Snow; Poet's Cafe; more snow

Awoke on Friday morning to a veritable blanket of snow. As always, given that snow is unusual in these parts, I snapped a number of photos before work, to preserve the memory. This ivy plant actually looked better with snow on it – I’ve a nasty feeling it might be dead.

Met up with Claire, Helen, Ali and Sarah on Friday evening for Ethiopian food at the Global Café followed by Poet's Cafe at South Street Arts, compered as usual by A F Harrold. The first half was devoted to the open mic slot, where about a dozen punters read their home-grown offerings, including Claire who read out a seasonal haiku she'd dashed off that day in a quiet moment at work. The second half featured performance poet John Hegley as guest poet, who delivered an entertaining set although with rather more audience participation than I go for.

Several of the 'open mic' participants were PC regulars and several appear to have produced mini-books of their work, with dubious justification in some cases. I always do enjoy Martin Haslam's offerings - his poems have a disciplined, spare quality that I like. Some contributors, I have to say particularly women of roughly menopausal age, don't seem to have grasped any sort of 'less is more' principle with poetry - yes, your ex-husband might well have been a complete git but no one else needs to hear three poorly-structured sides of A4 on the topic.

Ray and I had a day out in London on Saturday (pictures here) – started off by stoking up against the freezing weather with a slap-up breakfast at La Taaza on Praed Street (potted review of this café, which I’ve now breakfasted at 4 or 5 times: unsmiling staff; great coffee; very acceptable Breakfast No. 6, though it comes with rather more fried bread than is good for anyone). We had booked on an 11am Architecture Tour of the Barbican Estate, and as we had some time to spare elected to walk from Paddington into the City, which certainly bumped up my exercise quotient for the week. The tour group, probably partly due to the very cold weather and partly to the proximity to Christmas, was small – a quick subjective assessment revealed it to include me and Ray, two gay male couples and an elderly lady. The tour was fantastic and involved a comprehensive (and bracing) hour and a half long walk around the complex. The young tour guide was obviously a Barbican enthusiast and really knew his stuff.

We finished off the day with a quick unplanned detour to visit the appealingly-named church of St James Garlickhythe, before settling in at an en route Slug & Lettuce for a nice bottle of Chilean Merlot and some batter-covered snacks.

Abandoned vehicles in Reading

Last Friday's snowfall turned out to be merely a teaser, as a fairly unprecedented (for these parts) degree of snow fell on Monday afternoon resulting in traffic chaos and abandoned cars everywhere (see pic), and a whole slew of “how long it took me to get home” stories. Not owning a car, I have continued to trudge (wo)manfully into work. Today the roads look clearer, but the pavements are still like sheets of ice – but then no one much cares about pedestrians. AND we have to carry on going to work while car drivers claim time off for bad weather! If I were a bitter sort of person, I’d be seriously aggrieved. As it is, obviously I’m imbued with serenity and Christmas spirit. Much as I enjoy looking at snow, am now hoping for a thaw by tomorrow given need for Christmas travel.

Demise of goddess; Colleys Supper Rooms; Herbert

The goddess figure I made at Samhain has been partly violated thanks to Ruth accidentally sucking her head¹ up in the vacuum cleaner. In fairness her ‘head’ had been represented by a length of braid wound around the top of the twig and it had evidently slipped off. Have been pondering what to do with her and may end up having a ritual burning sometime around Christmas/New Year. May include some old bank statements and perhaps a rabbit.

On Tuesday, had our team Christmas lunch at Colleys Supper Rooms, a place that I'm sure I should find thoroughly charming but somehow it fails to float my boat. Their gimmicks are a supposedly traditional Victorian look and the fact that they bring round examples of the main course and dessert and thrust them under your nose so that you can make your choice that way. In fairness the food was nice, and better than I remembered it from the one occasion that I've been there previously, around 15 years ago. This picture (left) of my colleague Godfrey pouring wine shows off their décor reasonably - note the wallpaper, and the swathes of curtain fabric seen in the mirror behind him. I seem to be trying to convey intense excitement in the picture of me, while my colleague Paul, behind me, seems to be entranced by his napkin.

My previous visit to Colleys was in the company of a work colleague of Ray's and his wife, a Yorkshire couple we tried hard with but I think eventually realised we had nothing in common. I never cared for either of them particularly but did go out a few times with the female half, in deference to the fact that Ray and her husband worked together. I remember one evening, when Wife and I rejoined our men after going out nightclubbing together, Husband commenting that his wife was being (I quote) "led astray by a liberated woman". I remember looking around the room briefly before realising that he meant me. Quite what I had done to deserve this epithet I'll never know, but I can't say our friendship lasted all that long.

Unsure whether Lola has become interested in Buddhism, but recently found her sitting in frankly reverential fashion (right) before the stone Buddha head that Ruth and I acquired earlier this year from Sebastiano Barbagallo in Notting Hill, a fascinating emporium so stuffed full of Eastern plunder one doubts that all or even most of it is strictly legit. I had wanted to enquire as to the origins of our chosen head, but somehow didn’t like to in case this was interpreted as suspicion as to how the owner had come by it. The head has ended up being referred to as ‘Herbert’, which is obviously not intended to imply any lack of respect whatsoever for its Eastern origins.

¹ i.e. the goddess' head

Sunday 13 December 2009

Paid a visit to my parents a couple of weekends ago; the weather was dire for most of the visit but the rain held off long enough for us to go for a pleasant walk on the Saturday morning around Urishay Castle (pictures here). The site contains a ruined house from about the 17th century and the ruins of a 12th century chapel, now maintained by the appealingly-named Friends of Friendless Churches, of which my mother is a member. Mum tramped up to the chapel to have a peep at it; Dad and I, being more cautious if there isn’t a big sign up saying “YES, YOU MAY WALK HERE”, elected to stay behind and look at a field of sheep.

