Birthday; civic duty; snow

A brief summary of post-Christmas activity:

Ruth and I went up to London on 2 January for a walk along the Regent’s Canal from Little Venice. Started with a bite at the Waterside Café then walked for I suppose a couple of miles along canal bank of varying degrees of attractiveness, before arriving at Camden Lock and taking a brief look around the market and surrounding streets. Quite rapidly realised that the whole shebang holds considerably less appeal for me now than it did when I frequented it occasionally in my early 20s. Perhaps some things are best left to the young. We had a quick drink in the World’s End, looking, I think, world-weary, then made our way home.

Celebrated Ruth’s 40th birthday on 3 January by heading to Hungerford to meet several of her relatives for lunch at The Bear. After a limited yet quite stressful liaison with the hotel beforehand over Prosecco and fairy cakes, have decided that I am not cut out to be an events organiser. I got to sit next to Ruth’s mother’s delightful cousin Mary, who is always good value, so that was a plus. The picture is of Gail and Ruth and their teenage cousin Norman, who manfully sat through what must have been a tedious occasion full of much older people – I applaud him for not getting out his mobile half an hour in and starting to text friends, but he’s obviously too well-bred for that. I had booked us in to stay at the Bear overnight, as a birthday present, which was lovely, especially as I got to wallow in a bath while Ruth fiddled with the dodgy TV reception. Despite having had a large lunch we forced ourselves to have dinner in the bar, which was probably a bit unnecessary.

Had another birthday meal on 5 January, this time with friends at the Forbury Hotel’s Cerise restaurant. Expensive, but all agreed food v.g., which compensated. Afterwards, all of us except Claire went on for a nightcap at what is now a wine bar called Valentino’s on Valpy Street (it was previously the restaurant ‘Chronicles’ where we in fact had dinner for my 40th in 2008).

Kicked off a New Year notion of making more effort to make some money out of old stuff by selling a pair of shoes via the OU Noticeboard. The shoes are the kind of style I like but as I don’t really do heels over about an inch, I’d bought them and never worn them. After an absurd series of exchanges with a postroom operative called Vince, who tried persistently to haggle me down on the price (only discovered quite late in our exchanges that he wanted the shoes for his wife; prior to that I’d been adopting an open-minded ‘takes all sorts’ attitude), I eventually sold them to a lovely woman called Jenny, who seemed dead chuffed with them. So a rewarding outcome. Next up is a pair of mirrors – might give eBay a go. Still convinced that it’s going to be the ‘Diana funeral’ issue of OK! lurking in the attic that’s going to make my fortune.

HESA seminar in London on 15 January: went up to town blitheringly early to meet Ruth at Café Central on Old Street for a pre-work emergency summit. Then walked from Old Street to the venue near St James’s Park tube, for my exercise for the day. Judith and I made our way back to Euston after the seminar to barely manage to cram onto a train to MK, which was packed due to earlier cancellations and then moved at a snail’s pace as it had inserted a few extra stops at villages along the way, presumably in deference to the earlier cancellations. Was reminded once again of how I wouldn’t fancy a lengthy daily commute.

Vaguely excited to return home at the weekend recently to open a brown envelope from Her Majesty’s Courts Service and be greeted by the words ‘Jury Summons’. In case there should be any doubt as to what the communication is about, these words appear in a thumping great pink font (see below), followed by the exciting news that you’ve been selected at random from the electoral register to perform an important civic duty. Your employer is obliged to give you the time off to perform jury duty, though they’re not required by law to pay you for it – thankfully, the lovely OU does, at least for the first 10 days. Agreed with boss that deferring it would only mean having to do it at a busier time of year, so as things stand, I shall be reporting to Reading Crown Court on 11 February. Hoa in the office, who did jury service last year, says it involved a lot of hanging about.

On scanning the OU’s ‘Public Commitments Guidance’ I also noted that, should I be elevated to the peerage during my employment, I won’t be required to resign my position with the University. What a relief.

Though I have had a Twitter account for a while, I haven’t up until now ventured onto it much, probably largely through fear of getting hooked. However, the frustration this week of trying to contact T-Mobile, my current mobile broadband provider, to ask some questions about their Fair Usage Allowance (the precise details of which seem to be, one suspects deliberately, shrouded in mystery) led me to send a tweet to their @TMobileUKhelp service (this following an unrewarding phone call to their premium rate phone number, which consisted of being subjected to deafening ‘hold’ music for around 3 minutes before someone in their second line support eventually answered, whereupon my phone credit promptly ran out). As I write it’s five days since my initial tweet; have since followed up with two others. My tweets are threatening to become a squawk.

