Walk around south-east Reading

4 September 2010

Walked from home to Jacksons Corner and caught bus 17 to Palmer Park Avenue. PPA is a pleasant Victorian terraced street looking out over Palmer Park.

Houses on Palmer Park Avenue

Walked along to the end of the road and under the A329M on to Culver Lane, and then turned right onto Anderson Avenue. Poor Anderson Avenue - the gardens of the properties on the west side of the road were completely ravaged by the construction of the A329 relief road. Not sure exactly when this was constructed - around 1970? There are initially no houses on the west side of the road and I'm wondering if some houses were demolished. The first pair of houses, numbers 34 and 36, looked to me to have no garden at all - the back windows must look straight out onto the road barrier. Awful. Did the residents get compensation for the compulsory purchase of their gardens? It must have massively devalued their properties in one hit. Anderson Avenue now ends in a dead end (pictured; the trough of the A329 is on the left hand side), though I don't know whether this was always the case.

The southern end of Anderson Avenue

Walked along Church Road for a bit noting the two very old houses mentioned in Pevsner, tucked among the newer additions - Bulmershe Cottage (no.36) and no. 46 with its cute little Gothic-style windows. Of the 20th century houses, 'Pantiles' (no. 108) is interesting with its spare facade and black Crittall-style windows. Nipped into Eastcourt Avenue to take a look at Woodley Hill House, part of Bracknell & Wokingham College. There didn't look to be much else of interest there so I retraced my steps down Church Road stopping for a quick look around the churchyard of Earley St Peter's Church. Found some members of the Heelas family in the graveyard (not literally - buried ones); assume they were part of the family who owned the department store that became part of John Lewis.

Churchyard of Earley St Peter's

Continued on to the Earley crossroads, and turned left down Wokingham Road to have a look for the lodge to Maiden Erlegh House mentioned in Pevsner, on the corner of Maiden Erlegh Drive, a tree-lined private road that I contemplated walking down but was too wimpy. It leads to Maiden Erlegh School, a well-regarded local comprehensive built on the site of Maiden Erlegh House, demolished in 1960. From the picture and the description, sounds as though it was a flamboyant place inside and out. Walked back to the crossroads and turned into Whiteknights Road, passing a bungalow on the right, opposite the University's Earley Gate entrance, that I always rather like (pictured). Passed Whiteknights Lake and then turned into Hamilton Road, a long avenue of some impressively large and imposing villas, as well as some lovely more modestly-sized Victorian semis.

House I like

Reaching the end of Hamilton Road I crossed at Cemetery Junction and made my way back down King's Road into town. After a brief stop off at the library and M&S I walked back to Caversham via Reading Bridge.

Kew; ruins; summerhouses

Had a lovely day at Kew Gardens with Ray on the 21st (pictures here). We took the train to Richmond and walked from there up Kew Road to the Lion Gate entrance, tucked away in a corner of the garden, and had a lovely walk around parts of the garden that I don’t normally visit. Visited the Pagoda – which is looking much in need of a lick of paint – and then the Japanese Gateway (Chokushi-Mon), which I don’t remember ever coming across before, although apparently it has been there since 1911. We sat briefly in front of the little gate and its Zen-like garden arrangement and Ray expounded some theory about the rocks representing flowing water which, who knows, may well be true. We then wandered on via the pinetum to the boundary with the River Thames, and watched boats for a while, including a procession of narrowboats coming out of nearby Brentford Lock and heading upstream towards Teddington (apparently the gateway to the non-tidal Thames – you live and learn). After tea and cake in the White Peaks café we visited a couple of the glasshouses, though avoided the butterfly display in the Princess of Wales glasshouse as it was heaving with people. We wandered back to Richmond and sourced a late lunch in the quirky Pazza Idea – funky decor and nice enough food though places that don’t take cards are frustrating.

Torrential rain last week including on the (mainly very young?) revellers arriving for the Festival. Amazing queue of them on Thursday morning by Reading Bridge waiting for the boat to take them along the river to the festival site. Going away for the weekend ensured that we avoided most of the revelry though we did wake up on Monday to discover an abandoned Tesco trolley outside the house. I duly emailed the customer service line to report it and, sure enough, it has gone now. What service.

