Cosy conference; Notting Hill; mobile movements

Went up to London on Friday to attend a conference organised by the Further Education Research Association (FERA), a charming organisation that has apparently been around since the 1960s – from the approximate ages of the committee members present, that’s probably when most of them joined. The conference was held in the Regent’s College Conference Centre so involved a pleasant walk through Regent’s Park – the Nash terraces looked to have been recently repainted and were positively shining in an appealing clotted-cream-type fashion. The conference wasn’t well attended – about 30 of us – but that made for a friendly and pleasant gathering. Met up with my friend Amelia from Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Lifelong Learning Network (try saying all that when you answer the phone) and discovered over lunch that Amelia had dropped out of the University of Warwick aged 19. Shared that I had dropped out of Durham at a similar age, and we decided that at least we dropped out of good universities. Always best to be a dropout from a prestigious institution ....

As Ray is currently working on another contract in Chelsea, I accepted his offer of a lift up to London in the morning, even though this meant being ready for 5.45am. We had a rather indifferent breakfast at a branch of Eat on King’s Road and I then made my way over to Baker Street, but was still so early for the conference that I was forced to go for a second breakfast at the Base restaurant on Baker Street (much nicer, but left deservedly rather over-stuffed and caffeine-d).

Went up to London again on Saturday to meet up with Sarah again, this time at Ladbroke Grove tube station. We had a wander around Portobello Market, which is fun but so crowded on a Saturday that you have to concentrate more on fighting through the crowds than on actually looking at things. Sarah observed that there had been a big increase in the number of stalls selling fur, and theorised that fur seemed to be becoming acceptable again. We did indeed see a number of fur stalls and a couple of women looking at fur coats - I had assumed that fur was still not quite the thing to wear but perhaps public opinion has relaxed a bit on this. I can't say I've personally noticed more fur around locally, but probably Reading isn’t the sort of place where many people wear fur coats. We walked down to Notting Hill Gate and took a while to locate a suitable café for a cuppa given necessity of finding somewhere that served soya milk (Sarah is a vegan), but eventually discovered that Caffè Nero does. Later we met Sarah’s partner Chris in the Earl of Lonsdale and had a pleasant catch-up. The pub serves vegan-friendly stout (this is apparently a trademark of drinks from the Samuel Smith Brewery - though I’m not sure what stout generally contains that makes it not). Declined this as I’ve never developed a taste for stout but had a couple of pints of Sovereign Best Bitter.

Minor triumph on Monday as have had a paper accepted for publication in ‘Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning’. Yay me. It is, admittedly, co-authored with the person who actually did the work the paper reports on. A fair division of labour, I feel.

Seem to have finally managed to sever myself from 3. Received a phone call at work on Monday apologising for the telephone customer service, and transferring me to a chap in the cancellations department who had apparently been instructed not to offer me any deals. Subsequent call went fine and I was duly issued with the PAC code, but blimey, what a palaver. Have just made my decision and signed up for a Galaxy S contract with Vodafone. Looking forward to receiving my new phone and exploring its capabilities, which hopefully include brewing my morning coffee, contacting aliens etc.

Gay gags; social media; call centre frustrations

On Saturday night, Ruth and I went along to 'Laugh Out Proud' at South Street Arts, part of the Reading Comedy Festival 2010. It was MC-ed by the excellent Rosie Wilby and featured Julie Jepson, Shelley Cooper and headlined Tom Allen. Wilby and Allen were brilliant; Jepson was OK in that traditional dyke sort of way; Cooper seemed fidgety and nervous of the audience (echoed in this Edinburgh Fringe review from 2007) and her act at South Street contained little about the transitioning process, which you would think would provide fairly rich material for a comic.

