Celebrations; snow at last; office socialising

A group of us had a nice dinner at La Tasca last Friday to celebrate Claire’s having achieved a 2:1 in her Open University Psychology degree. Great stuff.

Having escaped the snow so far this year, Reading finally had a few inches of snow on Saturday morning. We took a few obligatory snow pictures, which are probably very similar to last year’s snow pictures. Remembering last year’s lethal pavements, I splashed out on some strap-on spikes, which are certainly handy for walking on packed snow and ice, though a bit noisy on tarmac so found myself taking them off yesterday once I got to an area that had been gritted. Today, ironically, there has been something of a thaw.

Came downstairs on Tuesday evening to find Ruth sitting on the dining-room floor with Lola upside-down between her legs pulling lumps of fur out of her backside, having just braved clipping her claws. All due to fear of being berated by Sandra at Reading Rabbits, where we are taking the rabbits tomorrow for their Christmas break. Lola seemed relatively calm once released and proceeded just to wash herself, but we fear she may be biding her time.

This afternoon was our team's scheduled 'At Home' for some of the other staff in our new building. Slightly muted from our end as in the event neither Fay or Ann, whose idea it had been, were in so Paul, Emma minor and myself were forced to act as hosts, with a certain amount of uncharacteristic disgruntlement from Paul about having been lumbered with the job. Despite that, lots of lovely people from Central Berkshire EBP turned up to make merry with us, so it went off fairly well. Now for Crimbo.

Jobsworths; dubious near-neighbours; festive crafting

Our chimney is finally supported! Cliffords have now installed a bespoke gallows bracket in bedroom 3 to support what remains of the rear chimney stack, which should avoid the probably largely theoretical possibility of it crashing through the ceiling and killing one of us. Ruth invited Building Control round last Friday to view it, as per the Building Notice we filed some months ago, only to be told that it looked inadequate to support the stack, and by the way we filled out the wrong form, and ignored the clause that says even if we raise no objections to the proposed work nor give you a deadline by which we will raise objections, you proceed with it AT YOUR OWN RISK and at any point we can turn round and decide we don’t like it. Luckily, by the following Monday, BC had decided that actually it was OK and we received a terse email confirming that everything was satisfactory. What happened in the interim? Was it dangerous on Friday, but not on Monday?

While they were here, Cliffords also repaired the piece of guttering that broke in last year’s snow (probably just in time for it to break again in this year’s snow). It never was on the cards that we were going to allow Norman from three doors down to fix it, but luckily he’s never raised the subject again anyway. On the subject, a week or so ago Ruth was sitting innocent and alone in the living room with the light on and the blind not fully closed, and looked up to see Norman outside on the pavement actually bending down and peering through the living room window. We briefly considered mocking up the scene that he was no doubt hoping to see, but subsequently decided not to humour the old perv.

Another piece of good news is that our somewhat protracted remortgage completed on Monday, following nearly two months spent over what should have been a relatively minor administrative process. Everything was resolved once the two sets of solicitors presumably got tired of firing insults at each other, our guy at Caversham Solicitors offered to make a seemingly very minor amendment to the title document, the other lot said “yeah, all right” and that was that. The whole thing is just orchestrated to DO PEOPLE’S HEADS IN.


Ruth and I had an uncharacteristic frenzy of home-crafting on Sat/Sun afternoon making our own Christmas cards, by printing out photos of snowy scenes from last winter and sticking these onto cards and envelopes purchased from John Lewis a week or so ago. Forgot to buy any glitter, but then that might just have been tacky really. We also decorated my little artificial tree with pretty much all the decorations we had, including Lester, and I bought some cute little bauble lights – battery-powered, to avoid tempting the bunnies with a trailing mains cable.

Monday was our team Christmas lunch at Loch Fyne. No turkey to be seen on the menu, which was fine with me - the meat option was duck, but I opted for gravadlax followed by a whole sea bass. Nice though spent more time than I'd anticipated spitting out bones. Received an excellent Secret Santa gift of a nice bottle of red.

Jamie's; tour of Maidenhead; new flat roof

Met Kate after work on Friday 26^th and at her suggestion tried out the new Jamie’s Italian in the Oracle. Noisy and crowded – by the time we left there were queues at the bar for tables. I had a squid ink pasta dish with scallops and prawns – impressively black pasta and lovely flavour, though for the price thought they could have been a bit more generous with the scallops. Accompanied it with two glasses of a lovely Chardonnay. So to sum up: nice food, but not somewhere you’d go for an intimate relaxed dinner.

Kate and I eschewed Las Iguanas, the first place that came to mind, on the grounds that it's just too loud to have a proper conversation. Concluded that we may both be getting quite old.

Went over to Maidenhead with Ray the following day for another walk, in entirely suitable cold, frosty but dry weather (pictures here). Started with breakfast at the lovely Palmieri’s on Furze Platt Road before striking off across fields towards Pinkneys Green. Crossed the main A308 and headed across country onto Darling’s Lane with its large properties (one of which had this funky elephant in its driveway) and thence to Maidenhead Thicket. We took a detour to Stubbings Nursery to check out its Christmas display – not as OTT as more commercial garden centres but plenty of decorations, including a whole collection of birds made with what looked like real feathers. Being charmed by anything cute and round, I was forced to adopt one of them and have named him Lester.

Proceeded through the thicket, crossing the A4 and coming out onto Cannon Lane, where we begun something of a Clark nostalgia tour, beginning with sneaking along the exclusive Sandisplatt Road to have a snoop at the houses. In fact most of the houses are manifestly uninteresting suburban faux-Georgian with fake pillars, with the exception of the striking Solar House, which Ray remembers running past on cross-country runs as a schoolboy and being very taken with. It is indeed totally unlike any of the houses around it, and one hopes it’s owned by someone sympathetic.

We cut through an alleyway onto Altwood Road and went for a snoop at Altwood School, Ray’s old secondary school, a purpose-built comprehensive which in Ray’s day sounded pretty liberal and wacky by my standards, not having prefects and offering Esperanto as an O-level option. One suspects it’s probably somewhat less wacky these days. We called in for a hot drink at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts before proceeding back past former Clark family residences on Westborough Road and Courthouse Road – the latter being the scene, apparently, of Ray’s being kept off school more than once in the 1970s to assist his parents in unceremoniously ripping original fireplaces and whole chimney breasts out of the house. Not sure about the former, but the latter would be unthinkable nowadays.

