The sky hung white in the sky like a damp dishcloth.
As we walked into Regent's Park it started drizzling, but the air was mild and the greenery so intense it was almost intoxicating and everything seemed as it should be : specially designed for us by the great designer in the sky.
The wind gusted occasionally though, making it suddenly cold, and all the paddle boats were parked up empty, looking forlorn and unemployed.
Tony Blair, the armchair warrior, is back in the news, urging Britain to intervene in Syria. He says there is evidence that the Assad regime has used sarin gas against its opponents in the civil war raging there.
Tony's got form in this department and it's not good.
If only one of his many properties were located in Damascus - he might be less keen on 'intervention' if it was one of his places that got smashed up. Or if one of his sons was a soldier.
It started raining very hard.
It's not just the weather that's showing the symptoms of madness - the human race is racing towards insanity : machete madness in London, Kalashnikov killers, shoulder fired rocket launcher lunatics, rocket propelled grenade gangsters, drone drivers in bunkers in suburbia, everyone wants to kill someone,or themselves, it's the only idea we've got, the only strategy left on the shelf.
Whatever happened to non - violence, the strategy that threw the British out of India?
But then the sun burst through and the white sky turned blue and the scene was transformed.
Looking up, there wasn't a drone in the sky and all around Shia mingled with Sunni and Muslim sat down with Hindu. Girls in Burkhas talked excitedly about Korean pop stars and the geese and ducks waddled around looking for someone to smile at and found an old lady who smiled back at them and fed them with breadcrumbs. People stopped shopping at Primark, insisting that they wouldn't buy from sweated labour.......no, now I've gone too far!
Parks though, especially London Parks, bring the world together in peace. It has been proven scientifically that people are happier and more creative if they have spent time in the countryside resting their eyes on the greenery it provides. Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey wants to build on the parks of Istanbul. If he wants his people to live together in peace, he should desist.
Mr Blair, pop down to Regent's Park, stroll around and do nothing for an afternoon. You work too hard. You need rest. The graveyards are full of indispensable people.
It started to get hotter as the afternoon wore on - was this the promised heatwave?
Over to Martha and the Vandellas.
In the sixties, they had heatwaves.
Back in 1123, Bartholomew Fair opened up alongside the horse market and St Bartholomew's Augustinian monastery.
It must have been quite a fair, because it was suppressed for rowdiness and debauchery in 1855, and generally speaking, things seem to have been bawdier and more debauched the further back you go.
Have a quick look at Chaucer or Rabelais if you want to check this out, or 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymous Bosch, from 1490.
While most folk then were making the most of the short span they knew they'd been allotted, some, a very small minority, were so removed from the cares of everyday life that they were debating ethereal questions as to the exact nature of The Holy Ghost and how the Spirit relates to the other two ..er....anyway, as we found today when we attended the sublime service put on by St Bartholomew's clergy, these questions are still being debated today. In fact, we were informed that just to discuss them in the terms they are being framed is to risk heresy, and that they are still causing a rift between the Latin and Eastern churches.
Oh dear, we'd have hoped our men of the cloth might have lowered their sights a little since St Augustine's days, but no such luck.
The service showed that the church still has the artistic, architectural and musical ability to move the human soul.
It moved ours, almost to tears, especially the choir, which rose and fell like swooping angels through the spacious canopy of the church and reduced its congregation to awestruck amazement that such heavenly utterances could be heard here on earth.
Yet all this power is turned towards the Holy Ghost and how to let it enter thy heart.
We know that each of us can only do what we can, and that charity begins at home, but surely the fine and subtle minds of our clergy can put aside their theology for a while as the world races towards armageddon?
If the Holy Ghost is the only character to get a mention in the play of life, then surely we are nearing the end of the play?
As our Prime Minister urges upon us a several billion pound outlay for another round of nuclear missiles to be fired in the event that someone fires something at us, thereby guaranteeing us the grim satisfaction of knowing that we have slammed the door on life once and for all, we wanted to know how The Holy Ghost wanted us to react, not argue about whether he is one and three at the same time.
And as Al Qaeda and other fanatics in Syria kill each other to get their hands on its oil fields, we wondered if the Archbishop of Canterbury might have a view on whether we should support the USA in its arming of the chaotic cadres of a different God who are roaming Mad Max style across the deserts of Syria?