Spent Monday afternoon in a >3 hour training session on social media and its applications for businesses. Was briefly introduced to lifestreaming, mashups and Delicious, as well as other more familiar stuff. We were given some academic references on social networks, and there was talk of interconnected nodes. Ho hum.
Recent talk of smartphones, apps etc has made me fancy upgrading my phone, so have been browsing online for deals. My boss Fay has just acquired an HTC Desire, which she claims not to know how to use yet, but it looks pretty. Kate spent some time at our last dinner showing me her Galaxy S, which looked jolly nice. Should probably restrain myself and be a bit sensible though. In the meantime, am currently spitting feathers at 3 Customer Services after two abortive phone calls in the last week or so. On the first occasion, I called to check the end date of my contract. The call went something like this:

Me: Hello, could you tell me the end date of my contract please?
Call Centre Drone: How are you today, Ms Thomas?Me: I’m extremely well, thank you. Could you tell me the end date of my contract, please?CCD: Before I tell you the end date of your contract, let me just say this: You have been a wonderful customer.
Me: Thank you.
CCD: I would like to tell you about some deals we have that may interest you.Me: I don’t have time for a long conversation. Could you please just tell me the end date of my contract, please?
The conversation continued a while longer in this fruitless vein before I hung up and sent a message through My3 asking the question, and received an answer a day or so later. Foolishly, I tried to ring them again yesterday to place a request for a PAC code pending imminent likely switch to another network. CCD2 (although it could well have been the same person) refused to action my request until he had had a chance to tell me about all the tempting deals available that might induce me to stay with 3. Another hanging up ensued and have put in an electronic request for the code. Telephone contact is evidently best avoided.

More Raja Yoga; substandard art; crafting

My new Alce Harfield painting is now ensconced on the living room chimney breast. Am mightily pleased with it.

On Saturday, went to Part 2 of the Raja Yoga course. As is the way of these things, several people who were at the first session had dropped out, including two overly religious types, which made for a pleasanter atmosphere. Marginally more time was spent practising meditation, and some of the lecture was interesting/useful - we were introduced to the concept of 'sanskaras' which seems to relate to the standard positive-thinking-book advice of using positive affirmations to overcome subconscious thinking patterns, though it sounds more poncey to say it in Sanskrit.

While killing some time before the class I went for a wander around part of the new West Village, a housing development that's being built on the former site of Battle Hospital, along with a mammoth new Tesco. According to this piece from 2007, it's intended to be "a vibrant 'happening' place to live". Not sure about that. I've certainly seen the Oxford Road referred to as a 'vibrant' and 'colourful' area, but sometimes suspect that to be a euphemism for 'high crime rate'.

Tesco caused a certain amount of controversy while preparing the site a few years ago by felling a large number of trees that were protected by Tree Preservation Orders - and presumably then just going "Oops, sorry" when challenged. I sent them an outraged letter of complaint at the time together with my cut-up Clubcard and since then have only shopped there when there's no alternative - not that I imagine that bothers them in the slightest. There's little remaining of the old hospital buildings apart from the entrance gate, which seems to have been kept. I was, my mother tells me, born in Battle Hospital, though I don't remember it myself.

Trekked up to St Joseph’s Convent School on Sunday (via Burger King to address Ruth’s low blood sugar) to support the 3rd Annual Reading Art Exhibition & Sale. We paid our £3 to get in and spent a while browsing the exhibits, which were mainly paintings with a few ceramics thrown in. Apart from a few cute pots, didn’t see anything that particularly grabbed me, and some of the stuff was truly frightful – series of paintings of cutesy animals in clothes, sort of cross between Beatrix Potter and Sylvanian Families, and ghastly New Agey fat nymph/angel surrounded by stuck-on flowers and glitter. In fairness, I think it was open to both amateurs and professionals.

The school itself looks somewhat in need of a refurb – one wonders if the decision to accept boys as of this year, and the change of name to ‘St Joseph’s College’, is part of a drive to improve its financial position. They do have a pleasant garden out back with some mature trees, and what looked like a grotto-type area with a statue of the Virgin Mary. The exhibition featured presumably recently-produced bannerstands with pictures of boys strategically inserted.

