London in the rain

I was up at five and out of the house walking to the coach station by six to go to London to stay with my sister June. Unfortunately it was raining by the time I arrived, but that didn't prevent June from dispatching me with great enthusiasm to see a Royal Academy exhibition of paintings from turn of the twentieth century New York by an artist I'd not heard of before, George Bellows.

What a remarkable mix of subject material attracted his attention. He was interested in all kinds of things. His strongly realist paintings includ domestic portraits, city life along the New York shore line, the construction site for Pensylvania station, depictions of first world war incidents, and a series of some remarkable oil paintings of boxing matches also some lithographs of them which reminded me of Hogarth's work a century earlier. It was worth getting wet feet to go back into the city from Wandsworth to see.

Before returning to June's in Wandsworth, I slipped into nearby St James' Piccadilly to take a brief look. It's decades since I was last there. The churchyard is presently being used for a craft market, but with such heavy rain today it had very few customers indeed.

St James' is a city centre church with a lively liberal inclusive hospitable tradition which presents its offer of ministry very thoughtfully. It's rather a pity that the model considered as most appropriate to imitate for the future development of Cardiff's City Parish Church of St John the Baptist after my retirement was that of St Martin in the Fields, rather than St James' Piccadilly. There are far more lines of comparison that can be made between their locations and the ministries developed in both.