Made the annoying discovery a couple of weeks ago that the Oriental supermarket at the University appears to have closed down, thereby removing one of the few sources of Shin Ramyun in Reading. Resorted to ordering a box online from the Wing Yip Store. When it arrived, was slightly stunned at the size of the outer box given that I had only ordered 20 packs – obviously pleasing that they were securely packaged, but slightly embarrassing given that the package was left, in not strictly legit fashion, at a house across the road. When I called to collect it, the box appeared to be blocking a large part of the poor resident’s small living room. I thanked him breezily and shuffled off quickly.

My whole family developed a taste for ramyun while living in Korea in the mid-1970s and seem each to be devoting a certain amount of our time to tracking down stockists; see this entry from my brother Dave’s blog from last year. My mother claims to have recently located a stockist in Hereford, which seems unlikely but just goes to show.

Met Claire for a drink and a bite to eat at the Ivory Lounge on Friday, compromising after an initial disagreement over venue. We managed to get a table although then spent a certain portion of the evening being elbowed in the head by standing drinkers, and halfway through our evening were joined by about 25 members of CfBT’s IT department at the table next to us. As a complete contrast, we joined the crusty real ale types at the CAMRA-favoured Hobgoblin to finish off the evening.

This weekend, I decided that there was a sound religious basis for putting up Christmas decorations, today being the third Sunday in Advent, and yesterday having been the Catholic Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Got the decorations out of the attic and spent a certain amount of time bickering with Ruth about which of our respective decorations should be chosen to adorn the house – obviously, just slapping the whole lot about randomly would have been simply tasteless and unrestrained. In deference to the limited floor space I chose to put up just one of the three artificial mini-trees I seem to have acquired over the years. As usual, I adorned the tree with the little red cherry lights I bought in Debenhams some years ago now, as well as various baubles. My baubles are of the gold multi-pack variety; Ruth has a smaller and more eclectic collection of baubles that are no doubt classier although less obviously Christmassy.

An hour or so after we had finished decorating the tree and switched on its little lights (see pic), Harley bit through part of one of the wires thereby rendering the lights potentially dangerous and no longer usable. Intend to stop addressing him as Git at some stage next week.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Went for a lovely dinner with Kate and Steve on Friday at The Crown at Playhatch, a local gastropub-type establishment. To start, Ruth and I shared the king tiger prawns wrapped in crispy potato strings, which were certainly artistic although slight risk of firing shards of crispy potato string into fellow diners’ eyes. The slices of rare¹ duck breast I had for a main course were very nice although I’m not sure what ‘pommes fur’ are.

Have been on something of a roll this week with Freecycling. Advertised an old IKEA double bed frame at around 2pm on Saturday and by 3pm had had seven replies from interested parties. A young lad duly came round on Sunday and loaded it all into his car. Wonderful notion that people will just come to your house and take away your old junk.

Jurys, Birmingham

Late in the day, Harley has proved himself a chewer. I had been rejoicing in the fact that Harley and Lola seem much less inclined than the late Jake to chew books/paper/clothing, which had led me rashly to store a pile of books on a low shelf in the dining room. This week I came home to find several with nibbles out of the spines. Rabbits apparently do need to chew constantly in order to keep their teeth worn down, so chewing is to be applauded, but they are provided with a plentiful supply of hay for this purpose. Lola enjoys hay but Harley appears to spurn it in favour of, this week at least, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway and the International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.

Spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday of this week at the Lifelong Learning Networks’ National Conference at the Jurys Inn, Birmingham. The conference was enjoyable enough and the hotel was nice on the whole – in my experience Jurys tend to have nice rooms but indifferent food, which was pretty much borne out. Am permanently amazed though as to why mass catering is so often so mediocre. At the conference dinner on Tuesday night, the main course was advertised as ‘medallions of fillet steak’ – to which I thought OK, sounds quite nice. The steak duly turned up – overdone, but that’s par for the course, but my suspicions were aroused when a dish of well done boiled vegetables then appeared at my elbow. The worst was confirmed when roast potatoes and gravy appeared a minute later. I mean WHAT IS THE POINT of serving fillet steak if you’re going to then turn it into a roast dinner? Personally I like steak with pommes frites and either béarnaise or peppercorn sauce, or mustard. Not BLOODY ROAST POTATOES AND GRAVY. I mean. Honestly.

¹ By 'rare' I mean pink, obviously. I don’t know what type of duck it was but hopefully not an endangered species.

Fireworks; Jacksons; slow cookery

Park House

After work on Thursday went up to Park House for the Senior Common Room’s annual firework display. Had to fight for a seat in the bar beforehand for our pre-fireworks drink (Batemans 'Miss Luscious'¹ for me; some appley concoction (Olde English) for Ruth) and dinner – I partook of an uninspiring chicken korma, rebranded for the evening as ‘Fireworks Chicken Curry’. The fireworks were punctuated by the traditional ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ and, as a sign of the times, were preceded by announcements about first aiders, fire blankets, buckets of water, standing well back etc etc. Then went home and watched yet more fireworks out of the living room window.

