Snow; Poet's Cafe; more snow

Awoke on Friday morning to a veritable blanket of snow. As always, given that snow is unusual in these parts, I snapped a number of photos before work, to preserve the memory. This ivy plant actually looked better with snow on it – I’ve a nasty feeling it might be dead.

Met up with Claire, Helen, Ali and Sarah on Friday evening for Ethiopian food at the Global Café followed by Poet's Cafe at South Street Arts, compered as usual by A F Harrold. The first half was devoted to the open mic slot, where about a dozen punters read their home-grown offerings, including Claire who read out a seasonal haiku she'd dashed off that day in a quiet moment at work. The second half featured performance poet John Hegley as guest poet, who delivered an entertaining set although with rather more audience participation than I go for.

Several of the 'open mic' participants were PC regulars and several appear to have produced mini-books of their work, with dubious justification in some cases. I always do enjoy Martin Haslam's offerings - his poems have a disciplined, spare quality that I like. Some contributors, I have to say particularly women of roughly menopausal age, don't seem to have grasped any sort of 'less is more' principle with poetry - yes, your ex-husband might well have been a complete git but no one else needs to hear three poorly-structured sides of A4 on the topic.

Ray and I had a day out in London on Saturday (pictures here) – started off by stoking up against the freezing weather with a slap-up breakfast at La Taaza on Praed Street (potted review of this café, which I’ve now breakfasted at 4 or 5 times: unsmiling staff; great coffee; very acceptable Breakfast No. 6, though it comes with rather more fried bread than is good for anyone). We had booked on an 11am Architecture Tour of the Barbican Estate, and as we had some time to spare elected to walk from Paddington into the City, which certainly bumped up my exercise quotient for the week. The tour group, probably partly due to the very cold weather and partly to the proximity to Christmas, was small – a quick subjective assessment revealed it to include me and Ray, two gay male couples and an elderly lady. The tour was fantastic and involved a comprehensive (and bracing) hour and a half long walk around the complex. The young tour guide was obviously a Barbican enthusiast and really knew his stuff.

We finished off the day with a quick unplanned detour to visit the appealingly-named church of St James Garlickhythe, before settling in at an en route Slug & Lettuce for a nice bottle of Chilean Merlot and some batter-covered snacks.

Abandoned vehicles in Reading

Last Friday's snowfall turned out to be merely a teaser, as a fairly unprecedented (for these parts) degree of snow fell on Monday afternoon resulting in traffic chaos and abandoned cars everywhere (see pic), and a whole slew of “how long it took me to get home” stories. Not owning a car, I have continued to trudge (wo)manfully into work. Today the roads look clearer, but the pavements are still like sheets of ice – but then no one much cares about pedestrians. AND we have to carry on going to work while car drivers claim time off for bad weather! If I were a bitter sort of person, I’d be seriously aggrieved. As it is, obviously I’m imbued with serenity and Christmas spirit. Much as I enjoy looking at snow, am now hoping for a thaw by tomorrow given need for Christmas travel.

Demise of goddess; Colleys Supper Rooms; Herbert

The goddess figure I made at Samhain has been partly violated thanks to Ruth accidentally sucking her head¹ up in the vacuum cleaner. In fairness her ‘head’ had been represented by a length of braid wound around the top of the twig and it had evidently slipped off. Have been pondering what to do with her and may end up having a ritual burning sometime around Christmas/New Year. May include some old bank statements and perhaps a rabbit.

On Tuesday, had our team Christmas lunch at Colleys Supper Rooms, a place that I'm sure I should find thoroughly charming but somehow it fails to float my boat. Their gimmicks are a supposedly traditional Victorian look and the fact that they bring round examples of the main course and dessert and thrust them under your nose so that you can make your choice that way. In fairness the food was nice, and better than I remembered it from the one occasion that I've been there previously, around 15 years ago. This picture (left) of my colleague Godfrey pouring wine shows off their décor reasonably - note the wallpaper, and the swathes of curtain fabric seen in the mirror behind him. I seem to be trying to convey intense excitement in the picture of me, while my colleague Paul, behind me, seems to be entranced by his napkin.

My previous visit to Colleys was in the company of a work colleague of Ray's and his wife, a Yorkshire couple we tried hard with but I think eventually realised we had nothing in common. I never cared for either of them particularly but did go out a few times with the female half, in deference to the fact that Ray and her husband worked together. I remember one evening, when Wife and I rejoined our men after going out nightclubbing together, Husband commenting that his wife was being (I quote) "led astray by a liberated woman". I remember looking around the room briefly before realising that he meant me. Quite what I had done to deserve this epithet I'll never know, but I can't say our friendship lasted all that long.

Unsure whether Lola has become interested in Buddhism, but recently found her sitting in frankly reverential fashion (right) before the stone Buddha head that Ruth and I acquired earlier this year from Sebastiano Barbagallo in Notting Hill, a fascinating emporium so stuffed full of Eastern plunder one doubts that all or even most of it is strictly legit. I had wanted to enquire as to the origins of our chosen head, but somehow didn’t like to in case this was interpreted as suspicion as to how the owner had come by it. The head has ended up being referred to as ‘Herbert’, which is obviously not intended to imply any lack of respect whatsoever for its Eastern origins.

