Birthday; civic duty; snow

A brief summary of post-Christmas activity:

Ruth and I went up to London on 2 January for a walk along the Regent’s Canal from Little Venice. Started with a bite at the Waterside Café then walked for I suppose a couple of miles along canal bank of varying degrees of attractiveness, before arriving at Camden Lock and taking a brief look around the market and surrounding streets. Quite rapidly realised that the whole shebang holds considerably less appeal for me now than it did when I frequented it occasionally in my early 20s. Perhaps some things are best left to the young. We had a quick drink in the World’s End, looking, I think, world-weary, then made our way home.

Celebrated Ruth’s 40th birthday on 3 January by heading to Hungerford to meet several of her relatives for lunch at The Bear. After a limited yet quite stressful liaison with the hotel beforehand over Prosecco and fairy cakes, have decided that I am not cut out to be an events organiser. I got to sit next to Ruth’s mother’s delightful cousin Mary, who is always good value, so that was a plus. The picture is of Gail and Ruth and their teenage cousin Norman, who manfully sat through what must have been a tedious occasion full of much older people – I applaud him for not getting out his mobile half an hour in and starting to text friends, but he’s obviously too well-bred for that. I had booked us in to stay at the Bear overnight, as a birthday present, which was lovely, especially as I got to wallow in a bath while Ruth fiddled with the dodgy TV reception. Despite having had a large lunch we forced ourselves to have dinner in the bar, which was probably a bit unnecessary.

Had another birthday meal on 5 January, this time with friends at the Forbury Hotel’s Cerise restaurant. Expensive, but all agreed food v.g., which compensated. Afterwards, all of us except Claire went on for a nightcap at what is now a wine bar called Valentino’s on Valpy Street (it was previously the restaurant ‘Chronicles’ where we in fact had dinner for my 40th in 2008).

Kicked off a New Year notion of making more effort to make some money out of old stuff by selling a pair of shoes via the OU Noticeboard. The shoes are the kind of style I like but as I don’t really do heels over about an inch, I’d bought them and never worn them. After an absurd series of exchanges with a postroom operative called Vince, who tried persistently to haggle me down on the price (only discovered quite late in our exchanges that he wanted the shoes for his wife; prior to that I’d been adopting an open-minded ‘takes all sorts’ attitude), I eventually sold them to a lovely woman called Jenny, who seemed dead chuffed with them. So a rewarding outcome. Next up is a pair of mirrors – might give eBay a go. Still convinced that it’s going to be the ‘Diana funeral’ issue of OK! lurking in the attic that’s going to make my fortune.

HESA seminar in London on 15 January: went up to town blitheringly early to meet Ruth at Café Central on Old Street for a pre-work emergency summit. Then walked from Old Street to the venue near St James’s Park tube, for my exercise for the day. Judith and I made our way back to Euston after the seminar to barely manage to cram onto a train to MK, which was packed due to earlier cancellations and then moved at a snail’s pace as it had inserted a few extra stops at villages along the way, presumably in deference to the earlier cancellations. Was reminded once again of how I wouldn’t fancy a lengthy daily commute.

Vaguely excited to return home at the weekend recently to open a brown envelope from Her Majesty’s Courts Service and be greeted by the words ‘Jury Summons’. In case there should be any doubt as to what the communication is about, these words appear in a thumping great pink font (see below), followed by the exciting news that you’ve been selected at random from the electoral register to perform an important civic duty. Your employer is obliged to give you the time off to perform jury duty, though they’re not required by law to pay you for it – thankfully, the lovely OU does, at least for the first 10 days. Agreed with boss that deferring it would only mean having to do it at a busier time of year, so as things stand, I shall be reporting to Reading Crown Court on 11 February. Hoa in the office, who did jury service last year, says it involved a lot of hanging about.

On scanning the OU’s ‘Public Commitments Guidance’ I also noted that, should I be elevated to the peerage during my employment, I won’t be required to resign my position with the University. What a relief.

Though I have had a Twitter account for a while, I haven’t up until now ventured onto it much, probably largely through fear of getting hooked. However, the frustration this week of trying to contact T-Mobile, my current mobile broadband provider, to ask some questions about their Fair Usage Allowance (the precise details of which seem to be, one suspects deliberately, shrouded in mystery) led me to send a tweet to their @TMobileUKhelp service (this following an unrewarding phone call to their premium rate phone number, which consisted of being subjected to deafening ‘hold’ music for around 3 minutes before someone in their second line support eventually answered, whereupon my phone credit promptly ran out). As I write it’s five days since my initial tweet; have since followed up with two others. My tweets are threatening to become a squawk.