We made our way home via the Forbury Retail Park and a peruse of Hobbycraft, where Ruth surprised me for lingering for quite a while looking at technical drawing equipment, while I hung around aimlessly feeling somewhat footsore. There are an amazing number of magazines dedicated to crafting, it seems. Was also intrigued by an entire book devoted to designs for knitted toilet roll holders. Have been vaguely ruminating for a while over the idea of taking up sewing, thinking that it would be useful to make one’s own clothes – though I daresay it takes one a while to reach the necessary degree of proficiency. May attempt to acquire a secondhand sewing machine and learn the basics – may set an initial target of making a kaftan out of an old duvet cover.

On Tuesday we duly trooped up to view Temporary Office Building 1 and were entranced by the sheer drabness of Spur K, the ‘wing’ that is to be our new home. At present it looks as though it was last occupied around 30 years ago, but apparently an express paint and refurb job is planned prior to our arrival.

Sulham Valley; Raja Yoga; impending new premises

Parked up with Ray at Sulham Woods early on Saturday morning for the first in what is supposed to be a regular series of once-a-month walks to aid with general fitness (in between all the other good things I am obviously doing, like going to the gym, Pilates, running on the spot etc). We had coffee and bacon rolls in the car park off Sulham Hill while watching a whole crowd of militant-looking dog walkers arriving and striding off into the woods, and then ambled off the other way down the hill to the left turn into Nunhide Lane, a public bridleway running north-south from Sulham down to Theale. It was misty when we started out (about 7.45am) but once the sun broke through it turned really quite nice. Saw a number of pillboxes (including this cute one that appeared to have a tree growing out of it) which Ray thought could have formed one of several 'stop lines' of the little concrete cuties; this document suggests that an anti-tank ditch was dug from the Kennet & Avon Canal through the Sulham Gap to the Thames at Pangbourne, so I guess they were probably connected to that. Anyway. Military history not really my thing. This person appears to have done a whole photographic study of pillboxes in the Sulham Valley, which apparently offers rich pickings for pillbox enthusiasts.

The walk passed Nunhide Farm, which has a beautiful old farmhouse (not the house that can be seen in the Geograph link - that's just a regular house although probably it belongs to the farm) which looked to us as though it was empty and in need of some TLC, and then off up behind the farm passed the listed dovecote known as The Pigeon Tower, built by a local Reverend for his lady love so that she could see it from her house and think of him. The walk skirted the edge of Tilehurst and down Pincents Lane, past Pincents Manor and the now-defunct Pincents Manor golf course, to the retail area that has, really quite excitingly, been acquired by IKEA, although nothing further seems to be happening at the moment and there seem to be the usual objections on traffic grounds, although as the site is just off a motorway junction and not near a residential area it would seem more than ideal, but maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, the rest of the walk took in a footbridge over Sulham Brook and the Moor Copse nature reserve, which, along with approximately 2,000 other places locally, is reputed to have provided Kenneth Grahame with inspiration for The Wind in the Willows and, rather more interestingly, has apparently been the scene of some woodland naughtiness, although I can't say we saw anyone lurking about hopefully. We walked down a section of the old A340 over Hogmoor Bridge and Ray spotted the cat's eyes still in the old road. We then made our way to Tidmarsh and then across country back to Sulham Woods.

In the afternoon, I went along to Battle Library for the first session of a three-part 'Introduction to Raja Yoga Meditation', run on behalf of Brahma Kumaris UK by the charming Clive and Esme. Rather more academic than I had expected and rather less time spent actually meditating, but I shall go along next week and see how it pans out. Met Clare, who seemed to share my view that we were just hoping to calm and focus the mind, rather than being particularly interested in God, the soul, etc. Our homework was, among other things, to spend the week repeating the affirmation "I am a being of light".

