When the ice saints go marching by

It’s always a good moment when we say goodbye to the Ice Saints.

My wife, whose roots are in the German-speaking world where the ‘Eisheiligen’ are much better known, introduced me to these characters. They mark the definitive end of the winter and, at long last, the start of Spring. Up here in the north of the northern hemisphere, at least.

They start on 11 May, with St Mamertus, followed by St Pancras on the 12th, St Servatius on the 13th and St Boniface on the 14th. With Boniface it’s all over: the last late frosts give way to the start of summer on the 15th, St Sophia’s day (is it a coincidence that we get four ice men followed by a summer woman? Perhaps I won’t go there.)

‘Vor Bonifaz kein Sommer,’ say the Germans: before Boniface there’s no summer, and ‘nach der Sophie kein Frost’: after Sophia no frost.

No wonder, then, that’s it’s for the best when those guys have gone by. Though I should mention in passing that there’s one I have a bit of a soft spot for: I rather like St Pancras. 

St Pancras
Don't know much about the saint,
but I really like the station

I think it’s great to have a saint named after my favourite station. Now that I don’t work in London any more, I don’t go there often, but I get a real kick when I see it from time to time: the pianos are still there with anonymous members of the public just sitting down and hammering out a tune to pass the time and entertain the passers by; so’s the statue of John Betjeman, who penned an ode to the station; and now there’s even a hanging sculpture over one end of the concourse. Lots of fun.

St Pancras, where passengers get entertained by occasional pianists

Don’t get me wrong. I like Grand Central station with its huge concourse, I love the Gare de l’Est with its extraordinary destinations that I find it hard to believe you can reach by train: Budapest. Warsaw. Moscow. Moscow for Pete’s sake! But even so, you can’t imagine a St Grand Central, can you, or a Saint Gare de l’Est for that matter?

But there’s a St Pancras and when you see his station, it’s no wonder he’s a bit special.

In any case, all that ice saint stuff doesn’t really work any more. When Europe switched to the Gregorian calendar, that cost ten days. So the actual weather that goes with the old ice saints belongs a bit later in the month.

Probably safest to go with the old English saying, ‘ne’er cast a clout till may be out.’ Not that I think that’s the month of May. Much more likely to be mayflower, called after that famous boat that got the United States going. Hawthorn blossom. Don’t take off a stitch of clothing till it’s in full bloom.

The Mayflower.
Puritains to America, summer to Britain
I know who did better out of that deal

No sign of that yet in England. So I’ll wave goodbye to St Boniface tomorrow, hello to St Sophie the day after. But I’m keeping the coat on until those white flowers have really taken over in the hedgerows.

Mayflower
More reliable than the Ice Saints

Cut the people some slack

It’s appalling just how many people feel they need to tell us what to do. Bosses, of course. Bossy relatives too. And bossy governments more than any. 

Along with the bossy priests, governments like to tell us who we should – and much more often should not – choose as partners, what things we should never read or watch, which people we should or shouldn’t live with or refuse to get anywhere near.

And yet much of the time all we really need all those judges of our behaviour to do is just act as enablers. Create a space, ensure a level playing field. And then clear off to their fashionable parties and leave us to get on with things. Because I’m firmly convinced that in those circumstances we’d get on a hell of a lot better than if people with a questionable claim to authority keep telling people arbitrarily classified as surbordinates what to do.

Tonight I saw a perfect illustration of the point, in St Pancras station.

Some time ago, someone up there among whatever passes as the authorities of this great London station, decided to put two pianos in the main concourse. A couple of stools too.

Then they backed off and left it to ordinary citizens to take the initiative. And so it was that today, as I wandered along the shops, I was greeted by the sound of music hall classics being banged out with great gusto and, frankly, skill too.

Music hall medley, and very good it was too

A little further on, I came across a couple posing by the other piano: they seemed more interested in taking pictures of each other than in playing music, but, hey, it’s all about having fun isn’t it?

Posing more than playing, but who cares?

And everyone was. With no-one to organise them. Or to give them orders.

What a lesson for government and other hierarchies that is.


Postscript. I’ve just realised that I wrote ‘tonight’ a few paragraphs back. But this happened at 6:30. Only a couple of months ago, that would have been ‘this evening’. The clocks go back this weekend. We’re seriously into the bad bit of the year. Ah well, time to buckle down, to grin and bear it. Less than two months to go and the days will be getting longer again.

Skim-read to reach out to curious headless martyrs

In the beginning, I’m assured on excellent authority, was the word. And just as well, I say. Because ever since words have provided us with excellent entertainment.

