Fermented cabbage; garden squares; local produce

A new Oriental supermarket has opened up on Friar Street that sells kimchi, so I have managed to obtain some following my unsuccessful attempt back in April. I forget the new shop’s name but there’s probably little point in remembering it as doubtless it won’t be long before it’s closed down and the owners do a runner overnight. Have also purchased a large packet for my parents, at Mum’s request, so it is currently festering in my fridge in readiness for when I see them next. Disconcertingly, though, the last time I returned to the shop, their kimchi supplies were apparently sold out and the man at the checkout claimed that there had been a big run on it, exclaiming “So popular!” and raising his arms in a 'what can you do' gesture. I hadn’t imagined that Reading would have a large army of kimchi fans, but was briefly cheered at the thought that the townspeople might be unexpectedly sophisticated. In reality, of course, the keen kimchi-munchers are likely to be overseas university students, rather than fat tattooed people from Whitley.

Spent a pleasant Friday in London with Ray on the 16th, in the main to have a look at two garden squares owned by the Cadogan Estates where Home Counties Turf Care have recently been employed to do some hard landscaping. We started the day with hot chocolate at the Marketplace Restaurant in Chelsea Farmers Market, the latter a faintly ludicrous name for the nice but hardly rustic collection of expensive shops and restaurants. I duly admired the new paths and edging in Cadogan Gardens and Hans Place and we popped in for a nose around St Columba’s Presbyterian Church of Scotland on Pont Street. We had intended to visit the Saatchi Gallery but discovered on arrival that it was closed for a private function, so we had a leisurely lunch instead at the Gallery Mess, the restaurant next door to the gallery that’s housed in the old Duke of York’s officers’ mess. The restaurant’s otherwise attractive interior is decorated with a number of neon installations, including a dodgy one of a woman on all fours with the word ‘Forgiveness’ (see this Independent review).

Had a lovely if expensive dinner with Ruth at Myalacarte on the 23^rd - I was aware that the restaurant makes a point of serving local produce where this is obtainable, but this did lead to some amusing descriptions on the menu, including one dish that came with ‘Basingstoke watercress’. I’m not sure that just calling it ‘watercress’ mightn’t have made it sound more appetising. We chuckled also at the 'mixed Goring Heath leaves'. Ordered the ‘pink carved Yattendon woodpigeon breast’ for my starter followed by fillet steak and treacle start and cream (which we accompanied with a dessert wine) before heading home for the blood pressure cuff. All delicious and beautifully presented so with hindsight my assessment of the restaurant last year might have been a tad harsh.

In an attempt to keep up with the young people, I have made the effort to master using predictive text, which is largely useful once you get the hang of it, but the phone does seem occasionally to possess an atypical vocabulary. I sent a recent text message to Ray part of which was supposed to read ‘… otherwise I will forward to your mum’s’. Using predictive text meant that what the phone wrote was ‘… otherwise I will forward to your nun’s’. Surely ‘mum’ has to be a more commonly used word than ‘nun’? Bizarre.

Brief pseudo gas leak excitement last Monday, when our team returned to the office after a work 'picnic' (held in meeting room due to rainy weather) and were alerted by a hissing noise coming from a pipe just above the entrance door and a gassy smell. Cue evacuation of building and standing around in the car park for an hour, while the university’s security services investigated. The upshot, ludicrously, was that the smell had not been gas but just stale air being forced through a pipe, and was part of a testing exercise being carried out on some of the pipework as part of the current building works. The testers hadn’t been sure where the end of the pipe was and had been going to judge that according to which group of staff panicked and fled their building. Doesn’t seem quite the best way of doing things.

On the way back from a meeting in London last Tuesday I visited The Building Centre on Store Street - never been there before but some quite interesting displays including the ‘Transforming the Boroughs’ project. Outside in the street, there appeared to be a 'We Love Store Street' celebration going on, apparently part of the London Festival of Architecture. Sweet.

Our chilli plant is producing quite a few quite large chillis. Difficult to know how much larger they’ll get but I’m assuming they are supposed to turn red at some point. The plant is just labelled Chilli Pepper (Hot), which doesn’t give much away. Harley did take a little bite out of one fruit before I could stop him, but didn’t appear to suffer any ill effects.