Ruth and I spent several hours in town on Saturday that included paying a rare visit to Jacksons, a prominent Reading department store that against all the odds, has resisted modernisation and is now a true museum piece – uneven floors, menswear departments staffed by doddery looking elderly gentlemen with tape measures round their neck and a peculiar system of dispensing change that means that if change is required it has to come down a tube from several floors above (one visualises a little old lady sitting in a dusty room on an upper floor – this site has a bit about the system; intriguing). Ruth bought a couple of hunting-themed Christmas presents for her family and had to wait some minutes after handing over a note before change appeared. God knows what would happen if you tried to pay with a credit card.

In the evening we had dinner afloat – Ray had been hopeful that his gas supply would be fitted by that time, but ‘twas not to be (the latest piece of advice he has been given is to look out someone at the marina site called ‘Bill the Pipe’). Instead, we had a slow-cooked stew that had a lovely flavour, but contained potatoes that had resolutely refused to cook despite having apparently been on for around 10 hours. I received a phone call the following morning to say that both the leftover stew and the slow cooker had been thrown out.

We gave Ray a gift of a canal-goer’s log book and a salt and pepper shaker painted in a traditional canal-boat design. His delight at receiving the latter can be seen in this heartwarming photo (I blame the motion of the boat, rather than the claret, for the lack of focus).

¹Actually I didn’t like the ML all that much, but the only other choice was Brakspear Bitter which is over-bitter for my palate – am not yet enough of a hardened real-ale drinker.

Neo-pagan dabblings; Cerridwen; twigs

On Saturday, I participated in a day of neo-pagan revivalism by attending a Goddess Workshop at The Crystal Dragon in Caversham (annoyingly amateurish website – get that background), a local business comprising a New Age shop selling crystals, tarot cards etc and a number of rooms out back that are used for a variety of alternative therapies including Crystal Light Bed Healing. Saturday’s workshop was titled ‘Dark Lady: Journey to Meet Cerridwen of the Cauldron’ and was timed to coincide with the festival of Samhain.

The workshop was led by Vicky, an apparently full-time ‘Priestess of Avalon’ who trained at the Isle of Avalon Foundation near Glastonbury (Vicky’s website is here). I was quite impressed with Vicky and at least two out of the four other women attending seemed quite normal. The day started with welcoming Cerridwen into the circle and went on to include making our own goddesses out of twigs bound together and scraps of material, and a dabble with scrying, which apparently involves staring intently at an object of your choice (crystal ball, bowl of water e.g.) and seeing what words/images emerge from your subconscious mind. I must have been doing something wrong as I didn’t find that anything much emerged, but the other women seemed to manage to find things to say although I cynically suspected that they might have been making it up. My goddess [pictured] turned out to be a somewhat abstract figure with a certain amount of difficulty in standing upright.

The only downside of the day was that it involved sitting on a thin cushion on a laminate floor for several hours. I could barely walk on Sunday.

After the workshop, Ruth and I had a nice dinner on Saturday evening with Claire and Helen - my autumnal pear tart was a reasonable success despite an initial pastry crisis. I had attempted, as I usually do, to make a bit of a seasonal display with autumn leaves and a pumpkin - as happened last year, I had barely arranged the leaves in the fireplace before cunning rabbity ears detected them and the munching began. Here's Lola really getting stuck in to the display. Disrespectful mare. Briefly considered sacrificing her to Cerridwen but then relented.

Bulmershe; Islington; Salman Rushdie

Dived into my quite generous leave entitlement to take Thursday and Friday off last week. On Thursday morning, took the bus up to the university’s Bulmershe campus with the intention of spending some time in the library perusing education journals and having a bit of a brainstorm generally. Did this for an hour or so. Bulmershe library is considerably quieter and, arguably, pleasanter than the main library at Whiteknights, and also houses a goodly number of both education and linguistics resources.

The Library at Bulmershe

The Bulmershe campus was built in the 1960s as a teacher training college, later became Bulmershe College of Higher Education and finally became part of the University in 1989. It has been earmarked for sale and redevelopment, meaning that the current buildings will be knocked down and a gazillion houses will be built to further enlarge the sprawling housing estate that is Woodley. I would just like to put it on record (not that anyone cares) that I LIKE Bulmershe and its ilk. 1960s-built campuses somehow smack of REAL PUBLIC SECTOR – none of your old-buildings-covered-in-creeper or the current rash of spanking-new-all-ensuite-wifi-enabled-studenty-hub type buildings (why is ‘hub’ the latest buzzword in new student developments?). To preserve the memory, in case the whole campus has been razed to the ground the next time I go up there, I took a few sneaky photos with my phone.

My mother arrived to stay on Thursday evening and we spent a pleasant couple of days - went up to London on Friday and did a lovely walk around Islington, one of a number of walks out of Andrew Duncan’s Secret London. The ‘Islington spur walk’ took us on a pleasant tour of elegant streets and squares including a stop-off for a lovely lunch at The Albion on Thornhill Road.

Lunch at The Albion

After lunch we took the tube from Angel to London Bridge and paid a brief visit to Tate Modern, which included taking in Miroslaw Balka's How It Is. The installation itself is impressively huge, but the experience of going inside was somewhat underwhelming. According to The Guardian: Miroslaw Balka's black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill. I suppose knowing a bit about the intended historical allusion helps a bit, but in itself the experience simply involved walking a few feet into a not-actually-pitch-black space. Even when we reached the end we could still see reasonably well, helped by the number of people in white tops, which unfortunately for the artist had something of a luminous quality in the darkness.