For instance, I continue to be enchanted by the expression ‘reach out’ with the meaning of ‘talk’, as in ‘please reach out to him and find out what the hell he thinks he’s playing at.’

The nice thing about ‘reach out’ is that it covers such a range of meaning. It can be used neutrally, as just a synonym for ‘speak’. Positively, it might suggest catching someone falling, providing crucial help when it’s needed. Negatively, it could be something that ends in strangulation, when the person reached out to has been more than usually obnoxious.

In the old parlance, that might have led to a good ‘talking to’. These days I suppose it would have to be a good ‘reaching out for’.

Equally, where governments used boringly to indulge in talks, now they can have meaningful reachings out. And in the preparatory phase, they would presumably have constructive reachings out about reachings out.

And then there’s another expression I’ve come to enjoy: ‘skim-reading’. This is a great euphemism for ‘not reading.’

Here’s the scenario. You write a key document. You distribute it to everyone. You wait a week or two. You hear nothing. So finally you ask, ‘Have you read my proposal?’

‘I’ve only skim-read it so far,’ you’re told. And you realise they haven’t even opened it.

It’s enough to make you want to reach out to them.

Fortunately, there are other words around that make up for this kind of experience, providing the light relief which is just the tonic we need.

Today I enjoyed reading about the Mars explorer that’s just landed on the red planet. It rejoices in the imaginative name ‘Curiosity’ and my paper informed me that ‘Curiosity has a robotic arm, with a scoop and drill.’

Interesting idea, isn’t it? I suppose curiosity can grab hold of you with all the power of a machine and then refuse to let you go. The scoop would be there to lap up all the random facts, and more frequently fictions, that curiosity harvests from gossip; the drill is for boring more deeply, as Curiosity likes to, leaving her victims painfully bored.

That thinking carried me through a London Underground journey, always one of the more purgatorial experiences, where a little gentle entertainment is particularly welcome.

Then I emerged from the station to hear a voice bawling ‘St Pancras, use the stairs.’

Later a headless saint, but today
he used his head to be less saintly

I looked everywhere for the martyr, but couldn’t see him. Certainly not on the stairs. It reminded me of William Hughes Mearns: 

Yesterday upon the stair 
I met a man who wasn’t there 
He wasn’t there again today 
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

My saint, like his man, wasn’t there. Even in the station he’s called after. Had he perhaps decided to be less saintly and cheat by using the escalator? If so, he clearly knew how to use his head. Which is remarkable since his head was removed from his shoulders when he was only 14. 

Which I for one find curious. And doesn’t that show how curiosity can scoop up any old string of words and derive whatever nonsense it likes from them?

Digestive travel

Amusing phone conversation I overheard today. A young man was explaining to a friend that, to travel to Paris for the weekend, she first had to ‘get the train to St Pancreas’.

No place to take a train

Now it’s certainly true that there are aspects of St Pancras station that occasionally make me bilious, but I’d have thought a weekend in Paris might have more effect on the liver than the pancreas. Who knows, though? I suppose it depends on exactly what they choose to eat. And drink.

As it happens, the idea of sneaking off to Paris for the weekend evoked many pleasant memories for me. Before Danielle and I decided that we really couldn’t afford the phone or travel costs and moved into together, and long before we decided that we ought to legitimise by marriage the bump that would eventually turn into a Michael, we used to meet there regularly. It was about as inconvenient for her, travelling from Eastern France, as for me, travelling from London.

Have to say it wasn’t my pancreas that took the worst beating during those weekends.

But I hadn’t finished with the young man’s travel recommendations. ‘You then have to catch the Euro Tunnel.’

Now that’s the kind of idea I enjoy, because it sets me musing.

Who’d be throwing the tunnel, exactly?

Could it become an Olympic event? ‘Nah, I gave up on the discus and javelin. I throw the tunnel now.’

And what strength do you need to catch a tunnel? After all, it’s basically a long hole, which is presumably weightless. On the other hand, it doesn’t offer much purchase, much to hold on to. Intriguing problem.

Curious the kind of people you can find to raise challenging philosophical conundrums.

Or should that be conundra?

Saintly St Pancras

A little while ago I expressed a fear that Christmas, that deeply spiritual time of year, the second most significant entry in the Christian calendar, might perhaps be in danger of falling prey to creeping commercialism. 

Now I may be alone in feeling that disquiet, but I have to admit that I can’t entirely shake it off, that it remains forever a nagging concern at the back of my mind.