¹ i.e. the goddess' head

Friendless church; ramyun; Christmas decs

Paid a visit to my parents a couple of weekends ago; the weather was dire for most of the visit but the rain held off long enough for us to go for a pleasant walk on the Saturday morning around Urishay Castle. The site contains a ruined house from about the 17th century and the ruins of a 12th century chapel, now maintained by the appealingly-named Friends of Friendless Churches, of which my mother is a member. Mum tramped up to the chapel to have a peep at it; Dad and I, being more cautious if there isn’t a big sign up saying “YES, YOU MAY WALK HERE”, elected to stay behind and look at a field of sheep.

Castle ruins

Mum going for it

Ramyun

Made the annoying discovery a couple of weeks ago that the Oriental supermarket at the University appears to have closed down, thereby removing one of the few sources of Shin Ramyun in Reading. Resorted to ordering a box online from the Wing Yip Store. When it arrived, was slightly stunned at the size of the outer box given that I had only ordered 20 packs – obviously pleasing that they were securely packaged, but slightly embarrassing given that the package was left, in not strictly legit fashion, at a house across the road. When I called to collect it, the box appeared to be blocking a large part of the poor resident’s small living room. I thanked him breezily and shuffled off quickly.

My whole family developed a taste for ramyun while living in Korea in the mid-1970s and seem each to be devoting a certain amount of our time to tracking down stockists; see this entry from my brother Dave’s blog from last year. My mother claims to have recently located a stockist in Hereford, which seems unlikely but just goes to show.

Ramyun unboxing

Met Claire for a drink and a bite to eat at the Ivory Lounge on Friday, compromising after an initial disagreement over venue. We managed to get a table although then spent a certain portion of the evening being elbowed in the head by standing drinkers, and halfway through our evening were joined by about 25 members of CfBT’s IT department at the table next to us. As a complete contrast, we joined the crusty real ale types at the CAMRA-favoured Hobgoblin to finish off the evening.

This weekend, I decided that there was a sound religious basis for putting up Christmas decorations, today being the third Sunday in Advent, and yesterday having been the Catholic Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Got the decorations out of the attic and spent a certain amount of time bickering with Ruth about which of our respective decorations should be chosen to adorn the house – obviously, just slapping the whole lot about randomly would have been simply tasteless and unrestrained. In deference to the limited floor space I chose to put up just one of the three artificial mini-trees I seem to have acquired over the years. As usual, I adorned the tree with the little red cherry lights I bought in Debenhams some years ago now, as well as various baubles. My baubles are of the gold multi-pack variety; Ruth has a smaller and more eclectic collection of baubles that are no doubt classier although less obviously Christmassy.

The mini tree

Herbert looking festive

An hour or so after we had finished decorating the tree and switched on its little lights, Harley bit through part of one of the wires thereby rendering the lights potentially dangerous and no longer usable. Intend to stop addressing him as Git at some stage next week.

Chewed books; fillet steak a la Toby Carvery

Went for a lovely dinner with Kate and Steve on Friday at The Crown at Playhatch, a local gastropub-type establishment. To start, Ruth and I shared the king tiger prawns wrapped in crispy potato strings, which were certainly artistic although slight risk of firing shards of crispy potato string into fellow diners’ eyes. The slices of rare¹ duck breast I had for a main course were very nice although I’m not sure what ‘pommes fur’ are.

Have been on something of a roll this week with Freecycling. Advertised an old IKEA double bed frame at around 2pm on Saturday and by 3pm had had seven replies from interested parties. A young lad duly came round on Sunday and loaded it all into his car. Wonderful notion that people will just come to your house and take away your old junk.

Jurys, Birmingham

Late in the day, Harley has proved himself a chewer. I had been rejoicing in the fact that Harley and Lola seem much less inclined than the late Jake to chew books/paper/clothing, which had led me rashly to store a pile of books on a low shelf in the dining room. This week I came home to find several with nibbles out of the spines. Rabbits apparently do need to chew constantly in order to keep their teeth worn down, so chewing is to be applauded, but they are provided with a plentiful supply of hay for this purpose. Lola enjoys hay but Harley appears to spurn it in favour of, this week at least, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway and the International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.

Spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday of this week at the Lifelong Learning Networks’ National Conference at the Jurys Inn, Birmingham. The conference was enjoyable enough and the hotel was nice on the whole – in my experience Jurys tend to have nice rooms but indifferent food, which was pretty much borne out. Am permanently amazed though as to why mass catering is so often so mediocre. At the conference dinner on Tuesday night, the main course was advertised as ‘medallions of fillet steak’ – to which I thought OK, sounds quite nice. The steak duly turned up – overdone, but that’s par for the course, but my suspicions were aroused when a dish of well done boiled vegetables then appeared at my elbow. The worst was confirmed when roast potatoes and gravy appeared a minute later. I mean WHAT IS THE POINT of serving fillet steak if you’re going to then turn it into a roast dinner? Personally I like steak with pommes frites and either béarnaise or peppercorn sauce, or mustard. Not BLOODY ROAST POTATOES AND GRAVY. I mean. Honestly.

¹ By 'rare' I mean pink, obviously. I don’t know what type of duck it was but hopefully not an endangered species.

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.