'How It Is' by Miroslaw Balka

On Saturday we went over to Hungerford, where Mum and Dad lived for a few years in the early-mid 1990s, and spent a few hours mooching about, including noting that the formerly extremely bijou end-of-terrace where they lived has been significantly extended and is now on the market for £285,000. Blimey. Had lunch in the improved Plume of Feathers before taking a short walk out past St Lawrence's Church to Freeman's Marsh, beloved of the somewhat annoying Johnny Morris.

14a Park Street, Hungerford

Canal at Hungerford

At last night's Book Group meeting was forced to report that I had only made it halfway through The Satanic Verses - luckily turned out to be in good company. I usually like to finish a book once I've started it but Rushdie's writing style is too irritating for words.

Norham Gardens; Take a Break; goji berries

Norham Gardens

Ruth and I went over to Oxford on Sunday afternoon for a bit of a mooch as I had an urge to go and look for the street that features in the title of Penelope Lively’s children’s novel The House in Norham Gardens, to see if it was anything like the representation in the book (see here for a potted review). Indeed it is, being a pleasant genteel tree-lined street of large Victorian-era houses, most of which seem to be nowadays either in flats or used as offices/educational centres of one type or other. Here's a picture of me posing outside a Gothic-style pile (can only see the ground floor windows unfortunately).

Me enhancing Norham Gardens

On the way back, we went for a bit of a browse around the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the attached Pitt Rivers Museum (also mentioned in the novel). The Natural History Museum is the usual somewhat dusty collection of ancient stuffed animals and birds but there are some more interactive displays to attract the young including quite a bit of stuff on dinosaurs (presumably always a crowd-puller); the main draw for me is the building’s extravagant architecture. The Pitt Rivers Museum is an amazing collection of tribal plunder of various sorts, including a collection of shrunken heads.

After the museum we went to Brown’s for a lovely late lunch/early dinner. To while away the time on the train home, bought a copy of Take A Break, a low-budget magazine that I used to buy quite regularly – now buy it only infrequently but I do get an urge to enter the competitions from time to time as there are some quite attractive prizes on offer, not that I’ve ever won anything but as with the National Lottery one lives in hope. The magazine is mainly based around ‘real-life reader experience’ type articles; a typical issue contains one, or at most two, genuinely moving articles where you think ‘blimey, good on them’ and a number of others that range from dull to the frankly outrageous where one marvels at the sheer stupidity and crassness of the people involved. One particular gem I shall always remember was a mother and daughter bemoaning how, having somehow been defrauded of their benefits by an unscrupulous relative after inexplicably handing power to handle their financial affairs over to him (because he was ‘family’ (say in requisite Cockney Wanker accent) and because presumably they found filling in the odd form too difficult to contemplate), they were forced to live on baked beans and their ilk for six months. The photos featured of the doleful-looking duo, presumably following these starvation rations, suggested that their combined weight was almost certainly in excess of 40 stone. One wondered what they weighed BEFORE the baked bean diet.

This week’s Graze box contained a mix that included goji berries – never having heard of these, I did a few minutes desk research. According to Wikipedia, the goji berry is native to southeastern Europe and Asia, and is apparently the commercial name for the wolfberry. It appears to have a whole slew of alternative names including ‘barbary matrimony vine’ and ‘Duke of Argyll’s tea tree’. Apparently the bulk of commercially produced wolfberries come from China. They seem to have been trendy among skinny celeb-types and marketed as a bit of a ‘superfood’ (so presumably the Gillian McKeith munches quite a lot, in between inspecting folks’ dung). My verdict: they’re OK.

Okra shortages; mantras and beads; grapes

Ruth and I went up to the marina on Saturday afternoon to give Ray a hand painting his boat. It wasn't great painting weather but we managed to fit in an hour or so. A start has been made on applying the green top coats. We then barbecued some sausages and spent a pleasant evening sitting around his darling new little wood-/coal-burning stove.

In a fit of attempting to support local traders, I strode out along the Oxford Road (see 3 June post) on Sunday morning, stopping first at Super Foods, one of many Asian supermarkets in the locality but with one of the nicest selections of vegetables. Bought half a dozen or so small aubergines and a substantial pile of okra, which Waitrose appear to have stopped selling. Have been vaguely intending to take issue with them over this but haven’t got around to it as yet. Rather shockingly, my mother informed me on the phone that she can’t find okra in her local Waitrose either, but did find some in Tesco. Feel as though all is topsy-turvy with the world. Anyway, after purchase of veg, proceeded further out to the recently-opened Sari Sari Oriental supermarket to re-stock with Shin Ramyun. County Delicacies in St Mary’s Butts are no longer reliable stockists of this, and I don’t always feel like trekking up the hill to the Oriental supermarket at the University, the only other known source in Reading.

On Wednesday evening I went along to a meditation class at RISC courtesy of Meditation UK. The meditation classes I’ve done before have been of the silent ‘focus on the breath’ type so I had been naively assuming that this class would be the same and was unprepared for the hour of mantra-chanting and bead-fondling that awaited me. The first hour of the class was evidently intended as an introduction for novices; we worked through a couple of mantra meditations, starting with ‘Gauranga’, uttered slowly on an out-breath, and then up-skilling ourselves rapidly to move on to ‘Gopala Govinda Rama Madana-Mohana’, said quite quickly while threading beads through our fingers. On learning that the second hour of the class was due to involve musical instruments, I beat a hasty retreat during the brief comfort break, as did one other chap, muttering darkly about how it wasn’t what he’d been led to believe on the phone.

The young woman who led the class was very smiley and friendly but a little ditsy (came out with some gem roughly along the lines of “this will help you if you want to do spiritual things, like, you know, spiritually”) and did make some seemingly ill-informed comments about ‘silent’ approaches to meditation and their unsuitability for the modern age. Still, Meditation UK’s website claims, in grandiose fashion, that the classes will involve ‘understanding your true identity and the goal of life’.


