribley, Roy Truscott.<\/p>\n
Not many, no; but what we lacked in numbers we more than made up for in ability and aspiration.<\/p>\n
Pauses for thought…<\/p>\n
I got back in the car and continued down Vassal Road, then turned right and threaded my way through the one-way system to Calais Street where I\u00a0lived for a while, and then turned right in to Cormont Road, also where I\u00a0lived – but briefly.<\/p>\n
And then on to Brixton, where I currently stay during the week.<\/p>\n
The earlier hailstorm seems to have wreaked massive damage on south London; a couple of stores in the High Street have been flooded; staff sweep floodwater out as I drive past.<\/p>\n
Pete and Shane’s house is untouched though.<\/p>\n
Except for a small area in my bedroom.<\/p>\n
Because I left the window open this morning.<\/p>\n
Oops!<\/p>\n
\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I detoured this evening. Spur of the moment, probably brought on by the hailstones. Partway en-route to Brixton I turned left on a whim. In<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}