Signing off; breakfast; boat-building

The main triumph of the last week has been obtaining approval and subsequently a completion certificate from Reading Borough Council Building Control for Ray’s re-roofing of the house and fitting of a Velux window. We were pretty sure that we had done the necessary in terms of stuff BC had asked us to do, but you can never be sure until sign-off. Now, if I ever do in future get to the stage of compiling a HIP, the certificate can slot right in. Grateful to little R for doing a good enough job during a difficult time.

Weekend got off to a good start with breakfast with Ray at the lovely Palmieri’s in Maidenhead. Fabulous coffee (had two cups) and probably the nicest ‘full English’ I’ve had – I don’t normally order full Englishes in cafes/hotels as I’m wary of being presented with a sea of grease, if I’m really unlucky, swimming in an additional sea of baked beans (which I like, but not for breakfast). However, Palmieri’s slight Italian twist on the full English was perfect, and included some perfect little charred cherry tomatoes. Ray’s baked beans were served in a separate little bowl, rather than on the plate, which was a nice touch. Palmieri’s is out of the town centre (probably no bad thing – for a presumably wealthy town, Maidenhead has a particularly drab and uninspiring town centre, although there does appear to be a regeneration planned) but it seemed to have plenty of custom when we were there at 9am, so I hope it thrives.

Then we trolled off up the M40 and out past Banbury to see the progress of the construction of Ray’s narrowboat. I was reassured to see that it does appear to be being constructed of solid-looking steel, rather than the pieces of coloured wood glued together that I had imagined.

Finished the day with a lovely walk around Bisham Woods to take full advantage of the weather. The going would have been tough if it had been wet as the ground had been well churned up by horses – much muttering from Ray about horses ruining footpaths. Luckily it was dry but still a risk of spraining ankles in ruts created by hooves. We didn’t actually see any of the huge beasts – perhaps they’ve moved on to churn up pastures new. In fact we didn’t see anybody at all, which was strange given the lovely weather.
At Book Group this weekI was slightly startled at the amount of hatred directed at our book for the month, Danny Wallace's Yes Man. I had regarded it as an appealing piece of light entertainment but I seemed to be alone in this.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Last Thursday was distinguished by my partaking of the J D Wetherspoon’s Curry Club for the first time, during drinks at the Back of Beyond with my friend Claire. Usually the main thing that can be said about J D Wetherspoon’s food is that it’s cheap, but the chicken tikka masala was not half bad (and yes, I know it’s a British dish), although I had had a pint or so of lager by the time I ate it. BoB is one of three JDW’s in Reading town centre and probably the nicest – the others are the Monks Retreat (rough) and the Hope Tap (never yet ventured into, but suspect also rough). There’s also the supremely atmosphere-free Baron Cadogan in Caversham, where Ruth recently went for a quiet dinner and ended up being chatted up (by a man! how exciting!).

Hen dinner

Had a lovely day on Saturday at my friend Kate’s hen ‘do’. A handful of us spent the day at the revive Health Club & Spa at the Crowne Plaza making use of the facilities. I had a wonderfully relaxing De-Stress Scalp massage, followed by an Elemis Body Glow Treatment (bit of quite hard brushing, followed by exfoliation and moisturising, leaving you shiny and ready to slide right off any surfaces you might brush up against).

Was a member at revive until quite recently, but cancelled my membership before Christmas in a ‘streamlining of outgoings’ session. Kind of regretted it on Saturday as it reminded me how much I love swimming. Trouble is you often (at least, I often) get the scenario where you only end up going twice a month and then realise that a half-hour swim has cost you the equivalent of about £30 a time. Would be better to grit teeth and use the public pools, although it’s amazing how snobbish one becomes about them after one starts paying private health club fees. Also Reading’s main complex, the Central Swimming Pool, is now extremely dilapidated (or at least, was when I last went a couple of years ago) and appears to be having no money spent on its upkeep – one suspects it’s due to be a casualty of the Chatham Place development.

To return to the hen do … then met up with the larger group for dinner at Zizzi’s in Henley. Evening was enlivened by a ‘drink or dare’ game featuring horrible forfeits devised by Kate’s friend Sarah. Mine was to bite a stranger on the leg, which I eventually did actually do after a couple of the others had managed to nobble a willing (drunk?) volunteer to offer his leg. With hindsight I should have bought the poor guy a drink afterwards.

Away Day; outlying campuses; women in farming

At the risk of sounding nauseatingly spring-like and positive, it was a beautiful morning this morning ... took this picture of the park at the end of my road at around 7.30am.