My main experience of meditation previously was some classes hosted at the University of Essex’ Multi-Faith Chaplaincy Centre, led by a bruiser of a man with a Scottish accent who introduced himself as Amogrivajra – I remember smirking at some other class members before realising that this wasn’t supposed to be funny. Assume he’d been re-birthed at some point.

Attaching a photo of our now-white garage, with now-ripened grapes. They look pretty but I haven’t tried eating them. Probably should do something creative with them like trampling them into wine, but can’t be arsed really.

Center Parcs part 2; saints

Returned intact from our mini-break at Center Parcs. Very nice accommodation and a lovely woodland setting. The central 'Plaza' and similar areas did become a wee bit trying after a day or so due to the crowds of young families, but I suppose that was to be expected. I'd definitely consider going back though. It's certainly a cut above Butlins - here's a picture of me at Butlins in 1992, the one (and only) time I've been there.

Budget-class accommodation at Butlins Bognor Regis, 1992

To offset that depressing picture, here's a photo of the lake at Center Parcs.

The lake at Center Parcs Longleat Forest

Spent much of Monday on the train, travelling to a meeting at Staffordshire University (formerly Staffordshire Polytechnic, formerly North Staffordshire Polytechnic, formerly Staffordshire College of Technology. Phew.).

Staffordshire University

From Wikipedia

Tuesday was the feast day of St Michael the Archangel, my confirmation saint. Catholic Online gives you the lowdown on Mike here. He’s the patron saint of both paratroopers and the police, so presumably a bit of a hard law-enforcement-type dude as well as being a blond fluttery angel creature. The Wikipedia entry on Michael currently has an amusing image of a Guido Reni painting featuring Michael standing on Satan’s head. After that he probably took Satan’s dinner money as well.

I chose a male confirmation name largely in an attempt to be a bit rebellious, and in part because I was (apparently) christened on or around Michael’s feast day. In the event it caused a bit of confusion on the day, as my brother and I were confirmed together and the bishop made the not unreasonable assumption that it was Dave who had chosen the handle Michael – resulting, as I recall, in the parish priest having to hiss in the bishop’s ear “No, Michael’s the girl!”. Such fun.

Scanning down Catholic Online’s vast list of saints, there’s certainly a wealth of choice when it comes to choosing confirmation names. Had I been more creative, I could have chosen to honour St. Amaswinthus, St. Macrobius or St. Sexburga (despite her name, renowned for piety and humility).

Open House London; bowels; Center Parcs

On Saturday I finally, after several years of just thinking about it, made it up to Open House London. Met Helen at the National Theatre and had a bit of a poke about - the intention had been to join the OH-advertised tour but in the event we arrived having just missed one and decided against waiting around for an hour for the next one. Instead we wandered around the ground floor space and I took some pictures. It is a truly fantastic building – and I hope it outlives Prince Charles by a very, very long way.

After leaving the National we went for a pleasant lunch at Strada and then walked westwards along the South Bank to the Garden Museum on Lambeth Palace Road. I had never even heard of this place, which claims to be the country’s only gardening museum, before I noticed it advertised in the Open House brochure. The museum was set up in 1977 in the former parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth (which apparently had been just about to be demolished and turned into a car park) as the ‘Museum of Garden History’. The main point of interest was the temporary gallery space made from prefabricated timber that’s recently been erected within the church – this is, apparently, a freestanding timber “belvedere” structure that works within the existing church to provide a new exhibition gallery for the museum’s exhibits. There’s also a tiny but attractive garden in the former churchyard. Helen and I spurned a talk about asters (a tad too specialist for my interests) in favour of tea and a thumping great piece of cake in the café.

Items of note in the museum include (apparently) a total immersion font, which Helen and I managed to miss completely. We were also intrigued to learn that Archbishop Parker’s bowels are buried in the churchyard, although the rest of him is buried at Lambeth Palace ... why? Were they special enchanted bowels? The mind boggles.

We ended a pleasant day out by going over to Trafalgar Square to see the giant chess set installed as part of the London Design Festival. When we got there the square was packed and a game was just beginning between two young players, one of which was apparently the top girl chess player in the UK currently. She was a surprisingly trendy-looking lass - I had been expecting thick glasses and sensible shoes. The Fourth Plinth (see 9 September post) was occupied by a woman wearing several placards and having a bit of a rant, but unfortunately it was impossible to hear her over the traffic and the commentary on the chess game, so from her point of view a bit of a wasted slot, no doubt.

As of Monday Ruth and I are now ensconced at the Longleat Forest Center Parcs for a four-night midweek break. Spent Tuesday morning in the (extremely nice) Aqua Sana spa flitting serenely from one steam room/sauna/meditation room to another, finishing off with a Tranquillity Scalp Massage. Did hire a bike, partly because I felt I should, but so far have not actually ridden it much and am realising it's quite a while since I've done any cycling. Duller day today so braved the Subtropical Swimming Paradise (!) for a bit of a dip, unaccompanied by Ruth, who scorns getting wet - doing much actual swimming isn't really possible but the main pool has a wave machine every 15 minutes so one can do some bobbing about, and I did brave a go on the Wild Water Rapids.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Met up with some of my old team from CfBT after work on Friday to raise a glass to our colleague Ginette, who tragically died last week.