We ended the outing by calling in at Ray’s Auntie Barbara’s on Alwyn Road for tea and buttered crumpets. Barbara is an intelligent and inspiring old lady but doesn’t believe in wasting heat, so although her back sitting room was nice and toasty thanks to the gas fire, the rest of her sprawling c. 1920s bungalow was the approximate temperature of an icehouse. Perhaps her generation were just hardier?

Went for a nice dinner with Claire at Prezzo in the evening. The following afternoon Ruth and I finished off the destruction of the back bedroom chimney, although with the unfortunate side-effect of making a hole in the kitchen ceiling (brick dropped onto by then wafer-thin section of floor). Drat.

Cliffords turned up on Monday morning to start repair work on the flat roof covering the rear extension, which leaked in heavy rain a few weeks ago. Our main goal, after speaking with Building Control, is to maintain that it’s a repair and not a replacement, as if it’s a replacement of the whole roof it requires building regulations approval (yawn). The decking under the roof cover was apparently rotted through, so it proved to be a more comprehensive ‘repair’ than originally planned, but Cliffords have apparently taken photos throughout to demonstrate that it has been correctly insulated, etc etc. Here's one (left) of the apparently rotted old roof (yuk) and one I took of the finished product (right).

Structural work; luxury hotels; mail order brides

Took the train down to see my parents on the 13^th (pictures here) – Dad cooked a delicious prawn curry on the Saturday evening and on the Sunday we went for a walk around the village of Middlewood, taking in the odd-looking Middlewood House, seen on this Geograph link. The house looks to be empty and in a poor state of repair – who knows whether it will find an owner willing to pour the necessary money into it. We called in to the newly-revamped Castlefield for a drink – the place was packed out with people eating Sunday roasts, so we had to perch at the bar but Mum and Dad managed to book a table for dinner the following week to try the place out.

Disastrous day a couple of weeks ago when not only the ridge of the roof in the back bedroom leaked in heavy rain and wind, but the flat roof on the bathroom also started letting in a considerable amount of water. We consulted with local roofing company Cliffords (Reading) Ltd who have already given us a quote to fit a gallows bracket. Luckily the problem in the back bedroom is a minor matter of the join between the two houses needing to be sealed better, but the flat roof is likely to need replacing. The extension is 30 years old so the roof may well have reasonably reached the end of its natural life, but it will still be a bill we hadn’t bargained on.

With a view to the gallows bracket: Cliffords came round last week and, very excitingly, fitted something called an acro prop to support the stack in the roof space so that Ruth could start removing the portion below – we are hoping to save £300 by removing the chimney breast ourselves. Last weekend was duly a frenzy of chimney work, with Ruth dismantling the structure and me ferrying buckets of rubble to a waiting Hoppa Bag (cunningly cheaper alternative to Hippobags, distributed by local man) and ferrying the good bricks out to the garage, where we may now have enough bricks stored to be able to build a small structure in the garden. Here’s some footage from the scene. I omitted to photograph the scene where Ruth dropped the chisel down the hole and had to go fishing for it with a pair of barbecue tongs.

Had an appointment in Henley first thing on Monday morning to seek some legal advice from fresh and funky solicitors The Head Partnership, who had been recommended to me as apparently marketing themselves as a new kind of solicitor. Had a brief but helpful meeting with the approachable Melissa, then called in to Maison Blanc for a nice enough but overpriced breakfast next to a table full of au pairs.

After the appointment, returned to Reading station to join my team to travel up to this year’s Lifelong Learning Network National Conference, held this year in Manchester. Spirits rose considerably on checking in to the extremely smart ABode on Piccadilly – high ceilings, enormous bed, flatscreen TV, ‘monsoon' shower, allegedly handmade biscuits and selection of herbal teas and real coffee. Fancied the idea of ordering room service and settling down to watch TV, but dutifully presented for the conference dinner instead and watched several colleagues getting tipsy on refills of pre-dinner complimentary Prosecco. The event the next day was held at The Studio, a self-consciously funky venue a few streets away – lots of coloured portholes and inspirational sayings daubed on the walls, though Godfrey, Jude and I were distracted by the persistent misuse of 'its/it's'. THESE THINGS MATTER, even if you are terribly creative.

This Wednesday was our first day at our new home at Earley Gate, in Spur K of Temporary Office Building (‘TOB’) 1. The building as a whole is a cold spartan place that was never intended to be a permanent structure, but our suite of four rooms has been given an express paint job and isn’t looking too bad. Am quite enjoying having a few more people around us, even though the journey to work now involves a bus ride.

Book Group met at Claire’s house on Wednesday to discuss Richard Wiseman’s 59 Seconds, supposedly an antidote to all those silly self-help books but actually quite similar to a self-help book. We ordered pizzas from Tops Pizza at Cemetery Junction.

Have just been immensely amused by the news that a former boyfriend is now dabbling in the catalogue bride business. Ray met the now ex-wife of my ex-boyfriend Andy in a chippy in Maidenhead – as is the way, she recognised him despite the time lapse and engaged him in conversation, apparently mentioning three times in five minutes the fact that she’s now ‘young, free and single’, though according to Ray her interest seemed to wane on discovering that he lives on a boat. Apparently she and Andy had a total of four (4) children together, all of whom now live with Andy, but best of all, after she and Andy finally broke up, Andy went to Thailand for a holiday and came back with a wife. Hope he warned her about all the kids.

Lowbrow walk; autumn leaves; mortgage frustrations

Went with Claire, Helen and Ruth for a voucher-assisted dinner at Strada on the 28^th (the modern way of eating out in these straitened times) and then on to see Shazia Mirza at South Street Arts, who delivered a funny show but misjudged some of the audience involvement (in brief, chose unwittingly to pick on some people who had come to the show straight from giving a free dinner for the town’s refugee population – cue supportive “ain’t that marvellous” applause from audience where Mirza had evidently intended to make game of them). Going through a member of the audience’s handbag is also possibly a bit of a cheap gag; one that Julian Clary also used when Ray and I saw him at the Wycombe Swan some years ago. Having said that, I do like Mirza’s comedy very much and most of the show was good value.

