Some cultural outings

Henley Arts Trail

Saturday 5 May

Bit of a misnomer, as about half the venues were in Twyford. We started by slogging up Remenham Hill (a curious decision; I blame Ruth) to visit Allan Henderson’s studio. Pleasant enough exhibition in the garage and back patio of one of the houses in Remenham Terrace. Slogged all the way back down the hill and decided we were ready for lunch. I actually don’t think we ended up seeing anything else, even though there were things in the town centre we could have visited. We remain officially crap at arts/heritage/open house events.

Re-opening of the Reading Abbey ruins

Saturday 16 June

The Abbey Ruins re-opened in June after being closed for renovations for nine years. Ruth and I hadn’t really planned in advance to go but on the day decided we’d wander down. As it was a good while since I’d been into the ruins, it was tricky to get a sense of exactly where the money had gone – but the stonework certainly looked very clean. I assume it was spent gluing loose bits back on, propping up any wobbly areas etc.

The Abbey was founded in the twelfth century by Henry I. Some time later, in 2009, it was closed because of safety concerns over falling masonry. The renovation was funded jointly by the council and by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. There were plenty of people milling around, plus the usual Morris and clog dancers.

People milling, plus a spot of clog-dancing

Genesis Inc.

Saturday 7 July

Play at the Hampstead Theatre. About the privatization of human reproduction. Entertaining. We went to the matinée performance. The theatre was pretty full, substantially with older people, though the numbers dwindled a bit after the interval – the whole row to my right evidently decided it wasn’t to their taste, and one of the women in front of us piped up to her companions that she hadn’t really liked the giant talking ovaries. Ruth and I quite enjoyed it though. Here's an interview with the writer Jemma Kennedy, who apparently wrote the play following her own experiences of having her eggs frozen. It was my first visit to the Hampstead Theatre – lovely building.

Tom Allen

Friday 27 July

Part of the Milton Keynes International Festival in Campbell Park. Ruth and I had seen and liked Tom Allen when we saw him as part of a group of acts at South Street a few years ago. This set was part of Allen's first solo tour. We had a quick dinner at Revolución de Cuba beforehand. By the time we’d managed to locate the Spiegeltent, it was pretty packed and we had to squeeze onto the end of a row at a rather awkward angle to the stage. But still. It was funny.

Open House London

Saturday 22 September

Well, did we do better than last year’s crap attempt? Kind of. Not really.

We started off by making our way up to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead to visit the UCL Pathology Museum. Very interesting, and gross in equal measure. After a tour of frankly alarming tumours and enormously distended colons I was left feeling slightly queasy. Interesting little exhibition though, tucked away on an upper floor of the hospital. Unlike the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, which Ruth and I visited a few years ago, the UCL Pathology Museum isn’t as a rule open to the general public. We got access on a strictly-timed hour-long slot, but frankly by the end of the hour I’d had enough of contemplating all the awful things that can happen to the body and was eager to escape back into the open air.

Entrance to Acland Burghley School

As a second venue, I decided I wanted to visit Acland Burghley School, apparently an important example of 1960s comprehensive school design in the Brutalist style. Persuaded Ruth to walk, though unfortunately by the time we reached the school it was raining. Acland Burghley was awarded a Grade II listing in 2018, as well as celebrating its 50th birthday. Just like me, except for the listing part. Like many buildings of its ilk, it doesn't look much from the outside but has some lovely spaces inside.

Ruth inside the school hall

Rundown of September

Started September by booking two cottages at the Low Briery park near Keswick for a family holiday next April. Hurrah. Lake District here we come. Don't think I've been since we had a family week there in 2005, which seems a long time really. On that holiday it rained quite a lot and Hannah and I spent quite a bit of time watching episodes of Dallas on DVD.

Booked the day off on Friday 1st for a day out with Mum and Hannah in London to see the Giacometti exhibition at Tate Modern. Mum and Dad had stayed overnight in London the night before and seemed to have enjoyed themselves, things only being marred by Dad wearing some ill-advised sharp shoes that had given him blisters. He was off to the Geological Society on the Friday; Mum, Hannah and I met near the Millennium Bridge where Mum lightened her own bag by offloading a jar of crab apple jelly onto each of us. Mum had also evidently been accosted by some people filming an ad for Galaxy chocolate, and been given several free bars.

