AVENUE METHODIST CHURCH – THE DRIVE THROUGH CHURCH

High up on one of High Wycombe’s hills, before Castlefield slithers down into Cressex runs Rutland Avenue. Elbowing its way out onto this road is the Avenue Methodist Church, busy, popular and with a food hygiene rating of 5.

 

This House of God is on a road prone to mishaps, illustrated by this story, four years back:

A 20-year-old man has been charged by in connection with a collision, which occurred at 4.50am on Saturday 30th January. *

 

And a year before that:

… Black Vauxhall Omega collided with a lamppost and church gates and wall. 

A man was injured when a car struck a wall at The Avenue Methodist Church. *

 

And last year a very sad mishap?

On Sunday 31st March 2019, at around 10.50pm, the Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service alerted officers from Thames Valley Police to a fire at The Avenue Methodist Church in Rutland Avenue, Police believe it is likely the fire was started several hours before the emergency services were called and that the fire was likely to have been started deliberately. *

 

It was very peaceful as I sat quite close to the road’s edge to make this drawing in the series ‘The Modern Church’ an impromptu survey of post WW2 war churches in High Wycombe. Perhaps if I had read these stories (all from Wycombe Today) I might not have been quite so audacious.

 

*Articles copyright Wycombe Today

PANGS OF NEW YORK: PARK AVENUE LOOKING UP

 

LEVER HOUSE - now home to Kitty and Miffy

 

One of my favourite views in New York was looking down Park Avenue from the MetLife Building – oh lucky man. My NY correspondent, PJ Leher took a photograph looking up Park, with The Lever House building prominent. Out came my paint brush.

 

Lever House built for the Lever Soap built in the International style. It made its presence felt in 1948, completed in 1952. All glass and steel, its appearance caused a rumpus amongst its neighbours in their fine residential masonry! 

 

Sadly 30 year later its brilliant blue glass had deteriorated due to the harsh New York weather and some of the steel began to rust. The building expanded and contracted and popped; by the mid-1990's only one per cent of its original glass remained.

 

Towards the end of the 1990's enter a team of real estate magnates, lawyers and $25 million dollars to do the place up. New technology and energy codes made the building tip top and shiny-new again.

Oh and they shelled out on marble benches, adding Isamu Noguchi sculpture garden to the building's plaza.  

 

Result, blue loveliness again and its plaza and lobby have been used as a gallery for the Lever House art  collection which includes a Damien Hirst. Tom Sach’s Hello Kitty and Miffy sculptures are also displayed in the plaza, which presumably attached PJ to visit in the first place. 

BENNY HILL SPOTTED IN UXBRIDGE

 

High seriousness was buried beneath an avalanche of toytown rustication

 

Boots, Sports Direct, Superdrug, Pret A Manger (closed) a second Pret A Manger (also closed) Costa, Boots, Piazza Express, another Costa: It was all here at Pavilion Shopping Centre all here to enjoy.

 

On a sunny Saturday afternoon people are milling around, mothers barely controlling pushchairs, the tune from of an out of tune busker floats comes across the square.

 

Outside Boots four guys in black T-shirts with the slogan “Jesus loves you” are busy preaching into a microphone. Their words of hope are quickly carried away in the fresh breeze.

 

This is Uxbridge town in Middlesex and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon a mere fifteen miles west-northwest of Charing Cross.

 

The real reason for being here was to seek out was has been described as ‘the architectural equivalent of Benny Hill or Sid James: course, matey, blokeish, undemanding, unthreatening, and accessible’. *

 

We found it. Hillingdon Civic Centre, lots of red brick that seems to rear up at you as if bumped into by accident. The whole thing is rather gloomy even in the sunshine. The building, which was designed by Andrew Derbyshire, was applauded as one of the most famous buildings in the British neo-vernacular style.

 

My current crush, Jonathan Meades, described the civic centre thus. 

 

‘Here in the wilds of suburban Middlesex was a suburban town hall composed apparently of several dozen suburban villas suburban bungalows which had through their keys into the centre of the room and which were now conjoined in cosily elephantine abandon.

 

Like any suburban orgy (think South Ruislip) it was more comical thank sexy it broke so many rules and way so wholly divergent from the precepts of canonical modernernism that it was revolutionary – in the snuggest homeliest most carpet- slippers way.  It was the architectural equivalent of Benny Hill or Sid James: course, matey, blokeish, undemanding, unthreatening, and accessible.  