Took a day off rather randomly on Friday 29^th (just to have a day off really) and decided on a whim to go over to Newbury for a pootle about to see what had changed. As I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I’ve visited my hometown in the last 20 years, the answer was: quite a lot. Ended up having a longer-than-intended walk around the south side of town, taking in the pretty lowbrow Newbury Retail Park, which is sited where I remember Newbury Rugby Club being – this, confusingly, has now moved about half a mile down the road. The retail park was doing a roaring trade – must be those branches of Peacocks, Matalan and Poundstretcher Extra all next to each other. Lunched on a cup of tea and a ham and cheese toastie in the branch of Costa inside the enormous Tesco on Pinchington Lane – the café is on a sort of mezzanine at the back of the shop so that one can enjoy looking out on to the shop floor and taking in multipacks of crisps, children being clouted, and other low-budget supermarket joys.

Ray and I went for another walk on Saturday, starting from the same spot in Sulham Woods but heading the other way, up towards the Thames, along the Thames Path a bit and then back across country via Purley. Stopped for tea at the basic but useful tea place at Mapledurham Lock, where Ray had a chinwag with the lockkeeper and I dwelt on the strong smell of rotting cabbage - the small garden and greenhouse in between the cafe and the lock cottage look in need of a bit of tidying up. Proceeded back across country with a short detour into Tilehurst to have a quick snoop at the strikingly unusual houses in Ridgemount Close.

Didn’t make my usual Hallowe’en display with dried leaves this year, given that it has been eaten by rabbits for the last two years running. I still maintain that Jake’s excessive consumption of Hallowe’en-display leaves in 2008 had nothing to do with his subsequent death not long afterwards. Have been burning black candles instead as a mark of the season.

Helen appeared to have spent most of the week before our Book Group meeting last Wednesday bubbling enormous vats of soup, as three types of Hallowe’en/autumnal soup were on offer: two with pumpkin and one with butternut squash. Managed to put away two bowls of pumpkin and apple, along with a small tonnage of assorted bread and pastries. The book under discussion was Diana Athill’s excellent ruminations on advanced old age, Somewhere Towards the End. Most of us had enjoyed it and agreed that Athill sounds a super old bird.

Ruth and I went to the cinema last Thursday to take in lesbian family-drama The Kids Are All Right, focusing on dominating wine-loving doctor Nic and her flaky wannabe-garden designer partner Jules, and their two children fathered by an anonymous sperm donor, perfect little blonde A-grade waif daughter Joni and mulish-but-really-terribly-sweet son Laser. Good viewing although one feels a bit sorry for Mark Ruffalo’s character being so abruptly dispatched at the end. Was v. impressed with Annette Bening; I’d never formed much opinion on her before – a strong, unglamorous part – fair play to her. Lisa Cholodenko also directed the 1998 movie High Art, which Ruth has a VHS copy of but which I haven’t tackled yet, although I believe Ally Sheedy is in it.

Our attempt to remortgage to a new fixed-rate deal that will shave £200 off our monthly payments has been essentially progressing OK over the last couple of weeks but it’s a bit of a case of two steps forward and one back. The solicitors acting for our prospective new mortgage lender have elected to become obsessed with the Deed of Trust that Ruth and I had set up when we took out our first mortgage together in 2008 – albeit that we are not actually legally required to have one of these and merely chose to do so as a mark of good financial sense. As of today they are quibbling various clauses in it, leading to us going back to the solicitor who originally drew it up, who has responded with “nonsense, they’re just trying to add costs” and has offered to draft a one-page supplementary letter that should do the trick. Jury is still out as to whether it will or not. Have so far successfully repressed urge to ring lenders’ legal firm and challenge that they wouldn’t be asking a married couple for all this cr*p.

Solo walk around the southern side of Newbury

29 October 2010

Greenham House

Caught bus number 1 from Blagrave Street and enjoyed about an hour's meandering journey to Newbury Bus Station, via Theale village and Thatcham. On leaving the bus station on Market Street, I briefly considered popping into the Empire Café for a hot chocolate - this little café on Cheap Street has been there for years although I never remember frequenting it much - but decided to get going instead.

Crossed the railway and wandered into the grounds of Greenham House, which appear still to be a public park and looked well kept. The house itself was looking a bit scruffy but still there. I can't remember its official function during my childhood, but I remember my brother and sister going there for eye tests so it must have been used as a clinic of some sort. It seems now to be some sort of family centre. According to a Google search, the house was built around 1845 and bought by the Corporation of Newbury in 1920 when it was turned into a children's clinic and the grounds turned into Greenham Park. When we were small children, I remember there being caged budgerigars, and quite possibly other animals, round the back of the house, but these went years ago; there used also to be a children's playground.

Left the park and walked along St John's Road to the junction with Catherine Road, where I took a quick pic of these flats (left) that have replaced our old family doctors' surgery, evidently now demolished. After a bit of web scouting, discovered that the practice itself seems to have moved to Monks Lane (along with both Newbury College and Newbury Rugby Club) and is now called the Falkland Surgery.

Looking down Howard Road

Turned up Tudor Road and then left into Howard Road, the eastern end of which has since the 1970s ended abruptly in the Sandleford Link road, a new bit of the A339 built in 1979 (here's a picture of its construction). Prior to its being built, I have dim memories of a tarmac footpath leading from the end of Howard Road, though I can't remember where it led to - over to Greenham Road I suppose. I walked through the subway that goes under the A339 and came out by The Blue Ball pub, which used to be a favourite watering hole of my father's and grandfather's when we were children (probably because it must have been about the nearest pub to our house). The pub is still there, although I don't actually think I ever went into it. According to this, it won a stay of execution in 2008 after being threatened with demolition and replacement with flats.

