OK, real cockerels; military history walk; chickenny goodness

Went to London for the LLN Research Forum meeting last Thursday and was shocked to discover that an off-peak Travelcard is now over £20, at £20.50. I remember when it was tuppence, etc etc.

After the meeting, wandered past the Torrington Place branch of Planet Organic and couldn't resist a quick browse. I spurned raw hemp and organic yam nuggets, but bought a carton of organic chick pea sprouts, which stated on their label ‘These sprouts are grown with the conscious awareness of the interconnectedness of everything and all life’. Far out.

Was suitably blown away on Thursday evening at Reading Film Theatre by Mike Leigh’s Another Year – a subtle, understated piece that never resorts to melodrama. Before the film, as it wasn’t worth going home, I braved the Students' Union's 3sixty bar for a drink and bite to eat. Emerged from the bar after an indifferent chicken burger feeling about 110.

Have been forced to eat humble pie as regards cockerel, as after staying over at the house last Friday night I did indeed hear it quite clearly myself while standing in the kitchen early on Saturday morning. Sounds like it’s only a few doors down. Wouldn’t be surprised if there are complaints from neighbours come summer – though that would possibly be a bit rich given the general noise of traffic and late-night drunks that already pervades the area.

Claire came for tea and banana cake on Saturday afternoon and admired the flat, before going off to her staff member's 30th birthday party armed with Stella Artois-themed presents (sounds like a classy bird).

Ray and I went over to Greenham Common on Sunday for a walk about. There’s an interesting website here with a virtual tour. The USAF returned Greenham to the MOD in 1992 and it was declared surplus to the Ministry’s requirements the following year. The Common has for some time now been in the process of being returned to being common land – most of the runway appears to have been dismantled, although you can still see quite clearly where it was – apparently a million tonnes of concrete have been broken up and removed – quite a task. The six cruise missile silos are still in place, behind fencing – and I assume they’ll be staying in place, given that they have been designated a Scheduled Monument of national significance. There were originally plans to turn the derelict Control Tower into a visitors’ centre, but judging by this Newbury Weekly News cutting from 2000, these were later shelved – not sure why, as it seems a reasonable idea to me.

There are various colour-coded walks – halway through the Taxiway Walk, we decided that the scenery was getting a bit samey and it was also getting a bit cold, so drove back into Thatcham and after a quick drink at The Swan by Thatcham station walked along the canal as far as the footbridge at Bull's Lock and then up the path that leads to the Bowdown Woods Nature Reserve. Once inside the woods we lost our way a bit – eventually managed to emerge into a car park off Bury's Bank Road and trudged back down to Thatcham. Drove back to Reading via Waitrose (Thatcham now has a Waitrose!) for Ray to pick up a pizza for his dinner.

Went round to the house on Sunday evening for a lovely dinner with my lady, who had prepared one of my favourite recipes, a Nigel Slater griddled chicken dish with garlic butter and thyme. In fact she just had to fry it as I've pinched the griddle, but still lovely.

Started yesterday by walking to the Bulmershe campus for a meeting with the lovely Carol and Tony from the Institute of Education, to check on the progress of a project we are funding. Spent an hour beforehand working in Bulmershe Library. I have expressed my affection for Bulmershe before and agreed with Carol that we both like Bulmershe Library – quiet, space to spread out, easy access to books as opposed to PCs (not necessarily a given in modern libraries). However, sadly, it’s going – its closure is scheduled for July 2011 and the University’s education resources are due to be absorbed (somehow) into the main library at Whiteknights. In the room where I was working the books had already been cleared from the shelves. Took these discreet photos. RIP proper university buildings.

Temporary move to suburbia; offloading of cr*p; phantom cockerels

Have completed first week in my new temporary home. Slightly weird to be back in Lower Earley, a large 1980s housing development on the south side of town where I lived for a year with my sister about 17 years ago. Maiden Place, where I’m living, is a low-level apartment development built around a central car park, with a few shops, pub, community centre and Baptist church. The small precinct includes a large off-licence and a creditable Indian restaurant, which Ray and I tried out last Wednesday evening after his van had helped to transport a large plant and my remaining odds and ends.