I expressed that anxiety in connection with the appearance of a Lego Christmas tree inside the main hall of St Pancras station. It was curious therefore that my attention was caught this morning by a sign in the same station that referred to that tree. Based on the carol ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, it gave twelve reasons for being in St Pancras:

Capturing the spirit of Christmas

One Giant Lego Tree

Two Lovers Meeting

Three Styles of Moët & Chandon

Four Sourced Hampers

Five Sporting rings

Six Tube lines stopping

Seven minutes to Westfield

Eight Monsoon scarves

Nine tales from Foyles

Ten Hamleys teddies

Eleven Neuhaus Truffles

Twelve Cath Kidston Crackers

Interestingly, fully three of these involve no logo and advertise no brand (just in case you  were wondering, the ‘two lovers meeting’ is about the rather splendid statue just inside the main entrance on the upper level – take a look, it’s great, especially the reliefs round the plinth – while the ‘five sporting rings’ are the Olympic rings up for the 2012 games, so really a bit more advertising, and the ‘six tube lines stopping’ – well, that’s six lines stopping).

Funnily enough, I don’t fully understand the need to give reasons to visit St Pancras. I mean, it’s a splendid station and all that, as stations go, but surely the only reason for going to a station is to go somewhere else, isn’t it?

That’s rather implied by the entry for ‘seven’, come to think of it. I love the idea that one of the reasons to go to St Pancras is that it’s seven minutes away from somewhere else, as it happens a major shopping centre. ‘Come here, it’s a bit of a hike to somewhere else’.  Not the most compelling advertising, wouldn’t you agree?

Perhaps if that’s the standard of commercialism, there’s hope for Christmas yet.

Season's greetings from our sponsor

A couple of weeks ago, a friend from Marseille wrote to complain about an initiative to include the name of a sponsor in that of the City’s historic stadium, the Vélodrome. 

‘Will it become the ‘Vélodrome Nutella’?’ he asks. And goes on to wonder whether Bernard Delanoë, mayor of Paris, isn’t missing a trick. ‘Why not turn the Champs Elysées,’ he suggests, ‘into the Champs L’Oréal – because we deserve it?’

Funnily, not more than a couple of hours after reading his remarks, I discovered that St James’s Park, as iconic in Newcastle as the Vélodrome is in Marseille, was being rebaptised the Sports Direct St James’s Park stadium. It seems that there’s a bit of trend starting here.

My friend sees cynicism in all this, quoting Oscar Wilde’s view that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Well, maybe. On the other hand, isn’t this just a matter of turning some grand old monuments into tributes to business? And doesn’t business perhaps deserve them? After all, isn’t it to some our greatest businesses, especially in financial services, that we owe today’s climate of economic stability and widespread prosperity?

On the other hand, I was a little disturbed by a sight that greeted me as I came through St Pancras International station the other day. The main hall now houses a massive Christmas tree made of Lego bits.

Lego gets the tone right

At first sight, I was amused by it – it’s striking and funny at the same time. But then I thought again. 

Christmas is the second most important feast of the Christian year after Easter (yes, though you wouldn’t know it from the scale of the celebrations, the death and resurrection trump, in liturgical terms, the birth. You’ve got to admit that birth’s more common). This is a time of year devoted, by Christians at least, to giving thanks for the birth of the Lord and Redeemer of all mankind. Turning it into an opportunity for advertising by Lego, however charming, might seem inappropriate.

After all, what would it say about our moral qualities in the West if Christmas became just another massive binge of commercialism?

Postscript with no relevance to the above: we’ve just started watching the second series of The Killing. It’s proving as gripping and powerful as the first (I’m talking about the original Danish version – I don’t know about the American remake which I haven’t watched). 

What’s extraordinary is that Series 2 manages to be strikingly fresh in feeling, even though the formula is exactly the same: a main story that is a classic thriller based around murder (but with an extraordinary central character in the detective, Sarah Lund), a family struggling with events risking to tear it apart, and a reasonably likeable political figure having to cope with a crisis of fearful complexity without being able to place full trust in his staff.

Well worth watching. 

Wish I weren't there...

Talking about what was then the latest technology for high-quality reproduction of great music, Michael Flanders, half of the historic Flanders and Swann comic duo, pointed to the extraordinary lengths to which people would go, to get the exact effect of having an orchestra playing to them in their sitting room.

‘Personally,’ he commented,  ‘I can't think of anything I should hate more than an orchestra actually playing in my sitting room.’

I thought of that the other day when I saw a sign on a platform at St Pancras International station.

Be in a station, wherever you are. Bliss.

It was a real Flanders moment for me.

‘Why on earth,’ I wondered, ‘would I want to recreate the experience of standing in a station when I’m somewhere else? After all, I only go to stations to get somewhere else.’