Turned into Racecourse Road and was pleased to discover that the lovely line of poplars is still there. Continued to the end of the road and bore right into New Road and the Westwood Road estate, where I remember visiting a number of people as a child. I have to say New Road looks a bit bleak today, although I don't remember the estate appearing so as a child. Continued along to the point where the road ends in a short footpath (although today it also ends in a development of large executive homes, just to the left of the footpath) that comes out by St Mary's Greenham. I might have had a quick wander around the churchyard but there was a man loitering in the gateway so I continued on up the road, past the entrance to the vicarage. Unfortunately this can't be seen from the road, but I swear I remember my family going to view it once when we were house-hunting. It was in serious need of renovation at the time and I can't really believe my parents were seriously contemplating buying it, but perhaps they were just curious for a nose around. The main thing I remember about it is that one of the rooms had a hole in the floor. Found a photo of the vicarage here taken in 1987 - this would have been several years after my family viewed it. I wonder what happened to it - whether it's still there, and whether somebody renovated it.

Newbury Retail Park

Came out onto Pinchington Lane and trekked along to Newbury Retail Park and the large Tesco opposite. The Tesco has a branch of Costa inside on an upper level, allowing you to sit and look out over the shop floor, which I did over a cup of tea and a ham and cheese toastie. After lunch I had a quick wander around the retail park, built in the mid-1990s - never been there before but apart from M&S it's pretty lowbrow (Matalan, Peacocks and Poundstretcher Extra all next to each other). It was also packed with cars and people so evidently does well.

Houses on Monks Lane

Crossed over the A339 and briefly admired the new Newbury College buildings on Monks Lane, where it's been since 2002 after moving from its old site at Oxford Road, on the north side of the town. Wandered a little way down Newtown Road and noted that a new development called The Oaks has replaced the Sandleford Rise development - according to this from Sovereign Housing, it forms the third social housing development on this site. Evidently Sandleford Rise itself replaced a 1950s development called Camp Close. I have a dim (and quite possibly incorrect) memory of this name applying to the row of council properties that are still at the eastern end of Monks Lane (see right) - maybe these are vestiges of the former estate. The houses are very similar to those in the Skyllings development on the northern side of the town.

Despite being a bit footsore by this time, decided to walk the full length of Monks Lane and then down the Andover Road back into town. Passed the new development Heather Gardens, which must have been built in the back gardens of houses in Tydehams - cursed infill. This Geograph photo confirms that. I just hope the residents of Heather Gardens feel SUITABLY ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.

Tydehams, one of Newbury's most exclusive roads, contains the impressive Internationale Moderne mansion 'The Haven' (1929, by Thomas Tait). This house fascinated me as a teenager and I managed to snap a picture of it during a wander down Tydehams in about 1990 (see above left). A bit of a tragedy that it's evidently since lost much of its garden to the Heather Gardens development - this Google Earth shot from 2004 (right) would seem to confirm that. The Haven is in the centre, top half of the picture. Here's an awesome back view of it from around 1930. At least the house is still there, and I have to hope that the money gained from the loss of the garden has allowed some kind person to do it up sympathetically. Here's hoping.

Walked down Andover Road past my former school. The Luker building (seen behind railings in the photo) was threatened with demolition a couple of years ago, but seems judging by this to have won a reprieve and is going to be converted into flats. According to the Newbury Today article, St Bart's new 'sustainable school', built with a Building Schools for the Future grant, is scheduled to be in use as from this academic year. The Willow Close development of retirement bungalows opposite the City Playground appears to have been razed to the ground, judging by this hoarding (left), which claims confidently that it's providing homes where people want to live. That's nice. At the roundabout, noted that St John's Post Office, a frequent stop-off point for sweets years ago, is still there.

Made my way back into town and called at Griffin Butchers on Bridge Street for bacon and a game pie.

Cosy conference; Notting Hill; mobile movements

Went up to London on Friday to attend a conference organised by the Further Education Research Association (FERA), a charming organisation that has apparently been around since the 1960s – from the approximate ages of the committee members present, that’s probably when most of them joined. The conference was held in the Regent’s College Conference Centre so involved a pleasant walk through Regent’s Park – the Nash terraces looked to have been recently repainted and were positively shining in an appealing clotted-cream-type fashion. The conference wasn’t well attended – about 30 of us – but that made for a friendly and pleasant gathering. Met up with my friend Amelia from Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Lifelong Learning Network (try saying all that when you answer the phone) and discovered over lunch that Amelia had dropped out of the University of Warwick aged 19. Shared that I had dropped out of Durham at a similar age, and we decided that at least we dropped out of good universities. Always best to be a dropout from a prestigious institution ....

As Ray is currently working on another contract in Chelsea, I accepted his offer of a lift up to London in the morning, even though this meant being ready for 5.45am. We had a rather indifferent breakfast at a branch of Eat on King’s Road and I then made my way over to Baker Street, but was still so early for the conference that I was forced to go for a second breakfast at the Base restaurant on Baker Street (much nicer, but left deservedly rather over-stuffed and caffeine-d).

Went up to London again on Saturday to meet up with Sarah again, this time at Ladbroke Grove tube station. We had a wander around Portobello Market, which is fun but so crowded on a Saturday that you have to concentrate more on fighting through the crowds than on actually looking at things. Sarah observed that there had been a big increase in the number of stalls selling fur, and theorised that fur seemed to be becoming acceptable again. We did indeed see a number of fur stalls and a couple of women looking at fur coats - I had assumed that fur was still not quite the thing to wear but perhaps public opinion has relaxed a bit on this. I can't say I've personally noticed more fur around locally, but probably Reading isn’t the sort of place where many people wear fur coats. We walked down to Notting Hill Gate and took a while to locate a suitable café for a cuppa given necessity of finding somewhere that served soya milk (Sarah is a vegan), but eventually discovered that Caffè Nero does. Later we met Sarah’s partner Chris in the Earl of Lonsdale and had a pleasant catch-up. The pub serves vegan-friendly stout (this is apparently a trademark of drinks from the Samuel Smith Brewery - though I’m not sure what stout generally contains that makes it not). Declined this as I’ve never developed a taste for stout but had a couple of pints of Sovereign Best Bitter.