Snow on Friday led to my, perhaps over-cautiously, opting to stay in MK for the weekend, though the further snowfall on Sunday seemed to validate that decision. Took the bus into CMK on Saturday morning and had a bit of a wander about, including making what may I guess have been my last ever visit to HMV. Bought two DVDs for a tenner (the BBC Pride & Prejudice, plus the more recent Keira Knightley film, as Ray nicked our joint copy of the latter and now won’t be parted from it). Here’s the receipt, just to record the event. Amazing to think how much time when younger I spent browsing around HMV and the Virgin Megastore, though much less in recent years. All hail the cornucopia of online wondrousness that is Amazon – while, obviously, giving it a token slap on the wrist for obliterating high-street media retailers. The latter won’t stop me shopping there though. Pic is of the concrete cows, looking snowy.

Spent pretty much the rest of the weekend holed up in the flat with Series 2 of Sherlock, recently lifted from Ruth’s DVD collection after she succeeded in getting me hooked on it. Repeated viewings definitely assisting with grasping the somewhat convoluted plots. According to this Telegraph piece, the nature of the Holmes/Watson relationship has been the subject of speculation since long before the current BBC version. The piece also quotes the two actors from the BBC version denying that there’s any funny business going on between their characters, though it’s not clear how this sits with Martin Freeman’s earlier comment about Sherlock being the gayest story in the history of television.

After a snowy early morning walk on Monday, making good use of my invaluable snow spikes, I arrived on campus at 08:45 to find the North Spur car park completely empty. A bit funny, I thought. On reaching my office and discovering that the entire corridor was deserted, I became suspicious and checked the staff intranet, to see the message below:

Hadn’t occurred to me to check in with this before leaving home, but I shall be wiser on any future snowy days. All of my colleagues had seemingly either had the presence of mind to check the intranet before leaving home, or had come in earlier and already buggered off. Actually I discovered on Tuesday that quite a few of them are signed up to the OU’s ‘emergency text alert’ service, which notifies staff should campus be closed/be annihilated during the night by nuclear holocaust, etc. I was dimly aware of it but had never got around to signing up. Have done so now, though s*d’s law there probably won’t be another campus closure now.

Christmas; Pomeranians; Twilight musings

Have made the disquieting discovery that the nosey neighbour we have been referring to as Norman for the last four years may in fact be called Kevin Price. The Thames Water contractor who called round a couple of weeks ago noted that the inspection had been prompted by the resident of number 43, one Kevin Price, reporting damp problems at his property. The man we know as Norman lives at number 43, so either we’ve been getting his name wrong, or he has a live-in male housemate. The latter seems improbable so I assume it’s the former. Racking my brains now to try and remember why we thought his name was Norman in the first place.

The Information Office Christmas lunch was held again this year at The Carrington Arms at Moulsoe, a village to the east of Milton Keynes. Information Office Christmas lunches are a sedate affair, with much fizzy pop and going back to work again after a couple of hours, unlike our Progress South Central Christmas lunches where Fay would allow us to get through several bottles of wine and then blow off the afternoon to go shopping. The perks of a small team, perhaps. Ruth’s team at HCT appeared to have the right idea, going out mid-afternoon for a Christmas pizza and descending later into karaoke. She texted me the following morning to say that she hadn’t made it into work and that one member of the group appeared to have gone completely AWOL.

Took Lola to the vets first thing on 22 December, as she appears to have lost some weight over the past couple of months, though seems otherwise well. The vet couldn’t come up with much by way of possible explanation, though did flirt with the idea that being a rescue animal, Lola might have been older than we thought at the time we adopted her, and consequently could now be making it into the older bunny territory and getting a bit sore and arthritic – Steve at Reading Rabbit Rescue seemed sceptical about this idea when we put it to him later in the day. The vet did identify evidence of an over-groomed patch on one of Lola’s legs and suggested that she might have had a sore knee (or whatever the bunny equivalent of a knee is). Lola has been duly dosed with an anti-inflammatory for the past week, but we’ll have to see if it makes any difference. Ruth has also got her some alternative food, at Steve’s suggestion, which she appears to be enjoying.

