Macbeth; Act I: First Witch … her husband’s to Aleppo gone …
On Good Friday in 2000 I didn’t pay for a ticket on the Heathrow Express and I wasn’t a fare dodger. I went to the wrong terminal and there was no charge to take the train between terminals. I just caught the direct BA flight to Aleppo.
Those were the days. I got a taxi into the old town and met Pippa at Beit Wakil, a small hotel that had been a private house, set around a courtyard with a fountain. It sticks in my mind because I sat on the edge and got a wet bottom. I was looking forward to going out for a sundowner but Pippa had other ideas; “chop-chop, we have to be at the Greek Orthodox Service in ten minutes”. Then we went on to another half dozen churches of orthodox, slightly less orthodox and not very orthodox denominations. So I think it quite likely that yesterday was not my first Armenian Service. It was a lot closer than Aleppo: two stops on the Piccadilly Line to Gloucester Road. I didn’t walk as Storm Angus was still blowing itself out.
Yesterday’s post explains how an Anglican church in South Kensington became an Armenian one. I went to Divine Liturgy at 11.00. The congregation was small – there were ten of us. The Service was taken by a bearded Bishop attended by seven priests and a choir. It was theatrical, not least because the pews in the nave have been replaced by upholstered seats taken from a theatre or concert hall and, at one particularly Holy bit, a red velvet curtain with gold tassels, good enough for Covent Garden, swished across the apse to hide this solemn moment from the congregation. There was, rather to my relief, a simply colossal (artificial) flower arrangement in the pulpit, leading me to suppose that there would be no sermon. I need hardly add that there was incense in abundance.
The structure of the Service was essentially High Anglican or Catholic including the dread Sign of Peace. I was embraced by a chap who muttered something in Armenian as he air-kissed me on both cheeks. Gradually the congregation increased and when I left, after an hour, four more arrived and there were about fifty. I was ready to explain that in the Church of Ireland it is only necessary to attend for an hour, maximum.
Yesterday I claimed, because I had read it on the internet, the organ is the second largest church organ in the country. Having seen it, I doubt this is true. The smell of incense reminded me that this is the white truffle season. I hardly needed reminding, every Italian restaurant cashes in. The cheapest I have found, in Fulham, is £7/gram and the most expensive $25/gram in New York, the latter according to Nicholas Lander in the FT. Five or ten grams are the recommended dose, according to your wallet. I don’t like truffles and, like lobster and avocado, give them a miss.
There certainly aren’t any dread signs of peace in the Greek Orthodox service, thank goodness. Plenty of incense of course and people come and go when they wish. Quiet gossiping occurs at the back, but stops at the most holy moments of the service. I would recommend a visit to the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Moscow road, always packed on a Sunday. There are interesting memorials to Anglo-Greeks, some of whom were killed in the First World War.