The exhibition was crowded but interesting. After taking this selfie in the turbine hall we went for lunch at a nearby Carluccio’s, after which Hannah left us to go and see a friend elsewhere in London and Mum and I walked around for a bit, having a look at the new extension from the outside.

Went over to Gail and Rob's house on Saturday 3rd for little Emily's second birthday tea party. Small gathering of only us plus Rob's nice father Brian. Emily is an outrageously cute child with a mop of blonde hair. Amused to see that she is now speaking a few words, including "More icing, Dad".

As part of ongoing quest to find a suitable hearth, or a piece of stone that could be fashioned into a hearth, I drove Ruth out to a stone merchants’ near Basingstoke on the afternoon of the 8th. We stopped off at The Vyne on the way to have lunch and make some use of our National Trust cards. Had a walk around the walled garden which had a gorgeous bed of pompom dahlias. The house is under scaffolding at the moment as there seems to be a major roof project underway.



Then found our way to stoneCIRCLE where Ruth spent some time in the yard browsing offcuts, seemingly mainly from kitchen worktops. Some discussion with the saleswoman followed but we didn’t end up actually ordering anything.

Managed to mess up our visit to the London 'Open House' weekend this year, entirely through not being sufficiently organised. Firstly, we were too lazy to stir ourselves on the Saturday morning and postponed our visit to the Sunday, thereby missing the chance to view Goldfinger's Haggerston School in Hackney, which I had been interested in seeing. When we arrived at Reading station on the Sunday morning, it turned out there were no trains running between Reading and Paddington because of line works, so we had to travel in to Waterloo instead, which, if you're unlucky (we were) takes almost three times as long.

On arrival, we headed over to Regent's Park to visit the Royal College of Physicians, though on arrival we discovered that the building is actually open to the public most days throughout the year. We signed up for a tour of the building and gardens, which was quite interesting though the tour guide was a bit over-theatrical for my taste.



We then took the bus to Hackney intending to see a few things there, but lost some enthusiasm after an interminable circa 24-stop bus journey. Queued for a while to see a wooden eco-house whose name I've forgotten, behind a bickering family of four whose bickering then descended into a brawl between the father and his teenage son. We went off the whole idea after that and took the bus back to Islington, where we had beer and crisps in The York. We should have focused on one borough and a handful of properties within easy reach of each other, but we never quite seem to manage to do that.

On the following Monday, my colleague Galina saw fit to share that she'd managed to visit four Open House properties with her daughter, in between taking her son to the junior parkrun and seeing a show. Some people are just made of sterner stuff.

On the 22nd we hosted Book Group at the house, to discuss Ruth's book choice 'Exposure' by Helen Dunmore. Quite an easy read; background of Cold War, spies etc. Of the four regular attendees who might have come, two were away but Ali and Lesley managed to make it. Ruth had tackled a new recipe involving halloumi-stuffed meatballs in a chermoula sauce - the preparation involved some ridiculously middle-class bleating over the phone about how the Caversham Waitrose were out of chermoula. Luckily I did an emergency chermoula run to the bigger MK Waitrose and managed to get some. We served polenta as an accompaniment, which I'd only attempted to prepare once before and been slightly bemused by. It was OK. By the following day it had become a shiny bouncy lump as per the photo. We marvelled at it for a while, prodding it at intervals. I eventually cut off a couple of slices and fried them as a dinner accompaniment - OK but I can't say I'd go a long way to seek it out.

Ray came up to MK to visit me on the 27th and we went for dinner again at the Antep Kitchen over the road from Tesco. Busy and humming, as per the last time.

Went down to Abergavenny the last weekend in September, stopping on the way at Westbury Court Garden, to make yet more use of our NT cards. I'd located it on the map as being reasonably conveniently located en route - the blurb claims it's the finest example of a
Dutch-style water garden in the country. It turned out to be a small place (euphemism for the fact that it didn't have a tea room, which we were a bit disappointed about, though I think the lady at the admissions hut might have been selling KitKats) but it's a dear little formal garden with some eye-catching planting.

