Coving; photography; blood-letting

Branched out into some uncharacteristic manual work on the house recently by removing the coving from the master bedroom ceiling. A brief bit of desk research beforehand paid dividends in that it suggested beginning by breaking the coving in the middle with a hammer rather than starting off by trying to prise it off the walls. This proved an excellent suggestion and the whole lot was gone within 3-4 hours, which was tiring but satisfying. Not original coving, but that stuff people put on thinking it adds 'character' (poisoned concept), so I don't feel guilty.

Had unexpectedly solo but surprisingly pleasant trip up to London on Saturday morning, starting off by treating myself to brunch at the Market Place branch of Carluccio’s just off Oxford Street. Then to the Photographers’ Gallery to see American photographer Sally Mann’s exhibition The Family and The Land, which I had been prompted to go and see by a recent Guardian Weekend piece. The exhibition, apparently Mann’s first solo exhibition in the UK, featured four different sets of photographs in four different rooms, one a collection from Immediate Family, one from Faces, a series of close-ups of her grown-up children’s faces using a process called wet plate collodion, the technicalities of which rather passed me by, one a series of shots of landscapes with Civil War significance and one a series of shots of rotting corpses – ‘What Remains’ – taken at the ‘Body Farm’ in Tennessee. All interesting, though the fat corpse was a bit gross. Finished off by visiting the bookshop and splurging on two books, a copy of Immediate Family and one of Mann’s earlier study At Twelve.

Had a nice dinner with Ruth at Bella Italia on Monday evening to celebrate my birthday followed by Amarettos (or is it Amaretti?) at Malmaison.

Decided to do my public spirited bit yesterday by going along to St Andrew’s United Reformed Church to donate blood. Feels like a worthy thing to do but a certain amount of reform of the way data is collected from patients is needed, to avoid the endless repetition one has to go through each time. One of the questions on the Donor Health Check Questionnaire relates to whether one has ever lived outside the UK for a continuous period of six months or more. As I have, albeit as a child, I am obliged to answer ‘Yes’ each time to this, but the National Blood Service appears not to retain any of the information given for next time, with the result that one is questioned each time about the trips in question and the nurse/assistant has to go off and look up the countries concerned in a file. This time, while puzzling over South Korea’s entry, the nurse looked up and asked me “Were you ever in the Demilitarized Zone?”. I was strongly tempted to answer “No, as a seven-year-old Western schoolchild I was, unsurprisingly, unable to slip past the most heavily guarded border in the world”, although my actual response was “No”, albeit accompanied by a minor degree of eye-rolling. Was eventually allowed to donate, once last year’s surgery had also been discussed in some detail. Makes you wonder whether they actually want your fluids sometimes. Once back in the office, I recovered my strength with another slice of birthday cake.

Claire treated me to a birthday lunch at Strada today where we made use of their pre-ordering service though we had to endure a triumphal ‘Aha!’ moment from the smug Scottish git who had justified taking 50 minutes to serve Claire’s lunch the week before by telling her that everyone else had pre-ordered and she hadn’t. Inevitably, these days, we were armed with a ‘2 mains for £10’ voucher, although we did enhance our panzerotti porcini off the set menu with a large glass of wine each.

Sculpture; marrow; teenage vampires

Took in the Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain on Saturday 31^st. As I arrived in London early it occurred to me that a second breakfast would be an entirely sensible idea, and as the outlets on Waterloo station were heaving with bodies I wandered down York Road and happened on the unassuming-looking Caffè Quattro, in a drab location on the ground floor of a 1960s-looking office block, but had an entirely excellent bacon sandwich and cup of coffee. Just goes to show.

Met Helen at the gallery to go around the exhibition – I was initially a bit stung by the £12.50 entrance fee but in fairness there were loads of pieces on display, including the wartime drawings of Londoners sheltering in the tube that allegedly won Moore the hearts of the British public. The final room contained four huge pieces in elm, beautifully set off by the light from the windows. Moore evidently did not attach much importance to naming his pieces, as more or less all his sculptures are called either ‘Reclining Figure’, ‘Mother and Child’ or ‘Head’, making it hard to remember whether you've actually seen particular ones before.

Before leaving we had a look at Fiona Banner’s ‘Harrier and Jaguar’ in the Duveen Galleries. ‘Harrier’ is a retired Sea Harrier jet, hanging nose-downwards from the ceiling, while ‘Jaguar’ is an RAF Jaguar used in the first Gulf War, lying upside-down in the neighbouring gallery. I hadn’t heard of Fiona Banner (she has apparently been a Turner Prize nominee) but apparently much of her work has a war plane theme – among other things, she has apparently produced a frame-by-frame written account of Top Gun (phew, these artists). Of ‘Harrier and Jaguar’, Banner has apparently made the typical cop-out statement of “This work is more about how people react to it”. Saves you deciding what it’s about, I suppose.

My colleague Ann brought a number of courgettes from her garden into the office the other week, though all had reached the size where calling them courgettes is stretching a point. (Are marrows really just big courgettes? A quick web search reveals quite a bit of debating of this question, though it’s probably not one of life’s more fascinating questions.) I took one to show willing, but then couldn’t face anything as fiddly as trying to stuff it, so tried grating it and frying it in the pan in manner of a potato cake, but the result was distinctly underwhelming. Ate it though, as I felt a bit obliged after the trouble I'd gone to. It was OK with a fried egg on top.



For August’s Book Group book Sarah, our youngest member, had chosen Twilight, the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s monumentally successful teen vampire saga. In spite of its being clearly aimed at ‘young adults’ while the majority of our group are over 40, we all admitted to having enjoyed it. What’s not to like? We followed up the discussion and a selection of different Domino’s Pizzas, generously fetched by Sarah’s discreet boyfriend Tim, with watching the movie, which was enjoyable, though, perhaps inevitably, we didn’t like it as much as the book and Robert Pattinson's Edward was not how I'd imagined Edward - not enough gravitas and what's with the sideburns? However, RP is, as I understand it, a big heartthrob with today's young.

As a (considerably) lower-key version of going to Brighton Pride on the 7^th, which had been the original plan, Ruth and I took the bus to Sonning Common to visit The Pet Barn and check out its rabbit-related supplies. We bought a small packet of hay and communed with some bantams before walking back through the village past Duckingham Palace and out to The Herb Farm, which does teas and hideously twee garden accessories in addition to herbs. I bought a packet of black olive Mondovino crackers, sensibly labelled ‘Serve with white wine’, and we briefly checked out the Saxon Maze, though, as this picture will attest, I was too scared to go in. We then headed for the newly-reopened and revamped Bird in Hand for a drink and snack. I had a creditable beef sandwich though the small bar area at the front does rather have the air of a hotel reception. The entire back section of the pub was booked out by the local Ramblers' Association, so we steered clear.

Last Sunday I met Dad at The Bear at Hungerford for a pleasant sunny lunch in the courtyard, followed by a stroll along the Kennet & Avon Canal. The narrowboaters are out in force. Because of the timings of Sunday trains I was obliged to arrive early so had time for a browse around the antiques arcade, where I bought Ruth a postcard of a young Queen Elizabeth II in full regalia, though I issued a warning that fancying HM is probably sacrilegious.