Our team's office move to Temporary Office Building 1 is getting ever closer and is now scheduled for mid-November, although it seems to have run into a number of hitches. Despite having been scheduled over a year ago, the 'new' building apparently still has no computer points and has water leaking from the ceiling in one place. In addition, several of the rooms are apparently locked and the keys cannot be found. Given that the university owns the buildings, why the locks can't simply be changed is a bit of a mystery, but there you go. Not starting to pack quite yet.

Crusty pubs; Cardiff; Millennium trilogy

The electrical work is now officially complete, except that I think some tweaks are needed to the new porch light's motion sensor. Probably need to consult the manual I was left, though Adam has offered to come back and tweak it if need be. The new LED downlights in the upstairs hallway and stairwell look great. Just need to do up the rest of the décor to match now.

After an unrewarding meeting at Oxford & Cherwell Valley College last Friday afternoon, met Claire at the Hobgoblin where we met up with some friends of her boyfriend, who has recently returned home to the US. The Hobgoblin is a small, quirky pub, very real ale-oriented and with a strictly-enforced rule about not using your mobile phone inside - one girl near me who tried to received a bellowed "Outside, please!" from the American barmaid. A number of people seem to have their own tankards behind the bar - unfamiliar with this but I guess it goes on. Spotted one woman sitting at the end of the bar with a handle-free tankard with what looked like Elvish runes on it. Probably sums up the clientele. I had a pint of something quite nice that I've forgotten the name of.

Had lovely long weekend with Mum on another UK city break, to follow on from our trip to Manchester last year. Cardiff was this year's destination, suggested by me as I thought Mum might enjoy visiting her hometown; also not too far to travel. We met at Cardiff Central station mid-morning on Friday and went straight to The Plan in the Morgan Arcade for a second breakfast. We then went and dumped our bags at our hotel, the Premier Inn Cardiff City Centre, before walking back into the city and picking up a map for the Cardiff Centenary Walk, which began with St John's Church (where we were accosted by an enthusiastic young woman asking if we wanted her to pray with us) and then moved on to Cardiff's indoor market which still has rabbits and kittens (among other things) on its upper level. Resisted the urge to a) become extremely depressed; b) buy all of them and take them home with me. The route also took in the Animal Wall that runs alongside Bute Park (apparently a programme to restore the animals kicked off in July of this year, which will include restoring the anteater's missing nose) and the exterior walls of Cardiff Castle. We gave the Great British Cheese Festival a miss as it was £8.50 to get in - you'd want quite a few free cheese samples for that.

The walk then took us to Cathays Park via a quick peek at a little stretch of water that was the dock feeder for the defunct Glamorganshire Canal - the pedestrian underpass that leads under the main road was formerly part of the route of the canal. Apparently the towpath is still visible, but we couldn't see it. After a look at the impressive civic buildings at Cathays Park we went to visit the National Museum of Wales, where we tried to find the leatherback turtle that Mum remembered from previous visits, but discovered on enquiring that he was in one of several galleries closed for refurbishment. We were able to admire the impressive entrance hall and staircases, and have tea and cake in the ground floor café.

We had dinner on the Saturday evening at Giovanni's, a long-established Italian restaurant that Mum had heard good reports of. Kitschy decor, largely involving Giovanni in poses with assorted minor celebrities, and over-loud music which Mum gamely asked them to turn down (which they did, ever so slightly). Had a delicious seafood pasta.

Sunday was mainly spent visiting Cardiff Bay - we decided to walk from the hotel down through Butetown, which Mum remembered as an area of densely-packed terraced housing but which apparently underwent a massive clearance and rebuilding in the 1960s. The area to the west of Bute Street still looked depressed to us and as though it hadn't been significantly uplifted by the new Bay development. After some difficulty we located the Butetown History & Arts Centre, which appeared to be undergoing a refit and consisted of only a smallish number of books and photographs, but did come complete with a chatty elderly man who regaled us with stories of the history of the area before talking Mum into buying a book.

