Hobbit; unnecessary SFX; first Christmas lunch

Passed this decorated tree in Kents Hill Park last Friday. Cute.

Met Ray in town on Saturday to go and see The Hobbit. Evidently, Part 1 of 3. We had both been surprised and somewhat sceptical beforehand about its being a trilogy, but in the event, really enjoyed it. Rather than being a film of The Hobbit, it’s really Prequel to The Lord of the Rings, Part 1, featuring the events of The Hobbit. Having said that, it’s ace – though it almost certainly does help if you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise (having once watched all three extended edition DVDs back to back in a nine-hour gorge-athon, we can probably count ourselves as two such). The trilogy-ness is discussed in this Guardian article. It is, as one of the critics quoted therein notes, a purist’s delight.

The H was also the first movie I’d seen in 3D. Ray, being more of an old hand at 3D, thought it didn’t work too well. Certainly I didn’t think it added anything, and ideally I’d prefer not to have to sit through a film wearing a pair of special glasses. I was also disconcerted by something hard to place concerning the speed of panning across landscapes and action in some of the shots (created effect similar to being driven too fast over a humpback bridge), and the way the background was out of focus – spent the early part of the movie rubbing my eyes and attempting to clean my 3D glasses. Possibly this could have been due to the high frame rate referred to in the article above, not that I really know what that means.

Ruth and I went over to Ray’s boat in the evening for a casual lasagne dinner and chinwag. Returned the following morning to collect my car and to drive Ray to Marparts in Caversham to buy a new length of exhaust pipe, the exhaust having fallen off his van the previous Friday. I gather that it has since been expertly welded back on by his mate Darren and is now almost good as new.

Took a day’s leave on Monday to meet ex-Progress South Central people for Christmas lunch. This year, we had decided on having it at the eatery on the London Road campus, formerly The Cotton Club but now, following a refurb, called Eat & Drink London Road. Went not expecting much as the food used to be OK at best, but we were pleasantly surprised at the decent quality of the lunch – turkey was dry and uninteresting, as is often its wont, but the rest was pretty good, and there was much exclaiming over the positively al dente sprouts.

Returned to MK later on Monday afternoon, though not before getting my key to the internal garage door stuck fast in the lock – after trying for about 10 minutes to get it out with no luck, had to just leave it and go. Had to advise Ruth that she would have to access the garage, if she needed to, via the back gate and the main garage door – this forgetting that the key to the padlock on the back gate was locked inside the garage. In the event, she evidently had to climb over the back gate, something which I gather caused a certain amount of difficulty, though she appeared to have treated it with more humour than I think I would have done. Fortunately, there were apparently no onlookers.

Winchester; subway intrigue; women's football

Have been forgetting to take a photograph of our new floating shelves in bedroom 2. Although they do enhance the room and look quite good from this sort of angle, they are best not viewed sideways on. Additionally, we ran again into problems with drilling into powdery mortar and not being able to get a good purchase for the fixings, hence the minimal decoration. There’s got to be a way around this, other than resorting to Loctite.


Took a train trip to Winchester on Saturday to visit the Christmas market. Ruth went to college in Winchester (when the now-university was still King Alfred’s College) so has an affection for it; additionally we spent a lovely pre-Christmas day and night there five years ago. The train journey down was enlivened by some Reading fans getting in voice for an away game at Southampton, but luckily we were able to get off after 40 minutes and make our way into the city which was, I guess not surprisingly, heaving with bodies. We managed to snaffle an outside table at Maison Blanc where we had tea and a snack, and then meandered over to the cathedral close to join the queue to go into the Christmas market. Queue luckily moved fairly quickly, but we were obliged to shuffle round the stalls at a snail’s pace due to the mass of humanity. I restricted my purchases to two small tree decorations; I don’t think Ruth bought anything at the market but did buy a dress in Hobbs on the way there.

