Sunday, April 22. Woke to wide pale blue sky and sunshine. Leaving shirts to wash while we set out on projected journey to Bexleyheath (Red House), could hear washing machine agitating half-heartedly in bursts of about 5 seconds. Machine comes with instruction booklet of ludicrous complexity, examples of typical weights for sheets, towels, etc, and instructions not to underload or overload the machine. As it essentially doesn't work, I don't know why they bother. How different from our own machine at home, where you just pile everything in, switch it on, and away it goes. English have never mastered anything to do with plumbing (or the 20th century at all, L would say). She wet her stockinged feet in the bathroom this morning because there is no floor waste, and the floor is graded outwards, towards the door. Yesterday, as well as being unable to work the shower, she pulled the shower-curtain fixings out of the wall. Some people might call her inept, but I blame the English.
To get to Red House, train from Waterloo past public housing of various ages - one block that L thought early C20 I thought could have been post-war. A look at the brickwork would no doubt reveal all. Speaking of brickwork, on the Circle line, which is old enough to have outdoor sections where you can get a look at the construction, I was delighted to see in an archway that the bricks were laid at 45 degrees to the direction of the tracks (and I suppose there were several such layers making up the arch and at right angles to one another). Little to be seen from the train appealed to any of the senses, though by the time we came to cuttings the embankments were now covered with a flush of lime-green leaves. Bexleyheath station offered no directions to what must be the only feature of local interest, a mini-cab driver equally ingorant. When we got to Red House, a reasonable crowd which kept on arriving seemed to show that our interest was not just a personal quirk. A red brick wall outside; inside rhododendrons, holly, a kitchen garden, and where the old orchard had been apple and pear trees still in blossom with first leaves. One old apple that had fallen still sending up sprays of rose-pink flowers. On the NW corner of the house, an espaliered pear the same from which Morris could pick fruit out the window of a small morning-room inside the front door. In the hall, big square terracotta tiles - a painted settle I thought showed Rossetti's hand - guide thought several artists probably contributed.
Little of original paintwork left inside, the house having been through several owners, But various papers and fabrics displayed. Saw another version of the Burne Jones tiles of the Judgement of Paris - goddesses still looked like a trio of year 9 schoolgirls changing for sport. Exterior charming in red brick and tile, and the angle on the south side with the well did not disappoint. Something to see the building which had so great an influence on later domestic architecture, particularly Edwardian - something like the Woolley Building a remote descendant.
Lunch in the tearoom was a gluey minestrone with a microwaved bread roll - L didn't finish. On the way back, lost our sense of direction completely, and had to take refuge in a bus that took a twisting route through endless streets of unlovely houses with pebblecrete finish to a quite different station. Deciding to ride on from Waterloo to Charing Cross was a major blunder, since our arrival coincided with finish of London Marathon. A huge scrum to get through the barriers - one was held open for runners, but neither of us could claim to be that - and then a long close-packed shuffle along underground tunnels to the platform. Would have been a good opportunity for a terrorist, but perhaps they're claustrophobic.
To choral evensong later at St Bartholomew the Great. Layout of church unusual - choir, pulpit and organ at one end, high altar at the other. Sermon by a priest I took to be Nigerian with an accent so thick I could make little of it. V high church, and I didn't think it worked, asking the congregation to combine the roles of voyeurs and participants - either the 4th wall is there or it isn't. Perhaps it was just that the high church is so out of sympathy with the impulse that gave us the great C18 and 19 hymns - the Book of Common Praise, which they used, full of lame C20 stuff. The congregation numbered 50 or so, mostly men. L said if she was looking for a man it would be one of her first ports of call. If it should come to that, I wish her luck.
What really did work was post-evensong - a blessing of the elements with antiphons sung or spoken from one end of the church to the other and an organ passage like the last trump in the middle. Sense that something important and inaccessible was occurring. Came out into the rain. I had left my far from integral umbrella at home, but we found we could get on pretty well with L's if I held the umbrella with one hand and clasped her tightly round the waist with the other and we walked in synchronised counter-step as for a 3-legged race. By King's Cross the rain had stopped, and we walked hand-in-hand down Judd Street singing the Mosman Prep school song at the tops of our voices. After that, what could have been nicer than a plate of pasta con olio e aglio followed by a Time Team special on an A-S treasure? Nothing I could think of.