We went for lunch at the lovely Bosphorus overlooking the Bay before walking out along the Cardiff Bay Barrage Coast Path to have a look at the Barrage, and then back to Mermaid Quay (the main hub) to catch the Waterbus back up the Taff into the city. In the evening we went for a curry at the Juboraj, which apparently enjoys the 'very enviable position of being at the pinnacle of Bangladeshi and Indian cuisine in South Wales today'. Hmm. Meal was nice enough though we were the only diners in the restaurant, which never adds to the atmosphere. Made our respective ways home on the Monday morning after another breakfast at The Plan.

My Book Group has just romped through Part 3 of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, which seems to have been a major hit with all of us except Claire. We are, of course, all completely in love with Blomkvist - which I can't help now pronouncing musically Blooom-kvist after seeing the Swedish film of Part 1. Also had a surprisingly OK Singapore chow mein from the Chinese takeaway across the road from Lesley's.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Hairdressing angst; bleak suburbia; messing about in boats

Rant for the week: prices of ladies’ haircuts. Have realised that I may be forced to move on from Alison Hair, the suburban pensioner-friendly salon at the end of my road that charges me a reasonable £21, as the lovely Lisa has substantially reduced her hours and the salon owner looks a tad too much like Bet Lynch for me to fancy booking in with her. This means though that if I want to pay less than £40 for a cut and blow dry I’ll have to either find another old-lady salon or cut my own hair. Ruth recommended Karin, the mobile hairdresser whom she and Helen have been using for the last 10 years or so, but although Karin seems a pleasant woman and does a good job on their hair, I fear her ditsiness and my anal-retentiveness would be an explosive combination (she seems to manage to get lost each time on the way to the house and sees nothing wrong with changing their appointment times at short notice, often to something patently obviously in the middle of the working day).

Visited four town centre hairdressers to get a representative view of the going rate, but was quoted around £40 by all of them, despite the fact that all I wanted was an inch off the ends. One of the salons I visited, Kirokara Hairdressing on Duke Street, apparently offer state-of-the-art Shiatsu massage chairs, but even that wasn't enough of a lure. They also have the cheek to offer something called 'Pamper Me Mondays' at only 'a credit crunching £80' – obviously some kind of merchant bankers’ credit crunch. Also the stylist I spoke to looked as though he had a gammy eye, but I guess that shouldn't be held against him. I ended up having a dry trim at Heidi's on Union Street (aka Smelly Alley) for £21, which covered not more than five minutes in the chair with a supremely uninterested stylist. Came home and booked in for the next available Saturday with Lisa, in a month's time. There's nothing for it but to be better organised.

Paid my first ever visit to South Ruislip last Friday to visit Sarah, a friend from PhD days whom I had not seen for about six years, partly because she’s been living in Paris until recently and I’ve been too slack to get around to arranging a visit. Had a great few hours’ catch-up though we had to postpone our planned evening drink in Notting Hill as Sarah had woken up with a frozen shoulder. From what I saw of South Ruislip it’s a rather bleak pebble-dashed suburb the centre of which seems to consist of a row of Chinese restaurants, tanning salons etc flanking the main road from the tube station. Sarah and her partner Chris are currently living cheaply in a house owned by a friend but I gathered that, being city people, there was some doubt as to whether they would be likely to be able to bear living there long-term.

Went to the Royal County of Berkshire (aka Newbury) Show on Saturday, for the first time in about 15 years. Watched the heavy horses doing their thing and then what I gather is called a pony scurry. We met up with Ruth’s aunt for lunch, who got us guest access to the Members’ Enclosure where we had hog roast. After lunch had a bit of a wander round to look at the animals, including llamas, pigs and chickens but managed to miss seeing the cattle so no marvelling at enormous bulls etc. I was hoodwinked into buying a far too large tub of feta-stuffed chilis, which I will now have to spend the next month or so eating.