Set off down to Mum and Dad’s on Friday morning for what is becoming an annual August barbecue weekend. We left early and stopped at Membury service station for breakfast including the traditional overly-pink sausages. Closer to our destination, we stopped off at Raglan Castle on a whim – were slightly stung by the entrance fee, given that it’s a ruin, but I guess even ruins require upkeep, and Raglan is quite an impressive ruin (pictures here). We lucked out and there was a sunny window in the generally gloomy weather that allowed us to have a pleasant poke around the ruins, moat etc. Ruth bought a necklace in the gift shop and I bought a cute greetings card with a sheep on it.

On Saturday Dave and Ben did sterling work helping Dad erect his new summerhouse (pictures), complete with cute little acorn finial on the top, while Hannah burned a huge pile of leylandii branches on a (very smoky) bonfire. By the time the barbecue was lit the sun had gone in rather and it was slightly on the cool side, but we had it anyway.

Building work on the London Road campus continues apace. Demolition of the building adjoining ours is supposed to begin soon, so we are braced for loud noises. A 'track mat walkway' has now been set up across the main lawn as the cloisters are now largely blocked off to enable, among other things, removal of asbestos from their ducts.

An almost microscopically insignificant piece of news is that my rarely-used coffee bean grinder is no more. Had run out of ground coffee on Monday morning so resorted to grinding some beans out of the packet I keep in reserve on a top shelf, but was reminded that the grinder has never been very efficient. Ruth offered to try and fix it and duly took it apart and made me wash the rust and cobwebs off the components, but was then unable to reassemble it again (a crucial screw in an inaccessible position, apparently). Here I am throwing it in the bin. Ah well.

Coving; photography; blood-letting

Branched out into some uncharacteristic manual work on the house recently by removing the coving from the master bedroom ceiling. A brief bit of desk research beforehand paid dividends in that it suggested beginning by breaking the coving in the middle with a hammer rather than starting off by trying to prise it off the walls. This proved an excellent suggestion and the whole lot was gone within 3-4 hours, which was tiring but satisfying. Not original coving, but that stuff people put on thinking it adds 'character' (poisoned concept), so I don't feel guilty.

Had unexpectedly solo but surprisingly pleasant trip up to London on Saturday morning, starting off by treating myself to brunch at the Market Place branch of Carluccio’s just off Oxford Street. Then to the Photographers’ Gallery to see American photographer Sally Mann’s exhibition The Family and The Land, which I had been prompted to go and see by a recent Guardian Weekend piece. The exhibition, apparently Mann’s first solo exhibition in the UK, featured four different sets of photographs in four different rooms, one a collection from Immediate Family, one from Faces, a series of close-ups of her grown-up children’s faces using a process called wet plate collodion, the technicalities of which rather passed me by, one a series of shots of landscapes with Civil War significance and one a series of shots of rotting corpses – ‘What Remains’ – taken at the ‘Body Farm’ in Tennessee. All interesting, though the fat corpse was a bit gross. Finished off by visiting the bookshop and splurging on two books, a copy of Immediate Family and one of Mann’s earlier study At Twelve.

Had a nice dinner with Ruth at Bella Italia on Monday evening to celebrate my birthday followed by Amarettos (or is it Amaretti?) at Malmaison.

Decided to do my public spirited bit yesterday by going along to St Andrew’s United Reformed Church to donate blood. Feels like a worthy thing to do but a certain amount of reform of the way data is collected from patients is needed, to avoid the endless repetition one has to go through each time. One of the questions on the Donor Health Check Questionnaire relates to whether one has ever lived outside the UK for a continuous period of six months or more. As I have, albeit as a child, I am obliged to answer ‘Yes’ each time to this, but the National Blood Service appears not to retain any of the information given for next time, with the result that one is questioned each time about the trips in question and the nurse/assistant has to go off and look up the countries concerned in a file. This time, while puzzling over South Korea’s entry, the nurse looked up and asked me “Were you ever in the Demilitarized Zone?”. I was strongly tempted to answer “No, as a seven-year-old Western schoolchild I was, unsurprisingly, unable to slip past the most heavily guarded border in the world”, although my actual response was “No”, albeit accompanied by a minor degree of eye-rolling. Was eventually allowed to donate, once last year’s surgery had also been discussed in some detail. Makes you wonder whether they actually want your fluids sometimes. Once back in the office, I recovered my strength with another slice of birthday cake.

