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.