Fireworks; Jacksons; slow cookery

Park House

After work on Thursday went up to Park House for the Senior Common Room’s annual firework display. Had to fight for a seat in the bar beforehand for our pre-fireworks drink (Batemans 'Miss Luscious'¹ for me; some appley concoction (Olde English) for Ruth) and dinner – I partook of an uninspiring chicken korma, rebranded for the evening as ‘Fireworks Chicken Curry’. The fireworks were punctuated by the traditional ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ and, as a sign of the times, were preceded by announcements about first aiders, fire blankets, buckets of water, standing well back etc etc. Then went home and watched yet more fireworks out of the living room window.

Ruth and I spent several hours in town on Saturday that included paying a rare visit to Jacksons, a prominent Reading department store that against all the odds, has resisted modernisation and is now a true museum piece – uneven floors, menswear departments staffed by doddery looking elderly gentlemen with tape measures round their neck and a peculiar system of dispensing change that means that if change is required it has to come down a tube from several floors above (one visualises a little old lady sitting in a dusty room on an upper floor – this site has a bit about the system; intriguing). Ruth bought a couple of hunting-themed Christmas presents for her family and had to wait some minutes after handing over a note before change appeared. God knows what would happen if you tried to pay with a credit card.

In the evening we had dinner afloat – Ray had been hopeful that his gas supply would be fitted by that time, but ‘twas not to be (the latest piece of advice he has been given is to look out someone at the marina site called ‘Bill the Pipe’). Instead, we had a slow-cooked stew that had a lovely flavour, but contained potatoes that had resolutely refused to cook despite having apparently been on for around 10 hours. I received a phone call the following morning to say that both the leftover stew and the slow cooker had been thrown out.

We gave Ray a gift of a canal-goer’s log book and a salt and pepper shaker painted in a traditional canal-boat design. His delight at receiving the latter can be seen in this heartwarming photo (I blame the motion of the boat, rather than the claret, for the lack of focus).

¹Actually I didn’t like the ML all that much, but the only other choice was Brakspear Bitter which is over-bitter for my palate – am not yet enough of a hardened real-ale drinker.

Neo-pagan dabblings; Cerridwen; twigs

On Saturday, I participated in a day of neo-pagan revivalism by attending a Goddess Workshop at The Crystal Dragon in Caversham (annoyingly amateurish website – get that background), a local business comprising a New Age shop selling crystals, tarot cards etc and a number of rooms out back that are used for a variety of alternative therapies including Crystal Light Bed Healing. Saturday’s workshop was titled ‘Dark Lady: Journey to Meet Cerridwen of the Cauldron’ and was timed to coincide with the festival of Samhain.

The workshop was led by Vicky, an apparently full-time ‘Priestess of Avalon’ who trained at the Isle of Avalon Foundation near Glastonbury (Vicky’s website is here). I was quite impressed with Vicky and at least two out of the four other women attending seemed quite normal. The day started with welcoming Cerridwen into the circle and went on to include making our own goddesses out of twigs bound together and scraps of material, and a dabble with scrying, which apparently involves staring intently at an object of your choice (crystal ball, bowl of water e.g.) and seeing what words/images emerge from your subconscious mind. I must have been doing something wrong as I didn’t find that anything much emerged, but the other women seemed to manage to find things to say although I cynically suspected that they might have been making it up. My goddess [pictured] turned out to be a somewhat abstract figure with a certain amount of difficulty in standing upright.

The only downside of the day was that it involved sitting on a thin cushion on a laminate floor for several hours. I could barely walk on Sunday.

After the workshop, Ruth and I had a nice dinner on Saturday evening with Claire and Helen - my autumnal pear tart was a reasonable success despite an initial pastry crisis. I had attempted, as I usually do, to make a bit of a seasonal display with autumn leaves and a pumpkin - as happened last year, I had barely arranged the leaves in the fireplace before cunning rabbity ears detected them and the munching began. Here's Lola really getting stuck in to the display. Disrespectful mare. Briefly considered sacrificing her to Cerridwen but then relented.

Bulmershe; Islington; Salman Rushdie

Dived into my quite generous leave entitlement to take Thursday and Friday off last week. On Thursday morning, took the bus up to the university’s Bulmershe campus with the intention of spending some time in the library perusing education journals and having a bit of a brainstorm generally. Did this for an hour or so. Bulmershe library is considerably quieter and, arguably, pleasanter than the main library at Whiteknights, and also houses a goodly number of both education and linguistics resources.

