Berberis' World

Saturday, 29th August 2009, Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.

In essence, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder involved me sitting around whilst other people made a lot of noise. After a performance lasting just shy of three hours, I stood up and sang for approximately 4 minutes. It therefore seemed wrong, somehow, to be applauded for about twice that but, hey, you take it where you can get it.

On stage, and performing their young socks off, were the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, under the baton of the clearly adored and adoring Peter Stark. Joining them on stage were Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Waldemar), Rita Cullis (Tove), and Jane Irwin (Waldtaube). After the interval they were joined by Robert Hayward (Bauer), Alan Oke (Klaus-Narr), Nigel Robson (Sprecher) and members of both the London Symphony Chorus and the LPC, half of whom had to rush on at the last minute due to lack of seating.

It was all quite strange. I’d planned to go into London on my own, get lost, feel lonely, drink too much coffee and get to the rehearsal late and overheated, having dressed inappropriately for the weather. After the rehearsal, I would then have drunk more coffee, and mooched around the streets, probably ending up in the National Gallery or somewhere else where admission is free, feeling at a complete loose end until the 7pm call time and more sitting around waiting for our 4 minutes of reflected glory.

What actually happened was that we caught a bus from the end of the road. At Peckham, having endured quite enough of the bus, we caught the train from Peckham Rye and went to Victoria. Here, we went to a pub and had lunch (solid and liquid) before strolling down to the Hall. The tutti, such as it was, was more a game of musical chairs, seeing how many of us sops and altos could remain seated so that getting those remaining onto the stage for those last few moments was not too undignified a scramble (not to mention a health and safety issue).

That having been achieved, we had 4 hours to waste. This we did quite nicely by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum therein. I’d been to the CWR before – with the kids, before the CM was opened – but remembered little of the detail.

It’s scary and humbling and fascinating being down there, under all that concrete (the Slab, a 1-3 meter thick layer of concrete on metal running the entire length and width of the building, one fact I didn’t recall from the earlier visit) knowing that real people had lived and worked in conditions that would have Health and Safety Executives wringing their hi-vis jackets and throwing up their clipboards in horror. My erstwhile other half is very up on statistics – what engine went in each plane, who won which battle etc etc – but I was more interested in the psychosocial aspect. These people worked underground for anything between 10 and 16 hours a day, often sleeping in the same tiny office where they worked, living on the same meagre rations as those above ground. For six years.

The maps with countless tiny drawing pin holes showing every movement of every ship involved in the war; charts showing how many died during the doodlebug raids; telegrams from Churchill when he was suffering from severe pneumonia, the hand scribbled order at the bottom warning that on no account was this news to reach anyone but the King; a push-button operated coil with which those charged with charting and predicting the enemy’s moves could light their cigarettes. I guess if you thought you were going to die at any moment, then giving up smoking was not high on your list of priorities.

I’ve just finished reading ‘Early One Morning‘, a novel based on a true story about those involved in the French Resistance. Even if only half of it is a quarter true, I cannot even begin to imagine how people dealt with being under such pressure, all day every day, for so many years. Reportedly, when the war ended, the men in the map room at the CWR simply tidied their desks and left the office to go home. You are left thinking: how? How the hell do people living at such an intensity for such a long time just go home?

I was moved to tears at the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. The display case full of battered shoes and broken spectacle frames was appalling to behold. It is still utterly incomprehensible to me that there are people who claim that the Holocaust never happened when so much damning evidence exists. It cannot be simple ignorance – these deniers are not lacking in intelligence – so it must be denial. If they are denying it because their minds cannot cope with the magnitude of such atrocities, then that might be acceptable. But they deny it because they secretly agree with the belief that there are people in the world who are sub-human, and that these people should be eradicated.

On the train on the way home there were two men standing by the door. In the quieter moments of the journey, I could hear what one of them was saying, which was essentially that anyone who was not white and English should be made to leave the country. In light of where I’d been that afternoon, this open racism seemed both shocking and reckless. On leaving the train, he could quite clearly be heard to say that he was going to continue to think these thoughts, and no one was going to stop him expressing them. Best of luck to him.

And, for entirely different reasons, the best of luck to the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra. You were all splendid, and may you go on to bigger and better things.