 

High seriousness was buried beneath an avalanche of toytown rustication, inverted Diocletian windows and distended columns.’ 

 

*From Museum without Walls   Jonathan Meads Published by Unbound Books 2014, the book is a compulsive read for anyone who is fascinated by the ordinary and sees most places as extraordinary. For any topophilic a real treat

WORLDS FAIR - WORLD’S STAGE

 

A flight of fancy?

 

There was something space age about the photographs my friend PJ Leher took when visiting what was left of the New York State’s exhibit of the 1964 World’s Fair. It was just one of over 140 pavilions and 110 restaurants; 80 nations took part. It opened on April 22 that year.

 

PJ wrote up her impressions on seeing what was left of the New York State’s pavilion in 2015, great photographs accompanied her short meaningful narrative; Link to her post. 

 

And she returned earlier this year and took a stunning series pictures here

 

What really attracted me to these pictures and want to tackle one in paint was the optimism of the age. The Beatles hit the number 1 spot in the US charts with I want to hold your hand, Clay beat Sonny Liston, the Civil Rights Act 1964 was signed by Lyndon Johnson. Martin Luther King Jr., became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

It was also the year when at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that "extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice", and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". Johnson was re-elected that November.

It seems a prescient declaration by Goldwater given we are now so close to the 3rd November 2020.

GOD, IT’S BEEN A WHILE

Welcoming and filled with grace

A couple of Sunday’s ago I received Holy Communion for the first time in almost six months. I went to St. Anne’s Dropmore a delightful church. Vicar and congregation were so welcoming and all the pandemic procedures were observed with good grace. 

 

As the Prayer of Preparation filled the church I was in tears: largely guilt, as I had been raging (to family and friends) against the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on their stoic mishandling of opening our churches in the summer. Ikea and Sainsburys had figured it out.

 

It was a special moment and this church had formed an important part of my life in this lock-down. It was the first place to which I cycled once the measures were announced on March 21.  Most Fridays across the Summer I’d meet up with cycling chum, Judge Ricardo, and we’d catch up over our homemade sandwiches, sitting in the porch of the church, the gap was almost two meters apart.

 

The history of this lovely church is here link

SAILING OVER THE SOLENT

 Sailing above the Solent

There seems to be a distinct nautical favour through posts of late, Emsworth and Newtown IOW, now to add a bit of ‘aero’. 

 

The other day I was going to a 2017 sketchbook the couple of years back and rediscovered a series of six drawings I made from up in the air above the Solent.

My pilot was a good friend Chris SS, a pilot instructor, who’d offered up a jaunt and I could to pick the place over which we would fly (within reason and fuel capacity).

I'd chosen the Solent because having sailed across it several many times I really wanted to see it from the air. Off we hopped from Wycombe aerodrome and in no time at all we were over the Solent. 

 

Sketchbook out, pen uncapped, I had to work quickly, for, exasperatingly, the position of plane the landscape beneath us changed real quickly. Actual the drawing time started at about 11:15 and all over by 11:50 when it was time to land for lunch, on the Isle of Wight. 

It was a great trip and I stood the pilot lunch, the least I could do! You'll see from the timings on the drawings there was little time to get into detail. One was really trying to grab the most important shapes as surfaces and to in front of me as we sped along above the Solent.

EMSWORTH HAVEN

It was a bright September day, a Friday and the traffic was light when I headed south on the A3 to Emsworth. This small town lies on the north end of the Chichester Harbour. I was delivering some paintings to my dear friend Annie G. 

 

The place a haven for boats of all shapes and sizes, some vessels make a permanent home here, some are just passing through. I had, five years back, set out from an estuary mooring on Rag Doll, one of the prettiest boats on the Solent.  Passim blog post ‘Sailing the Solent’ August 28 2015

 

A WONDERFUL VIEW ACROSS EMSWORTH CHANNEL 

Annie lives out on a point of land, a slight way out of the town, by the main boat yard. Her house overlooks the estuary. At low water the landscape glows and sparkles!  This is a wonderful spot, boats beginning to ride up on their moorings as the tide returns.

 

Emsworth was a port from the 1300s. In the 18th and 19th century shipbuilding and rope making were the main trades. There was also a space for two flourmills run by the tides. At the end of World War II the area was a staging post a staging post for Canadian troops shipping out as part of the D-Day landings; a rich and varied history whose former residents include Albert Finney and PG Woodhouse. 

 

What a treat of a trip, catching  up with Annie and Tom the skipper of Rag Doll turned up to join us for lunch.