Cone-shaped trees	One of the canals
Prettiness	Reputedly the oldest evergreen oak in England

(Most of ) September round-up

With the intention of going to more constructive and highbrow events, I bought a ticket for the National Secular Society’s ‘Secularism 2016’ conference on the first Saturday of this month. Due to early morning rail chaos – arrived at Reading station to find all trains to Paddington cancelled due to some sort of signalling problem – I arrived in London much later than I’d intended due to having to take the South West Trains service to Waterloo instead, which takes almost three times as long due to meandering through most of Surrey and south-west London. Resigned myself to missing the morning sessions – though frankly I probably could have made them if I’d made sufficient effort – I walked up from Waterloo to the conference venue, via a visit to the Early Music Shop, which I’d identified from an internet search on the train as selling recorders and recorder music. Have recently decided to take up the recorder, as I have a bit of a yen to play a musical instrument again – I played recorder a bit as a child and teenager but was only ever self-taught, but have vague ambitions this time of finding a teacher and taking some ABRSM grade exams. We’ll see if that comes off.

The Early Music Shop is a charming place on Denmark Street, just off Charing Cross Road. The shop is on the first floor and you have to ring a bell to be let in. Denmark Street has a number of music shops but early musical instruments are evidently a bit of a niche interest – most music shops give over the bulk of their space to guitars and keyboards. The EMS was crammed with recorders and other old-style instruments, along with masses of sheet music. I bought a book of recorder music aimed at Grades 1-2, plus a new brush. Have since bought myself a brand new descant, an Aulos 205, purchased, I’m ashamed to say, not from the EMS but from Amazon. Here it is on the right next to my old cream Hohner recorder. The tone of the Aulos is indeed nicer so hopefully it will be fun to play.

After leaving the Early Music Shop I walked up to the conference venue, the Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury. The hotel is a fairly dispiriting building on Bedford Way with a central courtyard and various cafes and restaurants adjoining. Pic nicked from TripAdvisor.

I registered for the conference and took a seat in time to hear the keynote speaker, one Jacques Berlinerblau, giving a talk called ‘How to be Secular’ (he has apparently written a book of the same name). Berlinerblau, an American academic, talked mainly about the state of secularism in the US, including how secularism is hampered in the US by being synonymous in many people’s minds with atheism (it’s probably hampered fairly similarly in the UK). He discussed the ambiguity in the US constitution re the separation of church and state, and showed [then Senator] John F Kennedy’s 1960 address in which he argued that the separation of church and state should be absolute (though JFK was admittedly coming from the perspective of being a Roman Catholic hoping to be elected president, so was presumably influenced by a – reasonable enough - desire for his religion to be considered irrelevant to his presidency) and that “no church or church school [should be] granted any public funds or political preference”. Sad that that democratic hope is a long way from being true in the UK – I’m not sure about the US as I’m reasonably sure Berlinerblau noted that state-funded faith schools are in fact illegal in the States. Berlinerblau said a good deal of common sense stuff about picking battles, noting as an example the pragmatic impossibility of removing “In God We Trust” from the US dollar bill.

After the keynote there was a tea break, during which I rather shamefully decided I’d had enough and went for a cup of tea and a KitKat in the neighbouring Blooms Pizza Café before getting a bus back to Paddington (signalling problem now thankfully solved). Must build up more stamina.

The following afternoon Ruth and I went over to Arborfield for Ruth’s niece Emily’s first birthday tea. Emily is now an adorable little blonde munchkin of a child and much time was spent watching her play with her presents, crawl under tables etc. She had a chocolate birthday cake in the shape of a hedgehog.

Emily pointing at her cake

Persuaded Ruth up to MK again for the weekend of 10th/11th. On the Friday evening we booked dinner at Buskers again, where the musician of the night was the lovely Jausme, playing an instrument new to me called the Kankles. She was accompanied by a cellist, which proved a very evocative combination – much of Jausme’s music is apparently influenced by the forests of her native Lithuania. Here’s a clip of somebody playing one. The food, as before at Buskers, was less memorable than the music, but it was nice enough – I quite enjoyed the Moroccan lamb dish I had though Ruth complained her chicken breast was dry.

