Two autumn breaks

Couple of short trips away back in October, neither of which I have yet recorded for interested future generations who may stumble across and dust off this blog.

Love owls

Ruth and I had a 3-night mini break at Forest Holidays' Forest of Dean site – can’t remember how I came across them but I am a bit of a sucker for a) undemanding holidays; b) log cabins, however faux; c) woods. We didn’t manage to find one of their breaks that wasn’t pretty stonkingly expensive, but in fairness I did choose to book one of their Golden Oak Hideaway cabins, delightful little for-two love nests that have a hot tub, an oversized sunken bath and various twee touches including this heart-shaped trivet (left, with espresso cups) and this owl couple in the dining area. Our decked patio area did have a rather damp autumnal quality, so we didn’t spend a lot of time on it though we did use the hot tub once so as to get the most out of the facilities. The cabin itself was, in fairness, absolutely lovely, and even hard-to-please Ruth said she’d happily go again. Except we’d need to take an HDMI cable next time – it’s so high-tech that there are no DVD players as you’re expected to connect to your own technology and stream things. Luckily there’s also Sky, so we weren’t too disadvantaged by not being able to watch the DVDs we’d taken.

We didn't bother taking the cover off the hammock, mainly as it wasn't warm enough for lying around outside but also because I doubt my ability to get into a hammock successfully while holding a glass of bubbly, as per the lovely couple in the publicity photos.

Forest Holidays aren't quite such a family fun centre as Center Parcs, but they do offer various extras, for a charge. We sniggered over the 'Romantic Evening In' package, which includes rose petals. Considered requesting a bottle of wine in place of these, but it does say no substitutions.

On the Saturday we walked from the Forest Holidays site to Symonds Yat Rock, a couple of miles away, where we admired the views, which were pretty good even in the intermittent lashing rain. Didn’t see any of the advertised peregrine falcons, but in fairness they were probably huddled indoors. We walked down the side of a steepish gorge to Symonds Yat East, where we had lunch in the packed-out Saracens Head, before slogging back up the slope. We did see the hand-pulled ferry in operation, though didn’t try it.

The Wye from Symonds Yat Rock

On the Sunday we drove further into the Forest of Dean, though not having made a proper plan of where to go (nor downloaded the Forest Xplorer app, which I’ve just noticed) we ended up at the large car park at Beechenhurst which was pretty thronged with visitors. We had quite a pleasant walk on marked trails for a couple of miles, looking at the sculptures dotted around, though spent much of the time dodging families on bicycles. Ruth then pleaded to visit a town, and as Monmouth looked to be the nearest town likely to be halfway decent, we drove there, parked up and had lunch. Did the obligatory walk over the old bridge. The town itself was a bit short on shops that weren’t closed on a Sunday.

On the Monnow Bridge

Monmouth was the location of my inspiration for the red walls at the dining room at the house – Mum and I had lunch there once in a café with gorgeous chilli-red walls and I was very taken with the idea. The actual colour we ended up with is less chilli and more brick than I hoped for, but here’s hoping for next time. Ruth and I walked past what I’m pretty sure was the same café, but the walls had been painted a much less interesting creamy colour.

Forest Holidays has a site at Keldy in North Yorkshire, but I can’t tell whether this is the same site that Mum and I, Hannah and Hannah’s friend Lyn stayed at in 1989, as there’s also a Hoseasons holiday lodge site at Keldy apparently.

Had another few days away a week or so later, this time in Dorset to join Mum and Dad at a self-catering cottage they’d booked for a few days’ short break. To lengthen the trip slightly as I could only take the Monday to Wednesday off work, I booked Ruth and me into a Premier Inn just outside Bournemouth for the Sunday night. On the Monday morning we drove into Poole and parked up, and walked down to the harbour, where we spontaneously booked onto a harbour cruise via City Cruises Poole. As it was an amazingly nice day for the beginning of October, the cruise was lovely - the trip of an hour or so took us quite close to Brownsea Island, then over to the Sandbanks peninsula to ogle the luxury residences, then back around the other smaller islands in the harbour, including Furzey Island, owned by BP and apparently the site of a number of oil wells, though that’s not apparent from the views of the shoreline. Fascinating article here by a chap who lived on Furzey Island with his wife in the 1960s. We also passed Green Island and got a view of Edward Iliffe’s new luxury residence. According to this, the first eco-house Iliffe built on the island burned down in 2012, but there was certainly a house there when we went past so I guess it’s risen from the ashes.