Week has been enlivened so far by a team Away Day at Reading Town Hall. My equilibrium was slightly unsettled by one of the activities in the morning, but a lunchtime walk through St Laurence's churchyard restored my spirits. Took a photograph of this bush, although I'm not entirely sure why - was possibly led towards it by mystical forces of which I am unaware.

Today's main achievement was to make my way successfully to Oxford Brookes University's Wheatley campus minus a car, something I wasn't initially sure was possible. The Brookesbus service proved me wrong though - although the journey from Oxford railway station takes about half an hour so best if you don't have too many other commitments on the day in question. According to this link, the CPRE have voted the tower on the Wheatley campus one of the ten ugliest buildings in the country. Much of the campus does admittedly have a somewhat grey tinge, but the O'Regan Centre, where my meeting was, is a pleasant, airy modern building. The campus is a typical former college campus that now finds itself part of a university - in the 1960s it was the Lady Spencer Churchill College before merging with Oxford Polytechnic in 1974, which in turn then became a university in the 1992 upgrading.

Attended an interesting lecture at the Museum of English Rural Life this evening on Women in British Farming, held to mark International Women's Day 2009. Some fascinating old photographs. Still not quite clear what was involved in being a bondager, although they seem to have worn bizarre bonnets. Audience, as expected, largely full of Game Old Birds, with a smattering of Game Old Chaps accompanying in some cases. We were served tea and an extremely nice coffee cake with butter icing. All strangely congenial. Perhaps am reaching the time of life when I should join Townswomen's Guild or similar.

Real ale; Manchester; zoology

Last weekend began well with a real ale tasting hosted by the University’s Senior Common Room. I joined the SCR shortly after starting employment with the university, partly to have a potential bolthole to go and eat my sandwiches at lunchtime, but had never actually attended one of their events – this seemed a good one to start with. Staff from the Hammerpot Microbrewery in Sussex gave a brief presentation on the brewing process before letting us taste a range of their ales. I liked the Madgwick Gold, a light golden ale that’s probably at the wussy girly end of what Hammerpot produce, although Claire’s and my joint consensus was that the Woodcote Bitter was our favourite.

Amazingly, we did rather well in the evening’s quiz and won ourselves three bottles of beer in addition to the free bottle of Madgwick Gold that everyone was given – though I was less appreciative of the winnings by the time I’d carried them home.

The Bottle Wreck Porter was a bit much for me. What is porter anyway?

Then spent a lovely long weekend in Manchester with Mum - a follow-up 'British city break' to the weekend we spent in Glasgow a few years ago. Pictures here. Weather was rather grey and our hotel was only so-so (adequate but uninspiring) but we had a great time in spite of that. We spent most of the time walking around and looking at impressive buildings - took in the Royal Exchange Theatre, the Town Hall and extension, the Central Library, Urbis, a number of huge old hotels including the gloomily imposing (from the outside, at least) Palace Hotel and the brand-new Beetham Tower, home of a Hilton hotel and luxury apartments. Popped briefly into St Ann's Church (where the invitation to quiet prayer was being stymied by the shrieking laughter of a group of ladies serving tea at the back) and Manchester Cathedral. Had a couple of nice dinners, one at the down-to-earth El Macho on Portland Street and one at the fantastic Dimitris - great atmosphere, food and service. We also did an interesting urban canal walk following part of the line of the 'Rochdale Nine'. Didn't get time to do everything I'd have liked to do - including visiting Salford Quays - will have to go back.

Went for an interesting tour this evening of the Cole Museum of Zoology (again, courtesy of the Senior Common Room). The Cole Museum is one of the University of Reading’s three museums, the others being the Museum of English Rural Life (which I have been to) and the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology (which I haven’t – it’s somewhere in the depths of HumSS formerly FOLSS). We sat through a reasonably interesting talk from the curator – buoyed up by a free glass of wine – and then were allowed to have a bit of a poke about the displays. The skeleton hanging from the ceiling in the foreground of the picture on their homepage is a False Killer Whale (not sure what makes it false – haven’t bothered to look this up yet) and the one in the background is a male Indian elephant – an ex-circus performer acquired for the Museum in 1921. I was personally more charmed by a Trumpet fish (a dear little thing that apparently swims head-down) and a Microbat. Ruth briefly admired the delicacy of the 5-metre long Reticulated Python’s 400 vertebrae before becoming squeamish and having to be led quietly away.