Met Claire on the evening of the 22nd for a drink in the ex-Hobgoblin (now The Alehouse), where I met a bearded friend of hers whose name I’ve forgotten, but who appeared to have amassed an impressive number of degrees, most recently an LLB with the OU. We talked briefly about the impressiveness of people who do OU degrees while working at actual jobs. Claire appeared to have fallen out with Prezzo, her usual preferred dinner spot, so we ended up having a pleasant dinner at Strada instead.

Left Reading early on Sunday 23rd and managed, unbelievably, to arrive at Mrs Millard’s house in Cheddar in good time, thanks to there being much less traffic than I expected. No evidence of the village being flooded, though apparently Mrs M had been woken a month or so earlier in the middle of the night by the police, telling villagers that they should prepare to evacuate as a nearby river was threatening to burst its banks. In company with her neighbours she decided not to evacuate, and evidently nothing much happened.

Proceeded from Cheddar to Newport to have lunch at Dave and Hazel’s house, in company with Mum, Dad and Hannah, and Hazel’s sister Paula. Had a delicious lunch consisting of a chicken dish prepared by Dave, followed by choice of damson crumble prepared by Mum or some excellently chewy chocolate brownies prepared by Hannah, so a real family effort. Ruth, Hannah and I went into Hay on the morning of Christmas Eve to pick up some outstanding bits and pieces and to have a mooch around in rather damp weather. On the way back we met Mum and Dad for a drink at the newly revamped Bridge Inn in Michaelchurch – the pub has had a chequered history over the past 10 years or so but seems to have been recently taken over by some people who are doing their best to make a go of it.

On Christmas Day we ate a pleasantly moist turkey and in the evening watched the Hammer film The Reptile, not one I'd seen before but part of a Hammer mega-box set Mum and Dad had got for Christmas. It wasn't bad, as these things go, and nice that the 'wife' character (Jennifer Daniel) has a bit of backbone. On Boxing Day Mum, Ruth and I went for an extremely wet walk from Llanfoist along the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, before returning to Michaelchurch for another drink at The Bridge. On the way back to Reading on the 27th we stopped off at Mrs Spence's house in Lambourn for a ham and bubble and squeak lunch. Mrs S's dog Bertie appears to have gained some weight, but apparently he's recently been neutered.

Ruth went creative with Christmas gift tags this year, including this one for me of a Pomeranian, following my outbreak of hysteria over the winner of the Toy Group at Crufts 2012. Pomeranian Belliver Unexpected Dream (‘Dreamer’) has his moments in the spotlight from about the 31 sec point onwards in this YouTube video. On the Pom’s final walkabout, the male commentator abandons dignified commentary and descends into: “It is a ball of fluff, isn’t it? I mean, they’re just so cute”. The judging is at about 42 secs. Look at it go after its win is announced. (The Pom in the gift tag picture, Carripom Zachariah, apparently won Pomeranian of the year 2012 in Scotland.)

Among my Christmas presents this year was this book on the architectural practice Aldington, Craig and Collinge, part of the ‘Twentieth Century Architects’ series. ACC designed some interesting houses and public buildings in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including the Anderton House in Devon which is one of the buildings now available for upmarket holiday rentals via the Landmark Trust.  For some reason I’d been thinking that ACC also designed the housing development at Old Groveway that I’m currently renting in, but I had remembered this wrongly as this was, according to this entry in Iqbal Aalam’s excellent Flickr photostream, designed by the firm of Phippen, Randall & Parkes. Iqbal has a set on these architects here. Parkes’ obituary from 2008 is of interest and notes that he was responsible for Britain’s first sheltered housing scheme. PRP evidently still exists as a firm and is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013.

Aldington, Craig and Collinge did do some work in Milton Keynes though, the attractive development near the canal at Woolstone pictured here.

Called in at Ray's on New Year's Eve to deliver him a couple of presents, this bottle of whisky from Dave and a book about canals from Mum, both of which were well received. He is off to Tenerife tomorrow for ten days in the sun.

Some disparaging comments about the Twilight series made at our ex-Progress South Central lunch a week or so ago reminded me of this excellent article a year or so ago in Times Higher Education, in the context of the low status afforded to books and films that are perceived to have a largely female fan base. Though I would hazard a guess that neither of the commentators at our recent lunch had actually read the book (am always amazed at how this doesn’t deter some people from expressing strongly-voiced opinions), my all-female book group, ranging in age from 30 to 60, read Twilight a year or so ago as our monthly book, and almost all enjoyed it (from what I recall the only dissenting voice was Helen’s, who was annoyed not on account of its ‘trivial’ femaleness but on account of the perceived licence taken with traditional vampire canon, evidently a topic of some importance to her).