The music shop portion of Buskers seems to be becoming ever smaller to allow for the expansion of the café/restaurant function – so I hope it remains in some capacity as that was surely part of the original point.

I continued the musical theme on the Saturday night by booking us in to an event at St Mary & St Giles Church in Stony Stratford that formed part of the Willis Pipe Organ Festival being held over that weekend. The event, the 'Saturday Night Silent Movie', featured organist Donald MacKenzie improvising (apparently) a live soundtrack to the 1923 Harold Lloyd (silent) film Safety Last! (I didn’t particularly recognize the film from the name, but it’s the one where he dangles off a clock face.)

MacKenzie apparently specializes in the art of improvised accompaniments to silent films – something of a niche specialism. The organ is not my favourite instrument – perhaps too associated with church – and I probably wouldn’t attend an evening of pure organ music, but had been amused by the prospect of the organ/silent movie combo. In the event MacKenzie played a few solo pieces before the interval, which I sat through politely, and after the interval we watched the movie. The accompaniment was certainly pretty good, in that after a while I forgot it wasn’t part of the film’s soundtrack. The film was entertaining enough, though the latter part, where Lloyd’s character scales the front of a building, I found more tense than funny. It was very well done though.

The booklet we got on entry has endless text about the organ restoration funding, so obviously a big thing for the church.

The following weekend we went up to Open House London on the Saturday. This year I had managed to install the very useful, albeit not free, app in advance, and we had idly flicked through the guide – Ruth had marked a few places in Ealing, I think just because it came early in the alphabetical list of London boroughs, and as I’d never been to Ealing we decided to go there, and agreed that it would be sensible to visit several places within easy reach of each other.

Bluebell House

Ruth vetoed getting a stopper from Reading to Ealing Broadway on the grounds that it would be quicker to get a fast train into Paddington and then get the tube out to Ealing. It wasn’t. However, we did finally arrive, and walked through pleasant streets to the first property we’d selected, Bluebell House on Waldemar Avenue. BH is a gorgeous self-build in what was formerly the garden of the large Edwardian house the owners previously lived in. Evidently the large old house was becoming too much for them but they didn’t want to move away from Ealing, so sold off the house and a portion of the garden and built their own place. Fabulous idea. I tried to abstract away from how well off they must be, as they seemed a very pleasant older couple, despite the husband being so posh he pronounced “off” as “orf”. I was impressed at the trouble they’d taken to work around the mature trees already in their garden, even where this placed restrictions on the new house. The name apparently comes from the bluebells formerly in the garden that were evidently re-planted on the roof of the house, though the owner did confess that only a small patch had survived.

Heath Lodge

After leaving Bluebell House, we walked a bit of a way to Heath Lodge, a stunning development of modern terraced houses. They’re larger than they look in the street level photo, as you go in and then downstairs to the kitchen and living area, and a small courtyard back garden.

After leaving Heath Lodge, we decided that we fancied lunch and established that we were in Hanwell. At first glance, Hanwell appears something of an armpit of a place: after walking along what appeared to be the main high street area along the Uxbridge Road and not seeing anywhere we particularly fancied eating lunch, we turned left into Boston Road past some drunks and walked along that. I had just suggested locating the nearest bus stop and getting a bus to frankly anywhere else, when we stumbled across the W7 Emporium, which looked more our sort of place. Indeed it was, though it was fairly busy so we were obliged to brave the outdoor space – luckily the rain held off.

After lunch, we took a somewhat lengthy bus journey back east to White City to see the Sustainable Drainage Scheme (SuDS) at Bridget Joyce Square. This sort of thing is more Ruth’s cup of tea than mine though I do of course think it’s all a very good thing. The scheme is right in the middle of the 1930s White City Estate – we both wandered in thinking we were looking for the entrance to some sort of treatment plant, and stood for a while in front of a primary school in a pedestrianised open space with some pleasant planting, before being accosted by an enthusiastic chap asking if we were there for the Open House. As he started talking we realized we were in fact standing in the middle of the scheme. The chap talking to us had evidently been one of the team involved in the design, and his story of how the scheme was thought through was quite interesting, including how it had to have some discernible benefits to the local community through the creation of an ‘urban public park’. We walked the ‘wiggly wall’ on our way out – well, you have to.

