Singing crusties; art students; snooping

Finally got around to emailing Alce Harfield about a possible painty canvas commission. Got a reply thanking me and saying she’ll deal with my enquiry as soon as she gets back from Glastonbury. Ah, the artist’s lifestyle.

Went up to the marina on Saturday evening to join Ray at the Berth Holders’ Bash – marquee; live music etc. One of the bands was formed of actual berth holders; the others were from outside. Music was OK though mainly covers of mainstream stuff; I had been expecting something rather more folky. Our tickets entitled us to food from the buffet, although the stuff that various cunning and well-organised people were cooking on their barbecues looked a lot nicer. The evening was considerably cooler than I (and evidently others) had been expecting – after an hour was forced to borrow some warm clothes so spent the rest of the evening in a Wasps fleece. I didn’t stay late enough to hear Ray’s permanently-inebriated neighbour John perform, but gathered later that he had been too drunk to go on in the end anyway.
On Sunday I persuaded Ruth to do a bit of the Whiteknights Studio Trail, a yearly event where, among other things, artists living in the vicinity of the University open their homes to visitors to exhibit their work. As a number of the houses are on streets that I wouldn’t mind living on, I’ve been meaning to go for the last few years and did my best to disguise from the artists the fact that I was blatantly more interested in casing their house and garden than in their artwork. We started off at the university visiting the Department of Fine Art’s Final Year Degree Show, which had stayed open for the Studio Trail weekend. Although I do try not to walk around exhibitions of contemporary art thinking ‘I could have done that myself’, some of the stuff did seem a bit lame, especially if it represented the culmination of three years’ work – it would have helped had there been a small paragraph next to each piece to give it some context. Scoff-worthy highlights included a large birdcage containing a television balanced on one corner; a slide projector projecting blanks onto a wall, cunningly titled ‘Untitled’, and a roomful of cardboard boxes glued to the walls, but the ultimate highlight was a video installation of two girls dressed in bikini tops and shorts throwing mud at each other. Godfrey informed me at work on Monday though that the latter sounded like performance art of a type popular around the late 1960s/early 1970s, so maybe there was some deliberate historical comment in there somewhere.

We were quite charmed by a large elephant made out of shredded paper glued together, although I accidentally put my hand on its trunk at one point and almost snapped it off. Never good to have to leave part of an exhibit at the front desk on the way out.
The University’s Fine Art department is housed in Temporary Office Building (‘TOB’) 1, one of several run-down wartime buildings occupying the Earley Gate side of the campus. The current VC has apparently expressed his desire to demolish them, but I think they have a certain charm, although they could do with a lick and a polish. Our team is due to be moving to one of them this November for the final eight months of our funding period, so I shall doubtless get to know them better.

After leaving the degree show, we visited the small wildlife garden on Whiteknights Road run by the Ridgeline Trust. On Sunday it was hosting an exhibition of local primary school children’s artwork, which we had a quick look at as well as a wander around the garden. After that, we visited three different houses on New Road (super leafy street of some lovely houses, although probably hell to park on) where I had a cursory look at the stuff on offer as well as a bit of a snoop at the property – attempted to perfect technique of appearing to look intently at a handmade necklace while actually looking out of the window into the garden. Ruth was chatted up by a woman with hairy legs and an inadequately-secured bicycle.

Had a successful weekend’s Freecycling, managing to offload a pedestal fan that had been lingering in the garage for a while, an office swivel chair and a particularly uncomfortable tubular steel chair (pictured) that I bought on eBay on a whim several years ago and then swiftly consigned to storage. Am now fired up to do some more de-cluttering. Then can buy more stuff.
The area between our office building and the building next to it was cleared earlier in the year in a few days of concerted destruction as part of the impending campus redevelopment, but now has grown into a rather lovely meadow-type area with colourful flowers. We are puzzled by this and are unsure whether it's intentional, or whether the redevelopment has just gone off the boil for the moment allowing weeds to thrive. Quite pleasant to look at, though.

NAGging; church jumble; plants

In one of my sporadic, and usually short-lived, attempts to become more involved with the local community, I attended a meeting of the Lower Caversham Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) last Thursday evening. The meeting was a public meeting to set the NAG’s priorities for the next year, and all of us present were given little coloured post-it notes to stick on various flipcharts indicating those things we thought should be priorities. The categories were pre-chosen and included such obvious things as Burglary, Antisocial Behaviour etc. We also had a talk from Inspector Penny MacKenzie, head of the Neighbourhood Policing Team. As is the way of these things, some of the older NAG members present did seem to tread that fine line between ‘concerned citizen’ and ‘annoying busybody’. On my way in I was greeted by an enthusiastic elderly gentleman who shook my hand for longer than necessary while thanking me profusely for coming, and then proceeded to put his arm round me while saying to somebody else ‘look, a new member’. Was tempted to say that if he continued the body contact it would be the last meeting I attended, but as I have occasionally been reminded of the need to be more tolerant of eccentrics/weirdos, refrained.