Still it’s progress, I suppose, of sorts, and who’d want to stand in the way of that particular freight train? 

Is the legacy of the IRA a load of old rubbish?

The central problem in Anglo-Irish relations is that the Irish remember too much, and the English forget too quickly. Most Englishmen barely remember who Oliver Cromwell was. In Ireland, his armies might as well be rampaging through the land still, slaughtering the people in an orgy of self-righteous fury.

The same forgetfulness afflicts us now. We’re losing sight of how things were only twenty years ago. Throughout the 1980s, when I regularly travelled into Central London from the suburbs, it became a routine to check for abandoned packages on the overhead shelves or under the seats every time I got into a train. While I never saw a bomb go off, I twice heard them: it wasn’t Belfast, far less Beirut, but London was an uneasy place.

Today, practically no trace remains of those troubled days. People, and above all politicians, love to whip up anxiety over Moslem terrorism, but they’re not even in the same league as the IRA. Why, apart from the casualties, the IRA regularly shut down the main stations or other public places by the simple expedient of phoning in a bomb warning, sometimes without going to the trouble of actually planting a bomb. You had to admire their economy of effort, to say nothing of their sheer deviousness.

Still, if there is little trace of those times today, they have at least left one small legacy. I’m reminded of it every time I go through the glorious, airy and brilliantly constructed main hall of St Pancras International station, something I’m obliged to do a couple of times on most days. The architecture is wonderful, the layout charming, the atmosphere uplifting – but there isn’t a single litter bin.

Now this is a direct result of the IRA campaign. Bins were far too easy places to plant bombs, so in the course of the eighties, they were done away with throughout London. In recent years, they’ve been gradually coming back, usually in the form of clear plastic bags, in which I presume it would be relatively easy to spot a bomb (if, say, it comes with trailing wires or perhaps a helpful label ‘bomb’).

But St Pancras is hanging on grimly to the tradition of the last two decades and resisting the reintroduction of waste bins. I asked a cleaner once ‘so where do I leave my coffee cup?’

‘On a table or a chair, anywhere you like,’ came the answer, ‘we’ll clear it up.’

So that’s what I do. I dump my rubbish any old where in the station, and each time I think of the IRA.

My personal tribute to the IRA

A fitting monument, I’d say.

Glimpsed in railway stations

It’s a commonplace that a pleasure’s all the greater for being unexpected.

For example, there are lots of good things to be said of railways stations. Obviously, they’ve got a lot going for them if you want, say, to catch a train. Hard to imagine doing that without a station, to be perfectly honest, unless you plan to jump onto a moving carriage in time-honoured Western style. In addition, though, they often provide other things too: a cup of coffee, a passable meal at an occasionally less than rip-off price, or even, in certain shining examples such as the major London terminals, access to some fairly good shops. A decent latte in the morning, Marks and Spencer fresh orange juice in the evening, and I feel Euston station has done a good job of topping and tailing my day.

What I don’t expect from a station is art, particularly not art that strikes me. So I was pleasantly surprised the other day at St Pancras station to come across Paul Day’s sculpture The Meeting Place.

My first feeling was that there was humour to the piece. It seemed a bit cartoon-like in treatment, for instance the overstated folds of the clothes, and that made me smile. At second glance, what struck me was the contrast in the scene: on the one hand, the meeting itself, an incdent repeated dozens of times a day at stations around the country, so unexceptional as to be banal, while on the other hand there's the sharp poignancy of what it represents – the end of separation.

It made welcome relief from the dullness of station life. It also reminded me of a similar experience I had several times as a teenager when I used to travel to Devon from Paddington Station. The train left from platform 1 which is where the Great Western Railway First World War memorial stands. Now I generally feel that, if railway stations have little to do with art, war memorials have even less. Most war memorials are trite representations of a young man striding resolutely forward, a rifle with bayonet fixed in his hands or at his shoulder. It’s all about courage and heroism, and feels completely artificial in sentiment.

The exceptions are the memorials that are about loss not glory, like the Vietnam wall in Washington. Or Charles Sargeant Jagger’s memorial on platform 1 at Paddington.

The man is young but no teenager. He’s in battledress but not striking a warlike pose. Instead he’s wearing all the clothes he can, against the cold and probably the wet (whenever I see the statue, I feel that something about it says that it’s raining). He’s reading a letter from home. So, the statue’s not about heroism, but about longing to be somewhere else, which could hardly be more appropriate than in the trenches. And isn't out of place in a station.

Two London stations, two uplifting moments. I recommend them if you’re anywhere nearby.