St John the Devine, Robin Hood Road, Coventry

For headbangers.

When I was a kid growing up in the 60s and early 70s, I thought Basil Spence was a Coventrian just like me. I have no idea why I should have thought this, I just took it for granted because he had designed Coventry Cathedral. Roll forwards about fifty years, while casually researching on the internet, I discovered that in 1954, Spence had been commissioned to design three other churches in Coventry. To cut his teeth before embarking on the cathedral. One was at Bell Green, one at Willenhall and one at Tile Hill. All new post-war housing estates on the edge of the city. I looked up pictures of the churches and they were all crud, and all the same. All with pokey glazing, with blank walls the size of two double-deckers, each with an external bell tower having no walls at all. The money was coming from the War Damage Commission Fund. You could have a church made from brick, or three the same, slapped up using concrete. Take your choice. All this must have been stored in memory.

On Saturday I went to visit my Dad in hospital, at The Walsgrave. He eats and drinks nothing unless coaxed repetitively. He had some jaffa cakes there already, and I took up a couple of bags of jelly babies and a bottle of Lucozade as he likes pop. Five minutes in, he tells me he doesn’t like jelly babies and that the Lucozade is sharp. I eventually persuade him to try a jaffa cake. It takes him 15 minutes to eat half of one. After handing me the half he doesn’t want, and wiping off the chocolate that has melted on his fingers, a doctor approaches, simultaneously drawing the curtains around the bed. Her face is a yard from my dad yet speaks loudly. She wants to know if my Dad will allow her to insert a cannula in his arm, pointing to his skinny, red and purple limb. She asks a number of times, all of which are met with a bright smile but not much else, until he says he can’t. He can’t allow her to insert a cannula because Philip has come to take him home. So I step up, explaining that the nice lady wanted his permission so as to be able to make him better. Would he allow the lady to make him better? This line of questioning draws a blank too.

The doctor, Sophia, beckons that I follow her. We leave the ward bay and enter a small office the other side of the corridor. After sitting down, Sophia begins an explanation. She says Dad’s (one) kidney function is way, way down. His infection levels are through the roof, despite administering antibiotics intravenously. If he was stronger they would operate, but he is dreadfully weak and an anaesthetic would kill him. The doctor’s questioning had lacked persuasive language for a reason. Even if the hospital continued to treat using antibiotics, she doubted that would be an effective cure. He would be alive but even sicklier. She thought the better route was ‘to allow nature to take its course’. That didn’t sound like a guaranteed path to full health to me, so I asked what course she expected nature to take. She told me. I asked how long. She said may be three days may be two weeks. Her eyes had turned pale pink and glistened with a ledge of water.

On leaving the hospital I made a couple of calls to the family. After sharing, I had this pressing need to make a photograph that typified how I felt. Spence’s brutal wall for headbangers was calling from Willenhall, just a few miles away.