October 18th - Day 183

Today I was in a dilemma ("nice cars" as Ted Chippington once said). In the morning I went to church with Claire. That is, we went to a church and stood outside. Guitar music and singing serenaded a steady stream of people, mainly young families, into the church, All Saints in Peckham, for the start of the service. We dithered as the devil looked down upon us...sorry, the devil looks up doesn't he...it's God who looks down. I only had fifteen minutes before having to go and pick up Oliver for his football match, and we didn't want to go inside and get locked in. Eventually I took a chance and entered the building. Claire followed close behind. We spent a few minutes talking to Mavis who was handing out the day's service sheet. I told her we couldn't stay for long, but that we'd heard the music and thought we'd come in and have a look. She was a lovely lady. She asked why we couldn't stay for the service, and I told her it was because it clashed with my son's football. Oh well, another time, she said. She told us she was 82 (she looked in her sixties) and how her life has revolved around this church from when her children were baptised in here (eldest nearly 59). She also extolled the virtues of the church as a place for meeting people, "where the young men meet the single ladies and the young ladies meet the single men".

A couple of minutes later we were standing outside again. Families were still marching up the road towards the building as the congregation launched into "Amazing Grace". And this is the dilemma. I'd like to come back here one day and sit through the whole service to get the full measure of how much a part music plays in this church. In which case, under my rules, I can't use today's experience as "today's music".

With this in mind I went to East Dulwich's Boho Bar in the evening in the hope that there would be music there (and that the singer wouldn't be Lisa Lore who's played here a couple of times and whom I'd already seen!). "LIVE Soulful music tonight" said the sign outside. Inside a young woman was singing live soulful music. Happy, dreamy soulful music accompanied by a guy playing guitar to match. So she is today's music. But I didn't get her name. Damn.

Oh, over halfway now.

boho-bar.com/

October 21st - Day 186

To Rough Trade East today, off Brick Lane, for a lunchtime in-store performance by "warm-voiced American troubadour" AA Bondy...who annoyingly hadn't done the same, because he'd come down with flu and cancelled the gig. He had another gig lined up this evening and the Rough Trade guy I spoke to expressed an interest in discovering whether Mr Bondy would be better by then.

So I hot-footed it back to Liverpool Street and St Botolph without Bishopsgate. As luck would have it, I'd clocked yesterday that there was a Choral Eucharist service at this ancient church at lunchtime and so three days after Sunday's near-miss with God, we ended up bump into each other after all. I arrived during the first Hymn, "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven". There were twenty souls in the congregation - City workers on the left and others on the right, oddly. Actually, the first thing I noticed upon shuffling into a pew at the back, was the smell of some kind of incense coming from the thurible (that is the metal urn-type thing attached to a chain and swung robustly to and fro by the Rector's accomplice). For some reason I decided it must have been a similar smell to the one plague doctors conjured up to keep noxious odours from going up their noses. I really don't know why.

The Kyrie eleison, Sanctus and Agnus Dei were sung beautifully by a very small choir, made up of two singers from Trinity College of Music (that's a duo isn't it?). Hearing the singing in its natural context within a Christian service rather than at a recital gave the music extra hallowed strength.

My fellow churchgoers and I muttered our way through two more hymns, everyone shook hands and nobody locked the doors. I think I should now endeavour to experience the music at religous services of other faiths.

botolph.org.uk