Sturdy TVs; meditation; afternoon tea

The news of the ‘end of the line’ for analogue TVs reminded me that I’ve been trying for a while to convince my 10-year-old 28” Beko TV that it’s coming to the end of its useful life, but it continues in robust health. Given that it wasn’t particularly expensive when I bought it, and it was a make I’d never heard of at the time, I’m quite impressed. I would quite like an excuse to buy a new flatscreen jobbie though so have been trying to drop hints to it, but thus far it has refused either to explode or to throw itself from its perch.

Have just had a pleasant few days off work, much of it spent aimlessly bumbling. On Thursday, took myself to Oxford for the day, using the bus for a change – takes longer than the train but cheaper and goes from Caversham. Went to visit Inner Space Oxford, an offshoot of the Global Retreat Centre mentioned in a previous post. Attended a lunchtime guided meditation session, involving sitting in rows in a white room staring at a large orange oval shape on one wall. Quite good although I had my usual problem of drifting off during guided meditations (see previous post), in this case recovering my concentration to discover that I was supposed to have left the physical realm and become pure light. Perhaps a tad advanced for beginners. On the way out I impulsively bought a DVD containing a selection of visual meditations, which I have been trying out this week. Lots of pleasant scenes of nature, inspiring messages etc. Bit naff but it does beat just sitting for 10 minutes attempting to focus on the breath but actually looking around the living room and checking watch.

Then went for a meander around the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, now that I can get in free – was inspired by recent visit to the Harcourt Arboretum to become a Friend of the Garden, as this apparently allows free entry not only to the Garden and Arboretum but also to Kew – as the entrance fee to Kew is about £13 this seemed quite a good deal.

Went up to the marina in the evening to see Ray and had a pleasant pasta dinner. Two boats in the narrowboat marina have acquired kittens, apparently from the same litter, which were scampering in and out of Ray’s boat in a fashion I thought quite cute, until one of them was sick on the floor.

On Friday, drove down to Herefordshire to spend a couple of days with Mum. Have discovered, among other things, that I am oblivious to the plight of suffering farm animals. Mum popped out to the local shop early on Saturday morning and I went to sit out on the patio with a magazine, but was disturbed by a sheep persistently bleating very close to the hedge, so after throwing a few words of abuse its way I eventually went inside. A couple of hours later, it dawned on us that it was staying in the same spot an awfully long time and, on investigating, Mum discovered that it had got its head stuck in the fence. She duly phoned the farmhouse and, a speedy 45 minutes or so later, the farmer arrived to release it.

Later in the day we went out for a short walk along the disused railway line from Llanfoist Crossing to the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal, a dinky little canal that is apparently completely landlocked and not connected to the rest of the canal system. It looked a lovely spot for a pleasant meander in a boat, although how you get a boat onto it from anywhere else is a bit of a mystery. After the walk we went for tea at the Llanwenarth Hotel near Abergavenny. We were restrained enough to order only one full tea (sandwiches; scones and cream; assortment of cakes) between us, with a couple of extra scones for good measure.

Later in the evening we cooked an interesting fusion supper of keema matar and Korean fried squash (ho-pahk juhn) made with a couple of courgettes from Dad’s garden. One of the courgettes had grown quite large and bulbous so was quite proud of myself for handling it. Now I just need Ruth to get rid of the really big potato that’s lurking at the back of the vegetable rack.

We also made a summer pudding (although all I did was boil the fruit) which turned out quite well. Took this picture immediately Mum had freed it from its bowl, in case it collapsed, but it held firm. Quite impressed.

On Sunday went for a last Sunday lunch at the farmhouse at Ashbury where Ruth's aunt has lived for the last 50 years, prior to her imminent move to a smaller house. Much of her packing had been done but Ruth managed to purloin quite a large number of posh-looking wine glasses, which I will no doubt break.

Had another day off on Monday which I mainly spent doing useful jobs (going to gym; sweeping debris off kitchen floor, etc). Was interrupted late afternoon by a lady conducting an Ipsos Mori survey (must get new front door with spyhole), which I reluctantly agreed to participate in - it ended up taking about 40 minutes due to a combination of the repetitive nature of the questions and her seeming lack of expertise with the technology she was using. Just when she had finally finished, Harley bounded in, ran over to her, stuck his head in her bag and then knocked the cable out of the back of her laptop. Cue several minutes of ‘oh dear, I think I’ve lost everything’, while I remonstrated with Harley somewhat unconvincingly and tried to simultaneously convey sympathy and impatience for her to leave. Eventually she left, saying that I was the first person this had happened with.