Felt distinctly sorry for the Open House volunteer on duty at Bridget Joyce Square: it wasn't a particularly warm day, the school was apparently unexpectedly locked and visitors had not evidently been too plentiful, so he must have had a bit of a thin time standing around for much of the day.

Temple Lock

Went over to Marlow on the Sunday for a walk with Ray. At his suggestion we took the train over, for a novelty; I hadn’t taken the branch line to Marlow from Maidenhead for some years. Ray tried to look as we were leaving Maidenhead for signs of the former Maidenhead Boyne Hill station, but we couldn’t see any. After arriving in Marlow we walked to the high street, crossed over and walked through Court Gardens to the river path. Walked along as far as Temple Lock, where we sat for a while, before taking the path away from the river past Lowgrounds Farm and the Harleyford Estate, where Ray used to work and where I lived with him for a time in the mid-1990s. While walking up Harleyford Lane we were passed by Craig, now the head greenkeeper at the golf club, who stopped for a chat with Ray. We walked back into Marlow and had another nice lunch at The Botanist.

Since our visit to Marlow, some idiot in a 30-tonne truck seems to have knackered the historic suspension bridge, which has a 3-tonne weight limit.

Very pleased to manage to make a Book Group meeting at Ali’s on Thursday 22nd, as I’d booked leave the following day to attend an appointment locally (see next paragraph). Ali spoke eloquently about the book, Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, which seems very well written though I haven’t yet quite finished it. Caught up with the other Claire, who is due to give birth to her first child in November.

Ruth and I reported to the Henley offices of The Head Partnership on the Friday morning to meet one of their solicitors to start setting up our wills. We’d been putting this off for some time, partly through concern that it might lead to an enormous row, but actually we’ve so far got through the process quite civilly. The meeting was quite informative, and we managed to fit in some discussion of the amendments we want to our Deed of Trust on the house. After the meeting we went to the River and Rowing Museum café – now called The Quince Tree – for lunch.

To finish: Runderwear. I keep seeing ads for this on Facebook. I rarely if ever run, though I work with people who do.

Autumn snippets

A rundown of activity since the last blog post:

September

Mind Body Spirit festival

 

Caffe Chai, Warwick

Few hours spent at the Mind Body Spirit Wellbeing Festival at the NEC on 12 September. I had acquired two reduced-price tickets via Amazon Local thinking it might be a bit of a laugh. Ray obligingly said he would come with me – perhaps feeling morally obligated after postponing a get-together the previous Saturday to take his dad to a football match – and offered to drive, so we set off early and took a detour into Warwick where we found a café for breakfast. Here I am outside it looking somewhat simple.

We arrived at the NEC – my first visit; main impression was of acres of car parks, that, cheekily, charge quite an expensive parking fee. The ‘festival’ itself was OK, though in a rather cramped arena. I tried to book in for a meditation session that was already booked up. We sat listening to some live singing for a while. Feeling I should try out one of the various sessions on offer, I decided to have a psychic reading – costing £30, as did all the ‘readings’ on offer; I’m quite surprised I paid for it – and foolishly took the first psychic that was free, an angel card reader named Rani. Can’t say I felt the 15 minutes was worth the money, but didn’t have the balls to ask for a refund, though the booker-in had told me that I could do so if I didn’t feel the reading had helped me. Rani dealt various cards and made a series of mainly inaccurate suggestions about me (Rani: “I feel you’re the sort of person others come to with their problems”; Me: “No, not really”), a series of banal observations based on things I had just told her, and displayed a startling lack of any psychic ability throughout. (When I mentioned having some discussions with my partner currently about what to do with our house, Rani responded with a suggestion about “him” – “Ah, she didn’t work that out then?” Ray scoffed over lunch). Left the reading when my time was up thinking I should have had my aura photographed instead.

