The award-winning TV series The Office is set in Slough a few miles west of London and opens with this panorama of the town. Sir John Betjeman wrote a poem that put Slough on the map the way that George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier put Wigan on the map. The poem from the Bard of Suburbia goes like this:
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town -
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.
It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
It is no surprise that the Church of England owns large tracts of land in cathedral cities such as Canterbury, Ely, Peterborough and York. But after the Church Commissioners debacle a few years ago the Church has begun investing in industrial estates in Swindon and Waltham Cross and shopping areas like the Cribbs Causeway Centre in Bristol. Its newly-acquired interests also spread to Europe with its stake in the ING Central Europe Property Fund.
Closer to home planning permission has now been granted for the Church to develop land on the Ashford Great Park estate while 15% of the Church’s commercial portfolio is in London’s West End…mainly with a holding in the Pollen estate. Connie’s old employers…Quin and Biddie Cole at Rye Pottery…have been at the sharp edge of these New Model Church Commissioners. One day out of the blue the Church…landlord of their Retail Outlet in Sloane Square…gave notice to Rye Pottery that their rent was trebled. They had little choice but to close up shop.
The Church of England also has parking space in the capital and nets twenty million pounds a year from selling 99-year leases on garage spaces. Nor is property in The North neglected where it holds a 10% interest and associated land in the MetroCentre in Gateshead…the largest shopping and leisure centre in Europe providing Shoppertainment with an indoor theme park, an 11-screen cinema and a bewildering array of shops open from 10am to 9pm six days a week and from 10am to 5pm on Sundays. What would Sir John Betjeman have to say about all this? Is it good form?
Shortly after 9/11 at the age of 42 the star of Basic Instinct Sharon Stone was at home when she suddenly felt she had been shot in the head. The pain was so intense she fell over. She had always feared having a stroke yet when it happened she didn’t take it seriously. She found herself with a splitting headache while none of the things she said made sense. After three days she finally went to hospital. They operated but the haemorrhage was missed. They thought she had a ruptured vessel that had bled itself out. Nine more days went by and her condition didn’t improve so they operated again. This time they found an artery that was pumping blood into the brain.
Sharon Stone was close to death at one point and saw the white light reported by those who have a Near Death Experience. She saw people she knew had died and felt they were as close and as real as any living being and that she only had to step over a very narrow line and to join them. Talking about it five years later Sharon’s conclusion is that it just wasn’t her time. ‘The whole experience got rid of any remaining fears I may have had about life after death. I still have much to do,’ she said, ‘but I don’t fear for the future.’ Sharon had this to say about her experience.
‘My near-death experience affected me profoundly. It made me prioritise and put a new perspective on my career. I love what I do, but more than ever I keep it in its place. I’m a different person now. I walk closer to God and have an overwhelming sense of wellbeing, of joy, and I don’t have the wants and desires I had before. I have more gratitude in my life for what I have than longing for what I don’t…and that’s a peaceful way to be.