The Library at Bulmershe

The Bulmershe campus was built in the 1960s as a teacher training college, later became Bulmershe College of Higher Education and finally became part of the University in 1989. It has been earmarked for sale and redevelopment, meaning that the current buildings will be knocked down and a gazillion houses will be built to further enlarge the sprawling housing estate that is Woodley. I would just like to put it on record (not that anyone cares) that I LIKE Bulmershe and its ilk. 1960s-built campuses somehow smack of REAL PUBLIC SECTOR – none of your old-buildings-covered-in-creeper or the current rash of spanking-new-all-ensuite-wifi-enabled-studenty-hub type buildings (why is ‘hub’ the latest buzzword in new student developments?). To preserve the memory, in case the whole campus has been razed to the ground the next time I go up there, I took a few sneaky photos with my phone.

My mother arrived to stay on Thursday evening and we spent a pleasant couple of days - went up to London on Friday and did a lovely walk around Islington, one of a number of walks out of Andrew Duncan’s Secret London. The ‘Islington spur walk’ took us on a pleasant tour of elegant streets and squares including a stop-off for a lovely lunch at The Albion on Thornhill Road.

Lunch at The Albion

After lunch we took the tube from Angel to London Bridge and paid a brief visit to Tate Modern, which included taking in Miroslaw Balka's How It Is. The installation itself is impressively huge, but the experience of going inside was somewhat underwhelming. According to The Guardian: Miroslaw Balka's black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill. I suppose knowing a bit about the intended historical allusion helps a bit, but in itself the experience simply involved walking a few feet into a not-actually-pitch-black space. Even when we reached the end we could still see reasonably well, helped by the number of people in white tops, which unfortunately for the artist had something of a luminous quality in the darkness.

'How It Is' by Miroslaw Balka

On Saturday we went over to Hungerford, where Mum and Dad lived for a few years in the early-mid 1990s, and spent a few hours mooching about, including noting that the formerly extremely bijou end-of-terrace where they lived has been significantly extended and is now on the market for £285,000. Blimey. Had lunch in the improved Plume of Feathers before taking a short walk out past St Lawrence's Church to Freeman's Marsh, beloved of the somewhat annoying Johnny Morris.

14a Park Street, Hungerford

Canal at Hungerford

At last night's Book Group meeting was forced to report that I had only made it halfway through The Satanic Verses - luckily turned out to be in good company. I usually like to finish a book once I've started it but Rushdie's writing style is too irritating for words.

Norham Gardens; Take a Break; goji berries

Norham Gardens

Ruth and I went over to Oxford on Sunday afternoon for a bit of a mooch as I had an urge to go and look for the street that features in the title of Penelope Lively’s children’s novel The House in Norham Gardens, to see if it was anything like the representation in the book (see here for a potted review). Indeed it is, being a pleasant genteel tree-lined street of large Victorian-era houses, most of which seem to be nowadays either in flats or used as offices/educational centres of one type or other. Here's a picture of me posing outside a Gothic-style pile (can only see the ground floor windows unfortunately).

Me enhancing Norham Gardens

On the way back, we went for a bit of a browse around the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the attached Pitt Rivers Museum (also mentioned in the novel). The Natural History Museum is the usual somewhat dusty collection of ancient stuffed animals and birds but there are some more interactive displays to attract the young including quite a bit of stuff on dinosaurs (presumably always a crowd-puller); the main draw for me is the building’s extravagant architecture. The Pitt Rivers Museum is an amazing collection of tribal plunder of various sorts, including a collection of shrunken heads.

After the museum we went to Brown’s for a lovely late lunch/early dinner. To while away the time on the train home, bought a copy of Take A Break, a low-budget magazine that I used to buy quite regularly – now buy it only infrequently but I do get an urge to enter the competitions from time to time as there are some quite attractive prizes on offer, not that I’ve ever won anything but as with the National Lottery one lives in hope. The magazine is mainly based around ‘real-life reader experience’ type articles; a typical issue contains one, or at most two, genuinely moving articles where you think ‘blimey, good on them’ and a number of others that range from dull to the frankly outrageous where one marvels at the sheer stupidity and crassness of the people involved. One particular gem I shall always remember was a mother and daughter bemoaning how, having somehow been defrauded of their benefits by an unscrupulous relative after inexplicably handing power to handle their financial affairs over to him (because he was ‘family’ (say in requisite Cockney Wanker accent) and because presumably they found filling in the odd form too difficult to contemplate), they were forced to live on baked beans and their ilk for six months. The photos featured of the doleful-looking duo, presumably following these starvation rations, suggested that their combined weight was almost certainly in excess of 40 stone. One wondered what they weighed BEFORE the baked bean diet.