The flat was the third flat I viewed and is light, airy, white and an interesting design, which combined to sell it to me. It also has a balcony, which after some difficulty have just managed to obtain the key to. Contemplating setting up a small Zen/tranquil thoughts-type area with strategically-placed Buddha, grasses, wind-chimes etc. The only downsides to it so far (apart possibly from its location in deepest suburbia) are the saggy mattress on the bed and the feeble shower. Going to try a foam mattress-topper to assist with the former; the latter I’ll probably have to live with but at least I can now take baths without fear of the room flooding.

Although the plan is to live ‘light’ for the next six months, meaning that I haven’t had to move any furniture, only selected possessions, Ruth and I still ended up transporting four car-loads of stuff across town. Where does it come from? I also took the opportunity to recycle our huge backlog of bottles, with a view to some sort of New Year fresh start of not accumulating quite so many. Ruth had some amazing success Freecycling the army of bags of rabbit dung that had also accumulated in the garage, and I finally managed to get rid of a wine rack that I've unsuccessfully advertised at least three times before - the eventual taker was a chap who wanted somewhere to store his homebrew.

Have been lucky enough to acquire a completely free 32" LCD TV which Ray got as a gift with a recent mobile phone upgrade. Can't quite understand how, but I gather it's something to do with his having quite an expensive contract but only requesting cheap phones due to tendency to ruin them by rubbing grit into the screen/dropping them into lakes etc. Have generously left Ruth my sturdy old Beko that still refuses to die.

Ruth claims to have been plagued recently at the house by the noise of a cockerel crowing in the early morning. Have suggested that this sounds to me like auditory hallucinations but she has threatened to telephone me at cockcrow with the idea that I'll be able to hear it down the phone. I await this with a certain degree of scepticism.

Finally, have just noticed from the Wikipedia article linked above that, apparently, "Earley also contains the most radioactive residential property in England". Hmmm. I comfort myself with the thought that Wikipedia is just an ill-informed free-for-all.

Reflections on service areas; rural festivities; plumbing problems again

Was up bright and early on Dec 23^rd to collect hire car and fill it with petrol. Discovered that, despite the roads largely having thawed, the lane at the back of the house looked icy so I had to park down the road (thought of attempting the lane, getting stuck and Norman appearing to help was just too terrible). We delivered the bunnies to Reading Rabbit Rescue and were greeted by an uncharacteristically cheery Steve, who gave us a Christmas card (cheeriness also odd given that he had apparently just had to make an overseas phone call to a bunny owner to inform them that their pet had died). Went home, loaded car and were then ready for the excitement of setting off for Ruth's family home in Norfolk. Left about 11.30am, traffic and weather both fine, stopped once at Birchanger Green services on the M11, and arrived (I think) about 5pm. I mistakenly assumed that leaving the M11 meant that we were nearly there, but no - took the best part of two more hours to drive the rest of the way to Ruth's parents' home near Scoulton, not helped by driving in darkness on country roads for the last part of the journey.

Returning briefly to service stations: according to the Wikipedia entry, in 2006 Birchanger Green had the lowest overall rating of all UK motorway service areas on the independent Motorway Services Info website. Can't say it struck me as that bad - but it sounds as though proneness to congestion was the cause of the ratings. We obviously lucked out. Over Christmas, I had a brief conversation with Ruth's father about service stations. He seemed to think that they've gone downhill, but this is of course wrong. If my memory serves, a typical service station in the 1970s would feature one enormous refectory-style eating area with fixed plastic seating and stinking of chips. At least these days, you can get a nice coffee and toastie in Costa and leave the sweaty masses in their tracky bottoms to go to Burger King. One that stands out particularly in my memory is the one on the English side of the (now old) Severn Bridge, which I remember having a huge dining area where I recall eating on several occasions, as it would have been on my family's route to Gran's house in Cardiff. It had a view down to the Severn, but according to this, that's now gone. See here for fascinating facts about UK motorway service areas.