Snow on Friday led to my, perhaps over-cautiously, opting to stay in MK for the weekend, though the further snowfall on Sunday seemed to validate that decision. Took the bus into CMK on Saturday morning and had a bit of a wander about, including making what may I guess have been my last ever visit to HMV. Bought two DVDs for a tenner (the BBC Pride & Prejudice, plus the more recent Keira Knightley film, as Ray nicked our joint copy of the latter and now won’t be parted from it). Here’s the receipt, just to record the event. Amazing to think how much time when younger I spent browsing around HMV and the Virgin Megastore, though much less in recent years. All hail the cornucopia of online wondrousness that is Amazon – while, obviously, giving it a token slap on the wrist for obliterating high-street media retailers. The latter won’t stop me shopping there though. Pic is of the concrete cows, looking snowy.

Spent pretty much the rest of the weekend holed up in the flat with Series 2 of Sherlock, recently lifted from Ruth’s DVD collection after she succeeded in getting me hooked on it. Repeated viewings definitely assisting with grasping the somewhat convoluted plots. According to this Telegraph piece, the nature of the Holmes/Watson relationship has been the subject of speculation since long before the current BBC version. The piece also quotes the two actors from the BBC version denying that there’s any funny business going on between their characters, though it’s not clear how this sits with Martin Freeman’s earlier comment about Sherlock being the gayest story in the history of television.

After a snowy early morning walk on Monday, making good use of my invaluable snow spikes, I arrived on campus at 08:45 to find the North Spur car park completely empty. A bit funny, I thought. On reaching my office and discovering that the entire corridor was deserted, I became suspicious and checked the staff intranet, to see the message below:

Hadn’t occurred to me to check in with this before leaving home, but I shall be wiser on any future snowy days. All of my colleagues had seemingly either had the presence of mind to check the intranet before leaving home, or had come in earlier and already buggered off. Actually I discovered on Tuesday that quite a few of them are signed up to the OU’s ‘emergency text alert’ service, which notifies staff should campus be closed/be annihilated during the night by nuclear holocaust, etc. I was dimly aware of it but had never got around to signing up. Have done so now, though s*d’s law there probably won’t be another campus closure now.

Christmas; Pomeranians; Twilight musings

Have made the disquieting discovery that the nosey neighbour we have been referring to as Norman for the last four years may in fact be called Kevin Price. The Thames Water contractor who called round a couple of weeks ago noted that the inspection had been prompted by the resident of number 43, one Kevin Price, reporting damp problems at his property. The man we know as Norman lives at number 43, so either we’ve been getting his name wrong, or he has a live-in male housemate. The latter seems improbable so I assume it’s the former. Racking my brains now to try and remember why we thought his name was Norman in the first place.

The Information Office Christmas lunch was held again this year at The Carrington Arms at Moulsoe, a village to the east of Milton Keynes. Information Office Christmas lunches are a sedate affair, with much fizzy pop and going back to work again after a couple of hours, unlike our Progress South Central Christmas lunches where Fay would allow us to get through several bottles of wine and then blow off the afternoon to go shopping. The perks of a small team, perhaps. Ruth’s team at HCT appeared to have the right idea, going out mid-afternoon for a Christmas pizza and descending later into karaoke. She texted me the following morning to say that she hadn’t made it into work and that one member of the group appeared to have gone completely AWOL.

Took Lola to the vets first thing on 22 December, as she appears to have lost some weight over the past couple of months, though seems otherwise well. The vet couldn’t come up with much by way of possible explanation, though did flirt with the idea that being a rescue animal, Lola might have been older than we thought at the time we adopted her, and consequently could now be making it into the older bunny territory and getting a bit sore and arthritic – Steve at Reading Rabbit Rescue seemed sceptical about this idea when we put it to him later in the day. The vet did identify evidence of an over-groomed patch on one of Lola’s legs and suggested that she might have had a sore knee (or whatever the bunny equivalent of a knee is). Lola has been duly dosed with an anti-inflammatory for the past week, but we’ll have to see if it makes any difference. Ruth has also got her some alternative food, at Steve’s suggestion, which she appears to be enjoying.

Met Claire on the evening of the 22nd for a drink in the ex-Hobgoblin (now The Alehouse), where I met a bearded friend of hers whose name I’ve forgotten, but who appeared to have amassed an impressive number of degrees, most recently an LLB with the OU. We talked briefly about the impressiveness of people who do OU degrees while working at actual jobs. Claire appeared to have fallen out with Prezzo, her usual preferred dinner spot, so we ended up having a pleasant dinner at Strada instead.

Left Reading early on Sunday 23rd and managed, unbelievably, to arrive at Mrs Millard’s house in Cheddar in good time, thanks to there being much less traffic than I expected. No evidence of the village being flooded, though apparently Mrs M had been woken a month or so earlier in the middle of the night by the police, telling villagers that they should prepare to evacuate as a nearby river was threatening to burst its banks. In company with her neighbours she decided not to evacuate, and evidently nothing much happened.