On Saturday dragged Ruth around a few local sites courtesy of Heritage Open Days 2009. We visited two churches in the morning, St Bartholomew's and St Luke’s, which together form a joint parish. St Bart's is used not only by a CofE congregation (they appear to use the Nave) but also by Greek Orthodox and Serbian Orthodox congregations (who use the Chancel – this had icons and decorative bits and pieces dotted about). The pulpit at St Bartholomew's was apparently the anonymous gift of two ladies who carved it themselves - Ruth and I were amused at the anonymity aspect and had visions of two elderly ladies smuggling a pulpit into the church under cover of darkness. St Luke's - the left-hand picture on the joint parish homepage - is a more imposing and coherent-looking building, probably thanks to being designed by just one architect (James Piers St Aubyn) as opposed to being a collection of add-ons.

We were welcomed at both churches by a few elderly members of the congregation who were so pleased to see us one suspected that they were having a quiet day. One chap at St Luke's even pursued me down the street to ask whether we were interested in seeing inside the church hall as well.

Had an hour to kill so descended on our friend Helen for a refreshing drink before heading to the Royal Berks to see the Medical Museum, part of the Berkshire Medical Heritage Centre. The museum, tucked away at basement level in the former hospital laundry, is a fascinating if gruesome collection of medical equipment and memorabilia. Some of the old obstetric and dental equipment is particularly unpleasant - thank God for progress - and an 'aerial' shot of what must have been close-on 100 patients in iron lungs was pretty sobering.

On the way out, I noticed a corridor going off to the left in the direction of the main hospital building and got to wondering about the no-doubt fascinating maze of underground tunnels that probably runs under the buildings. Found myself wishing for an alternative Heritage Open Day offering tours of underground tunnels and abandoned buildings - I'm sure it would draw an audience. My suggestions for an Alternative Heritage Open Day for Reading would be:

• The suspected sub-hospital catacombs, as mentioned above
  
• The disused Mecca Bingo above the (very) disused bus station. The bingo hall has been closed since 2003; the bus station underneath it has been abandoned for a lot longer. See pictures here and also a short piece from a contributor to the Urban Exploration forum - a fascinating (and doubtless not strictly lawful) endeavour. The contributor also has some photos of Friars Walk, a now-closed shopping precinct that used to house C&A among other places.
  
• Aldwych House, on the corner of Blagrave Street, which used to be occupied by Foster Wheeler. It had (or used to have) a bar in the basement – I once went there for a drink with a flirtatious Detective Sergeant when briefly temping for British Transport Police back in the early 1990s (see 2 September post).
  
• And possibly the long-abandoned Western Tower on Station Hill, which may still be the tallest building in Reading (not sure - I know it was at one point) – there are some entries on the UE forum - here and here - about this as well.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Ruth and I wandered down to King’s Meadow on Saturday afternoon to sample Reading Pride, as I had never been to a Pride festival before and felt I should sample the local offering. Ruth, a veteran of several such festivals, spent much of the time muttering about how it wasn’t as good as London/as Brighton/as it used to be in the 18th century, etc. It had a slightly scrappy feel to it, possibly because of its attempt to be a family festival as well as catering for the LGBT (loathsome acronym) community – hence funfairs, candy floss, loads of pushchairs etc. We enjoyed a quick browse around the various stalls, at least half of which were political parties and campaigning groups such as Amnesty International. There were a few people waving ‘Against the National Front’ banners, obviously not having realised that the NF had already cancelled their planned protest – they had threatened to picket the march but in the end pretty much announced that they couldn’t be arsed to turn up. We then met up with our friend Claire and used the dodgy weather as an excuse to decamp to the pub for a beer or two, and thence to Carluccio’s for an unplanned dinner (damn the beer or two).

I was quite taken with the gay Conservatives stall and intend to read through my list of bios of top gay Tories.

We now, hopefully, have a rabbit-proof fence, as Ruth spent a good few hours on Sunday nailing chicken wire down the whole length of one of the back garden fences, in the hope that this will prevent Harley escaping. We then coaxed him out into the garden to test it - certainly he stayed within the confines of the garden tho' this may just have been coincidence.

Went up to London on Monday morning for a meeting at the National Gallery Dining Rooms. The DRs are dead posh though it took my boss Paul and me a while to locate them, as we didn’t realise they’re located in the new Sainsbury Wing – managed to visit the Café and the shop before finally locating them. As it was mid-morning I just had a mint tea but the food on offer looked very nice.

On the way in to the gallery, the sight of a chap sitting reading a newspaper on top of the Fourth Plinth reminded me that Antony Gormley’s One and Other project is now underway.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

After having started August with a level of determination to go on an economy drive, I seem to have eaten out in August more than in any other month in the year so far. Went for dinner with Ruth at Bella Italia last Thursday evening – much more crowded than usual due to the influx of festival-goers. I would have thought that to be in the true festival spirit they should have been up at the Rivermead site consuming greasy burgers out of a van, rather than enjoying pizza and wine in Bella Italia. Today’s festival-goers are evidently a namby-pamby lot. Afterwards went for a nightcap at Malmaison - so nice that the former Great Western Hotel has finally been converted into something after standing empty for years – hopefully it will survive in its new incarnation as a boutique hotel. The bar is a haven of subdued lighting and at-table service so something of a novelty in Reading. I remember when I had a summer job temping for the British Transport Police back in 1993 (one of my pleasanter and more interesting temp jobs) having to go down into the basement of the former GWH and collect post for them from a locker room down there – not sure what all that was about.