It’s interesting, though the THE article does not discuss this, that a book’s being aimed at children does not per se afford it a low status, provided that the target audience includes boys. The Harry Potter books are the best current example – adults can fawn over these without embarrassment, but as an adult it’s not really possible to admit to liking the Twilight series without some qualification and/or justifying yourself in some way. Less embarrassing to be caught reading a children’s book, provided a boy might like it too, than to be caught reading a book solely aimed at girls and women. A point to reflect on.

On the subject of Harry Potter: I read Philosopher’s Stone, and quite enjoyed it, but have never felt drawn to read any of the subsequent books. Have seen the first two films, but none beyond that, though Ray assures me they improve – certainly in the first one, of the core trio only Rupert Grint does anything resembling acting. So far I’ve only read the first in the Twilight series, but I may well read the others. Steering clear of the films though after having seen the first one – Stewart is quite good but R-Pattz doesn’t do it for me as Edward, but possibly I’m the wrong age. Perhaps when reading the book, one has more licence to imagine someone really not far from your own age …

Hobbit; unnecessary SFX; first Christmas lunch

Passed this decorated tree in Kents Hill Park last Friday. Cute.

Met Ray in town on Saturday to go and see The Hobbit. Evidently, Part 1 of 3. We had both been surprised and somewhat sceptical beforehand about its being a trilogy, but in the event, really enjoyed it. Rather than being a film of The Hobbit, it’s really Prequel to The Lord of the Rings, Part 1, featuring the events of The Hobbit. Having said that, it’s ace – though it almost certainly does help if you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise (having once watched all three extended edition DVDs back to back in a nine-hour gorge-athon, we can probably count ourselves as two such). The trilogy-ness is discussed in this Guardian article. It is, as one of the critics quoted therein notes, a purist’s delight.

The H was also the first movie I’d seen in 3D. Ray, being more of an old hand at 3D, thought it didn’t work too well. Certainly I didn’t think it added anything, and ideally I’d prefer not to have to sit through a film wearing a pair of special glasses. I was also disconcerted by something hard to place concerning the speed of panning across landscapes and action in some of the shots (created effect similar to being driven too fast over a humpback bridge), and the way the background was out of focus – spent the early part of the movie rubbing my eyes and attempting to clean my 3D glasses. Possibly this could have been due to the high frame rate referred to in the article above, not that I really know what that means.

Ruth and I went over to Ray’s boat in the evening for a casual lasagne dinner and chinwag. Returned the following morning to collect my car and to drive Ray to Marparts in Caversham to buy a new length of exhaust pipe, the exhaust having fallen off his van the previous Friday. I gather that it has since been expertly welded back on by his mate Darren and is now almost good as new.

Took a day’s leave on Monday to meet ex-Progress South Central people for Christmas lunch. This year, we had decided on having it at the eatery on the London Road campus, formerly The Cotton Club but now, following a refurb, called Eat & Drink London Road. Went not expecting much as the food used to be OK at best, but we were pleasantly surprised at the decent quality of the lunch – turkey was dry and uninteresting, as is often its wont, but the rest was pretty good, and there was much exclaiming over the positively al dente sprouts.

Returned to MK later on Monday afternoon, though not before getting my key to the internal garage door stuck fast in the lock – after trying for about 10 minutes to get it out with no luck, had to just leave it and go. Had to advise Ruth that she would have to access the garage, if she needed to, via the back gate and the main garage door – this forgetting that the key to the padlock on the back gate was locked inside the garage. In the event, she evidently had to climb over the back gate, something which I gather caused a certain amount of difficulty, though she appeared to have treated it with more humour than I think I would have done. Fortunately, there were apparently no onlookers.

Winchester; subway intrigue; women's football

Have been forgetting to take a photograph of our new floating shelves in bedroom 2. Although they do enhance the room and look quite good from this sort of angle, they are best not viewed sideways on. Additionally, we ran again into problems with drilling into powdery mortar and not being able to get a good purchase for the fixings, hence the minimal decoration. There’s got to be a way around this, other than resorting to Loctite.