Looking towards Sandbanks

Boats in the harbour

After the boat trip we had lunch at Banana Wharf, where it was actually warm enough to sit outside.

After lunch we drove, with only a couple of hitches, westwards via Bridport to Chapel Barn at Salwayash, the holiday let that Mum had booked. Small place but cosy and well-equipped. That evening, Dad drove us to the neighbouring village of Waytown for dinner in The Hare & Hounds, via some extremely narrow country lanes. Here's a screenshot of Google Maps tracking our route.

The next day - which was a beautiful day for October - we parked at West Bay and walked along the beach past the peculiar cliffs as far as the village of Burton Bradstock. Walked down to the beach and stopped for tea and cake at the Hive Beach Café which was absolutely rammed - the only table free was a large one outside, which we nabbed and Mum and I braved the long queue to place our order. After tea, we made our way back westwards towards West Bay - Dad and I hived off to walk up onto the coastal path for the final stretch while Mum and Ruth continued along the beach.

We returned to the cottage via Bridport's branch of Morrisons, where Dad and I raced around the shop grabbing foody bits while Mum and Ruth reclined in the car. Back at the cottage I cooked a coq au vin, having taken care to take some leftover vin with me. Ruth and I had to leave at crack of dawn the next morning as she had an afternoon meeting in London and I needed to get back to Milton Keynes for work the following day.

Chapel Barn, Salwayash

Cliffs at West Bay

Autumn burblechore

Studying another OU module as of 1 October, this time Essential mathematics 1. Have finally, after some dithering, have decided on a qualification I want to aim for: am going for the DipHE in Computing & IT and Statistics. Can count My digital life, the module I did last year, towards it, but sadly am obliged to do a maths module as the next compulsory module at Level 1. Very glad I studied the slightly easier Discovering mathematics a couple of years ago, as otherwise I’d be pretty at sea – prior to that, hadn’t formally studied any maths since doing my O-level in 1985. Have submitted my first assignment and done quite well, but now struggling rather with Unit 3 which is about functions - not something I ever remember doing before, but with a whole slew of baffling notation.

‘Give It 100’ walking challenge going well, with 40 consecutive days now done. Pics being posted on Instagram. And they may be appearing in a feed to the right of this text, if I’ve done the widget thing right.

Also started trying to use the Headspace meditation app, at the same time as I started the walking exercise. Finding it quite useful, and Andy Puddicombe's voice is quite soothing, though I don't agree with meditating with the eyes closed (too much like sleep) so am ignoring that instruction. More often than not find myself drifting onto thoughts about the day ahead, rather than managing to follow Andy's guidance, so effectively it's usually just sitting still in a chair for 10 minutes. Still, maybe that's useful.

Continuing with T’ai Chi. We have just done embracing the tiger and returning to the mountain, and are now fending off the monkey.

Went with Ruth on 20th October to see the Apollo Theatre Company’s touring production of Round the Horne, at Stantonbury Arts & Leisure. I’m not particularly familiar with the original radio show, though Ruth has some episodes on CD that I did listen to once. The bulk of the audience were considerably more familiar with it, given the enthusiastic welcome they gave to the various different characters. It seemed very well done – the young chap playing Kenneth Williams seemed very good; not being familiar with any of the other actors in the original, I couldn’t say whether they were well portrayed or not.

This was only the second time I’d been to the theatre at Stantonbury Campus, the first being to see an amateur production of Footloose during my first week working at the OU in 2011. The school opened in 1974 and apparently initially adopted a policy of no uniform and allowing pupils to call staff by their first names. Ah, the liberal 1970s. This Daily Mail article from 2012 reported that Stantonbury was introducing a dress code, apparently in response to parents' concerns.