After having our fill of the market, we briefly considered looking round the cathedral until we discovered it’s now charging £6.50 entrance fee (subsequently mentioned this to Mum, who was suitably appalled), so went for a walk instead to use up the remaining daylight, after which we crammed into the William Walker for a couple of drinks before proceeding to the Old Vine, where Ruth had booked a table for an early dinner. We spent a night at the Old Vine on the 2007 trip mentioned above – lovely room and food and a great position overlooking the cathedral.

Quite excited to learn from the latest issue of Reading Station News (a publication introduced to keep passengers up-to-date vis-à-vis ‘the exciting changes ahead’ as Reading’s railway interchange and station undergoes a major refurb) that a formerly closed subway is to be temporarily re-opened while the footbridge linking the north entrance multi-storey car park with the station is removed early in the new year, pending the opening of a splendid new passenger bridge a bit further along. Most of the network of subway under the station, which pre-dates the 80s-built footbridge by many years, has been out of use for some time – the official reason is probably security concerns, but actually it’s hard to see a good reason. I remember in my young day being intrigued while walking through the subway under Station Road and coming up by Thames Tower (a route that’s been closed for some years) to see a passageway mysteriously stretching off to the right, that I never went down – I think it must have been the passage that linked the railway station with the long-disused bus station, as I believe there is one, though I don’t remember ever using it. I’m sure I remember reading a while ago in one of the pages on the Reading Forum that there are supposed to be a whole network of subways below the level of the station and Station Road. Don’t know whether that’s true or not, but an intriguing thought. Anyway, apparently the aforementioned stretch leading from the Caversham side is to be “completely refurbished and re-lit”. How cute. I must remember to take a trip down it.


Some old photos of the station here. In case I don’t get another photo of the current footbridge before it’s demolished, here’s a picture of Ruth in it.

We had a visit from Dave, Hazel and Nia on Sunday morning, en route to a lunch date in Newbury and also, extremely thriftily, to collect some eBay-purchased sanitaryware from an address in Tilehurst. Nia ate some of my shortbread and got a bit of a stroke of Harley's head. In the afternoon we walked up to St Andrew's Hall on Albert Road for Caversham Artists' Christmas Gala, though we didn't spend long there - after the market the previous day I'd really had my fill of decorative glassware, watercolours etc. Caversham does seem to have a thriving community of artists, seemingly largely ladies - or, as I prefer to put it, Ladies Who Don't Have to Work.

Once back from the gala, we decorated one of my small Christmas trees, over a glass of sherry - a surprising whim but one I felt I should indulge.

Recently read Marie-Claire Carlyle’s How to Become a Money Magnet, in one of my sporadic forays into self-help books. An OK read; the usual combination of the odd helpful thought/tip nestled among layers of anodyne padding. I was most amused by Marie-Claire’s credentials as given in the ‘About the Author’ section at the beginning of the book: not only is she a DipLCH and FSSA, but is also an accredited Space Clearer. And she has taught cosmic ordering.

We had a card through the door a week or so ago from Thames Water headed ‘You may have a leak – call this number’, or something similarly potentially alarming. Ruth duly stayed in on Monday morning for visit from TW contractor, who confirmed that the leak is not on our property - good news, though the bad news is that as five houses apparently share the same external stopcock, we could be liable for the not inconsiderable leak which is likely to be at number 45, a tenanted property occupied (we think) by Latvians in possession of an extremely smelly gas barbecue. Apparently number 43 is having damp issues, though according to the TW man, the owner of number 45 is reluctant to engage with the problem, so not sure what's going to happen there. We've decided to keep quiet unless/until we're actually presented with a bill.

