Diary – 8 May 2004

My granddaughter was christened at the Brompton Oratory on Saturday. Although the day was muggy and storms had been forecast, I am sorry to say that there was no thunder and lightening. Like Hector Berlioz recalling the circumstances of his birth — ‘I came into the world quite naturally, unheralded by any of the signs which, in poetic ages, preceded the advent of remarkable personages’ — I was a little put out that Holly’s reception into the Church was not accompanied by some celestial commotion. Other than that, the only bleak thing about the service was that it forced me yet again to confront my own perfidy: over the years, and with barely a thought, I have broken most of the baptismal vows I have made as a parent and godparent.

It is easy to laugh at the Oratory. My friend and former colleague Paul Goodman once said it put him in mind of ‘Brideshead Revisited choreographed by Derek Jarman’. But — and call me a sentimental old fool — I love the place. Its cavalry-twill Catholicism reminds me of my days at a Benedictine school in the 1950s, just before the Church was given a makeover by Vatican II and was left looking, even sounding, like Michael Jackson. Fifty years on I can still hear Gregorian chant (with Buddy Holly in the background) and smell new-mown cricket pitches. The abbey was at once English and universal. How little I valued it at the time! On Sundays I could not wait for Vespers to end — except perhaps once, when I was stoned — and I did not much care for cricket. Naturally, I was sacked.

Life at a British public school in the 1950s could be tough. (Not much more of this schoolboy smut.)