Attended baby Emily's christening at the end of October, at the church of St Catherine Bearwood, where Gail and Rob were married. Emily charmed everyone by applauding herself after the ceremony was over. She coped very well with being lumped into the vicar's arms and having water poured on her head - I'm not sure I would have done. Here's a picture of Emily with the parents and godparents - not sure what happened with the light but Emily looks cute. We went back to Gail and Rob's house afterwards for sandwiches and cake.

Having made the decision to have Emily christened, Gail and Rob seem to have had a certain amount of trouble finding people to be godparents, as evidently the majority of the people they approached had not actually been christened themselves. Gail managed to prevail on her cousin Norman to be godfather – Norman had also never been christened but was evidently willing to undergo christening for the occasion. They did seem to have located a suitable friend to be godmother, as there was a godmother present at the ceremony, although only one and I gather that in the CofE you’re meant to have three godparents, two of the same sex as you and one of the opposite. Gail did invite Ruth to be a godmother as she at least met the initial entry requirement of having been christened herself, but Ruth refused on principle, on the grounds of not being willing to agree that she’d assist with bringing the child up in the Christian faith. As neither of the child’s parents are regular churchgoers as far as I know – and quite likely neither of the godparents either – the whole ritual seems bizarre to me, but there you go. If Ruth had been in any doubt about her decision, the order of baptism contains a number of things the godparents have to say, along the lines of renouncing evil and submitting to Christ as Saviour. Jesus. As it were.

Here's a picture of me at what I believe was my christening in 1968, though I don't remember it myself, with Mum, Auntie Anne and Gran. I'm not sure what Mum's hat was about.

Ray came up for the evening of 31 October to celebrate Samhain, bringing some gin purchased at the Dyfi Distillery during a recent white-water rafting trip in North Wales with friends. Also some remarkably nice non-sweet tonic water. Gin and tonic isn't something I drink regularly, but we had one for a bit of a novelty and it was really quite nice. We lit candles for various deceased friends and family, including Uncle Dan and Ray's cousin June's daughter Janine, who have both died this year.

Sharing two ridiculous news snippets that I've had in storage for a while but I don't think shared yet. The first is from the BBC News website's 'Most Popular', which frequently comes up with some gems. Re the second: it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which this wouldn't be regarded as suspicious.

False memory; Nutrimashers; Fitbit

Recently identified an episode of not exactly false memory but of memory possibly playing tricks. I have a childhood memory of watching a sci fi series called The Fantastic Journey – definitely this one as I remember the boy who played the child Scott, and had vague memories of it involving a collection of people stranded on an island. Indeed it does, having watched an episode recently – their boat sails into a glowing green cloud somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle, and they come round on an island where all sorts of space-time continuum shit is going on.

I had been convinced that I’d watched the programme when we lived in South Korea in the 1970s, and that it was one of the only English language programmes other than Sesame Street that I remembered. However, everything I can find about this series online indicates that it was first broadcast in 1977, and we returned from Korea in 1976. So presumably I can’t have watched it there. So where did I watch it? It seems unlikely that a US TV show that was cancelled after only 10 episodes would ever have been aired in the UK, but I suppose it’s possible.

What the devil is that?

There are a few clips from the show on YouTube, including the pilot episode. And I obtained for about a tenner a ‘DVD’ version from Vintage Television, though the picture quality is pretty poor – I assume someone must have videotaped it from the television.

This New Yorker article on memory is interesting, although I can’t categorise my questionably accurate memory of The Fantastic Journey as a particularly emotionally significant event.  Another article here.

This time's offering from the OU Noticeboard below. During even a cursory view of early morning TV currently one is besieged by ads for gadgets that juice whole fruits (and vegetables and seeds), mainly the NutriBullet, but also I’m sure I’ve seen a NutriNinja. One produces ‘nutriblasts’ and the other ‘nutrishots’, but I forget which way round. They emphatically DON’T produce juice, apparently.

Mildly irritated at Google’s first acquiring, then mothballing the excellent Picasa Web Albums in favour of their Google Photos service.  Have looked briefly at Google Photos – whither all my albums from PWA got migrated – but it lacks provision to add captions or to arrange albums in the order you want – when I last looked my albums were appearing in a seemingly random order. Haven't yet made up my mind whether to persevere with it or go to the faff of transferring my pictures somewhere else.