Went over to Henley with Ray on Sunday for a bit of a mooch. We wandered out to have a snoop at the house on Fairmile where we lived from 1997 to 2003 (though mainly at weekends in my case). When we lived there the house was badly in need of TLC (rotting windows, dampness – the bathroom ceiling in our flat once fell down as it was so weighed down by water). It and its neighbour are still owned by the Harleyford Estate, Ray’s former employer (or rather the sister company of Ray’s former employer Harleyford Golf – the estate is owned by two brothers whose relationship is such they split their assets down the middle to avoid ever having to speak to each other) but have now been renovated to within an inch of their lives, have gated entry and seem to have been renamed ‘Savill Court’ – and consequently would now be far too expensive for the likes of us. I haven’t been able to find a picture of the house as it used to be though I’m sure I’ve got one somewhere.

For lunch we went for meze at the Green Olive (eating out again) - had a gorgeous collection of dishes including a garlicky aubergine dip (ordered two platefuls) and a huge pile of deep-fried whitebait. Beats a roast any day.

Had yet another meal out this Wednesday as my parents were staying over en route to the Channel Tunnel and a two-week holiday in France, and as I was too idle to think of a creative meal to cook on a week night I booked a table at Quattro, a long-established Italian restaurant helpfully situated a mere skip from the house (in actual fact we scuttled in single file under umbrellas in pelting rain). When I first moved to Caversham my South African neighbour Nicki initially put me off Quattro by speaking disparagingly about its food and service, but IMHO the food, though not top-of-the-range, is nice enough and the service, though not overly effusive, is perfectly friendly and polite. They don’t do the bouncing up to your table, usually just after you’ve forked a large helping of food into your mouth, to ask “Is everything all right with your meal?” in perky tones before skipping off without waiting for an answer – but personally that doesn’t bother me too much.

On a last food-related note: we have upped the bunnies' food intake following the shock discovery of their weight loss - they are now getting twice the amount of pellets in the morning and the odd grape in between times. Ruth has been trying to assure Harley that his bottom is getting fatter, but I'm not sure as yet. The extra food doesn't seem to have dimmed Lola's appetite for plaster and wallpaper though - if I didn't know she'd been 'done' I'd suspect she was pregnant.

Grosmont; IKEA; underweight bunnies

Grosmont Castle

Had a lovely dinner with Claire at La Tasca on Friday night, which she very kindly paid for as a belated birthday treat – she also gave me a lovely green necklace which fits in with my tentative first forays into green clothing over the last year – have acquired a green shirt, a green scarf and now two green necklaces. 

Drove down to my parents' place on Saturday morning for a family barbecue - weather not too warm but not actually raining. Someone did note that there are photos of a previous family barbecue where everyone is wrapped up in fleeces, so this one was balmy in comparison. On Sunday Mum drove Ruth and me over to Grosmont for a stroll around the castle and St Nicholas Church. Grosmont Castle is one of the 'Three Castles' or, more splendidly, castles of the Trilateral (the others being Skenfrith Castle and White Castle). We went for a nice lunch at Gentle Jane Tearoom, where I shared with Mum a slice of something called ‘Hummingbird cake’, which turned out to be a particularly sickly moussey concoction flavoured with banana and pineapple. Had a couple of mouthfuls and then felt faintly bilious. 

At the tearoom

On the way back from Mum and Dad’s on Monday we stopped off at IKEA in Bristol, in a pre-planned moment of spontaneous madness. It had seemed like a good idea originally but turned out to be only moderately enjoyable as it was surprisingly busy for a Monday morning - the sat nav, perhaps in a moment of foresight, repeatedly urged us to stop and do a U-turn just as we were driving into IKEA’s car park. My original intention had been to buy one of their SKRUVSTA swivel chairs, but sadly they seem to have discontinued the one I particularly liked with the white fluffy seat covers. After actually sitting in a couple, I was still undecided so ended up not actually buying one. We did buy a set of six matching wine glasses, some wooden coat hangers and a few other bits and pieces. 

On collecting the rabbits later that day after their two-day board at Reading Rabbits, we were informed that both bunnies have lost half a kilo each since being homed with us and need to be fed more food. Once Ruth gets over the blow to her mothering skills, I think the intention is to feed them more high-calorie food such as carrots and grapes. Apparently being underfed is likely to be the reason for their occasional pre-breakfast scraps. Their recent eating of one of their chew toys and quite a bit of plaster off the living room chimney breast takes on a whole new meaning. Les pauvres. 

Kate and I hit the gym together after work on Tuesday as part of a newly-formed ‘gym buddy’ pact. I had only been once since having my workout routine devised back in June, and that only to use the exercise bike. This time I did manage to get through most of my routine, excluding the sets on the Total Abdominal – a piece of kit apparently designed to tone abdominal muscles but seemingly actually designed to wreck necks and shoulders. Could still feel the effects the following day particularly the sets done on the Adductor, so assume it must have done some good. Fearing that I might be particularly inept at remembering how to use the machines, I had suggested to Kate that she might be needed to create a diversion by swooning/having a fit of the vapours or similar, but in the event didn’t actually make too much of a twat of myself. We are planning to go again next week ...

Wednesday 19 August 2009

Was invited for my first official dinner on Ray’s narrowboat last Friday. As his only cooking facilities at the moment are disposable barbecues and a frying pan balanced atop a small and none-too-robust looking portable stove, I was unsure what to expect for dinner, but it turned out to be a delicious scallop and squid medley – see pics of frying scallops and squid tentacles, and cunning seafood kebabs.