What are angel cards anyway? According to Wikipedia they fall under the category of ‘OH cards’, though whether that stands for anything I’ve no idea. They seem to have their enthusiastic adherents, such as this woman quoted in an online forum re angel cards I found on a Google search:

“I truely [sic] believe in Angels too - especially when I have lost things I ask the Arc Angel Chamuelle for help in finding things … Also when I am feeling low I just talk to the Angels and within minutes see a single white feather so I know they are around us.”

The Hatton flight

This woman on Netmums (not my usual port of call for anything; it just came up in a Google search) says “I recently had my cards read, using Angel cards, and couldn't believe how accurate they were”. There you go then. There seem to be plenty available via Amazon, for example these, featuring a quite masculine-looking hunk of angel on the cover.

After having enough of the festival we retraced our steps towards Warwick and had lunch at the Hatton Arms, a large and quite smart pub near the Grand Union Canal. After lunch we walked down to the nearby Hatton Locks and had a look at the impressive flight. According to this history, the stretch of water that hosts the locks was the Warwick & Birmingham canal when it opened in 1799, part of a chain of eight canals connecting London and the Midlands. The Grand Union Canal Company took over the entire stretch in 1929 and did some modernizing in the form of widening the locks to allow boats to double up and traffic to thereby pass through more quickly.

Birth of Emily

Gail and Rob’s baby, Emily Charlotte Joyce, was born in early September. We visited Gail in the RBH the day after Emily was born and then again at home around a week later, when these pictures were taken. Emily has an insane shock of dark hair, which is very cute. 

Ruth actually had an hour alone with her a week or so ago while Gail went to a dental appointment, and apparently did manage to give her a bottle, but escaped having to change a nappy.

OpenHouse London

 

Alexandra Road estate

London OpenHouse weekend on 19-20 September and I had been determined to go this year, having missed out the last couple of years. Got over my moaning at the fact that you now have to pay for the hard copy catalogue of what’s on offer, and we bought one.

Inevitably with these things you end up not being able to pack in as many things as you think you’ll be able to. I had been keen for the last few years to see the Alexandra Road estate in Camden and go on the tour they offer of the interior of one of the flats, so we headed up there as our first port of call. When we arrived there was already quite a substantial queue for the flat tour, moving very slowly as they were only allowing four in at a time (due to the flat’s compactness) and evidently more people had turned up than the OH volunteers had expected, as they eventually started issuing people with timed tickets and asking us to come back later. We went off to have the tour of the estate garden that was on offer, and then returned to the flat an hour or so later, when, thankfully, we were admitted. Beautiful and well designed little space with a lovely balcony area that felt more like a little courtyard garden. The flat open to the public was evidently one that had had few changes made to it – the guide did say that a lot of the flats have had their interiors altered, but that there’s an attempt at clamping down on this with one chap in trouble currently for making some changes he wasn’t supposed to.

The estate was listed Grade II* in 1993, apparently the first post-war housing estate to be listed. Neave Brown, the architect, is distinguished by having had all his UK work listed, which seems incredible for a modernist architect. Go Neave. Though apparently he didn’t work in the UK again (he’s American) after Alexandra Road, thanks to the public enquiry into the project following its completion because it had cost so much.

Lunch outside at Poem

Bunhill Energy Centre

After spending more time than we’d planned to at AR because of the length of the wait, we sought out lunch nearby and settled on Poem, on the corner of Abbey Road and Boundary Road, where we had an OK light lunch. After this, we made our way over to the City area to visit Ruth’s choice, the Bunhill Heat and Power Energy Centre, a weeny little place doing all sorts of good things with energy in a way that I didn’t properly understand, probably through not being quite as interested as I should be. It opened in 2012 and supplies energy to three nearby estates.

At Salvador & Amanda

Returned to London on 26 September for celebrations of my university friend Helen’s 40th birthday. Ruth and I met Helen and seven or eight other people at Brown’s on St Martin’s Lane for afternoon tea – arranged to suit people who couldn’t stay out for an evening meal – then most of us went on for cocktails and dinner at the nearby Salvador & Amanda, a cellar restaurant on Great Newport Street. There was some disappointment with afternoon tea, mainly around the slowness of the service – though Ruth and I have enjoyed two pre-theatre dinners at that branch of Brown’s and not noticed any problems – but the dinner was nice and cellars are always atmospheric.