Minor triumph on Monday as have had a paper accepted for publication in ‘Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning’. Yay me. It is, admittedly, co-authored with the person who actually did the work the paper reports on. A fair division of labour, I feel.

Seem to have finally managed to sever myself from 3. Received a phone call at work on Monday apologising for the telephone customer service, and transferring me to a chap in the cancellations department who had apparently been instructed not to offer me any deals. Subsequent call went fine and I was duly issued with the PAC code, but blimey, what a palaver. Have just made my decision and signed up for a Galaxy S contract with Vodafone. Looking forward to receiving my new phone and exploring its capabilities, which hopefully include brewing my morning coffee, contacting aliens etc.

Gay gags; social media; call centre frustrations

On Saturday night, Ruth and I went along to 'Laugh Out Proud' at South Street Arts, part of the Reading Comedy Festival 2010. It was MC-ed by the excellent Rosie Wilby and featured Julie Jepson, Shelley Cooper and headlined Tom Allen. Wilby and Allen were brilliant; Jepson was OK in that traditional dyke sort of way; Cooper seemed fidgety and nervous of the audience (echoed in this Edinburgh Fringe review from 2007) and her act at South Street contained little about the transitioning process, which you would think would provide fairly rich material for a comic.

Spent Monday afternoon in a >3 hour training session on social media and its applications for businesses. Was briefly introduced to lifestreaming, mashups and Delicious, as well as other more familiar stuff. We were given some academic references on social networks, and there was talk of interconnected nodes. Ho hum.
Recent talk of smartphones, apps etc has made me fancy upgrading my phone, so have been browsing online for deals. My boss Fay has just acquired an HTC Desire, which she claims not to know how to use yet, but it looks pretty. Kate spent some time at our last dinner showing me her Galaxy S, which looked jolly nice. Should probably restrain myself and be a bit sensible though. In the meantime, am currently spitting feathers at 3 Customer Services after two abortive phone calls in the last week or so. On the first occasion, I called to check the end date of my contract. The call went something like this:

Me: Hello, could you tell me the end date of my contract please?
Call Centre Drone: How are you today, Ms Thomas?Me: I’m extremely well, thank you. Could you tell me the end date of my contract, please?CCD: Before I tell you the end date of your contract, let me just say this: You have been a wonderful customer.
Me: Thank you.
CCD: I would like to tell you about some deals we have that may interest you.Me: I don’t have time for a long conversation. Could you please just tell me the end date of my contract, please?
The conversation continued a while longer in this fruitless vein before I hung up and sent a message through My3 asking the question, and received an answer a day or so later. Foolishly, I tried to ring them again yesterday to place a request for a PAC code pending imminent likely switch to another network. CCD2 (although it could well have been the same person) refused to action my request until he had had a chance to tell me about all the tempting deals available that might induce me to stay with 3. Another hanging up ensued and have put in an electronic request for the code. Telephone contact is evidently best avoided.

More Raja Yoga; substandard art; crafting

My new Alce Harfield painting is now ensconced on the living room chimney breast. Am mightily pleased with it.

On Saturday, went to Part 2 of the Raja Yoga course. As is the way of these things, several people who were at the first session had dropped out, including two overly religious types, which made for a pleasanter atmosphere. Marginally more time was spent practising meditation, and some of the lecture was interesting/useful - we were introduced to the concept of 'sanskaras' which seems to relate to the standard positive-thinking-book advice of using positive affirmations to overcome subconscious thinking patterns, though it sounds more poncey to say it in Sanskrit.

While killing some time before the class I went for a wander around part of the new West Village, a housing development that's being built on the former site of Battle Hospital, along with a mammoth new Tesco. According to this piece from 2007, it's intended to be "a vibrant 'happening' place to live". Not sure about that. I've certainly seen the Oxford Road referred to as a 'vibrant' and 'colourful' area, but sometimes suspect that to be a euphemism for 'high crime rate'.

Tesco caused a certain amount of controversy while preparing the site a few years ago by felling a large number of trees that were protected by Tree Preservation Orders - and presumably then just going "Oops, sorry" when challenged. I sent them an outraged letter of complaint at the time together with my cut-up Clubcard and since then have only shopped there when there's no alternative - not that I imagine that bothers them in the slightest. There's little remaining of the old hospital buildings apart from the entrance gate, which seems to have been kept. I was, my mother tells me, born in Battle Hospital, though I don't remember it myself.

Trekked up to St Joseph’s Convent School on Sunday (via Burger King to address Ruth’s low blood sugar) to support the 3rd Annual Reading Art Exhibition & Sale. We paid our £3 to get in and spent a while browsing the exhibits, which were mainly paintings with a few ceramics thrown in. Apart from a few cute pots, didn’t see anything that particularly grabbed me, and some of the stuff was truly frightful – series of paintings of cutesy animals in clothes, sort of cross between Beatrix Potter and Sylvanian Families, and ghastly New Agey fat nymph/angel surrounded by stuck-on flowers and glitter. In fairness, I think it was open to both amateurs and professionals.

The school itself looks somewhat in need of a refurb – one wonders if the decision to accept boys as of this year, and the change of name to ‘St Joseph’s College’, is part of a drive to improve its financial position. They do have a pleasant garden out back with some mature trees, and what looked like a grotto-type area with a statue of the Virgin Mary. The exhibition featured presumably recently-produced bannerstands with pictures of boys strategically inserted.

We made our way home via the Forbury Retail Park and a peruse of Hobbycraft, where Ruth surprised me for lingering for quite a while looking at technical drawing equipment, while I hung around aimlessly feeling somewhat footsore. There are an amazing number of magazines dedicated to crafting, it seems. Was also intrigued by an entire book devoted to designs for knitted toilet roll holders. Have been vaguely ruminating for a while over the idea of taking up sewing, thinking that it would be useful to make one’s own clothes – though I daresay it takes one a while to reach the necessary degree of proficiency. May attempt to acquire a secondhand sewing machine and learn the basics – may set an initial target of making a kaftan out of an old duvet cover.

On Tuesday we duly trooped up to view Temporary Office Building 1 and were entranced by the sheer drabness of Spur K, the ‘wing’ that is to be our new home. At present it looks as though it was last occupied around 30 years ago, but apparently an express paint and refurb job is planned prior to our arrival.