Claire treated me to a birthday lunch at Strada today where we made use of their pre-ordering service though we had to endure a triumphal ‘Aha!’ moment from the smug Scottish git who had justified taking 50 minutes to serve Claire’s lunch the week before by telling her that everyone else had pre-ordered and she hadn’t. Inevitably, these days, we were armed with a ‘2 mains for £10’ voucher, although we did enhance our panzerotti porcini off the set menu with a large glass of wine each.

Sculpture; marrow; teenage vampires

Took in the Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain on Saturday 31^st. As I arrived in London early it occurred to me that a second breakfast would be an entirely sensible idea, and as the outlets on Waterloo station were heaving with bodies I wandered down York Road and happened on the unassuming-looking Caffè Quattro, in a drab location on the ground floor of a 1960s-looking office block, but had an entirely excellent bacon sandwich and cup of coffee. Just goes to show.

Met Helen at the gallery to go around the exhibition – I was initially a bit stung by the £12.50 entrance fee but in fairness there were loads of pieces on display, including the wartime drawings of Londoners sheltering in the tube that allegedly won Moore the hearts of the British public. The final room contained four huge pieces in elm, beautifully set off by the light from the windows. Moore evidently did not attach much importance to naming his pieces, as more or less all his sculptures are called either ‘Reclining Figure’, ‘Mother and Child’ or ‘Head’, making it hard to remember whether you've actually seen particular ones before.

Before leaving we had a look at Fiona Banner’s ‘Harrier and Jaguar’ in the Duveen Galleries. ‘Harrier’ is a retired Sea Harrier jet, hanging nose-downwards from the ceiling, while ‘Jaguar’ is an RAF Jaguar used in the first Gulf War, lying upside-down in the neighbouring gallery. I hadn’t heard of Fiona Banner (she has apparently been a Turner Prize nominee) but apparently much of her work has a war plane theme – among other things, she has apparently produced a frame-by-frame written account of Top Gun (phew, these artists). Of ‘Harrier and Jaguar’, Banner has apparently made the typical cop-out statement of “This work is more about how people react to it”. Saves you deciding what it’s about, I suppose.

My colleague Ann brought a number of courgettes from her garden into the office the other week, though all had reached the size where calling them courgettes is stretching a point. (Are marrows really just big courgettes? A quick web search reveals quite a bit of debating of this question, though it’s probably not one of life’s more fascinating questions.) I took one to show willing, but then couldn’t face anything as fiddly as trying to stuff it, so tried grating it and frying it in the pan in manner of a potato cake, but the result was distinctly underwhelming. Ate it though, as I felt a bit obliged after the trouble I'd gone to. It was OK with a fried egg on top.



For August’s Book Group book Sarah, our youngest member, had chosen Twilight, the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s monumentally successful teen vampire saga. In spite of its being clearly aimed at ‘young adults’ while the majority of our group are over 40, we all admitted to having enjoyed it. What’s not to like? We followed up the discussion and a selection of different Domino’s Pizzas, generously fetched by Sarah’s discreet boyfriend Tim, with watching the movie, which was enjoyable, though, perhaps inevitably, we didn’t like it as much as the book and Robert Pattinson's Edward was not how I'd imagined Edward - not enough gravitas and what's with the sideburns? However, RP is, as I understand it, a big heartthrob with today's young.

As a (considerably) lower-key version of going to Brighton Pride on the 7^th, which had been the original plan, Ruth and I took the bus to Sonning Common to visit The Pet Barn and check out its rabbit-related supplies. We bought a small packet of hay and communed with some bantams before walking back through the village past Duckingham Palace and out to The Herb Farm, which does teas and hideously twee garden accessories in addition to herbs. I bought a packet of black olive Mondovino crackers, sensibly labelled ‘Serve with white wine’, and we briefly checked out the Saxon Maze, though, as this picture will attest, I was too scared to go in. We then headed for the newly-reopened and revamped Bird in Hand for a drink and snack. I had a creditable beef sandwich though the small bar area at the front does rather have the air of a hotel reception. The entire back section of the pub was booked out by the local Ramblers' Association, so we steered clear.

Last Sunday I met Dad at The Bear at Hungerford for a pleasant sunny lunch in the courtyard, followed by a stroll along the Kennet & Avon Canal. The narrowboaters are out in force. Because of the timings of Sunday trains I was obliged to arrive early so had time for a browse around the antiques arcade, where I bought Ruth a postcard of a young Queen Elizabeth II in full regalia, though I issued a warning that fancying HM is probably sacrilegious.