October

My digital life

Since early October am now studying my fourth OU module, this time the Level 1 module My digital life. Very interesting so far; it’s a broad-based module with a bit of programming, a bit of HTML and XML, a bit of (moderately) technical detail on networks and wireless communications, and no doubt other stuff to come. Am keeping a somewhat intermittent study blog on the OU's student blog area. Students are supposed to keep 'learning journals' but I find all that frankly a bit tedious. I consider myself to have done well if I spend time studying in the evenings after work, never mind then writing about it.

Discretionary increment

Pleased/smug in October to receive a merit award from the OU for the second year running. A certain number of these are made available to each unit every year as a way of rewarding specified individuals' performance. Judith handed me my letter with some kind words about the past year’s efforts. The additional increment on the pay scale doesn’t amount to a lot of extra money, but it’s better than a slap in the face.

Outing with Clarks

Went over to Maidenhead on 3 October and had lunch with Ray’s parents at Maidenhead Conservative Club. It was some years since I’d been there and I remembered the place as fairly dingy and thick with cigarette smoke, but it appeared much brighter and pleasanter on this occasion, no doubt substantially due to the smoking ban but I think also it might have had a coat of paint. Had a pleasant lunch with Ray senior and Carol and we then drove over to Hurley Riverside Park, where Ray’s sister Sharon now lives with her boyfriend Keith. Lovely setting; we admired Sharon’s garden and Carol, Sharon and I went for a walk down to the river, where I introduced them to the term ‘gongoozling’. Sharon and Keith have apparently been having issues with a mildly lunatic neighbour, which hopefully will be resolved soon.

Boat trip

Ruth and I were both pleased to have our first trip out on Ray’s boat for some time on 10 October. We went eastwards down the river as far as Sonning and moored up on the side of the river away from the path, where we had a lovely and leisurely breakfast. We passed the red spoon sculpture that Uri Geller had had erected by the Thames Path prior to his recent departure for Israel (audacious behaviour) - I attempted to take a picture of it, but there was plant life in the way, plus a number of other people on the path also taking pictures of it. Shortly after the spoon's installation, questions arose as to whether it had planning permission and a rude message was found taped to it. It then disappeared altogether, to be replaced with an actual bent spoon. It later turned out Uri himself had requested its removal, suspecting, quite probably correctly, that it wouldn't get planning permission. Geller's parting shot to the local council appears to have been "You can take my spoon, but you'll never be able to bend my creative freedom." Stirring stuff.

View of spoon through the trees

After breakfast we continued down river as far as Shiplake Lock, before turning round and returning to the marina. Ray has decided for the moment to pass up the prospect of moving to Enslow and is staying at Thames & Kennet for the time being. He has some grand refurb plans for the winter, including replacing his current cassette toilet with a pump out toilet, partly as this should prove easier for the klutzier visitor (e.g., me) to operate.  

November (first bit of)

Parents in MK

Tree Cathedral

Mum and Dad came for a visit the first weekend in November, Dad’s first to my Wolverton flat. I had carefully reserved them a space with my car in the Electrolux parking area – parking issues at Wolverton Park being the subject of a good deal of ranting on the Facebook group lately – and done a token tidy up. The Saturday was ushered in with possibly the worst weather I’ve seen since living here – lashing rain and really quite strong wind – and I was wondering slightly nervously what I would do with them for the afternoon if we couldn’t go outside, hoping not to be reduced to visiting the National Badminton Museum. We stalled for time once they arrived by having some lunch, but Dad, in a somewhat unusual display of optimism, thought we should go out anyway and perhaps it would clear up. Drove them (through increasingly heavy rain; asked at one point whether there was anything they wanted in John Lewis) to the Peace Pagoda car park and parked up, and we walked to the Pagoda and admired it briefly, by which point the rain was, thankfully, easing off.