Had the excitement on Monday of a trip down the Thames on Ray’s boat. He and his friend Alan have now completed a boat-handling course and took the boat out on its maiden voyage last week. Seems to be going well although I gather some things (e.g. rope throwing) take a bit of getting the hang of. They picked Ruth and me up from alongside Christchurch Meadows and we had a lovely pootle down the river to Pangbourne, where we moored up for a second breakfast, and then on to Goring, where we turned round just before the lock and returned to Reading. Saw quite a number of herons and Ruth claimed to have seen a kingfisher. We both had a go at steering – takes a severe degree of concentration at first but presumably gets easier.

As of today (Wednesday) Adam from AHL Electrical and two colleagues are thumping about in the house doing the various tasks that form part of ‘Electrical work 2010’. Still not sure I’ve bought the right bulb for the new porch light but hoping they will advise me. Corraling the bunnies safely has proved a bit of a challenge. Methinks they will go for a couple of days’ board at Reading Rabbit Rescue the next time we have any work done.

Tapas; evening route marches; seaside

Had a lovely dinner with Kate at the Alto Lounge on Friday 3^rd. This was positively reviewed on eatmytown in April – am more or less in agreement with the comments including re the default 175ml wine glasses. Kate and I had the tapas, which was lovely although their tapas menu does contain some dishes that are unusual and possibly not 100% typically Spanish (honey-glazed shredded 5 spice pork belly?). My main complaint is that when they first opened their egg & bacon stack off the breakfast menu was served with maple syrup and was delicious; some time afterwards they sneakily changed this to golden syrup. No, it’s not the same thing. Golden syrup is used to make flapjacks. You don’t eat it on your breakfast.

Walked up to the marina on the Sunday morning to have breakfast with Ray. He had managed to turn the boat round to enable painting of the unpainted side, though I gather not without a certain amount of difficulty and photographing by fellow boat owners. Unfortunately it started raining shortly after we started our breakfast on the rear deck, but we erected the umbrella and carried on.

Went out with Ruth for what I thought was going to be a brief early evening stroll on Wednesday 8^th and ended up, rather surprisingly at her suggestion, walking along the Thames to Sonning. It was a lovely evening and a very pleasant walk (pictures here) though the scenery improves once one passes the gas towers and Thames Valley Business Park. I managed to throw off my slight concern at not having had time to research buses home from Sonning, as I am often told I should be more spontaneous. We walked along a lovely stretch of the river past a number of narrowboats moored up. At Sonning Bridge we left the Thames Path and turned off up into the village – Sonning is a wealthy, immaculate, chocolate-box village that is pleasant for a stroll through but looks a bit sterile to live in (I say this, obviously, in the full knowledge that I am unlikely ever to be rich enough to do so anyway). We made our way to The Bull and had a drink outside and then dinner, to make the walk fully worthwhile. We left at 8pm and did the roughly hour-long walk back to Caversham, in semi-darkness for the last stretch. Quite a lot of exercise for one evening.

Possibly brought on by cabin fever after having had a week off work at home, Ruth booked us a last minute weekend in Bournemouth last weekend (pictures here). We took a lovely direct train on the Friday morning and checked in to the Bournemouth Westcliffe Premier Inn, a monster of a new hotel situated on Poole Road on the western side of the town. After lunch we went to visit the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, an incredible emporium of OTT Victoriana that Sir Merton and Lady Russell-Cotes had built around 1900 to house their private collection of paintings, furniture, miscellaneous curios and things nicked from foreign folk abroad. The interior is so gaudily decorated and so stuffed with things that one feels mildly queasy after a while. Even the house itself, originally called East Cliff Hall, would have done well for a moderating hand – Mr Russell-Cotes had apparently not been able to resist tweaking his architect’s design, evidently deciding that it contained insufficient turrets and other random twiddly bits, and the resulting house is a mad incoherent fantasy, though according to Sir Merton it was supposed to be a fusion of Scottish Baronial and Italian Renaissance. The Russell-Cotes had travelled extensively abroad and had brought back souvenirs a-plenty; the guide to the Mikado’s Room quotes Merton as saying that they were so taken with Japan they filled around a dozen trunks with assorted antique artefacts to ship back to England. In some cases one does wonder how legitimately they came by some of the stuff – the blurb in one of the rooms relates the particularly amusing story of the Empress Eugenie of France visiting Russell-Cotes Towers and spotting an elaborate dresser that, the last she knew, had been in one of her houses. Whether Sir Merton and Lady blushed and gave it back to her isn’t recorded.