She also mentioned that she’d had quite a good result in our area with getting people to complete the survey. Made mental note to move to area where more of the residents have day jobs.

Jasmine; dentists; education events

Charmed that the jasmine growing around the front door has produced lots of attractively scented flowers recently. After the winter it was looking brown and crisp and Ruth was speculating, rather more hopefully than I thought kind, that it might be dead. But no. Look how pretty.

Graduation ceremonies took place last week so the campus was awash with young (surely, younger than they used to be?) students with, in some cases, elaborately overdressed family members. I think I managed to appear in a number of family photos while making my way along the cloisters on the way back from lunch.

Intrigued by the report of the appearance of Jesus on a drainpipe in Coventry, though I have to say it looks a slight stretch of the imagination to me. If this degree of imagination is required, I reckon a pair of discarded pants on the bedroom floor this morning was a dead ringer for the Virgin Mary.

Went for the usual thrice-yearly scrape and polish with hygienist last Thursday. I took the perhaps unprincipled decision to abandon NHS dentists about three years ago after being registered as an NHS patient in three different dental surgeries in Reading within the space of a few years: one decided to stop accepting NHS patients; the next was a shabby little hole containing an abrasive Greek bint whom I never remember cracking a smile, followed by a surgery in Caversham with a semi- abandoned air and a Vicky Pollard-like receptionist, where the dentist probably had an adequate grasp of English but preferred not to use any of it during the consultation, except for an "Ah! You need filling!" towards the end. At that point I decided I needed communication skills in addition to a second opinion (my previous, only, filling had been around 20 years earlier and I was a bit sceptical) so registered at a private dental practice. I'm sure their technical competence is no greater than NHS dentists (my new dentist confirmed that I did, indeed, need the filling) but their customer service and communication is infinitely better. Even the hygienist is a softened version of the ferocious Nazi witch prototype that I remember NHS hygienists fitting when I was younger. After the hygienist’s appointment, my dentist, a pleasant jolly woman who was undoubtedly head girl of her private school in a former life, told me, as usual, that my teeth were wholly uninteresting and threw in a jovial parting comment about flossing, before charging me £35 for the 5-minute consultation. This is the life. Next stop BUPA.

Spent last Friday at the National Strategic Skills Audit South East Regional Roadshow, which involved taking the train to Gatwick Airport and then getting a taxi to the Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick which, despite the name, is only a short car drive involving a motorway journey from Gatwick Airport. No wonder the fare was £16. The hotel is a bizarre faux-Mediterranean affair with its own golf course, which was awash with elderly golfers – in fact my cab driver nearly took out one particularly doddery looking specimen on the way up the drive. The event itself was well organised though did involve the compere pleading with people during the welcome address not to bugger off after lunch what with the lure of it being Friday/sunny/Andy Murray playing at Wimbledon. Didn’t entirely work, given that each table sat 10 people and mine was down to 4 after the lunch break.

Ruth and I wandered briefly into Reading’s new branch of The Range on Saturday. According to their hyperbolic website, The Range’s wares range “from everything you’ve ever dreamt of to anything you could ever imagine”. In practice, it’s a bit like Hobbycraft combined with Matalan combined with Homebase. It does sell rabbit food, which could be useful. I spent 59p on a ‘Harvest Munch’ snack for the bunnies, which they have so far spurned. Here it is placed temptingly on the floor, plus Lola’s bottom as she hops past it.

Went to another event on Sunday, as I had volunteered a while ago to attend a day of the first-ever Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College in Crowthorne. By the time the event came around, both the universities minister David Willetts and film mogul/founder of Skillset David Puttnam had pulled out, making it distinctly less relevant to Lifelong Learning Networks than it could have been. Bits of the day were interesting, though, and Kenneth Baker was good value. Spent a predictable portion of the day envying people who go to school in such surroundings. Here's one of the school buildings and a rather nice woody glade where I ate my lunch.
Managed to follow the wrong crowd of people on the way in to the College grounds and initially found myself in a gymnasium about to register for a chess tournament. Realised just in time. Phew.