Proceeded from Cheddar to Newport to have lunch at Dave and Hazel’s house, in company with Mum, Dad and Hannah, and Hazel’s sister Paula. Had a delicious lunch consisting of a chicken dish prepared by Dave, followed by choice of damson crumble prepared by Mum or some excellently chewy chocolate brownies prepared by Hannah, so a real family effort. Ruth, Hannah and I went into Hay on the morning of Christmas Eve to pick up some outstanding bits and pieces and to have a mooch around in rather damp weather. On the way back we met Mum and Dad for a drink at the newly revamped Bridge Inn in Michaelchurch – the pub has had a chequered history over the past 10 years or so but seems to have been recently taken over by some people who are doing their best to make a go of it.

On Christmas Day we ate a pleasantly moist turkey and in the evening watched the Hammer film The Reptile, not one I'd seen before but part of a Hammer mega-box set Mum and Dad had got for Christmas. It wasn't bad, as these things go, and nice that the 'wife' character (Jennifer Daniel) has a bit of backbone. On Boxing Day Mum, Ruth and I went for an extremely wet walk from Llanfoist along the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, before returning to Michaelchurch for another drink at The Bridge. On the way back to Reading on the 27th we stopped off at Mrs Spence's house in Lambourn for a ham and bubble and squeak lunch. Mrs S's dog Bertie appears to have gained some weight, but apparently he's recently been neutered.

Ruth went creative with Christmas gift tags this year, including this one for me of a Pomeranian, following my outbreak of hysteria over the winner of the Toy Group at Crufts 2012. Pomeranian Belliver Unexpected Dream (‘Dreamer’) has his moments in the spotlight from about the 31 sec point onwards in this YouTube video. On the Pom’s final walkabout, the male commentator abandons dignified commentary and descends into: “It is a ball of fluff, isn’t it? I mean, they’re just so cute”. The judging is at about 42 secs. Look at it go after its win is announced. (The Pom in the gift tag picture, Carripom Zachariah, apparently won Pomeranian of the year 2012 in Scotland.)

Among my Christmas presents this year was this book on the architectural practice Aldington, Craig and Collinge, part of the ‘Twentieth Century Architects’ series. ACC designed some interesting houses and public buildings in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including the Anderton House in Devon which is one of the buildings now available for upmarket holiday rentals via the Landmark Trust.  For some reason I’d been thinking that ACC also designed the housing development at Old Groveway that I’m currently renting in, but I had remembered this wrongly as this was, according to this entry in Iqbal Aalam’s excellent Flickr photostream, designed by the firm of Phippen, Randall & Parkes. Iqbal has a set on these architects here. Parkes’ obituary from 2008 is of interest and notes that he was responsible for Britain’s first sheltered housing scheme. PRP evidently still exists as a firm and is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013.

Aldington, Craig and Collinge did do some work in Milton Keynes though, the attractive development near the canal at Woolstone pictured here.

Called in at Ray's on New Year's Eve to deliver him a couple of presents, this bottle of whisky from Dave and a book about canals from Mum, both of which were well received. He is off to Tenerife tomorrow for ten days in the sun.

Some disparaging comments about the Twilight series made at our ex-Progress South Central lunch a week or so ago reminded me of this excellent article a year or so ago in Times Higher Education, in the context of the low status afforded to books and films that are perceived to have a largely female fan base. Though I would hazard a guess that neither of the commentators at our recent lunch had actually read the book (am always amazed at how this doesn’t deter some people from expressing strongly-voiced opinions), my all-female book group, ranging in age from 30 to 60, read Twilight a year or so ago as our monthly book, and almost all enjoyed it (from what I recall the only dissenting voice was Helen’s, who was annoyed not on account of its ‘trivial’ femaleness but on account of the perceived licence taken with traditional vampire canon, evidently a topic of some importance to her).

It’s interesting, though the THE article does not discuss this, that a book’s being aimed at children does not per se afford it a low status, provided that the target audience includes boys. The Harry Potter books are the best current example – adults can fawn over these without embarrassment, but as an adult it’s not really possible to admit to liking the Twilight series without some qualification and/or justifying yourself in some way. Less embarrassing to be caught reading a children’s book, provided a boy might like it too, than to be caught reading a book solely aimed at girls and women. A point to reflect on.

On the subject of Harry Potter: I read Philosopher’s Stone, and quite enjoyed it, but have never felt drawn to read any of the subsequent books. Have seen the first two films, but none beyond that, though Ray assures me they improve – certainly in the first one, of the core trio only Rupert Grint does anything resembling acting. So far I’ve only read the first in the Twilight series, but I may well read the others. Steering clear of the films though after having seen the first one – Stewart is quite good but R-Pattz doesn’t do it for me as Edward, but possibly I’m the wrong age. Perhaps when reading the book, one has more licence to imagine someone really not far from your own age …