Took a train trip to Winchester on Saturday to visit the Christmas market. Ruth went to college in Winchester (when the now-university was still King Alfred’s College) so has an affection for it; additionally we spent a lovely pre-Christmas day and night there five years ago. The train journey down was enlivened by some Reading fans getting in voice for an away game at Southampton, but luckily we were able to get off after 40 minutes and make our way into the city which was, I guess not surprisingly, heaving with bodies. We managed to snaffle an outside table at Maison Blanc where we had tea and a snack, and then meandered over to the cathedral close to join the queue to go into the Christmas market. Queue luckily moved fairly quickly, but we were obliged to shuffle round the stalls at a snail’s pace due to the mass of humanity. I restricted my purchases to two small tree decorations; I don’t think Ruth bought anything at the market but did buy a dress in Hobbs on the way there.

After having our fill of the market, we briefly considered looking round the cathedral until we discovered it’s now charging £6.50 entrance fee (subsequently mentioned this to Mum, who was suitably appalled), so went for a walk instead to use up the remaining daylight, after which we crammed into the William Walker for a couple of drinks before proceeding to the Old Vine, where Ruth had booked a table for an early dinner. We spent a night at the Old Vine on the 2007 trip mentioned above – lovely room and food and a great position overlooking the cathedral.

Quite excited to learn from the latest issue of Reading Station News (a publication introduced to keep passengers up-to-date vis-à-vis ‘the exciting changes ahead’ as Reading’s railway interchange and station undergoes a major refurb) that a formerly closed subway is to be temporarily re-opened while the footbridge linking the north entrance multi-storey car park with the station is removed early in the new year, pending the opening of a splendid new passenger bridge a bit further along. Most of the network of subway under the station, which pre-dates the 80s-built footbridge by many years, has been out of use for some time – the official reason is probably security concerns, but actually it’s hard to see a good reason. I remember in my young day being intrigued while walking through the subway under Station Road and coming up by Thames Tower (a route that’s been closed for some years) to see a passageway mysteriously stretching off to the right, that I never went down – I think it must have been the passage that linked the railway station with the long-disused bus station, as I believe there is one, though I don’t remember ever using it. I’m sure I remember reading a while ago in one of the pages on the Reading Forum that there are supposed to be a whole network of subways below the level of the station and Station Road. Don’t know whether that’s true or not, but an intriguing thought. Anyway, apparently the aforementioned stretch leading from the Caversham side is to be “completely refurbished and re-lit”. How cute. I must remember to take a trip down it.


Some old photos of the station here. In case I don’t get another photo of the current footbridge before it’s demolished, here’s a picture of Ruth in it.

We had a visit from Dave, Hazel and Nia on Sunday morning, en route to a lunch date in Newbury and also, extremely thriftily, to collect some eBay-purchased sanitaryware from an address in Tilehurst. Nia ate some of my shortbread and got a bit of a stroke of Harley's head. In the afternoon we walked up to St Andrew's Hall on Albert Road for Caversham Artists' Christmas Gala, though we didn't spend long there - after the market the previous day I'd really had my fill of decorative glassware, watercolours etc. Caversham does seem to have a thriving community of artists, seemingly largely ladies - or, as I prefer to put it, Ladies Who Don't Have to Work.

Once back from the gala, we decorated one of my small Christmas trees, over a glass of sherry - a surprising whim but one I felt I should indulge.

Recently read Marie-Claire Carlyle’s How to Become a Money Magnet, in one of my sporadic forays into self-help books. An OK read; the usual combination of the odd helpful thought/tip nestled among layers of anodyne padding. I was most amused by Marie-Claire’s credentials as given in the ‘About the Author’ section at the beginning of the book: not only is she a DipLCH and FSSA, but is also an accredited Space Clearer. And she has taught cosmic ordering.

We had a card through the door a week or so ago from Thames Water headed ‘You may have a leak – call this number’, or something similarly potentially alarming. Ruth duly stayed in on Monday morning for visit from TW contractor, who confirmed that the leak is not on our property - good news, though the bad news is that as five houses apparently share the same external stopcock, we could be liable for the not inconsiderable leak which is likely to be at number 45, a tenanted property occupied (we think) by Latvians in possession of an extremely smelly gas barbecue. Apparently number 43 is having damp issues, though according to the TW man, the owner of number 45 is reluctant to engage with the problem, so not sure what's going to happen there. We've decided to keep quiet unless/until we're actually presented with a bill.