Sulham Valley; Raja Yoga; impending new premises

Parked up with Ray at Sulham Woods early on Saturday morning for the first in what is supposed to be a regular series of once-a-month walks to aid with general fitness (in between all the other good things I am obviously doing, like going to the gym, Pilates, running on the spot etc). We had coffee and bacon rolls in the car park off Sulham Hill while watching a whole crowd of militant-looking dog walkers arriving and striding off into the woods, and then ambled off the other way down the hill to the left turn into Nunhide Lane, a public bridleway running north-south from Sulham down to Theale. It was misty when we started out (about 7.45am) but once the sun broke through it turned really quite nice. Saw a number of pillboxes (including this cute one that appeared to have a tree growing out of it) which Ray thought could have formed one of several 'stop lines' of the little concrete cuties; this document suggests that an anti-tank ditch was dug from the Kennet & Avon Canal through the Sulham Gap to the Thames at Pangbourne, so I guess they were probably connected to that. Anyway. Military history not really my thing. This person appears to have done a whole photographic study of pillboxes in the Sulham Valley, which apparently offers rich pickings for pillbox enthusiasts.

The walk passed Nunhide Farm, which has a beautiful old farmhouse (not the house that can be seen in the Geograph link - that's just a regular house although probably it belongs to the farm) which looked to us as though it was empty and in need of some TLC, and then off up behind the farm passed the listed dovecote known as The Pigeon Tower, built by a local Reverend for his lady love so that she could see it from her house and think of him. The walk skirted the edge of Tilehurst and down Pincents Lane, past Pincents Manor and the now-defunct Pincents Manor golf course, to the retail area that has, really quite excitingly, been acquired by IKEA, although nothing further seems to be happening at the moment and there seem to be the usual objections on traffic grounds, although as the site is just off a motorway junction and not near a residential area it would seem more than ideal, but maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, the rest of the walk took in a footbridge over Sulham Brook and the Moor Copse nature reserve, which, along with approximately 2,000 other places locally, is reputed to have provided Kenneth Grahame with inspiration for The Wind in the Willows and, rather more interestingly, has apparently been the scene of some woodland naughtiness, although I can't say we saw anyone lurking about hopefully. We walked down a section of the old A340 over Hogmoor Bridge and Ray spotted the cat's eyes still in the old road. We then made our way to Tidmarsh and then across country back to Sulham Woods.

In the afternoon, I went along to Battle Library for the first session of a three-part 'Introduction to Raja Yoga Meditation', run on behalf of Brahma Kumaris UK by the charming Clive and Esme. Rather more academic than I had expected and rather less time spent actually meditating, but I shall go along next week and see how it pans out. Met Clare, who seemed to share my view that we were just hoping to calm and focus the mind, rather than being particularly interested in God, the soul, etc. Our homework was, among other things, to spend the week repeating the affirmation "I am a being of light".

Our team's office move to Temporary Office Building 1 is getting ever closer and is now scheduled for mid-November, although it seems to have run into a number of hitches. Despite having been scheduled over a year ago, the 'new' building apparently still has no computer points and has water leaking from the ceiling in one place. In addition, several of the rooms are apparently locked and the keys cannot be found. Given that the university owns the buildings, why the locks can't simply be changed is a bit of a mystery, but there you go. Not starting to pack quite yet.

Crusty pubs; Cardiff; Millennium trilogy

The electrical work is now officially complete, except that I think some tweaks are needed to the new porch light's motion sensor. Probably need to consult the manual I was left, though Adam has offered to come back and tweak it if need be. The new LED downlights in the upstairs hallway and stairwell look great. Just need to do up the rest of the décor to match now.

After an unrewarding meeting at Oxford & Cherwell Valley College last Friday afternoon, met Claire at the Hobgoblin where we met up with some friends of her boyfriend, who has recently returned home to the US. The Hobgoblin is a small, quirky pub, very real ale-oriented and with a strictly-enforced rule about not using your mobile phone inside - one girl near me who tried to received a bellowed "Outside, please!" from the American barmaid. A number of people seem to have their own tankards behind the bar - unfamiliar with this but I guess it goes on. Spotted one woman sitting at the end of the bar with a handle-free tankard with what looked like Elvish runes on it. Probably sums up the clientele. I had a pint of something quite nice that I've forgotten the name of.

Had lovely long weekend with Mum on another UK city break, to follow on from our trip to Manchester last year. Cardiff was this year's destination, suggested by me as I thought Mum might enjoy visiting her hometown; also not too far to travel. We met at Cardiff Central station mid-morning on Friday and went straight to The Plan in the Morgan Arcade for a second breakfast. We then went and dumped our bags at our hotel, the Premier Inn Cardiff City Centre, before walking back into the city and picking up a map for the Cardiff Centenary Walk, which began with St John's Church (where we were accosted by an enthusiastic young woman asking if we wanted her to pray with us) and then moved on to Cardiff's indoor market which still has rabbits and kittens (among other things) on its upper level. Resisted the urge to a) become extremely depressed; b) buy all of them and take them home with me. The route also took in the Animal Wall that runs alongside Bute Park (apparently a programme to restore the animals kicked off in July of this year, which will include restoring the anteater's missing nose) and the exterior walls of Cardiff Castle. We gave the Great British Cheese Festival a miss as it was £8.50 to get in - you'd want quite a few free cheese samples for that.

The walk then took us to Cathays Park via a quick peek at a little stretch of water that was the dock feeder for the defunct Glamorganshire Canal - the pedestrian underpass that leads under the main road was formerly part of the route of the canal. Apparently the towpath is still visible, but we couldn't see it. After a look at the impressive civic buildings at Cathays Park we went to visit the National Museum of Wales, where we tried to find the leatherback turtle that Mum remembered from previous visits, but discovered on enquiring that he was in one of several galleries closed for refurbishment. We were able to admire the impressive entrance hall and staircases, and have tea and cake in the ground floor café.