Still wearing and enjoying the Fitbit Charge HR I purchased a few months ago, though some of Fitbit’s updates are a tad bizarre, e.g. this one. Bought mine after Steve at work showed me his plus his 'dashboard' of various stats - Steve has the larger 'Surge', which looks like a proper watch and also has GPS, but that was a bit chunky (as well as expensive) for my taste. I did, in a fit of extravagance though, also buy the 'Aria' scales, that upload your weight and body fat percentage to your Fitbit dashboard via Bluetooth¹. I blame the OU module 'My digital life' I did last year, which got me interested in all this wearable computing stuff.

Stayed up in Milton Keynes this weekend, partly because it’s getting near the sharp end of the HESA return and I’m conscious of not being as far on as I ought to be. Ended up going into the office for four hours this morning as couldn’t manage to access my remote desktop. Discovered Matt there, also working on HESA tasks, and also Harvey and Steve at various points during the morning. Do some people regularly go to the office on a Sunday? This afternoon, went for a pleasant walk along Haversham Road and then into Ouse Valley Park and along the path under the viaduct. Discovered a bit further along that a new network of paths seems to have been created over what I think was previously a quarry site, as well as some brand new-looking bird hides. Strolled through part of this and then up to come out by Manor Farm - bravely, walked through a field where cows were milling around over the footpath. Ruth enjoys mingling with cows but I prefer to give them a wider berth, but they appeared placid and I wasn't up for the substantial detour that would have been involved otherwise.

Have set myself a walking challenge on the back of a magazine article I read recently on the ‘Give It 100’ challenge. Don't intend uploading video but intend to use Instagram to publish daily photos, but we'll see how this goes.


¹  This does mean you can avoid looking at your weight at the moment you actually weigh yourself and look at it later when you can face it, perhaps over tea and a biscuit.

Tai Chi; taking up floorboards

Started a weekly beginners' Tai Chi class in September, run by the lovely David who has, apparently, been teaching Tai Chi in Wolverton since 1983. Blimey. The form we are learning is apparently the Long Yang form - similar to the form this chap’s doing, though I’m not sure it’s exactly the same. Here’s a clip of David himself doing part of the routine, presumably in his garden. David learned Tai Chi from Gerda Geddes, apparently more or less the first Tai Chi teacher in the UK. Geddes, a trained dancer, apparently came across Tai Chi in China in the late 1940s. An interesting red herring is that, in addition to dance, Geddes had apparently also worked with Wilhelm Reich, he of the Orgone accumulator.

As a not-originally-planned part of renovating the living room, Ruth has recently completed taking up all the floorboards in the living room and hallway, putting down insulation and replacing the floorboards with chipboard. We briefly considered trying to retain the original floorboards but they’re not a complete set as some have been replaced with newer board over the years, added to which some had woodworm. So we’re considering selling them – seemingly they can fetch a bit. Ray helped out as part of an exchange of labour he and Ruth have worked out, though he lent expertise and tools as well as labour. We took him for dinner at The Crown at Playhatch a couple of weeks ago as additional payment.

Ruth's first checking out of the floorboards, observed by Beau

Ray's car stuffed with insulation

Hallway partway through

Living room partly done

Rug

The inevitability of not actually finishing the living room before Christmas (artfully predicted by me some time ago) is upon us. We want to get Chris from Alldec back to do the painting, as we were impressed with his work last time, but he isn’t available until the new year. To increase cosiness until the new flooring is put down, we’ve brought a rug of Ruth’s down from the attic. I’d never seen it as it’s been rolled up since she moved in, but it’s actually quite nice. Ruth is a big fan of Persian-style rugs, which I can take or leave.

We were given some quails' eggs recently by Gail, who has started keeping quail. One has, sadly, been lost to one of their cats, but Ruth and I viewed the others at Emily's recent birthday party. I fried two of the eggs for breakfast on some sourdough bread.