Have been occupying myself during the week in Milton Keynes by watching a number of the fascinating OU TV programmes that are available on DVD from the OU library. Last week an interesting programme on Queen Victoria’s early life; this week was the turn of ‘Women’s football’, part of the ‘Nation on film’ series. Partly about women’s football, partly focusing on early cinematography, the film focused on Dick, Kerr’s Eleven, a women’s football team comprised initially of factory workers from Preston who formed a team to play matches to raise money for injured WWI soldiers. By all accounts they were amazingly successful and really drew crowds – the record seems to have been a crowd of 53,000 at Goodison Park for a match on Boxing Day 1920, apparently much larger than anything the women’s game draws today. In 1921, women’s football teams were banned by the FA from using FA grounds, a ban which was not lifted until the 1970s and seems to have done considerable damage to the women’s game. The argument put forward in the documentary seems to be that the women were victims of their own success: the women’s game was rapidly expanding at the time, Dick Kerr’s team had raised £50,000 for charity (about 1.5 million in today’s money) at the time of the ban and regularly drew large crowds, drawing potential cost and support away from the FA and the men’s game. Whatever the reason, it does seem a bit mean.

Amazingly beautiful frost this morning - made myself late stopping to take pictures.

Bracknell; Richmond; neighbours

Struggled my way to Bracknell last Thursday for Book Group at Sarah’s new house. In fairness, it was only the last bit that was a struggle, as I spent about 10 minutes being fired helplessly around ring roads never seeming to be in the right lane. Made it eventually and admired Sarah’s increased amount of space, though her husband Tim seems to have had a substantial hand in decorating their living room, given the c. 50-inch plasma in pole position in the centre of the wall. I’m reasonably fond of technology, but that sort of thing does turn the entire room into a home cinema. We stocked up on carbs and discussed Douglas Kennedy’s The Pursuit of Happiness, which all of us had enjoyed.

Surprised to note last weekend that Christchurch Meadows had actually flooded and then frozen, something I haven’t seen during the time I’ve lived in Caversham. Some keen type has already put a photo on Flickr. Here's a measly photo of mine too.

Ray and I went up to Richmond for the day on Saturday – we had originally intended to do a six-mile walk along the river to Ham House and Petersham, from one of my London Walks books, but the wet ground deterred us from that idea and instead we had a general wander around the posh suburb and its park, which I’d never been into before. Pictures here. Started with breakfast at the Carluccio’s on Kew Road, then walked down across Richmond Green and down to the (full and fast-flowing) Thames, where we walked along the river frontage for a bit before turning up Richmond Hill where we stopped for a quick gander at the view from the top of Terrace Gardens. Then headed into Richmond Park where we had a pleasant walkabout, though in deference to Ray’s recent knee injury and the danger from slippery ground we left the park at East Sheen Gate and walked back into Richmond via a bit of a snoop at the big houses on Fife Road. Had a lovely lunch at Don Fernandos before heading back to the train.

The only blight on the day was the interminable journey home, allegedly due to emergency engineering works caused by a broken rail at Ashford. Whatever the reason, it entailed us getting off the train at Staines and hanging around on a freezing platform for over an hour, in the company of other increasingly irate people, until a train to Reading finally turned up. I now, most unfairly, never want to visit Staines again.

Our Caversham neighbour Terry has been in an uncharacteristic frenzy of doing work on his house just lately, as he leaves for Australia within the next week to join his Australian wife Louise, who ended up being deported from the UK a year or so ago after living and working here for several years. Seems inexplicable to me, especially given that she was working as a social worker, hardly a career on most people’s wish list, but no doubt there must be specifics that we’re not aware of. On the other side: Nicki shows no signs of returning from South Africa, but we are considering emailing her about the parlous-looking state of her middle chimney stack, as we don’t relish the thought of it falling into our garden. Her current tenants look to be in the process of moving out, so we await to see whether new ones appear. The ideal would be someone who enjoys feeding other people’s pet rabbits and doesn’t own a car.

Surprised to wake on Wednesday morning to snow in MK - either it hadn't been forecast or I hadn't paid attention to the forecast. Not very deep, but still snow. No signs of any more of it at the moment though. Snapped a couple of obligatory photos, including one of this pretty cottage in Simpson, which has adorned itself with tasteful Christmas decs.

Belly dancing; Mum; floods

Took myself along on Tuesday 15th to support Children in Need (the less charitable part of me thinks: Christ, is that still going?) by watching the OU’s Belly Dance Club (yes, there is one such) give a lunchtime performance. They weren’t bad; not that I am much of an assessor of belly dancing. The most wacky number was a woman performing to a piece of music called Shaskin; her performance allegedly featured tribal fusions choreography as taught to her by one Darkstar. She was dressed not in more traditional belly dance gear but as though auditioning for a part in Mary Poppins. Puzzling.