We had dinner on the Saturday evening at Giovanni's, a long-established Italian restaurant that Mum had heard good reports of. Kitschy decor, largely involving Giovanni in poses with assorted minor celebrities, and over-loud music which Mum gamely asked them to turn down (which they did, ever so slightly). Had a delicious seafood pasta.

Sunday was mainly spent visiting Cardiff Bay - we decided to walk from the hotel down through Butetown, which Mum remembered as an area of densely-packed terraced housing but which apparently underwent a massive clearance and rebuilding in the 1960s. The area to the west of Bute Street still looked depressed to us and as though it hadn't been significantly uplifted by the new Bay development. After some difficulty we located the Butetown History & Arts Centre, which appeared to be undergoing a refit and consisted of only a smallish number of books and photographs, but did come complete with a chatty elderly man who regaled us with stories of the history of the area before talking Mum into buying a book.

We went for lunch at the lovely Bosphorus overlooking the Bay before walking out along the Cardiff Bay Barrage Coast Path to have a look at the Barrage, and then back to Mermaid Quay (the main hub) to catch the Waterbus back up the Taff into the city. In the evening we went for a curry at the Juboraj, which apparently enjoys the 'very enviable position of being at the pinnacle of Bangladeshi and Indian cuisine in South Wales today'. Hmm. Meal was nice enough though we were the only diners in the restaurant, which never adds to the atmosphere. Made our respective ways home on the Monday morning after another breakfast at The Plan.

My Book Group has just romped through Part 3 of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, which seems to have been a major hit with all of us except Claire. We are, of course, all completely in love with Blomkvist - which I can't help now pronouncing musically Blooom-kvist after seeing the Swedish film of Part 1. Also had a surprisingly OK Singapore chow mein from the Chinese takeaway across the road from Lesley's.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Hairdressing angst; bleak suburbia; messing about in boats

Rant for the week: prices of ladies’ haircuts. Have realised that I may be forced to move on from Alison Hair, the suburban pensioner-friendly salon at the end of my road that charges me a reasonable £21, as the lovely Lisa has substantially reduced her hours and the salon owner looks a tad too much like Bet Lynch for me to fancy booking in with her. This means though that if I want to pay less than £40 for a cut and blow dry I’ll have to either find another old-lady salon or cut my own hair. Ruth recommended Karin, the mobile hairdresser whom she and Helen have been using for the last 10 years or so, but although Karin seems a pleasant woman and does a good job on their hair, I fear her ditsiness and my anal-retentiveness would be an explosive combination (she seems to manage to get lost each time on the way to the house and sees nothing wrong with changing their appointment times at short notice, often to something patently obviously in the middle of the working day).

Visited four town centre hairdressers to get a representative view of the going rate, but was quoted around £40 by all of them, despite the fact that all I wanted was an inch off the ends. One of the salons I visited, Kirokara Hairdressing on Duke Street, apparently offer state-of-the-art Shiatsu massage chairs, but even that wasn't enough of a lure. They also have the cheek to offer something called 'Pamper Me Mondays' at only 'a credit crunching £80' – obviously some kind of merchant bankers’ credit crunch. Also the stylist I spoke to looked as though he had a gammy eye, but I guess that shouldn't be held against him. I ended up having a dry trim at Heidi's on Union Street (aka Smelly Alley) for £21, which covered not more than five minutes in the chair with a supremely uninterested stylist. Came home and booked in for the next available Saturday with Lisa, in a month's time. There's nothing for it but to be better organised.

Paid my first ever visit to South Ruislip last Friday to visit Sarah, a friend from PhD days whom I had not seen for about six years, partly because she’s been living in Paris until recently and I’ve been too slack to get around to arranging a visit. Had a great few hours’ catch-up though we had to postpone our planned evening drink in Notting Hill as Sarah had woken up with a frozen shoulder. From what I saw of South Ruislip it’s a rather bleak pebble-dashed suburb the centre of which seems to consist of a row of Chinese restaurants, tanning salons etc flanking the main road from the tube station. Sarah and her partner Chris are currently living cheaply in a house owned by a friend but I gathered that, being city people, there was some doubt as to whether they would be likely to be able to bear living there long-term.

Went to the Royal County of Berkshire (aka Newbury) Show on Saturday, for the first time in about 15 years. Watched the heavy horses doing their thing and then what I gather is called a pony scurry. We met up with Ruth’s aunt for lunch, who got us guest access to the Members’ Enclosure where we had hog roast. After lunch had a bit of a wander round to look at the animals, including llamas, pigs and chickens but managed to miss seeing the cattle so no marvelling at enormous bulls etc. I was hoodwinked into buying a far too large tub of feta-stuffed chilis, which I will now have to spend the next month or so eating.

Had the excitement on Monday of a trip down the Thames on Ray’s boat. He and his friend Alan have now completed a boat-handling course and took the boat out on its maiden voyage last week. Seems to be going well although I gather some things (e.g. rope throwing) take a bit of getting the hang of. They picked Ruth and me up from alongside Christchurch Meadows and we had a lovely pootle down the river to Pangbourne, where we moored up for a second breakfast, and then on to Goring, where we turned round just before the lock and returned to Reading. Saw quite a number of herons and Ruth claimed to have seen a kingfisher. We both had a go at steering – takes a severe degree of concentration at first but presumably gets easier.

As of today (Wednesday) Adam from AHL Electrical and two colleagues are thumping about in the house doing the various tasks that form part of ‘Electrical work 2010’. Still not sure I’ve bought the right bulb for the new porch light but hoping they will advise me. Corraling the bunnies safely has proved a bit of a challenge. Methinks they will go for a couple of days’ board at Reading Rabbit Rescue the next time we have any work done.

Tapas; evening route marches; seaside

Had a lovely dinner with Kate at the Alto Lounge on Friday 3^rd. This was positively reviewed on eatmytown in April – am more or less in agreement with the comments including re the default 175ml wine glasses. Kate and I had the tapas, which was lovely although their tapas menu does contain some dishes that are unusual and possibly not 100% typically Spanish (honey-glazed shredded 5 spice pork belly?). My main complaint is that when they first opened their egg & bacon stack off the breakfast menu was served with maple syrup and was delicious; some time afterwards they sneakily changed this to golden syrup. No, it’s not the same thing. Golden syrup is used to make flapjacks. You don’t eat it on your breakfast.