This week’s Graze box contained a mix that included goji berries – never having heard of these, I did a few minutes desk research. According to Wikipedia, the goji berry is native to southeastern Europe and Asia, and is apparently the commercial name for the wolfberry. It appears to have a whole slew of alternative names including ‘barbary matrimony vine’ and ‘Duke of Argyll’s tea tree’. Apparently the bulk of commercially produced wolfberries come from China. They seem to have been trendy among skinny celeb-types and marketed as a bit of a ‘superfood’ (so presumably the Gillian McKeith munches quite a lot, in between inspecting folks’ dung). My verdict: they’re OK.

Okra shortages; mantras and beads; grapes

Ruth and I went up to the marina on Saturday afternoon to give Ray a hand painting his boat. It wasn't great painting weather but we managed to fit in an hour or so. A start has been made on applying the green top coats. We then barbecued some sausages and spent a pleasant evening sitting around his darling new little wood-/coal-burning stove.

In a fit of attempting to support local traders, I strode out along the Oxford Road (see 3 June post) on Sunday morning, stopping first at Super Foods, one of many Asian supermarkets in the locality but with one of the nicest selections of vegetables. Bought half a dozen or so small aubergines and a substantial pile of okra, which Waitrose appear to have stopped selling. Have been vaguely intending to take issue with them over this but haven’t got around to it as yet. Rather shockingly, my mother informed me on the phone that she can’t find okra in her local Waitrose either, but did find some in Tesco. Feel as though all is topsy-turvy with the world. Anyway, after purchase of veg, proceeded further out to the recently-opened Sari Sari Oriental supermarket to re-stock with Shin Ramyun. County Delicacies in St Mary’s Butts are no longer reliable stockists of this, and I don’t always feel like trekking up the hill to the Oriental supermarket at the University, the only other known source in Reading.

On Wednesday evening I went along to a meditation class at RISC courtesy of Meditation UK. The meditation classes I’ve done before have been of the silent ‘focus on the breath’ type so I had been naively assuming that this class would be the same and was unprepared for the hour of mantra-chanting and bead-fondling that awaited me. The first hour of the class was evidently intended as an introduction for novices; we worked through a couple of mantra meditations, starting with ‘Gauranga’, uttered slowly on an out-breath, and then up-skilling ourselves rapidly to move on to ‘Gopala Govinda Rama Madana-Mohana’, said quite quickly while threading beads through our fingers. On learning that the second hour of the class was due to involve musical instruments, I beat a hasty retreat during the brief comfort break, as did one other chap, muttering darkly about how it wasn’t what he’d been led to believe on the phone.

The young woman who led the class was very smiley and friendly but a little ditsy (came out with some gem roughly along the lines of “this will help you if you want to do spiritual things, like, you know, spiritually”) and did make some seemingly ill-informed comments about ‘silent’ approaches to meditation and their unsuitability for the modern age. Still, Meditation UK’s website claims, in grandiose fashion, that the classes will involve ‘understanding your true identity and the goal of life’.


My main experience of meditation previously was some classes hosted at the University of Essex’ Multi-Faith Chaplaincy Centre, led by a bruiser of a man with a Scottish accent who introduced himself as Amogrivajra – I remember smirking at some other class members before realising that this wasn’t supposed to be funny. Assume he’d been re-birthed at some point.

Attaching a photo of our now-white garage, with now-ripened grapes. They look pretty but I haven’t tried eating them. Probably should do something creative with them like trampling them into wine, but can’t be arsed really.

Center Parcs part 2; saints

Returned intact from our mini-break at Center Parcs. Very nice accommodation and a lovely woodland setting. The central 'Plaza' and similar areas did become a wee bit trying after a day or so due to the crowds of young families, but I suppose that was to be expected. I'd definitely consider going back though. It's certainly a cut above Butlins - here's a picture of me at Butlins in 1992, the one (and only) time I've been there.