On the subject of eccentrics, seem to keep running into our neighbour-from-a-few-doors-down Norman following my encounter with him back in March. As seems to be the way of gents of a certain age and ilk, he does seem to spend a lot of time hanging around outside his property indulging in low-level chitchat with passers-by. Am trying to perfect technique of greeting him cheerily while not slowing brisk pace, in manner of one clearly on the way somewhere important, though was forced to slow down long enough on one occasion for him to tell me I looked nice in my gym kit. He doesn’t seem to speak to Ruth so am feeling unduly hand-picked for his attentions at the mo. It has been pointed out to me that he is no doubt well-meaning but lonely, which is no doubt true, but still.
In an attempt to support local events Ruth and I wandered down the road to Caversham Methodist Church on Saturday to support something billed in the paper as a ‘summer market’ – an overblown term for what turned out to be a pretty lowbrow and poorly attended jumble sale. The main room featured a handful of depressed-looking people sitting behind tables offering used toys, bedlinen etc, none of which looked like something you’d be drawn to buy. We made a beeline for the food stall and I bought a jar of marmalade, while Ruth bought a bag of dry-looking rock cakes. We then tried to escape but unfortunately someone offered us a cup of tea as we were heading for the door, which we felt obliged to accept. There did turn out to be books for sale in the main church itself, which redeemed the event a bit. The man in charge of the book stalls informed us that all religious books were free, but I refrained from taking any and paid 30p for a copy of ‘What Not To Wear’, which has occasional useful tips scattered among Susannah Constantine’s repeated banging on about her flabby arms.
Along with WNTW we picked up a small pamphlet published by The People's Friend in 1978 entitled Your Money Saving Diary, which includes a sobering list of money-saving tips, including how to salvage a cracked egg by rubbing the crack with dripping before putting the egg into water, and using the inner bags of cereal packets to line cake tins. Thrifty stuff.
We went over to Arborfield again on Sunday to check on the progress of Gail and Rob’s kittens (still cute). Gail then kindly drove us around to look at plants and pots, including a trip to the lovely Pudding Lane Nursery - plants laid out in attractive garden that one can meander through, with pleasing absence of the extraneous tat that garden centres feel obliged to sell in addition to plants (ghastly figurines; fridge magnets with inspirational sayings; giant ceramic blue tits etc – NB anybody in search of the latter should try the Henry Street Garden Centre). We bought several more grasses and a couple of large terracotta pots, one of which is now homing the oleander Dad gave me a few years ago.

Sticking with plants, have noted new growth on my spider plant at work. Bought this about a year ago in Homebase, on the grounds that it was a manky-looking specimen that I feared no one else would buy - probably not a sound basis on which to choose a plant, but I felt sorry for it. Have been feeding it for the past few weeks using a plant feed Ruth mixed for me. Feel nurturing and almost maternal.

As part of current attempt to get rid of backache by toning up core muscles etc, returned to Pilates on Tuesday evening, over a year after having done the original beginners course. Can feel stomach muscles today so assume it must have been doing something. Still sticking with gym routine, but have convinced Frazer that no, I don’t need to ‘up’ the routine quite yet, as am still struggling to do five minutes on the crosstrainer. Have a nasty feeling he is contemplating adding dumbbells to my squats.

Iron-pumping; tofu; waterborne hazards

Have resigned my membership of revive in the hope of getting a better value gym experience at Caversham Health and Fitness. CHF doesn't have a pool, unfortunately – but then in fairness I’d hardly used the pool in the last six months. On the up side, it’s half the cost and offers a number of different classes, including things with intimidatingly energetic names such as 'Pump' and 'Body Combat'. Had an induction last week from Frazer, an enthusiastic young lad who uses the term "awesome" a lot. We have established that I need core muscle strengthening and have thus been sentenced to a round of squats, lunges and planks 2-3 times a week as well as cardio.

Have resolved not to invest in any serious gym kit until I’ve been at it for a month, so for the time being am wearing a baggy black T-shirt and a pair of stripey leggings (see right), which according to Ruth make me look like a jester.

Earlier this week stir-fried, as I often do, some Cauldron marinated tofu pieces, and was amused to read on the back of the packet an invitation to visit Cauldron’s website and ‘share your tofu experiences’. Naively, I would have thought there were limits to the range of experiences one can have with tofu, but perhaps it has applications I’ve not thought of. Here’s what Cauldron, producers of ‘mouth-watering vegetable based foods’, to quote their website, have to say about tofu. You can even read the story of tofu, if you’re keen enough.