Mum came to spend a long overdue weekend in Reading on the 16th; we had a sandwich lunch in Caversham’s Costa, during which we both seethed at the undisciplined children being allowed to run screaming about the café (it has become a distressingly popular haunt for middle-class mummies), then later in the afternoon wandered down to an art exhibition at something billed as ‘Studio 21’ on Patrick Road, though it turned out to be simply No. 21 Patrick Road, with lots of art in the front room. We perused briefly. On the Saturday, we went up to London where we took a bus to the Wellcome Collection to visit the ‘Death: A Self-Portrait’ exhibition. Quite interesting – certainly a range of stuff. I was reasonably charmed by Kawanabe Kyosai's ‘Frolicking Skeletons’, as pictured in this Guardian piece. We had a quick cup of tea before walking down through Bloomsbury to High Holborn and lunching at the Kimchee Restaurant, where we sampled radish kimchi and bulgogi in a noodle soup, along with a bottle of the rather underwhelming Hite each, as I felt we should sample some Korean beer.


After lunch, we walked to nearby Lincoln’s Inn Fields to visit Sir John Soane’s Museum, which I’d heard of but never visited. We had to queue for around 20 minutes to get in, as they only let a certain number of people in at a time – probably a good idea. For some reason, you are obliged to put your handbag into a see-through polythene bag, but are then allowed to carry it around with you. The museum is certainly a curiosity, though it’s so dimly lit that it’s hard to see some of the exhibits, and certainly Mum found it hard to read the guidebook that she’d paid £2 for on the way in. On the way out I bought a fridge magnet showing a head of the goddess Diana.

Digressing briefly: the story of Diana and Actaeon has to be one of the most unjust stories in Roman mythology. I mean: if you don’t want a man to come across you naked, then don’t take a bath in the middle of a wood.

Ruth cooked her poshed-up version of toad in the hole in the evening, featuring cherry tomatoes and rosemary. On the Sunday, Mum and I went for breakfast at the Alto Lounge followed by a walk around Caversham, before I saw her to her train.

Received an email a week or so ago from the OU's LGBT Network (rapidly becoming a source of comedy) from a PhD student doing a thesis on shifts in lesbian women's mating preferences across the menstrual cycle. Reminded me of a Japanese PhD student I once met while a postgrad at Essex, an acquaintance of my friend Shiho's, who was doing a PhD allegedly in something erudite-sounding which I've forgotten, but which basically amounted to pornography. I remember him being intrigued over dinner to know how I, being British, felt about British people's easy access to pornography, before I was forced to disappoint him by informing him that I didn't buy a great deal of it. It did sound as though he was getting to study a good many jazz mags while classing them as research material.

‘Brit Cops’ moment last Tuesday when there was a knock on my door around 7pm and I opened it to be greeted by a uniformed police officer, saying that there’d been a report of a crowd of people outside with knives, and had I heard anything. Apparently my neighbour Fraser had phoned them with this report, but appeared to have since gone to ground as there was no reply from his house despite their repeated banging on his door. Was obliged to say that I hadn’t heard anything, and she proceeded to ask if I’d heard anything going on next door (nothing different from usual) and how much I knew about my neighbour (not much; doesn’t appear to work; often seen with can in hand; did tell me once that he had mental health problems). She came in for a peek over my back wall, but no baying mobs in sight, so left, thanking me for my time.

Another nice Information Office outing last Wednesday, this time to the Bekash in Stony Stratford, a Victorian suburb on the north-west edge of Milton Keynes. Stony appeared to have a number of curry houses, judging by my walk from the bus stop, but the Bekash is allegedly the oldest. The food was pretty nice and compensated for the recent Bina experience. Carol, our newish Forecasting manager, kindly gave me a lift home - Carol owns a house in Bakewell but has been renting in MK during the week (good to know I'm not the only one), though she has recently abandoned Bletchley (don't blame her, from what I've seen of it) for Monkston, a pleasanter-looking district near to Walton Hall.

In a moment of extravagance last Saturday, Ruth and I purchased a new and streamlined DAB radio/CD player to replace my cheap old one (left) which we sense is about to give out. We sat for a while on Saturday afternoon marvelling at the sound quality. It does have a blinkin' iPhonePod dock, but luckily it's not too prominent. Admittedly they are pretty and have lots of cool accessories, but I'm still resolutely not venturing into the world of Apple.