Fermented cabbage; garden squares; local produce

A new Oriental supermarket has opened up on Friar Street that sells kimchi, so I have managed to obtain some following my unsuccessful attempt back in April. I forget the new shop’s name but there’s probably little point in remembering it as doubtless it won’t be long before it’s closed down and the owners do a runner overnight. Have also purchased a large packet for my parents, at Mum’s request, so it is currently festering in my fridge in readiness for when I see them next. Disconcertingly, though, the last time I returned to the shop, their kimchi supplies were apparently sold out and the man at the checkout claimed that there had been a big run on it, exclaiming “So popular!” and raising his arms in a 'what can you do' gesture. I hadn’t imagined that Reading would have a large army of kimchi fans, but was briefly cheered at the thought that the townspeople might be unexpectedly sophisticated. In reality, of course, the keen kimchi-munchers are likely to be overseas university students, rather than fat tattooed people from Whitley.

Spent a pleasant Friday in London with Ray on the 16th, in the main to have a look at two garden squares owned by the Cadogan Estates where Home Counties Turf Care have recently been employed to do some hard landscaping. We started the day with hot chocolate at the Marketplace Restaurant in Chelsea Farmers Market, the latter a faintly ludicrous name for the nice but hardly rustic collection of expensive shops and restaurants. I duly admired the new paths and edging in Cadogan Gardens and Hans Place and we popped in for a nose around St Columba’s Presbyterian Church of Scotland on Pont Street. We had intended to visit the Saatchi Gallery but discovered on arrival that it was closed for a private function, so we had a leisurely lunch instead at the Gallery Mess, the restaurant next door to the gallery that’s housed in the old Duke of York’s officers’ mess. The restaurant’s otherwise attractive interior is decorated with a number of neon installations, including a dodgy one of a woman on all fours with the word ‘Forgiveness’ (see this Independent review).

Had a lovely if expensive dinner with Ruth at Myalacarte on the 23^rd - I was aware that the restaurant makes a point of serving local produce where this is obtainable, but this did lead to some amusing descriptions on the menu, including one dish that came with ‘Basingstoke watercress’. I’m not sure that just calling it ‘watercress’ mightn’t have made it sound more appetising. We chuckled also at the 'mixed Goring Heath leaves'. Ordered the ‘pink carved Yattendon woodpigeon breast’ for my starter followed by fillet steak and treacle start and cream (which we accompanied with a dessert wine) before heading home for the blood pressure cuff. All delicious and beautifully presented so with hindsight my assessment of the restaurant last year might have been a tad harsh.

In an attempt to keep up with the young people, I have made the effort to master using predictive text, which is largely useful once you get the hang of it, but the phone does seem occasionally to possess an atypical vocabulary. I sent a recent text message to Ray part of which was supposed to read ‘… otherwise I will forward to your mum’s’. Using predictive text meant that what the phone wrote was ‘… otherwise I will forward to your nun’s’. Surely ‘mum’ has to be a more commonly used word than ‘nun’? Bizarre.

Brief pseudo gas leak excitement last Monday, when our team returned to the office after a work 'picnic' (held in meeting room due to rainy weather) and were alerted by a hissing noise coming from a pipe just above the entrance door and a gassy smell. Cue evacuation of building and standing around in the car park for an hour, while the university’s security services investigated. The upshot, ludicrously, was that the smell had not been gas but just stale air being forced through a pipe, and was part of a testing exercise being carried out on some of the pipework as part of the current building works. The testers hadn’t been sure where the end of the pipe was and had been going to judge that according to which group of staff panicked and fled their building. Doesn’t seem quite the best way of doing things.

On the way back from a meeting in London last Tuesday I visited The Building Centre on Store Street - never been there before but some quite interesting displays including the ‘Transforming the Boroughs’ project. Outside in the street, there appeared to be a 'We Love Store Street' celebration going on, apparently part of the London Festival of Architecture. Sweet.

Our chilli plant is producing quite a few quite large chillis. Difficult to know how much larger they’ll get but I’m assuming they are supposed to turn red at some point. The plant is just labelled Chilli Pepper (Hot), which doesn’t give much away. Harley did take a little bite out of one fruit before I could stop him, but didn’t appear to suffer any ill effects.

