Unexpected bonus
WHAT does it take for something still to be “a thing”? This is not an ontological teaser (although, who knows, it might become one): it is a question about cultural currency.
What items in the landscape of our living are still relevant, fashionable, or, at least, in use? It looks as though gagging orders to save celebrity blushes are not to be a thing for much longer, while the Queen seems set on being one into a tenth decade. That, I suppose, could be cause for considerable rejoicing.
The keenness of this thought has had its game raised for me by the placement of an ordinand, Nathan Thorpe, at All Saints’, Rome, through Passiontide and on into Easter. At 22, I fully expected him to hale from another planet (his being raised in Warrington and training at Cranmer Hall also posed serious questions for me as an unrepentant Wescottian Wiganer).
What a joy, then, to find that we still speak substantially the same language, despite what will be more than a quarter-of-a-century difference, God willing, in date of ordination. Nathan won friends across the age ranges and nationalities of our diverse community, and communicated the gospel with an unassuming naturalness. Happy diocese of Liverpool to have raised him, and now to retain him.
The play’s the thing
IF NATHAN proves that ordination in the Church of England is somehow still “a thing”, the overwhelmingly youthful casts of two English-language Hamlets recently in Rome amply illustrate that Shakespeare will never stop being one.
An all-female cast presented their production in a small commercial indoor venue; the touring London Globe production appeared on Vatican territory, thereby adding another State to their attempt to perform in every country on the planet: “Globe to globe”, as the project neatly puts it.
The Villa Borghese park in Rome is home to a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe, and hosts an annual festival of the Bard in Italian translation through August and September. The Vatican performance was safely indoors (April weather in Rome is almost as unpredictable as that in the UK) within the grandeur of a frescoed hall of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, sumptuously provided on its ceiling and walls with “flights of angels” enough to sing the final death-toll to their multiple rests.
What was that?
I HAD seen a couple of episodes of the BBC1 sitcom Car Share over the past couple of years without having thoroughly woken up to Peter Kay. (Remember, I have lived in Rome now for 17 years, with only intermittent access to British media.) Once again, it was in conversation with young Nathan that I finally caught up with Kay while the Boltonian comedian and actor is still definitely “a thing” — although I suppose it might be argued that having a special BBC compilation show is the clearest sign that your “reification” is beginning to be questioned by some.
His comedic mishearing of pop lyrics reminds me of my father’s general condemnation of the unintelligibility of any singer after Nat King Cole. My favourite was his suggestion that the group Sister Sledge were singing “Just let me staple the vicar” in the course of “We are family”. A temptation many have felt an urge towards, no doubt.
Sans everything
YOU know that something is still “a thing” when you walk into it in the dark. I threatened ontological musing earlier; so here comes the Queen of Science bit. Pug dog Gaston, the patriarch of my pets, is going blind, and is almost “sans teeth”, too. I watched with horror as he trotted headlong into a pot of geraniums I had just put out on the terrace, and which had thus threatened the safety of his interior, remembered map.
We all need the safety of knowing when a thing is a thing, and perhaps just as importantly where things are. And we should remember not to put obstacles in the way of others less able to identify things. Or perhaps we could just staple the vicar?
The Ven. Jonathan Boardman is the Chaplain of All Saints’, Rome.