Ah well, the Peace of God passeth all understanding, that we now know for sure, and we repaired to Smiths, a fine establishment adjacent to Smithfield market, for a cup of tea and fish and chips, and very good they were too.
Someone wants to knock down parts of Smithfield Market and replace it with new shops and offices.
Let's hope they love what's there now, because it's beautiful and human, and glass and steel, the materials of our time, just aren't, most of the time. If they love what's there now, they might create something as lovely.
Dream on, brother.
Next week, at St Bartholomew's, The Mayor and his wife will attend the service, and a piece by Olivier Messiaen will be performed.
Let's hope it's not his 'Quartet for the end of Time'
Outside the church, the life of London goes on, unaware of the Holy Ghost drifting around. He's gender neutral we learnt today, but we reckon he's on the prowl for debauchery and rowdiness.
He or she will find it sooner or later around here, in fact, anywhere he looks.
After all, as Shakespeare wrote, 'It's a bawdy planet'.
The sun has slashed through our windows and carved up the walls of the flat into two diagonal blocks, so we decide to surrender ourselves to it completely and take a walk along the Regents Canal, which we knew would have been completely conquered by its welcome warmth.
The trees have given up fighting the Spring and are happily clad now in its lincoln green cloaks and the blossom has burst out laughing on the Cherry trees.
Philp Larkin caught to perfection the way that the trees renew hope for us despite the fact that they and we know that one day we’ll be dead - this no reason to give up before we have to :
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh,afresh, afresh.
Barges and boats, canoes and cormorants, ducks, geese and swans jostle for space on the canal itself and London has sent a representative of every one of its peoples, nations, tribes, sects, classes, ages, clubs and cliques to strut their stuff along the canal path - these are the united nations of London and they show us the borderless future of tomorrow’s world, united under the banner of a warm sun and a canopy of deciduous trees and a border of flora and riverine fauna.
On a day like this, in a place like this, you realise that there is no need for us to fight each other. We can share this canal, this narrow path that lies alongside this narrow stretch of water with its narrow boats that give way to each other, so we can share this planet, surely.
Take this message to Mr Assad in Syria and Mr Netanyahu, invite them to take a walk along Regents Canal.
We will leave them to chat on one of the benches about how they can carve pathways of peace in their own part of the planet. As they sit, perhaps before the conversation begins, they will notice how the presentation of beauty and bounty in a small space makes people realise that space must be shared if it’s to be enjoyed.
The small space sort of frames the world for us and makes us aware of its limits and its frailty.
Share they must, or they will fill their spaces with hatred, which makes the air unbreathable, and their tribes will be done for, and surely that’s not the fate they want for their people.
We walk past the manicured lawns of the vast regency palaces, which back onto the canal. They are owned by the plutocrats of the word, but we notice how mostly indifferent people are to the startling discrepancy between their own accommodation and this - no envy, it seems, perhaps some bemusement, or reflection on what kind of drive it takes to accumulate so much and transform it into such ostentatious real estate. Or maybe it’s the sheer lifelessness of these enormous ornaments that adorn the ego’s of the very rich - they are there just to say, ‘Look, look what I have done’ but they can’t be played in for fear of damaging them and the ego they protect.
These barricaded gardens will never be stormed unless their owners become responsible for preventing all those who can’t be bothered to be rich from walking past in pleasurable and peaceful ways that belong to them. The most valuable property is your own soul, and most of us know this. It’s those that don’t that cause all the trouble. Real wealth is the freedom to spend your time in the way that you want to, in tune with your own soul, sensing the space that surrounds it and the satisfaction of sharing it with those that you have chosen.
As the great Jimi Hendrix sang so poignantly, ‘I’m the one that;s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my own life, the way I want to...play on brother.
At Camden Lock I push through the crowds which throng the market and buy some ice cream for Elena and her Mum.
Back on the canal path, we use our wooden spoons to scrape the chocolate ice cream from the tubs. Around us, conversations concern a million different worries, but somehow they are not worries as the water laps up against the bank and other people’s worries seem more worrisome.
This is London, not Gaza or Damascus, and we are all grateful for that.