Sturdy TVs; meditation; afternoon tea

The news of the ‘end of the line’ for analogue TVs reminded me that I’ve been trying for a while to convince my 10-year-old 28” Beko TV that it’s coming to the end of its useful life, but it continues in robust health. Given that it wasn’t particularly expensive when I bought it, and it was a make I’d never heard of at the time, I’m quite impressed. I would quite like an excuse to buy a new flatscreen jobbie though so have been trying to drop hints to it, but thus far it has refused either to explode or to throw itself from its perch.

Have just had a pleasant few days off work, much of it spent aimlessly bumbling. On Thursday, took myself to Oxford for the day, using the bus for a change – takes longer than the train but cheaper and goes from Caversham. Went to visit Inner Space Oxford, an offshoot of the Global Retreat Centre mentioned in a previous post. Attended a lunchtime guided meditation session, involving sitting in rows in a white room staring at a large orange oval shape on one wall. Quite good although I had my usual problem of drifting off during guided meditations (see previous post), in this case recovering my concentration to discover that I was supposed to have left the physical realm and become pure light. Perhaps a tad advanced for beginners. On the way out I impulsively bought a DVD containing a selection of visual meditations, which I have been trying out this week. Lots of pleasant scenes of nature, inspiring messages etc. Bit naff but it does beat just sitting for 10 minutes attempting to focus on the breath but actually looking around the living room and checking watch.

Then went for a meander around the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, now that I can get in free – was inspired by recent visit to the Harcourt Arboretum to become a Friend of the Garden, as this apparently allows free entry not only to the Garden and Arboretum but also to Kew – as the entrance fee to Kew is about £13 this seemed quite a good deal.

Went up to the marina in the evening to see Ray and had a pleasant pasta dinner. Two boats in the narrowboat marina have acquired kittens, apparently from the same litter, which were scampering in and out of Ray’s boat in a fashion I thought quite cute, until one of them was sick on the floor.

On Friday, drove down to Herefordshire to spend a couple of days with Mum. Have discovered, among other things, that I am oblivious to the plight of suffering farm animals. Mum popped out to the local shop early on Saturday morning and I went to sit out on the patio with a magazine, but was disturbed by a sheep persistently bleating very close to the hedge, so after throwing a few words of abuse its way I eventually went inside. A couple of hours later, it dawned on us that it was staying in the same spot an awfully long time and, on investigating, Mum discovered that it had got its head stuck in the fence. She duly phoned the farmhouse and, a speedy 45 minutes or so later, the farmer arrived to release it.

Later in the day we went out for a short walk along the disused railway line from Llanfoist Crossing to the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal, a dinky little canal that is apparently completely landlocked and not connected to the rest of the canal system. It looked a lovely spot for a pleasant meander in a boat, although how you get a boat onto it from anywhere else is a bit of a mystery. After the walk we went for tea at the Llanwenarth Hotel near Abergavenny. We were restrained enough to order only one full tea (sandwiches; scones and cream; assortment of cakes) between us, with a couple of extra scones for good measure.

Later in the evening we cooked an interesting fusion supper of keema matar and Korean fried squash (ho-pahk juhn) made with a couple of courgettes from Dad’s garden. One of the courgettes had grown quite large and bulbous so was quite proud of myself for handling it. Now I just need Ruth to get rid of the really big potato that’s lurking at the back of the vegetable rack.

We also made a summer pudding (although all I did was boil the fruit) which turned out quite well. Took this picture immediately Mum had freed it from its bowl, in case it collapsed, but it held firm. Quite impressed.

On Sunday went for a last Sunday lunch at the farmhouse at Ashbury where Ruth's aunt has lived for the last 50 years, prior to her imminent move to a smaller house. Much of her packing had been done but Ruth managed to purloin quite a large number of posh-looking wine glasses, which I will no doubt break.

Had another day off on Monday which I mainly spent doing useful jobs (going to gym; sweeping debris off kitchen floor, etc). Was interrupted late afternoon by a lady conducting an Ipsos Mori survey (must get new front door with spyhole), which I reluctantly agreed to participate in - it ended up taking about 40 minutes due to a combination of the repetitive nature of the questions and her seeming lack of expertise with the technology she was using. Just when she had finally finished, Harley bounded in, ran over to her, stuck his head in her bag and then knocked the cable out of the back of her laptop. Cue several minutes of ‘oh dear, I think I’ve lost everything’, while I remonstrated with Harley somewhat unconvincingly and tried to simultaneously convey sympathy and impatience for her to leave. Eventually she left, saying that I was the first person this had happened with.