To finish, a couple more snippets from the OU noticeboard:

 

(Most of ) September round-up

With the intention of going to more constructive and highbrow events, I bought a ticket for the National Secular Society’s ‘Secularism 2016’ conference on the first Saturday of this month. Due to early morning rail chaos – arrived at Reading station to find all trains to Paddington cancelled due to some sort of signalling problem – I arrived in London much later than I’d intended due to having to take the South West Trains service to Waterloo instead, which takes almost three times as long due to meandering through most of Surrey and south-west London. Resigned myself to missing the morning sessions – though frankly I probably could have made them if I’d made sufficient effort – I walked up from Waterloo to the conference venue, via a visit to the Early Music Shop, which I’d identified from an internet search on the train as selling recorders and recorder music. Have recently decided to take up the recorder, as I have a bit of a yen to play a musical instrument again – I played recorder a bit as a child and teenager but was only ever self-taught, but have vague ambitions this time of finding a teacher and taking some ABRSM grade exams. We’ll see if that comes off.

The Early Music Shop is a charming place on Denmark Street, just off Charing Cross Road. The shop is on the first floor and you have to ring a bell to be let in. Denmark Street has a number of music shops but early musical instruments are evidently a bit of a niche interest – most music shops give over the bulk of their space to guitars and keyboards. The EMS was crammed with recorders and other old-style instruments, along with masses of sheet music. I bought a book of recorder music aimed at Grades 1-2, plus a new brush. Have since bought myself a brand new descant, an Aulos 205, purchased, I’m ashamed to say, not from the EMS but from Amazon. Here it is on the right next to my old cream Hohner recorder. The tone of the Aulos is indeed nicer so hopefully it will be fun to play.

After leaving the Early Music Shop I walked up to the conference venue, the Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury. The hotel is a fairly dispiriting building on Bedford Way with a central courtyard and various cafes and restaurants adjoining. Pic nicked from TripAdvisor.

I registered for the conference and took a seat in time to hear the keynote speaker, one Jacques Berlinerblau, giving a talk called ‘How to be Secular’ (he has apparently written a book of the same name). Berlinerblau, an American academic, talked mainly about the state of secularism in the US, including how secularism is hampered in the US by being synonymous in many people’s minds with atheism (it’s probably hampered fairly similarly in the UK). He discussed the ambiguity in the US constitution re the separation of church and state, and showed [then Senator] John F Kennedy’s 1960 address in which he argued that the separation of church and state should be absolute (though JFK was admittedly coming from the perspective of being a Roman Catholic hoping to be elected president, so was presumably influenced by a – reasonable enough - desire for his religion to be considered irrelevant to his presidency) and that “no church or church school [should be] granted any public funds or political preference”. Sad that that democratic hope is a long way from being true in the UK – I’m not sure about the US as I’m reasonably sure Berlinerblau noted that state-funded faith schools are in fact illegal in the States. Berlinerblau said a good deal of common sense stuff about picking battles, noting as an example the pragmatic impossibility of removing “In God We Trust” from the US dollar bill.

After the keynote there was a tea break, during which I rather shamefully decided I’d had enough and went for a cup of tea and a KitKat in the neighbouring Blooms Pizza Café before getting a bus back to Paddington (signalling problem now thankfully solved). Must build up more stamina.

The following afternoon Ruth and I went over to Arborfield for Ruth’s niece Emily’s first birthday tea. Emily is now an adorable little blonde munchkin of a child and much time was spent watching her play with her presents, crawl under tables etc. She had a chocolate birthday cake in the shape of a hedgehog.

Emily pointing at her cake

Persuaded Ruth up to MK again for the weekend of 10th/11th. On the Friday evening we booked dinner at Buskers again, where the musician of the night was the lovely Jausme, playing an instrument new to me called the Kankles. She was accompanied by a cellist, which proved a very evocative combination – much of Jausme’s music is apparently influenced by the forests of her native Lithuania. Here’s a clip of somebody playing one. The food, as before at Buskers, was less memorable than the music, but it was nice enough – I quite enjoyed the Moroccan lamb dish I had though Ruth complained her chicken breast was dry.

The music shop portion of Buskers seems to be becoming ever smaller to allow for the expansion of the café/restaurant function – so I hope it remains in some capacity as that was surely part of the original point.

