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

RIP Expedit; theatre; glazing

Again backtracking a bit … spent Ruth’s birthday on 3 January firstly driving over to Aldbourne to visit Ruth’s Granny Box and to take her a gift of a battery-powered Mini Aquarium, which Ruth was forced to snatch away from Granny’s eager hands as it turned out to have the wrong sort of batteries. We had lunch in the Bear at Hungerford, recently taken over by Old English Inns – the bar area is pretty much the same, though it has been enlarged at the expense of the dead posh ladies’ toilets; there are, obviously, new ladies’ toilets sited elsewhere, but we agreed they’re not quite as posh as they were before. After this we attempted to go for a walk I’d identified around the Savernake Forest, but couldn’t find the recommended starting point, so after several false starts parked just inside the main gates off the A4 and walked a way down the Grand Avenue. We didn’t have a map with us – strange move on my part, as I am usually well equipped with maps – so were forced to retrace steps. In the evening we went for a birthday dinner at Myalacarte – I can’t now remember what we ate, but it was very nice.

Heavy winds brought down the last of the big Cedar of Lebanon trees on the OU’s campus in February, which was a bit sad. Estates published this bulletin on the intranet, a bit late so I suspect they’d been contacted by a few distraught members of staff. It was one of a pair, the other of which blew over some time last year. Not sure whether they’d just reached the end of their lives, though a colleague did speculate that they’d been victims of replacing buildings which had created a gap/wind tunnel in a critical place.

Met Helen at Tate Modern on 22 February for a long overdue catch-up. In addition to changing jobs since we last met, Helen has become engaged to a chap she met eight months ago at a speed-dating event. The exhibits on offer in the galleries we looked in included this Richard Serra piece ‘Trip Hammer’ in a gallery themed ‘Energy and Process’. My introduction to Richard Serra was on a visit to Tate (Britain, as it is now) with Mum many years ago when we encountered two vast blocks in the main entrance hall which we assumed were plinths waiting to have new artworks displayed on them. In fact they themselves turned out to be the display, another Serra artwork. We later saw another exhibition of his work at the Serpentine Gallery, consisting of rooms with some walls painted black and some white.

Ah, Expedit. Felt a pang of sadness at IKEA discontinuing its iconic Expedit range. Apparently I was in good company: this piece, titled ‘Ikea has killed off Expedit, leaving me sad, angry and confused’ was swiftly followed by this piece, titled ‘The people who mourn for discontinued Ikea lines’. Feeling the need to stock up, I sneaked a visit to IKEA on 26 February and purchased two white 2x2 Expedit units, along with a few of the storage boxes to go in them. Behind me in the queue was a man also purchasing two of the 2x2 units – I thought I might have seen him brush a tear from the corner of his eye, but can’t be sure. My 4x4 Expedit unit is now residing in the dining room of the house, although Ruth doesn’t think it goes – but she is, of course, wrong.

Went for tea with Claire on 2 March and what was intended to be a walk along the Thames – the original plan of a walk to Sonning had had to be abandoned due to continuing extreme sogginess of terrain, but we managed a brief walk once she had lent me Chris’ wellingtons. The walk was curtailed by the unfortunate discovery that Claire’s sister’s boyfriend Martin’s boat, a ramshackle Dutch barge named Mad Meg which is moored by the Horseshoe Bridge at Kennet Mouth, appeared to have been boarded and robbed. Claire had evidently been keeping an informal eye on it while Martin was on a six-week work trip to New Zealand, but it had evidently been tampered with shortly before as apparently Claire had already reported it to the police. We had to spend quite a while standing by the boat while Claire first called Martin’s friend Dave, who turned up to look it over, and then phoned the police to update the crime report. Dave’s theory was that others were attempting to take possession of it, and pointed the finger at the resident of a boat moored on the opposite bank, who is evidently known to the local boating community. While sympathetic, I thought it unfortunate that the boat was moored in such a vulnerable position and is sufficiently dilapidated as to look abandoned. Hopefully it can be done up a bit at some point in the future.