Budget-class accommodation at Butlins Bognor Regis, 1992

To offset that depressing picture, here's a photo of the lake at Center Parcs.

The lake at Center Parcs Longleat Forest

Spent much of Monday on the train, travelling to a meeting at Staffordshire University (formerly Staffordshire Polytechnic, formerly North Staffordshire Polytechnic, formerly Staffordshire College of Technology. Phew.).

Staffordshire University

From Wikipedia

Tuesday was the feast day of St Michael the Archangel, my confirmation saint. Catholic Online gives you the lowdown on Mike here. He’s the patron saint of both paratroopers and the police, so presumably a bit of a hard law-enforcement-type dude as well as being a blond fluttery angel creature. The Wikipedia entry on Michael currently has an amusing image of a Guido Reni painting featuring Michael standing on Satan’s head. After that he probably took Satan’s dinner money as well.

I chose a male confirmation name largely in an attempt to be a bit rebellious, and in part because I was (apparently) christened on or around Michael’s feast day. In the event it caused a bit of confusion on the day, as my brother and I were confirmed together and the bishop made the not unreasonable assumption that it was Dave who had chosen the handle Michael – resulting, as I recall, in the parish priest having to hiss in the bishop’s ear “No, Michael’s the girl!”. Such fun.

Scanning down Catholic Online’s vast list of saints, there’s certainly a wealth of choice when it comes to choosing confirmation names. Had I been more creative, I could have chosen to honour St. Amaswinthus, St. Macrobius or St. Sexburga (despite her name, renowned for piety and humility).

Open House London; bowels; Center Parcs

On Saturday I finally, after several years of just thinking about it, made it up to Open House London. Met Helen at the National Theatre and had a bit of a poke about - the intention had been to join the OH-advertised tour but in the event we arrived having just missed one and decided against waiting around for an hour for the next one. Instead we wandered around the ground floor space and I took some pictures. It is a truly fantastic building – and I hope it outlives Prince Charles by a very, very long way.

After leaving the National we went for a pleasant lunch at Strada and then walked westwards along the South Bank to the Garden Museum on Lambeth Palace Road. I had never even heard of this place, which claims to be the country’s only gardening museum, before I noticed it advertised in the Open House brochure. The museum was set up in 1977 in the former parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth (which apparently had been just about to be demolished and turned into a car park) as the ‘Museum of Garden History’. The main point of interest was the temporary gallery space made from prefabricated timber that’s recently been erected within the church – this is, apparently, a freestanding timber “belvedere” structure that works within the existing church to provide a new exhibition gallery for the museum’s exhibits. There’s also a tiny but attractive garden in the former churchyard. Helen and I spurned a talk about asters (a tad too specialist for my interests) in favour of tea and a thumping great piece of cake in the café.

Items of note in the museum include (apparently) a total immersion font, which Helen and I managed to miss completely. We were also intrigued to learn that Archbishop Parker’s bowels are buried in the churchyard, although the rest of him is buried at Lambeth Palace ... why? Were they special enchanted bowels? The mind boggles.

We ended a pleasant day out by going over to Trafalgar Square to see the giant chess set installed as part of the London Design Festival. When we got there the square was packed and a game was just beginning between two young players, one of which was apparently the top girl chess player in the UK currently. She was a surprisingly trendy-looking lass - I had been expecting thick glasses and sensible shoes. The Fourth Plinth (see 9 September post) was occupied by a woman wearing several placards and having a bit of a rant, but unfortunately it was impossible to hear her over the traffic and the commentary on the chess game, so from her point of view a bit of a wasted slot, no doubt.

As of Monday Ruth and I are now ensconced at the Longleat Forest Center Parcs for a four-night midweek break. Spent Tuesday morning in the (extremely nice) Aqua Sana spa flitting serenely from one steam room/sauna/meditation room to another, finishing off with a Tranquillity Scalp Massage. Did hire a bike, partly because I felt I should, but so far have not actually ridden it much and am realising it's quite a while since I've done any cycling. Duller day today so braved the Subtropical Swimming Paradise (!) for a bit of a dip, unaccompanied by Ruth, who scorns getting wet - doing much actual swimming isn't really possible but the main pool has a wave machine every 15 minutes so one can do some bobbing about, and I did brave a go on the Wild Water Rapids.