I continued the musical theme on the Saturday night by booking us in to an event at St Mary & St Giles Church in Stony Stratford that formed part of the Willis Pipe Organ Festival being held over that weekend. The event, the 'Saturday Night Silent Movie', featured organist Donald MacKenzie improvising (apparently) a live soundtrack to the 1923 Harold Lloyd (silent) film Safety Last! (I didn’t particularly recognize the film from the name, but it’s the one where he dangles off a clock face.)

MacKenzie apparently specializes in the art of improvised accompaniments to silent films – something of a niche specialism. The organ is not my favourite instrument – perhaps too associated with church – and I probably wouldn’t attend an evening of pure organ music, but had been amused by the prospect of the organ/silent movie combo. In the event MacKenzie played a few solo pieces before the interval, which I sat through politely, and after the interval we watched the movie. The accompaniment was certainly pretty good, in that after a while I forgot it wasn’t part of the film’s soundtrack. The film was entertaining enough, though the latter part, where Lloyd’s character scales the front of a building, I found more tense than funny. It was very well done though.

The booklet we got on entry has endless text about the organ restoration funding, so obviously a big thing for the church.

The following weekend we went up to Open House London on the Saturday. This year I had managed to install the very useful, albeit not free, app in advance, and we had idly flicked through the guide – Ruth had marked a few places in Ealing, I think just because it came early in the alphabetical list of London boroughs, and as I’d never been to Ealing we decided to go there, and agreed that it would be sensible to visit several places within easy reach of each other.

Bluebell House

Ruth vetoed getting a stopper from Reading to Ealing Broadway on the grounds that it would be quicker to get a fast train into Paddington and then get the tube out to Ealing. It wasn’t. However, we did finally arrive, and walked through pleasant streets to the first property we’d selected, Bluebell House on Waldemar Avenue. BH is a gorgeous self-build in what was formerly the garden of the large Edwardian house the owners previously lived in. Evidently the large old house was becoming too much for them but they didn’t want to move away from Ealing, so sold off the house and a portion of the garden and built their own place. Fabulous idea. I tried to abstract away from how well off they must be, as they seemed a very pleasant older couple, despite the husband being so posh he pronounced “off” as “orf”. I was impressed at the trouble they’d taken to work around the mature trees already in their garden, even where this placed restrictions on the new house. The name apparently comes from the bluebells formerly in the garden that were evidently re-planted on the roof of the house, though the owner did confess that only a small patch had survived.

Heath Lodge

After leaving Bluebell House, we walked a bit of a way to Heath Lodge, a stunning development of modern terraced houses. They’re larger than they look in the street level photo, as you go in and then downstairs to the kitchen and living area, and a small courtyard back garden.

After leaving Heath Lodge, we decided that we fancied lunch and established that we were in Hanwell. At first glance, Hanwell appears something of an armpit of a place: after walking along what appeared to be the main high street area along the Uxbridge Road and not seeing anywhere we particularly fancied eating lunch, we turned left into Boston Road past some drunks and walked along that. I had just suggested locating the nearest bus stop and getting a bus to frankly anywhere else, when we stumbled across the W7 Emporium, which looked more our sort of place. Indeed it was, though it was fairly busy so we were obliged to brave the outdoor space – luckily the rain held off.

After lunch, we took a somewhat lengthy bus journey back east to White City to see the Sustainable Drainage Scheme (SuDS) at Bridget Joyce Square. This sort of thing is more Ruth’s cup of tea than mine though I do of course think it’s all a very good thing. The scheme is right in the middle of the 1930s White City Estate – we both wandered in thinking we were looking for the entrance to some sort of treatment plant, and stood for a while in front of a primary school in a pedestrianised open space with some pleasant planting, before being accosted by an enthusiastic chap asking if we were there for the Open House. As he started talking we realized we were in fact standing in the middle of the scheme. The chap talking to us had evidently been one of the team involved in the design, and his story of how the scheme was thought through was quite interesting, including how it had to have some discernible benefits to the local community through the creation of an ‘urban public park’. We walked the ‘wiggly wall’ on our way out – well, you have to.