Discovered on Monday that the redway through Simpson/Walton that I often take as part of my morning route to work had become a raging torrent. Well, not quite a raging torrent, but certainly an area of quite fast-flowing water that I wouldn't have ventured through. Turns out Caldecotte Lake - one of MK's several balancing lakes - had overflowed its barrier at one end (which it is, apparently, meant to do in times of flood). MKNews have put out a piece reassuring locals that the lakes should return to normal soon.

Film musings; conference; online chatting

Lit a few candles and bought a small pumpkin in honour of Halloween/Samhain. As last year, Ray came up to exclaim over the candle flames and my low-key display of pumpkin atop bits of straw. We didn’t bother this year with readings but instead watched a DVD of The Dish, a wonderful little Australian film that he had picked up a while ago and thought, correctly, that I would like. Lovely, quirky and full of sympathetic characters.

Sticking with films, finally decided Ruth and I must get around to watching Helen’s DVD of The Princess Bride, which she lent us at a dinner party around two years ago now and which has been sitting on top of the TV at the house ever since. As I'd started to feel vaguely guilty about still having it given that apparently it’s Helen’s and her family’s favourite film, I insisted that we should hunker down and watch it. Ruth shuffled into the living room sulkily to join me about 20 minutes in, but, surprisingly given her general low tolerance of light-hearted fluff, ended up having more truck with it than I did. The two leads (Cary Elwes and Robin Wright) are dull - her especially - and the film in general is OK but unmemorable, making it somewhat puzzling that – according to Wikipedia – it’s apparently become a cult hit in the US. The only characters with any life/charisma are Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya and Christopher Guest’s six-fingered Count Rugen, though the latter’s a pretty small part.

Can’t help wondering if Mandy Patinkin’s movie career was at all stymied by his first name. Plausible. One suspects that if Brad Pitt had been called Julia Pitt it might have proved a barrier to his achieving full bland A-list hunk status.

Got despatched on the 6th to attend the NSS Conference 2012, as the team’s current NSS contact was unable to go and a brief reference I made to the NSS in a recent meeting appears to have been interpreted by my boss as volunteering to take over some of the admin work. Got up to town early and breakfasted at the 49 café on Marchmont Street (excellent coffee) before killing some time wandering through Russell Square and a couple of other squares enjoying sun and people-watching, including noting the statue of Rabindranath Tagore in Gordon Square. Arrived at Woburn House conference centre and met up with Em, the former head of the Information Office’s forecasting team who left the OU for Heriot-Watt last year and is now evidently involved with the NSS there. Dutifully took notes and scarpered when the conference finished at 3.15, after a start time of 10am. Love the public sector.

Am once again in the business of renegotiating with mobile phone companies, as my Galaxy S contract ended at the end of October and as I’m not using anything like as much of my call or data allowance as I expected to, nor am I desperate for an upgrade, have decided to go back to Pay As You Go for a while. Keen to avoid pushy sales patter, I decided to do the necessary negotiating via Vodafone’s online chat service. This resulted in two quite helpful ‘conversations’ amusingly peppered with an incongruous collection of phrases. Conversation 1, with Riyaz, started with the helpful 

 

followed shortly afterwards by the more puzzling

 

followed by the surprisingly colloquial

and closed with the charming

Conversation 2, with Mitesh, ran partly as follows (for 'You', read me ...):

In fairness the service is quite good and certainly enables cutting to the chase in a way that you'd be lucky to get away with via telephone.

Sticking with service providers: have been deterred from taking my car to KwikFit after rushing down to the Richfield Avenue branch on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks back suspecting I had a slow puncture, as a tyre appeared to be deflating. They inspected the tyre, assured me I didn’t and that it was only that the valve was loose, but then, perhaps in vengeance for not having actually been able to charge me for any work, claimed that the treads on my two rear tyres were almost down to the legal minimum. Prudently deciding to get a second opinion before splashing out, I booked it into Anglos a week or so later; they called me mid-morning to say that I still had 4mm of tread left and KF had been having me on. Tsk.

Anglos have evidently been nominated for Small Garage of the Year 2013 in Car and Accessory Trader. Looking at their somewhat gaudy headed paper, they were Regional Winners of ‘Golden Garages’ in 2010 and 2011, and the winners of Best Garage Service in the Citizen Motoring Awards 2009. Seemingly a lot of small-scale motoring awards out there.