Monthly column on the arts

The other day we celebrated our daughter's 18th birthday. We wanted to organise a surprise for her, and decided on the London Eye, the huge ferris-wheel-with-pods that now dominates London's river.

The surprise worked - she couldn't work out where we were going until we arrived - and for me it was something of a milestone. Having had vertigo all my life, I'd always vowed nobody would ever get me up in the Eye. But faced with being a wet blanket on my daughter's big day, I steeled myself to do it. I'm happy to tell all you EN readers out there who share my dislike of heights that it's a wonderful experience. The pods are roomy so you don't have to lean against the window; the wheel rotates with a stately slowness that makes the experience a lot more manageable; and the views are just wonderful. Highly recommended.

Farther downriver is the Millennium Bridge, now an unfortunate exercise in damage limitation - as I write the contractors trying to solve its tendency to sway alarmingly when used have marshalled 2,000 optimistic volunteers, sending them across in test batches at various speeds. The original design was unusual; now it has enormous stabilisers fitted, which make it look even more futuristic. Both versions are beautiful.

The Eye and the bridge are very apt millennium projects. The great wheel in Vienna's Prater Park is in many Impressionist paintings and you can still ride it today; the London Eye looks good for a few decades yet. And there's no reason to think that the Millennium Bridge won't still be around for a few hundred years once they stop it wobbling. They both seem much better celebrations of a new millennium than the deliberately short-term Dome, even without its many problems. Maybe the Dome money would have been better spent distributed between six or so national regions for each region to build its own millennial project (or even to implement my own millennium project, which would have been to bury underground as many rural overhead power cables as possible for the money available).

In the meantime, long after the Dome is forgotten, the Bridge and maybe the Eye will be dramatic millennial monuments, both examples of engineering touched by art.

Jubilee

Celebrations are much in the news at present as the Queen's Jubilee becomes embroiled in public argument, with resignations and leaked squabbles surrounding its planning. The Palace doesn't want the celebration to be at huge public expense, which is fair enough, but there is quite a lot of apathy around - we aren't into street parties and jelly and ice cream like we were for the Silver Jubilee, according to some pundits, and some people who are sceptical about the monarchy are suggesting that the antics of some of the Royals make celebration inappropriate. They could have a point - remember It's a Royal Knockout, organised by Prince Andrew in 1987, in which some junior royals took part? It's been widely seen as one of the first cracks in the crumbling of the authority of the royal family. It was toe-curlingly awful, and quite enough to make sure that Prince Andrew won't be asked to organise any street party we might be having in our village.

So, writing in early February, it looks thus far as if the Jubilee might be a damp squib, though one shouldn't rule out the very British possibility of things coming together wonderfully at the last minute.

It could, however, be a very good opportunity for churches to get involved. Historically, for example, the church has always been a leader in street theatre - we invented theatre, in fact, with the mediaeval mystery plays, and in the 20th century there was some major church theatre like the Canterbury Festivals where T.S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers and Charles Williams were among the Christian playwrights who contributed. It's not too late for churches to organise pageants or dramatic presentations: not necessarily as a homage to the crown, but certainly as a reflection on 50 years of national history. Organising exhibitions in church premises is another possibility, maybe picking up on the different world we live in today compared to the time of the Queen's accession.

Initiatives?

Perhaps this is a good time for a major initiative in serving the needy and disadvantaged in the area, or for launching community-based projects that will draw on the awareness of community that the celebrations are likely to foster. And if nobody else is going to organise a street party, few organisations are as good at handing round a tea pot and a plate of scones as your average local church!

It would be wrong to cynically kidnap the Jubilee as an excuse for aggressive evangelism. There is a place for serving others and having fun with one's neighbours without ulterior spiritual agendas. On the other hand, in the process Christians could find themselves having encounters, conversations and openings that they could scarcely have imagined.

Congratulations and celebrations

Jubilee

Initiatives?

David Porter

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