Did you know that garages have been transformed? A garage is no longer a home for a car. The car is out there feeling the cold on the hard standing. The garage is now a store-room or living-space. One garage is full of garden furniture or houses the tools of a d-i-y person. Another: is packed with more or less redundant furniture. Yet another: flower and vegetable seedlings. Not a bad record for a French word that originally meant ‘shelter’. Unlike ‘kennel’, which has fairly consistently signified a dog-house, i.e. a shelter for a dog, the word ‘garage’ has proved to be nourishing ideas above its station.
All this time you imagined that your garage has been looking in the mirror and thinking of its lowly good fortune it was in fact comparing itself with Versailles or St Petersburg.
Role reversal became established in WW1when women became bus conductors. It has now become acceptable for women to belong to armies as fighting soldiers. The Church of England now has women bishops. The feminisation of vesture has raised questions of wardrobe. I have mentioned before the mitre (peakless like those worn by Frederick the Great’s grenadiers). This is a mere detail. The larger underlying issue remains: to be female is to be a follower of fashion. TV presenters know this very well. They never wear the same thing twice.
Way back, Billy Graham’s backers were crestfallen when a preacher who filled Wembley Stadium had brought with him a wife who enjoyed cosmetics. Cleopatra’s needle must have been shuddering at such a trespass on female territory. And why should fashion be off-limits to a woman vicar? A man does not stop being a man when he becomes a vicar.
It would probably be as well to give our garages a once-over. They may be harbouring thoughts about going further. Behind that innocent-looking lawn-mower may be a throbbing desire to go up in the world. Think ambition. Think Amazon. Think Apple. Think what has started in garages.
LINDISFARNE IN HOBART
LA church means something different in Tasmania. You can expect to meet Lindisfarne type Christians in Lindisfarne Anglican church, Hobart. You will be invited to take your next step with Jesus. The Church makes no bones about it. It is making disciples of Jesus. The website welcomes inquirers and questions about Christian belief.
Tasmania is now a flourishing tourist destination.
ROYAL CARS
The royal mews is mostly about horses. Stables came before garages. But the royal mews is home to Royal cars. These include a rare 1950 Phantom 4.
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