A minor barney with one of the construction workers under the railway bridge last Thursday led to a pithily-phrased complaint to both the construction company and to Reading Borough Council. Was somewhat surprised to receive an apologetic phone call from the council later that afternoon, who gave me a slightly over-detailed explanation of the various issues with the works. By the evening, there was improved signage and a contraflow under the bridge. Felt briefly all-powerful, before discovering that evidently others had been complaining too.

We went for a lovely dinner on Ray’s boat on Saturday night – pleasing that it was actually warm enough to sit outside, although the downside is that we were mobbed by mosquitoes. Am lucky in not reacting too badly to mosquito bites; one of Ruth’s legs swelled up on Monday to - so it was claimed – almost twice its normal thickness. She diagnosed Skeeter syndrome and hurried off to Boots, who sent her to the Reading Walk-in Health Centre in the Broad Street Mall, who advised that it would be an hour’s wait before triage, so she decided to skip that and self-medicate with a glass of Pinot Grigio. The swelling seems to have subsided now.

While at the marina we were able to observe the savagery of waterfowl hierarchy, as a goose couple and their cute fleet of seven or so goslings were mobbed by one of the two resident black swans, who apparently are undeniably top dog. One of the adult geese nobly sacrificed itself and led the swan away allowing the young ones to feed. Almost brought a tear to the eye.

As often happens at the start of months where I've vowed to go on an economy drive, seem to have already found myself going out for a couple of substantial feeds. On the Sunday of the Bank Holiday weekend, went for Sunday lunch with Ruth and her aunt at The Bear at Hungerford - never eaten there before but was dead impressed, though it isn't cheap. Although I seldom order roasts, ordered roast beef on a whim, which was excellent, with a pleasing absence of overcooked everything and dark brown Bisto-style gravy. On Tuesday we had a team lunch at LSQ2 to celebrate Ann's sixtieth birthday, and had squid stuffed with chorizo - not a combo I've tried before but most pleasing. Rumour has it that the restaurant isn't doing too well, which is a shame although not entirely surprising - it's probably a bit upmarket for its setting. Intend now to eat baked beans for a few days.

Have decided to further embrace whiteness in the garden in a probably misguided attempt to achieve a Mediterranean look - thanks to Ruth's efforts at the weekend, the supporting wall around our tiny patio is now also white. Harley assisted by climbing into the chimenea and then trampling ash over the ground floor.

Local government; rhododendrons; cats

Reading Borough Council have announced their new Con-LibDem coalition, a big change as the council has been under Labour control since the 1980s. The article is mainly distinguished by the absurd photograph of the parties’ lead councillors Andrew Cumpsty and Kirsten Bayes. The slew of impolite comments posted include 'I feel violated' and references to The Krankies.

Had brunch with Ray in Pangbourne on Saturday morning at The Ditty, a recently-refurbed café/bistro that used to be called The Ducks’ Ditty– my aunt waitressed there many years ago. Not sure whether the renaming is a sign of a cooling down of the Thames Valley’s interminable obsession with Kenneth Grahame, but let’s hope so. As a child I had a rather smart green hardback copy of The Wind in the Willows, probably given to me by a well-meaning relative or friend of my parents, it being a classic example of Books Adults Think Children Should Read (being reminiscent of those wonderful far-off days when people ate lunch out of wicker baskets in the open air, children played nicely together, etc). Like any even vaguely normal child I was more interested in reading Enid Blyton so I don’t think I got around to reading TWITW until well into my teens, by which time I thought I’d better read the book before giving it away. Anyway, returning to the café, here I am outside it, just for the record.

We then went on to visit the lovely Harcourt Arboretum, an adjunct to the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. Lots of rhododendrons in amazing colours and quite a few groups having picnics. The arboretum used to be part of the grounds of Nuneham Park, also owned by Oxford University (I think) but currently used as the Global Retreat Centre run by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (!). I got myself onto their mailing list some time ago while looking around for meditation classes in the area, so now keep receiving emails inviting me to lectures and seminars on conquering fear, embracing one’s inner monk etc.

Ruth and I took the bus out to Arborfield Cross¹ on Sunday to visit Gail and Rob, who are now ensconced in their new home. The house represents more of a renovation project than I’d want to take on, but as two Building Control surveyors they should be better placed to tackle it. We had a pleasant lunch in the garden and met their two new kittens, who reminded me of how ADORABLE kittens are. I offered two rabbits in exchange for them, but nothing doing.