I was mindful of not planning too long a walk, in deference to Dad’s recent bout of pneumonia, but he seemed up for a bit of a stroll so we walked past the Japanese temple and had a bit of a stroll around the garden, before carrying on to the bird hide on the south bit of North Willen Lake near the V10, where Mum and Dad had a sit down and a peruse of far-off birds, before concluding that it was a bit pointless as they’d forgotten their binoculars. We continued and had a brief visit to the Tree Cathedral – sun had come out by this point – before returning to the car and my flat. In the evening, we caught a bus into Stony Stratford and went for a couple of drinks at The Vaults before going for a nice dinner at the Calcutta. The next morning we went for a post-breakfast walk along the canal as far as the aqueduct, before retracing steps to my flat. After a brief sandwich lunch at Buskers they set off back to Wales.

Near the Peace Pagoda we noted the memorial of the Rev. Seiji Handa, with a small photo and a number of flowers. We couldn't really tell who he was - other than presumably a monk at the temple - but he would appear to have been this chap. What an unfortunate way to die.

On a more tranquil note - and hopefully no lawnmowers in sight - there's a brief commentary-free video about the Peace Pagoda and Buddhist temple here.  

Book Group

Got to go to my first Book Group meeting in a while on 13 November, as Claire M had kindly prevailed on the rest of the group to host the meeting on a Friday so that I could come. 6 out of the 8 of us (missing Lesley, and Sarah who hasn’t yet rejoined the group following the birth of her baby) met in Claire’s cosy back room to discuss Barbara Taylor’s ‘The Last Asylum’. Only Helen, Ali and myself had actually made any headway with reading the book, so it was a bit of a limited discussion, but we agreed that psychoanalysis is a bit of a mystery, and certainly can only have been the province of a rich (and leisured) few.

The book's cover photo is of the scarily long corridor at Friern Hospital in Barnet, the asylum referred to in the book's title where Taylor spent time as an in-patient in the 1980s. The building's now been converted into a luxury flat development called Princess Park Manor, which manages to avoid mentioning on its 'History' page that it was once a mental hospital. No clue whether they left the corridor intact.

Rambling for Pleasure

On the Sunday of that weekend I attempted to drag Ruth for a walk out of ‘Rambling for Pleasure around Reading’. I’d picked a walk around Arborfield with the sweetener of visiting Gail and Rob afterwards and then possibly going for a cheese toastie at Dobbies (that being about as grand as my gestures get). Entirely through my inept navigation, we started badly by walking quite a way down the wrong road, unsurprisingly being unable to find the entrance to Pudding Lane and having to retrace our steps to the Bull roundabout, where we picked up the correct road. As we’d used up a bit of time doing this, I cut the route short and we took a route back past Arborfield church, which appeared veritably packed with worshippers (Gail later told us that Arborfield's congregation is of a somewhat happy-clappy persuasion, including apparently sticking name badges on people when they arrive for a service) and thence slightly hazardously along the B3030 Sindlesham Road for a stretch before arriving back at the village.

St Bartholomew's, Arborfield

We paid a brief visit to Rob and Gail and said good morning to Emily, who was dozing peacefully in her baby carrier when we arrived, but was duly lifted up and passed around. In a laudable attempt to share Emily out, Gail whipped her off Ruth’s lap, where she’d just settled down relatively peacefully, and put her onto mine, where she perhaps understandably set up a lusty bawl and was duly removed, to be walked soothingly up and down the hallway.

We had a brief lunch in a crowded Dobbies, and may have bought some stuff but I forget now.

Henley

Went over to Henley for a few hours the following Saturday – I’ve hardly been at all the past few years but it is indeed a pleasant place for a wander around. Not sure whether my recent low iron levels were making me feel the cold more than usual, but it appeared bl**dy cold – we did go for a short stroll along the river but even I couldn’t face spending too much time on it. We spent most of the time having a wander around the shops and the Christmas market, and had a pleasant lunch at The Argyll. We went into Tudor House Antiques – don’t think I’d ever been inside while living in Henley, probably because neither Ray nor I care for antiques, but as Ruth likes them we went in and passed a mildly excruciating (at least from my point of view) 15 minutes or so staring at old stuff and banging my head on beams. Lingered for a while in Central Home, a new arrival in Henley, where I coveted a few things but didn’t buy them. Ruth bought a ring.

Must rest awhile before bringing this account up to date, as I am weary and must stitch a while on my sampler.