Felt distinctly sorry for the Open House volunteer on duty at Bridget Joyce Square: it wasn't a particularly warm day, the school was apparently unexpectedly locked and visitors had not evidently been too plentiful, so he must have had a bit of a thin time standing around for much of the day.

Temple Lock

Went over to Marlow on the Sunday for a walk with Ray. At his suggestion we took the train over, for a novelty; I hadn’t taken the branch line to Marlow from Maidenhead for some years. Ray tried to look as we were leaving Maidenhead for signs of the former Maidenhead Boyne Hill station, but we couldn’t see any. After arriving in Marlow we walked to the high street, crossed over and walked through Court Gardens to the river path. Walked along as far as Temple Lock, where we sat for a while, before taking the path away from the river past Lowgrounds Farm and the Harleyford Estate, where Ray used to work and where I lived with him for a time in the mid-1990s. While walking up Harleyford Lane we were passed by Craig, now the head greenkeeper at the golf club, who stopped for a chat with Ray. We walked back into Marlow and had another nice lunch at The Botanist.

Since our visit to Marlow, some idiot in a 30-tonne truck seems to have knackered the historic suspension bridge, which has a 3-tonne weight limit.

Very pleased to manage to make a Book Group meeting at Ali’s on Thursday 22nd, as I’d booked leave the following day to attend an appointment locally (see next paragraph). Ali spoke eloquently about the book, Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, which seems very well written though I haven’t yet quite finished it. Caught up with the other Claire, who is due to give birth to her first child in November.

Ruth and I reported to the Henley offices of The Head Partnership on the Friday morning to meet one of their solicitors to start setting up our wills. We’d been putting this off for some time, partly through concern that it might lead to an enormous row, but actually we’ve so far got through the process quite civilly. The meeting was quite informative, and we managed to fit in some discussion of the amendments we want to our Deed of Trust on the house. After the meeting we went to the River and Rowing Museum café – now called The Quince Tree – for lunch.

To finish: Runderwear. I keep seeing ads for this on Facebook. I rarely if ever run, though I work with people who do.

Beau; RIP tree

As of the beginning of July, we have a new female bunny Beau. Harley had been on his own since Willow’s death in July last year, but Ruth had reached the conclusion that it might be best for him to have another companion. As before we went along to RRR and perused the limited number of females whom Sandra judged suitable, and agreed to an attempted bonding with Beau. She is around five years old, according to Steve and Sandra, and a bit skittish and highly-strung, so they warned – indeed she isn’t keen on being stroked, though perhaps she might come around, but she doesn’t appear too skittish otherwise. More importantly, she and Harley actually seem to work – they have been observed lying together a number of times and she has even on occasion been seen to groom him, albeit briefly. After the failure of both Lexie and Willow as companions for Harley – though Willow was an agreeable companion for humans – it’s a relief to have seemingly found him a suitable pairing. Beau has the same colour coat as Willow but is an erect-eared bunny as opposed to a lop.

Beau (left) and Harley being fed Fiba Sticks

Since Beau’s arrival we have been blocking off access to the stairs with a board in an effort to force Harley to stay downstairs and spend time with the new female, and amazingly, he appears much better and livelier than before – eating a wider range of food and hopping around after Beau, including following her out into the garden. I guess they really are social animals.

Sandra apologised for her masculine name but both Ruth and I are fine with it and have no intention of renaming her Belle.

Recently agreed, after months of wrangling, that Ruth could take out the conifer planted near the fence dividing us from number 51. Ray had planted it some years back – I think it might have been a Christmas tree though it was a sad-looking specimen and I had been convinced that it looked dead. Quite the contrary – it had grown into a splendid tree the past few years, resulting in us having to perform some surgery on it a couple of years ago. Recently, however, it had grown to such a size that Ruth had argued it had become too large for the garden – probably correctly, but I harboured some sentimental feeling for it, partly on account of its beautiful greenery, and had been reluctant to see it removed. However, I finally gave in recently on the condition that Ruth does something proactive for trees, e.g. via a donation to The Woodland Trust, e.g. through planting and sponsoring a tree or just making a donation. Or buying a small area of woodland.

The tree. RIP