After a late-afternoon film (Tamara Drewe) and a brief stop-off to look at the light show in the square, we had dinner at Ristorante La Piazza, where I had vitello pizzaiola and we shared a bottle of Sauvignon Friuli. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at a couple of gay bars in the Triangle area, apparently part of my education: The Branksome , populated by some variously craggy and desperate-looking trannies, and the glossier DYMK with a younger clientele. Basically though I just don’t like noisy bars, gay or otherwise, so gritted my teeth throughout much of the time we were there.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at the lovely and very convenient Olive Bistro and then, after a quick whiz into WHSmith to satisfy my urge for an A-Z, took the bus to Poole and had a (slightly longer than planned) walk down Canford Cliffs Road and the surrounding very well-heeled streets down to the cliffs, where we briefly admired the view before walking through Pinecliff Gardens down to the sea. Stopped for tea in the Terrace Bar of the Branksome Beach restaurant before walking back along the beach towards Bournemouth, via a quick stroll around Alum Chine. Took the West Cliff Lift back up to town level and popped into the Bournemouth Highcliff Marriott Hotel where Ruth gamely tried to book us a table for dinner in the Highcliff Grill, but we were told they were full. Damn them and their nice-sounding seafood. As Ruth talks dead posh we assumed it wasn't simply because we were wearing jeans and waterproofs. Anyway, walking back inland we found the lovely Westpoint and stopped off for whitebait (me), a pint of prawns (R) and two Budweisers.

We returned to our hotel room to chill for a few hours – had the novelty of a nice bubble bath in a bath that doesn’t leak – before trying out the Ciao Restaurant – nice pizza but noisy and a bit of a trek. The cabbie who drove us back to the hotel deflated our spirits temporarily by telling us that it was mainly younger people who hung out in that part of town and suggested a club in a different part of town that apparently we might enjoy (presumably equipped with comfy sofas, Zimmer frame access etc). On the Sunday I left Ruth in bed and went for an early-morning walk as, ironically, it was a beautiful morning and the nicest weather of the weekend. Took a number of blue-sky beach pics before joining Ruth for breakfast and then the train back to Reading.

My first visit to Bournemouth was for a week’s holiday in the company of my primary school friend Celia and her family in 1980 (a few pics here). Celia’s family owned a (detached, with driveway) holiday home in Sandbanks, additional to the sizeable property they owned back in Newbury. I remember having a pleasant enough holiday despite Celia’s somewhat stuffy mother and her father’s obsession with his SodaStream¹. Since then, I’ve only visited for a couple of days, one in the company of my family, as I remember Mum and I having a row in one of the town centre parks, and the second with Ray sometime in the mid-1990s, when I got badly sunburnt shoulders after a sunny walk along the beach.


¹ What is with the recent revival of these? They were a white elephant in the first place along the lines of the Sinclair C5. This MSN 'Most embarrassing gadgets' link has it about right. Of all the complicated ways to get a fizzy drink. You have to buy a bottle of (say) cola-flavoured concentrate which you then fire through the machine and it comes out as a fizzy and vaguely cola-flavoured drink. As opposed to just going to a shop and buying a can of Coke. Bizarre.