Maybe it's because I'm a Middle-Saxon

Mmm, well we may be in musical mode today, but I think we'll stick to the original 1944 title of Hubert Gregg's homage to his hometown which has been "covered" by the most unlikely of singers since it first brought cheer to the blitz-beleagured citizens of the capital over sixty years ago. It scans much better for starters, even if I may respectfully point out that London was once actually part of my native county of Middlesex, rather than the other way round when Greater London subsumed this historic bit of England forty years ago.

According to the Daily Telegraph obituary of the late songwriter and popular broadcaster last year, Maybe it's Because I'm a Londoner took Gregg just twenty minutes to pen while on leave from the Lincolnshire regiment. It's since been recorded by everyone from comedian Arthur Askey (a Liverpudlian) to Kirk Douglas- and even the Omsk Siberian choir, who sang it in Russian!

Gregg's contemporary Noel Coward, whose eulogy to a flower London Pride was another metropolitan melody which brought comfort between the bombs of those dreadful years of the Second World War, said in one of his plays "strange how potent cheap music can be". How right he was. It can also come in very handy however, when you're suddenly asked at a German wedding reception, fifty years after the war's end, to "do a typically English turn" on the spur of the moment, as I and several of my friends were challenged to do a decade ago this week at the wedding of one of the "Walker brothers" I mentioned in my posting on 20th May.

German wedding receptions are not for the faint-hearted! I can't now remember too many details of the earlier ceremonies, though this has little to do with the copious quantities of food and, of course, beer which were on offer throughout the proceedings. What I can recall though is that the festivities started around 3 in the afternoon in the pleasant surroundings of Glueckstadt, near Hamburg, and continued til around 1.00 the following morning (which happened to be Whit Monday in the UK). Eating a further feast at that time of the morning certainly seemed like a true "wedding breakfast", though the happy couple's first meal as man and wife had been consumed some time earlier. German law, for instance, requires a civil ceremony to take place before a church service- which often provides the opportunity for yet another celebration!

So what of our impromptu entertainment challenge? We were stumped! I am reasonably fluent in conversational German, but coming up with something everybody could join in with and yet reflected our party's own English roots was a tall order. In the end, all I could come up with was to suggest that we offered a rendition of Maybe..., even if there was a slight bit of dramatic licence since not all our party came from the capital. At the time, it probably sounded like a typically eccentric English idea, particularly given the circumstances and the time in which the song was written. Knowing now though that even the Russkis have warbled their way through this capital ditty, perhaps it was actually more of an inspired choice.

Well, we did our best to teach our German brothers and sisters and the happy couple the words of this simple song and it seemed to go down well. However, in a moment of madness at the end I decided it was time to inflict on the assembled guests my impersonation of the Westminster Chimes followed by the most famous "bongs" in the world, better known to one and all as Big Ben. Goodness knows why, but this brought the house down, though thank heavens it didn't bring the Houses (of Parliament) down. Perhaps it was the memory of this affront to his dignity though which silenced the mammoth bell for no less than ninety minutes last week, though the engineers say it was more likely due to the effects on Ben's aged inner workings of of that all too rare event of a London Summer, a hot day.

Not that I am wanting too many hot days this Summer, mind, even though pundits have been saying for weeks that we are likely to have a repeat of the astounding temperatures reached in 2003 here in the UK. I hope not, personally: it's fine if you are bathing in the rare, balmy waters of the Channel, as I was at Eastbourne when the 100 degree fahrenheit mark was breached in August 03 at Faversham, Kent - my dear late Mum's birthplace- but not if you are about to become a London commuter for the first time!

Yes, the biggest news of this week for me is that I have been offered a new job! I still don't want to say too much about it until I have actually started, but it is with a Christian organisation based in Central London, just off Oxford Street, and seems to have many components which are "made for me". I can't pretend that I relish the prospect of a twice daily trot up to town, or rather the rattling of the rails, which is a commuter's lot even in these days of air-conditioned Desiro rolling stock on South West Trains. Nevertheless, the thought of once again having a regular income coming in, through my own earned efforts rather than my debt to a card company, and working with folk who have a genuine interest and commitment to the practical application of the gospel, fills me with anticpation and delight.

Not only will I have access to some fine Christian minds, the nation's top shops will be but a hop away -though I don't intend to indulge too much in those- and all the delights of the capital's world will be my Oyster (card) to flit between the sights after work or even at weekends. God moves in mysterious ways: who knows where this will lead? Have I made the right choice? These are never easy questions to answer. So many of life's decisions have to be taken on trust, but with so many choices open to us these days it is so easy to wonder whether you have made the right choice.

The plenty we enjoy in our present age, in our wedding feasts, our church suppers for Wesley day, or our weekend fare on our supermarket shelves are the dividend of our freedom- and yet it is easy to forget that those we fought in World War II knew the privations of war and the sacrifices of rationing far more than my privileged post-war baby boomer generation are ever likely to. Sitting downstairs in the kitchen at the moment is a seven pound, three ounce iced fruit cake, made by a former naval chef for the benefit of the fete I mentioned in Monday's posting, which was great fun. Much to my amazement, I won it, and collected my prize yesterday afternoon. How am I and my little brother possibly going to eat it all by ourselves? The answer I guess is we are not!
Today mind you could be an appropriate day to eat it, as apparently it's the anniversary of the Queen's coronation back in fifty-three when the eyes of the world and his wife were on London, as Queen Elizabeth the second brought the hopes of a war-ravaged nation and commonwealth to the altar of Westminster Abbey. Liz Windsor's Westminster World is a very challenged one right now, particularly as the politicos grapple with the ramifications of now two nations- the latest being Holland- voting against the new European Union Constitution.
Once again, Europe is at a crossroads, as it was sixty years ago, and in some ways it is a worrying time. I've never quite been convinced by the argument, to be honest, that a united Europe would once and for all prevent the prospect of further war in Europe. That's a lie furnished by idealism rather than the realities of the selfish human heart. At the heart of London, alongside the glacial megaliths and giant gherkins which house the world's financial supercorps, lies the splendour of St Paul's Cathedral, Christopher Wren's masterpiece which stands sentinel to the real victor of all war, Jesus Christ our Lord. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life", remarked Dr Samuel Johnson, doyen of the dictionary and celebrated on a new coin in this 250th anniversary year of the publication of his first volume. I've never been one to disagree with him on this point- as I've already mentioned, I love my country's capital with all it's delights. As someone who just short of forty-six years ago was born in a London postal district, I can truly sing "maybe it's because I'm a Londoner", and mean it most of the time.

But more than that, I recall my first thoughts when attending my first German wedding: "We were at war with these people: why?". Of course, the reality we should never forget is that Britain was never really at war with "Germany" between 1939 and 1945, but with the evil regime of the Nazis which had supplanted most decent human values and compassion within that great swathe of Europe. So then, I'd be more prone to say, as a Christian, then as now "when a man is tired of loving, he is tired of life"