Tag: evangelism

Pride in Thurrock and Evangelicals in the High Street.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

A crocheted Freddie Mercury atop a bollard on Titan Road outside the Thameside Theatre

Further along from Freddie is a similar figure for Cher, but about as X rated as you can get in crochet. The steps outside the library are painted rainbow, the lamposts are hanging vertical flags (in hideously clashing colours) alongside huge dream catchers with bright coloured streamers, outside tables are neatly arranged, a sound system is being set up. Glad confident morning for Thurrock’s first ever Pride Festival. Had to get here eventually. Inside the library the cafe is all spruced up in rainbow colours and workshops are advertised for the afternoon, make up, song writing, Bollywood dancing. What looks like a band with clothing that could best be described as “optimistic” bubble out of the lift and head for the doors, giving me a grin on the way. I ask a couple of the blokes setting up what time its all kicking off and wish them luck. There is something necessarily exhuberant, and life affirming about all this. Something that we could all do with a bit of at times like this.

Alongside the posters downstairs, a small group of pensioners sit in a small grey huddle getting one of those advice sessions that libraries run now, and make them such an important community hub. Next to them, an even older pensioner – in his dark blue army blazer and regimental beret – stands with a D day books stall from the museum but seeming almost to be one; looking slightly bemused but friendly. I slightly regret not speaking to him – and just asking as one of the last survivors. They won’t be here for much longer.

Half way up Cromwell Road, someone has put a huge Palestinian flag in their window. Which feels like waking up.

On the High Street, at that strategic corner with George Street that all the buskers use, the Saturday posse of evangelists is out. A couple of young black guys with a sound system, some younger women with leaflets. One of the men is preaching to the unconverted in a way that makes no connection at all. “Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world”, and all that. Shoppers hurry by as though they don’t exist. Not even bothering to avert their eyes. As the parable goes “And some fell upon stony ground”. They have no crowd around them (missing a trick there; even faking an audience might generate a little curiosity from the otherwise lost and vulnerable). But perhaps thats not the point. Going out, giving testimony, being ignored, a sure sign of elect status. A smiling small boy offers me a leaflet and invites me to their Church. I smile back, thank him for the invitation and tell him that I’ve been an atheist since I was his age so I didn’t suppose I’d fit in. I don’t know if he thought that an “atheist” was a different denomination, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecontalist, Angloican, catholic, Atheist. It seemed kinder than telling him I didn’t believe in God.

A Wet Tuesday in Grays

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

As the steady drizzle descends there is a cultural clash outside the precinct.

On the corner of George Street one of the increasingly classy breed of buskers they have here now is playing some limpidly amplified acoustic guitar, staring quietly and camly towards the trees, the war memorial and the old Courthouse. He is playing a slow, gentle, rather yearning tune, with an emotional underpunch that sounds a bit like the B Side of Mark Knopfler playing Local Hero.

Directly opposite, outside the pawnbrokers, a short black woman in an enormous hoody declaims from an equally enormous Bible held in front of her – a burden and a shield – calling for people to “repent” and “follow the Lord Jesus”. No one is paying her any mind. In the bag she carries at her side there is a magnificent brass trumpet, which she must use at some point with a divine blast to rally the faithfull and startle the faithless.

In the market on George Street, the same bloke who was selling four perfumes for a tenner before Xmas, now has piles of those ugly high crowned half baseball hats emblazoned with “Prada”, Gucci”, “YSL”. Producing bootlegs with the inverted commas might be the next stage in cool.

At the top of Cromwell Road an armada of several dozen snails sails bravely across the pavement towards the promised land of the allotments over the far horizon.

Doing the exercises for my arthritic knee in the absence of weights, I use fat, heavy books instead. James Holland’s Normandy ’44 in one hand and Vasily Grossman’s extraordinary novel Stalingrad in the other. Possibly misguided even handedness. In reality, the Ostfront was much heavier in all respects.