Parish pump
THERE is a buzz around the parish akin to “My dear Mr Bennet, have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?” We have a new incumbent arriving after an interregnum of more than two-and-a-half years, and it is a talking-point even among those who don’t necessarily come to church, but have registered that we haven’t had a vicar for a while.
I encounter it in numerous places, often with past holders of the office recalled: “the one who married us”; “the one who gave that lovely address at the funeral”; “the one who was so good with my mother”.
As the long-abandoned Roman Catholic church building metamorphoses from day nursery to care home, and a couple embark on converting the ex-Methodist chapel into a family home, we feel the responsibility of legacy.
Nonpareil type
I RETURN saddened from the funeral of an ex-colleague, from the long-ago days when I edited a county magazine. He was a typesetter, and a good one, and nothing slipped by him in an age when we also employed full-time proofreaders.
I wanted the many who were there to hear how much care he took, and how much he loved words, and how critical was the eye that he cast over the pages when the printed copies arrived upstairs, fresh from the presses below and smelling of ink. We heard of his pleasure in his garden and his grandchildren and how much he loved his cricket, but nothing of his working life. A man is the sum of all his parts. Honour is due.
Big Bang
I AM standing in a darkened gallery, watching in wonder what happens when black holes collide, or, rather, how Conrad Shawcross — one of nine artists working alongside quantum physics researchers at the University of Nottingham — conceives the moment.
It is pure spectacle, as two bronze spherical bells orbit each other inside the mighty steel honeycomb that simulates the hemisphere. They accelerate at alarming speed and spiral inwards as they spin crazily towards ringdown, the moment of collision. The sound when they crash is fearsome, and so is the calm that follows. Nobody stirs.
The exhibition, “Cosmic Titans: Art, Science, and the Quantum Universe”, explores how to make sense of the origins of the universe. How do you represent things that you will never see? How do you make the invisible visible and the intangible tangible? There is no reference to God in any of the works, and yet it’s a profoundly spiritual experience.
I am uplifted by a work from two international artists, Daniela Brill Estrada and Monica C. LoCascio, not so much because I can better understand its stated intent — to explore how humans grapple with understanding and communicating complex theoretical ideas — but because its beauty moves me beyond measure.
It has disconnected fragments of weaving, geometries of netting, shiny bubbles of thin, bright copper wire that suggest something fermenting. There are bobbins that reference Nottingham’s lacemaking heritage, connected to the development of computer technologies in the copper drawings that replicate Jacquard-loom punch cards. In my mind’s eye, I see a weaver drawing all of these threads together. I guess that what we see depends on which lens we choose to look through.
Quantum wanton
MY APPETITE is whetted. I buy a pocket book on quantum theory, described on the opening page as “the most successful set of ideas ever devised by human beings”. The cover depicts Schrödinger’s cat, clearly discomfited by being both alive and dead, and the book is peppered with cartoons of black-bearded scientists with wild hair.
I wish I knew more. I wish I hadn’t given up physics at the age of 13. I wish I could look intelligent, and nod my head in wisdom and understanding as I encounter Planck’s predicament, Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect, Heisenberg’s picture of the atom, and Dirac’s transformation theory.
And, to my shame, the one piece of information that I do retain is that Schrödinger was a notorious womaniser, often inspired in his work by his most recent love interest. “During the Christmas holidays of 1925, he made the most important discovery of his career during a passionate tryst in his favourite romantic hotel in the Austrian Tyrol. He had been thinking about waves,” the book says.
I know now why I’m a playwright and not a quantum physicist.
Louder than words
FEBRUARY is a miserable month, with little to counteract the rawness of the weather and a prevailing despair at the world situation. There are snowdrops, of course: a joy to behold on damp walks through the woodland. But it is two urban transformations that break the mood and lift the spirits.
First is the wholesale replacement of windows in the outer-city church that hosts the foodbank that we support. The brick building has looked dilapidated for years, and, every time it’s my turn to deliver our church’s contribution, I drive away unhappy at the sight of the rotting frames, and the climate of struggle and hardship which they represent.
But, lo and behold! every face of the building now sports white-framed window panes, as snugly fitting as a Lego brick. They bring more than increased light and warmth and security: it is not fanciful to detect a lift of the head, a brightening of the eye, and a quickening of the step in all who now cross the threshold.
There is resurrection in the heart of our city, too, despite the fact that we’re bankrupt. When the ugly concrete edifice of a 1970s shopping centre was finally demolished, the council acceded to popular opinion and made a bold decision to green at least part of it, in the shape of a public park.
Now it’s crowned by a stunning bronze sculpture, Standing in This Place, by Rachel Carter, depicting two life-size figures: a white mill worker from Nottingham’s textiles past, and an enslaved Black woman worker from the American cotton fields. Their hands are clasped; their eyes meet in sisterhood. Generous donors funded it in the absence of any public money to spend. It brings hope, and it speaks volumes.
Pat Ashworth is a journalist and playwright.