She also mentioned that she’d had quite a good result in our area with getting people to complete the survey. Made mental note to move to area where more of the residents have day jobs.

Jasmine; dentists; education events

Charmed that the jasmine growing around the front door has produced lots of attractively scented flowers recently. After the winter it was looking brown and crisp and Ruth was speculating, rather more hopefully than I thought kind, that it might be dead. But no. Look how pretty.

Graduation ceremonies took place last week so the campus was awash with young (surely, younger than they used to be?) students with, in some cases, elaborately overdressed family members. I think I managed to appear in a number of family photos while making my way along the cloisters on the way back from lunch.

Intrigued by the report of the appearance of Jesus on a drainpipe in Coventry, though I have to say it looks a slight stretch of the imagination to me. If this degree of imagination is required, I reckon a pair of discarded pants on the bedroom floor this morning was a dead ringer for the Virgin Mary.

Went for the usual thrice-yearly scrape and polish with hygienist last Thursday. I took the perhaps unprincipled decision to abandon NHS dentists about three years ago after being registered as an NHS patient in three different dental surgeries in Reading within the space of a few years: one decided to stop accepting NHS patients; the next was a shabby little hole containing an abrasive Greek bint whom I never remember cracking a smile, followed by a surgery in Caversham with a semi- abandoned air and a Vicky Pollard-like receptionist, where the dentist probably had an adequate grasp of English but preferred not to use any of it during the consultation, except for an "Ah! You need filling!" towards the end. At that point I decided I needed communication skills in addition to a second opinion (my previous, only, filling had been around 20 years earlier and I was a bit sceptical) so registered at a private dental practice. I'm sure their technical competence is no greater than NHS dentists (my new dentist confirmed that I did, indeed, need the filling) but their customer service and communication is infinitely better. Even the hygienist is a softened version of the ferocious Nazi witch prototype that I remember NHS hygienists fitting when I was younger. After the hygienist’s appointment, my dentist, a pleasant jolly woman who was undoubtedly head girl of her private school in a former life, told me, as usual, that my teeth were wholly uninteresting and threw in a jovial parting comment about flossing, before charging me £35 for the 5-minute consultation. This is the life. Next stop BUPA.

Spent last Friday at the National Strategic Skills Audit South East Regional Roadshow, which involved taking the train to Gatwick Airport and then getting a taxi to the Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick which, despite the name, is only a short car drive involving a motorway journey from Gatwick Airport. No wonder the fare was £16. The hotel is a bizarre faux-Mediterranean affair with its own golf course, which was awash with elderly golfers – in fact my cab driver nearly took out one particularly doddery looking specimen on the way up the drive. The event itself was well organised though did involve the compere pleading with people during the welcome address not to bugger off after lunch what with the lure of it being Friday/sunny/Andy Murray playing at Wimbledon. Didn’t entirely work, given that each table sat 10 people and mine was down to 4 after the lunch break.

Ruth and I wandered briefly into Reading’s new branch of The Range on Saturday. According to their hyperbolic website, The Range’s wares range “from everything you’ve ever dreamt of to anything you could ever imagine”. In practice, it’s a bit like Hobbycraft combined with Matalan combined with Homebase. It does sell rabbit food, which could be useful. I spent 59p on a ‘Harvest Munch’ snack for the bunnies, which they have so far spurned. Here it is placed temptingly on the floor, plus Lola’s bottom as she hops past it.

Went to another event on Sunday, as I had volunteered a while ago to attend a day of the first-ever Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College in Crowthorne. By the time the event came around, both the universities minister David Willetts and film mogul/founder of Skillset David Puttnam had pulled out, making it distinctly less relevant to Lifelong Learning Networks than it could have been. Bits of the day were interesting, though, and Kenneth Baker was good value. Spent a predictable portion of the day envying people who go to school in such surroundings. Here's one of the school buildings and a rather nice woody glade where I ate my lunch.
Managed to follow the wrong crowd of people on the way in to the College grounds and initially found myself in a gymnasium about to register for a chess tournament. Realised just in time. Phew.