Walked up to the marina on the Sunday morning to have breakfast with Ray. He had managed to turn the boat round to enable painting of the unpainted side, though I gather not without a certain amount of difficulty and photographing by fellow boat owners. Unfortunately it started raining shortly after we started our breakfast on the rear deck, but we erected the umbrella and carried on.

Went out with Ruth for what I thought was going to be a brief early evening stroll on Wednesday 8^th and ended up, rather surprisingly at her suggestion, walking along the Thames to Sonning. It was a lovely evening and a very pleasant walk (pictures here) though the scenery improves once one passes the gas towers and Thames Valley Business Park. I managed to throw off my slight concern at not having had time to research buses home from Sonning, as I am often told I should be more spontaneous. We walked along a lovely stretch of the river past a number of narrowboats moored up. At Sonning Bridge we left the Thames Path and turned off up into the village – Sonning is a wealthy, immaculate, chocolate-box village that is pleasant for a stroll through but looks a bit sterile to live in (I say this, obviously, in the full knowledge that I am unlikely ever to be rich enough to do so anyway). We made our way to The Bull and had a drink outside and then dinner, to make the walk fully worthwhile. We left at 8pm and did the roughly hour-long walk back to Caversham, in semi-darkness for the last stretch. Quite a lot of exercise for one evening.

Possibly brought on by cabin fever after having had a week off work at home, Ruth booked us a last minute weekend in Bournemouth last weekend (pictures here). We took a lovely direct train on the Friday morning and checked in to the Bournemouth Westcliffe Premier Inn, a monster of a new hotel situated on Poole Road on the western side of the town. After lunch we went to visit the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, an incredible emporium of OTT Victoriana that Sir Merton and Lady Russell-Cotes had built around 1900 to house their private collection of paintings, furniture, miscellaneous curios and things nicked from foreign folk abroad. The interior is so gaudily decorated and so stuffed with things that one feels mildly queasy after a while. Even the house itself, originally called East Cliff Hall, would have done well for a moderating hand – Mr Russell-Cotes had apparently not been able to resist tweaking his architect’s design, evidently deciding that it contained insufficient turrets and other random twiddly bits, and the resulting house is a mad incoherent fantasy, though according to Sir Merton it was supposed to be a fusion of Scottish Baronial and Italian Renaissance. The Russell-Cotes had travelled extensively abroad and had brought back souvenirs a-plenty; the guide to the Mikado’s Room quotes Merton as saying that they were so taken with Japan they filled around a dozen trunks with assorted antique artefacts to ship back to England. In some cases one does wonder how legitimately they came by some of the stuff – the blurb in one of the rooms relates the particularly amusing story of the Empress Eugenie of France visiting Russell-Cotes Towers and spotting an elaborate dresser that, the last she knew, had been in one of her houses. Whether Sir Merton and Lady blushed and gave it back to her isn’t recorded.

After a late-afternoon film (Tamara Drewe) and a brief stop-off to look at the light show in the square, we had dinner at Ristorante La Piazza, where I had vitello pizzaiola and we shared a bottle of Sauvignon Friuli. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at a couple of gay bars in the Triangle area, apparently part of my education: The Branksome , populated by some variously craggy and desperate-looking trannies, and the glossier DYMK with a younger clientele. Basically though I just don’t like noisy bars, gay or otherwise, so gritted my teeth throughout much of the time we were there.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at the lovely and very convenient Olive Bistro and then, after a quick whiz into WHSmith to satisfy my urge for an A-Z, took the bus to Poole and had a (slightly longer than planned) walk down Canford Cliffs Road and the surrounding very well-heeled streets down to the cliffs, where we briefly admired the view before walking through Pinecliff Gardens down to the sea. Stopped for tea in the Terrace Bar of the Branksome Beach restaurant before walking back along the beach towards Bournemouth, via a quick stroll around Alum Chine. Took the West Cliff Lift back up to town level and popped into the Bournemouth Highcliff Marriott Hotel where Ruth gamely tried to book us a table for dinner in the Highcliff Grill, but we were told they were full. Damn them and their nice-sounding seafood. As Ruth talks dead posh we assumed it wasn't simply because we were wearing jeans and waterproofs. Anyway, walking back inland we found the lovely Westpoint and stopped off for whitebait (me), a pint of prawns (R) and two Budweisers.

We returned to our hotel room to chill for a few hours – had the novelty of a nice bubble bath in a bath that doesn’t leak – before trying out the Ciao Restaurant – nice pizza but noisy and a bit of a trek. The cabbie who drove us back to the hotel deflated our spirits temporarily by telling us that it was mainly younger people who hung out in that part of town and suggested a club in a different part of town that apparently we might enjoy (presumably equipped with comfy sofas, Zimmer frame access etc). On the Sunday I left Ruth in bed and went for an early-morning walk as, ironically, it was a beautiful morning and the nicest weather of the weekend. Took a number of blue-sky beach pics before joining Ruth for breakfast and then the train back to Reading.

My first visit to Bournemouth was for a week’s holiday in the company of my primary school friend Celia and her family in 1980 (a few pics here). Celia’s family owned a (detached, with driveway) holiday home in Sandbanks, additional to the sizeable property they owned back in Newbury. I remember having a pleasant enough holiday despite Celia’s somewhat stuffy mother and her father’s obsession with his SodaStream¹. Since then, I’ve only visited for a couple of days, one in the company of my family, as I remember Mum and I having a row in one of the town centre parks, and the second with Ray sometime in the mid-1990s, when I got badly sunburnt shoulders after a sunny walk along the beach.


¹ What is with the recent revival of these? They were a white elephant in the first place along the lines of the Sinclair C5. This MSN 'Most embarrassing gadgets' link has it about right. Of all the complicated ways to get a fizzy drink. You have to buy a bottle of (say) cola-flavoured concentrate which you then fire through the machine and it comes out as a fizzy and vaguely cola-flavoured drink. As opposed to just going to a shop and buying a can of Coke. Bizarre.