Have been occupying myself during the week in Milton Keynes by watching a number of the fascinating OU TV programmes that are available on DVD from the OU library. Last week an interesting programme on Queen Victoria’s early life; this week was the turn of ‘Women’s football’, part of the ‘Nation on film’ series. Partly about women’s football, partly focusing on early cinematography, the film focused on Dick, Kerr’s Eleven, a women’s football team comprised initially of factory workers from Preston who formed a team to play matches to raise money for injured WWI soldiers. By all accounts they were amazingly successful and really drew crowds – the record seems to have been a crowd of 53,000 at Goodison Park for a match on Boxing Day 1920, apparently much larger than anything the women’s game draws today. In 1921, women’s football teams were banned by the FA from using FA grounds, a ban which was not lifted until the 1970s and seems to have done considerable damage to the women’s game. The argument put forward in the documentary seems to be that the women were victims of their own success: the women’s game was rapidly expanding at the time, Dick Kerr’s team had raised £50,000 for charity (about 1.5 million in today’s money) at the time of the ban and regularly drew large crowds, drawing potential cost and support away from the FA and the men’s game. Whatever the reason, it does seem a bit mean.

Amazingly beautiful frost this morning - made myself late stopping to take pictures.

Bracknell; Richmond; neighbours

Struggled my way to Bracknell last Thursday for Book Group at Sarah’s new house. In fairness, it was only the last bit that was a struggle, as I spent about 10 minutes being fired helplessly around ring roads never seeming to be in the right lane. Made it eventually and admired Sarah’s increased amount of space, though her husband Tim seems to have had a substantial hand in decorating their living room, given the c. 50-inch plasma in pole position in the centre of the wall. I’m reasonably fond of technology, but that sort of thing does turn the entire room into a home cinema. We stocked up on carbs and discussed Douglas Kennedy’s The Pursuit of Happiness, which all of us had enjoyed.

Surprised to note last weekend that Christchurch Meadows had actually flooded and then frozen, something I haven’t seen during the time I’ve lived in Caversham. Some keen type has already put a photo on Flickr. Here's a measly photo of mine too.

Ray and I went up to Richmond for the day on Saturday – we had originally intended to do a six-mile walk along the river to Ham House and Petersham, from one of my London Walks books, but the wet ground deterred us from that idea and instead we had a general wander around the posh suburb and its park, which I’d never been into before. Pictures here. Started with breakfast at the Carluccio’s on Kew Road, then walked down across Richmond Green and down to the (full and fast-flowing) Thames, where we walked along the river frontage for a bit before turning up Richmond Hill where we stopped for a quick gander at the view from the top of Terrace Gardens. Then headed into Richmond Park where we had a pleasant walkabout, though in deference to Ray’s recent knee injury and the danger from slippery ground we left the park at East Sheen Gate and walked back into Richmond via a bit of a snoop at the big houses on Fife Road. Had a lovely lunch at Don Fernandos before heading back to the train.

The only blight on the day was the interminable journey home, allegedly due to emergency engineering works caused by a broken rail at Ashford. Whatever the reason, it entailed us getting off the train at Staines and hanging around on a freezing platform for over an hour, in the company of other increasingly irate people, until a train to Reading finally turned up. I now, most unfairly, never want to visit Staines again.

Our Caversham neighbour Terry has been in an uncharacteristic frenzy of doing work on his house just lately, as he leaves for Australia within the next week to join his Australian wife Louise, who ended up being deported from the UK a year or so ago after living and working here for several years. Seems inexplicable to me, especially given that she was working as a social worker, hardly a career on most people’s wish list, but no doubt there must be specifics that we’re not aware of. On the other side: Nicki shows no signs of returning from South Africa, but we are considering emailing her about the parlous-looking state of her middle chimney stack, as we don’t relish the thought of it falling into our garden. Her current tenants look to be in the process of moving out, so we await to see whether new ones appear. The ideal would be someone who enjoys feeding other people’s pet rabbits and doesn’t own a car.

Surprised to wake on Wednesday morning to snow in MK - either it hadn't been forecast or I hadn't paid attention to the forecast. Not very deep, but still snow. No signs of any more of it at the moment though. Snapped a couple of obligatory photos, including one of this pretty cottage in Simpson, which has adorned itself with tasteful Christmas decs.