Went with Liz on 5 March to hear the Ben Westlake Trio perform at one of the OU’s free lunchtime chamber music concerts in St Michael’s Church, the deconsecrated church on the Walton Hall campus. The three young chaps, two studying at the Royal Academy of Music and one at the Royal Northern College of Music, played a three-part programme beginning, to my delight, with Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio, which I’ve loved since studying it as part of my O-level Music course. They followed that with Schumann’s ‘Märchenerzählungen’ and then four of Max Bruch’s ‘Eight Pieces’. I had no familiarity with either of the latter; indeed this entry on Max Bruch notes that he is not primarily known for chamber music but that his "Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano" are occasionally heard as it’s a relatively rare combination of instruments. A pleasant one though. The young pianist, Tyler Hay, also gave stirring performances of a couple of short Chopin pieces.

Theatre trip on 7 March to see Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud – Ruth booked the tickets a while back as she is a big Angela Lansbury fan and wanted the chance to see the old girl return to the London stage. She was indeed entertaining, though I’m probably in agreement with this review. A large part of the audience were evidently there solely to see AL, and laughed and cheered loudly at practically her every utterance – including a request to pass the cucumber sandwiches, which I wasn’t sure was intended to be particularly funny – which became irritating after a while, given that there were other actors on stage. Couldn’t quite decide what I thought of the play – it was good, particularly Janie Dee as Ruth, though some of the humour was lost on me and I couldn’t decide what to make of the ending. It was my first exposure to Noel Coward, though, so possibly I just wasn't sure what it was all about. We had another lovely pre-theatre dinner at Browns on St Martin's Lane.

Made a mid-March visit to Mum and Dad and admired their new kitchen. We went for a walk along the Usk on the Saturday followed by a nice lunch at the Grofield Inn in Abergavenny. In the evening Dad lit the chimenea they inherited with the house and we sat outside for a while, though it did get a little chilly. Lovely sunset though.


Anglian have finally carried out the work we agreed with them a few months back, replacing the three single-glazed windows at the rear of the house with double-glazed units, and replacing the dining room window with a fully glazed French door. Here are 'before and after' pictures of the window in the toilet, with new extractor fan squeezed in top left, the only spot the electrician could find to put it.

The French door had been the subject of some dispute between Ruth and me for a while, with me quite liking the idea but not thinking that it constituted essential works, given strapped finances, and also wary of the impact it would have on the furnishing options for the dining room, which are already quite limited given the presence of doors in three corners (now four). Also was vaguely overcome by sentiment for the old dining room window, given that it was part of the Victorian house – though actually only the surround and the sill; the original sash window was long gone before I moved in.

The job was slightly plagued by misfortune - during the fitting of the windows, one of the fitters injured himself and later had to go to hospital, resulting in the door fitting being rescheduled for a few days later; on said day, Ruth had a call to say the van had broken down and they couldn’t come; Ruth then started a new contract in the interim and wasn’t able to be at home, so it had to be rearranged for a few weeks’ later to give me time to arrange to be at home. I duly arranged to be at home on Monday and Tuesday last week; had a call around 10:00am on Monday to say that one of the fitters had called in sick and they weren’t going to be able to come. Wasn’t best pleased as I’d taken a day’s leave, though in fairness the hapless woman on the phone was very apologetic. After a bit of arranging and some alternately threatening and emotional-sounding noises on my part, they agreed to send out a two-man team the following day who would definitely, we were assured, be able to complete the job in one day. Indeed they did, quite impressively.

Met up with Ray for supper at the Global Café on Tuesday last week (day of the French door fitting) as he had got a whim while in Reading with Emma recently to go there again. Don't often go these days as Ruth isn't a fan of the food, so a rare treat. Ray finished up with what was billed as an 'Ethiopian coffee', which certainly arrived in an attractive pot with two little cups, but smelled and tasted disappointingly like Nescafe.

Given recent lack of success at the job-getting game, was cheered a couple of Fridays ago to receive this (above right). Well, who wouldn't be. I did indeed have a paper published in RPCE in 2012, though the tone of the email suggested more that the author was about to either offer to be my wife or to deposit their life savings in my bank account.