We occupied ourselves on Christmas Eve by driving to Attleborough, the nearest town of any size, and having a quick look at Ruth's old secondary school and at St Mary's Church (with its ancient rood screen, dontcha know) before catching the train into Norwich for a lovely few hours mooching about. It was a very cold day but Norwich was awash with old buildings (probably always is) and twinkly lights (probably just for Christmas) so the atmosphere compensated. Our mooching included a visit to the Assembly House (apparently gutted by fire in the mid-1990s, but you'd never know now) where we had a lovely tea and slice of cake next to the Christmas tree.

Got off to an energetic start on Christmas Day by chopping vegetables, hoovering and helping to hump a table downstairs, before breaking off exhausted for a sherry. We were joined for lunch by two couples from Mrs Millard's bell-ringing group, who made for good company. Post-lunch featured the usual slumping on the couch, reaching sluggishly for yet another Milk Tray, before I feared I was about to doze off and retired to my room for an hour or so, where the ambient temperature rendered me awake again in short order.

Boxing Day luckily proved a nice day and Ruth and I went for a walk in the morning to the nearby villages of Rockland All Saints and Rockland St Peter and then back across fields to the house. We made our way back home again on the morning of the 27^th, once Ruth's mother had triumphantly filled our car with several boxes of Ruth's possessions which one suspects she had been trying to rid herself of for years. The drive back was tortuously slow, thanks to the M25 and people presumably either going home after Christmas or heading to out-of-town retail parks to the sales.

Caused some minor damage on the Tuesday evening by turning our annoying hot tap in the bathroom too far to the left and causing water to spurt violently from somewhere under the basin. We managed to stop the flood temporarily by turning off the water supply to the bathroom, but I was forced (with gun to head) to phone our friends Allwrights the plumbers the following morning, who came round and fixed the leak. In the interests of economy we opted not to have the tap replaced, given new bathroom plans, so have covered old tap with a plastic bag for the moment to remind ourselves not to turn it on (as apparently flood could resume if we do). We have both concluded that the house mocks us.

Took the train to Abergavenny on the morning of the 29^th to visit my parents (in fact the first part of the journey was by bus to Swindon, thanks to the complete festive closure of Reading station). Met up with Dave and Hazel for lunch at the Beaufort Arms in Raglan, and that evening Mum and I had a delightful dinner consisting entirely of nibbles (and wine), before tucking in to roast beef the following night once Dad had returned from a brief trip. As the weather was a bit pants we didn't go out much. Played a couple of games of Scrabble; true to form, Mum walloped me both times, though the second time slightly less shamefully than the first.

Arrived home late afternoon New Year's Eve. As is my practice for the last ten years or so, I eschewed New Year's Eve celebrations and stayed in for the evening. Cooked a few tapas dishes which Ruth and I ate while dozing in front of the TV. Rock on.

Ruth and I went for a walk along the river on New Year's Day, thinking we should get some air - turned out to be rather a longer walk than intended as I could have sworn the footbridge by The Roebuck Hotel used to be much closer to Caversham than it was this time. We were forced to stop for a hot chocolate at the big new Tesco on the old Battle Hospital site (plumbing the depths) before trudging home. In the evening we went for dinner at Ray's and admired his Christmas decorations, including cute little tree on the rear deck (pictured).

Took the train over to Hungerford on Monday 3^rd to have lunch at The Bear to celebrate Ruth's birthday. We had meant to invite several members of her family, but didn't quite get around to it. As the bar was packed out we had to dine in solitary state in the formal restaurant, but it was a very nice meal and luckily the staff didn't hover over us. Before the meal, we went for a mooch around the antiques arcade - still can't summon up much interest in antiquing but enjoyed browsing the books and old postcards.

Back to work on Tuesday and our team's first day with Ann at the helm as Director. Fay, our former Director, has now left to take up a post at UWE - I arrived to find a lovely email from her thanking me for my expertise, which I shall refer to in self-doubting moments, and suggesting keeping an eye out for openings in Bristol. Onwards and upwards.