Part of the purpose of the evening was to have a bit of a Star Trek marathon with favourite episodes of The Next Generation from our jointly-bought collection. We started off with The Measure of a Man, the undoubted crowning jewel of Season 2 and arguably of the series, followed by Contagion (scary opener; rest pretty mediocre, not helped by the not-very-scary Romulans and their absurd shoulder pads). Ensuing break for chat and dinner meant that by the time we got to Tin Man, the third choice on the list, it was quite late and my taxi arrived before the end. Never mind. I knew how it ended, and Tam Elbrun is pretty annoying.

Indulged in a couple of spa treatments at revive on Saturday morning – very nice although a chattier therapist than I had last time. Also they seem to have switched to black, as opposed to white, paper pants for whole-body treatments, perhaps to lend the whole thing a sluttier air.

My birthday on Sunday was a more muted affair than usual but Ruth and I did eventually make it up to London in time for a late lunch at Byron ‘Proper Hamburgers’ on the King's Road, before eventually proceeding with our original plan of visiting the V&A – unfortunately because of our late start, and then extended lunch, we arrived with only an hour to spare before closing, giving us just enough time for a look around the new Islamic gallery and a quick wander around a few other things. We then took the tube across to Soho, where Ruth bought a cabbage.

Almost-rounders; Grazing

Sunday’s community rounders event, intended to be a follow-up to July’s Big Lunch, turned out a spectacular flop when only four of us turned up. My long-standing antipathy to ball games meant that I attended more to show community spirit than because of any actual enthusiasm for playing rounders, so shame on my neighbours … Fiona, the organiser, was understandably a bit peeved but Ruth and I were discreetly delighted and went home instead for an early-evening drink on the patio, which is officially almost the same as exercising.

Ruth had even taken the rounders bat she keeps in the bedroom wardrobe (I’ve not as yet quite figured out its intended purpose – challenging intruders to a ball game?) - it would have been its maiden voyage, had it got as far as actually striking a ball.

Other than that had a quiet weekend doing household chores and baking a fig and ginger parkin, in true homebody fashion. Ruth has started painting the garage white, in an effort to achieve a bit more of a Mediterranean look - it looks good although unfortunately it has meant trimming back some of our neighbour Nicki's very pretty grapevine, which has trained itself attractively along one wall and across to our garage roof.

Today I have enjoyed having ‘nature delivered’ to my desk, in the form of a ‘graze box’ from www.graze.com. Graze make up a box of healthy snacks for you, based on the likes and dislikes you enter on their website, and based on the type of box you’ve chosen. I chose the ‘grazeenergy’ box, designed to help ward off that mid-afternoon slump, but there’s also e.g. a ‘grazewellbeing’ and a ‘grazepreworkout’ option. It’s delivered in a cute flat cardboard box. Today's box contained pieces of fresh pineapple, Korean chilli rice crackers and black pepper cashews. All, obviously, a clever marketing ploy, but for a fruit-phobe such as myself it may have some merits.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Hmm, OK, missed out a week.

Dinner with Kate at the (very crowded) Alto Lounge a week or so ago was enlivened by the sheer outrageousness of them running out of wine glasses. We were offered rosé in tumblers instead. Imagine! I opted for brandy glasses as a slightly more elegant alternative to tumblers, but really.

Ruth and I trekked over to the O2 a couple of Saturdays ago to see the Body Worlds exhibition, featuring a display of Dr Gunther von Hagens' ‘plastinated’ bodies and body parts. The overall theme was the human life cycle and the arc of ageing, accompanied by the inevitable topical advice about healthy living, some of which is now becoming frankly tedious ("hey, here’s yet ANOTHER pair of smoker’s lungs, if you haven’t got the message from the previous half a dozen pairs, and the pictures of smokers’ lungs that you’ll have been seeing in books since childhood." Actually, I have to say that judging by the pair on display at the exhibition, healthy lungs don’t look that attractive either.). The exhibits of body parts and slices of organs were fascinating, if your interests run to that sort of thing, which mine, on the whole, do. And in fairness, some of the stuff from the bodies of e.g. heart attack victims were enough to put one off butter and bacon sandwiches for a while. On leaving the exhibition, we were unsure whether to deal with our slight queasiness by immediately adopting a healthier fruit- and berry-eating lifestyle, or by going somewhere for a stiff drink.

I still don’t like the O2 as a venue (see my post of 3 September 2008) but getting there does entail using the Jubilee Line extension, which still looks quite snazzy. Here’s a picture of me in the foyer, just to prove we were there. We didn't hang around there after the exhibition as we both felt a strong urge to return to civilisation, so we went over to the King's Road to coo over things in Habitat.

As part of our general mooching around Chelsea we popped into the Queen's Head on Tryon Street for a quick drink. I had been there once before, but completely failed to notice on either occasion that it's a gay pub - Ruth asked wearily (by no means for the first time) whether I had completely failed to notice the rainbow flag on the way in. Indeed I had. Have no gaydar whatsover (assuming that term can be applied to places as well as people). Certainly the bar was full of older men, but as that applies to a lot of pubs I didn't think much of it.

Ruth's unconventional yet poignant friendship with Barry the caterpillar (pictured) appears to have fizzled out, as a direct result of his sudden disappearance from our lives. One minute he is munching his way through the small willow tree near the back door, the next he's gone, in not-at-all similar manner to celluloid animal friends such as Gentle Ben and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Ruth's obviously-still-grieving comment was "He ate all the leaves, and then he buggered off."

The tomatoes in the garden are growing well, but are staying resolutely green. Green tomato chutney it is then. Feel a late summer of bottling fruit and making chutneys and jams coming on. May also make an apron or two out of gingham.