Refurbishment of the Cotton Club, the food and drink outlet on the London Road campus, is now complete, which is a relief after the last few months of banging/swearing/loud singing (our office is directly next door). We were invited on Monday to a private pre-opening viewing, with complimentary tea and cake, of the revamped facility, now rebranded ‘Eat and Drink at London Road’. Certainly much swankier, though that was to be hoped given that it must have been at least 30 years since the previous refurb. The refurbishment has apparently aimed to ‘reveal the historic origins of the former dairy building’, and there is indeed a mural of some cows along one of the walls. According to Jude the coffee is now more expensive, but on the up side it does now appear to actually contain coffee.

The refurb is part of a general overhaul of the University’s catering outlets, the eventual aim of which is apparently ‘a flexible, high-end food offering’ across the University. Sounds a refreshing change from the inflexible, and remarkably low-end, food offering available in catered halls of residence when I was a student. Students today don’t know they’re born, etc.

Book Group met at Tamzin's house on Wednesday to discuss Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. I had only managed to get just over halfway through the book by the time of the meeting, partly through having started it too late and partly through not enjoying it much. It struck me as a mediocre fantasy-novel-by-numbers, but as everyone else appeared to have enjoyed it, I will endeavour to finish it just to see if my opinion changes. Tamzin’s large and ridiculously appealing cat Hendrix graced us with his presence for the second part of the evening, so it’s been a whole week of cute cats. If only I didn’t live on a rat run I’d be surrounded with them, though Ruth has cautioned me that two fortyish² women living with pet cats would fill just too many stereotypes.

¹ The Wikipedia stub cautions against confusing it with Arborfield, Saskatchewan. That was a near miss then. Good thing the bus driver was on the ball.
² The use of '-ish' implies there or thereabouts. One of us is, of course, not yet forty.

Blue tits; Somerset; Grand Designs

Emrys

Meant to update this last Wednesday from my parents’ place, but had no sooner settled down happily at their kitchen table with my laptop than I discovered that their broadband was out of action. After a brief rant in the direction of the cats, who looked unmoved, it dawned on me that having four days without access to the internet (as well as without mobile reception) would probably be good for me and create a calm meditative atmosphere conducive to periods of quiet reflection, etc. Spent a quiet day or so reading, looking through some old photographs and providing a lap for Emrys.

Collected Ruth from the train on Friday morning and we spent a further quiet day before my parents arrived home on Saturday. The visit was enlivened by what Ruth termed 'Tit TV': the nesting box with attached camera that Ray gave Dad as a present a few years ago is being used this year, by blue tits - we were able to view the 12 little eggs and the cute little bird sitting on them. Eggs and tit are just visible in these pictures. They had yet to hatch when we left, though Dad reckoned that hatching was imminent.

Eggs

Blue tit sitting on eggs

As I didn’t fancy driving far on the Thursday I tasked myself with finding dinner from the local shop at Longtown 3 or 4 miles away. Although doubtless a useful resource, it doesn’t stock a huge range of food so ended up with a Linda McCartney macaroni cheese and a packet of sausages. Macaroni cheese isn’t something I usually eat, but it wasn’t bad.

We drove to Cheddar on Sunday morning to visit Ruth’s grandmother, with whom we had a pleasant lunch at local restaurant the Edelweiss. Lots of attractively wooded hills around, which look worthy of further exploration at some point although Ruth thinks Somerset is a ‘vile’ county from which one is lucky to escape without dengue fever or similar from torpor-inducing west coast air. Have done only limited probing as to reasons for this view. Drive back was certainly vile after we had switched off the satnav in a degree of frustration; I had tasked Ruth with directing me around (NB as opposed to into) Bristol to pick up the M4 somewhere around Chippenham, but this didn’t quite work, resulting in half an hour or so of frosty silence after I had driven several times around the same roundabout in Bristol city centre. Once onto the M4 we became caught up in road works, Sunday evening traffic and pelting rain. Cheered ourselves up later by going for dinner at the recently-revamped Griffin.

To recap over the previous week: election news: both Reading’s seats are now blue. Reading East’s Conservative MP Rob Wilson got back in, with an increased majority. There was a vacancy in Reading West due to the recent retirement of Labour’s Martin Salter, and the Conservative's Alok Sharma is now the new man there. Reading Borough Council remains NOC, though a Tory/LibDem coalition looks likely. I haven’t formed much opinion either way about Rob Wilson, but I understand he holds regular surgeries across his constituency, so I guess I could pop in with an issue if I wished. His publicity material is chiefly characterised by him reminding voters that he’s married, with four children – aside from obviously being a thinly-veiled “Yes, I’m Heterosexual”, can’t understand why this is thought relevant to politics – and from observations it does tend to be a Tory tactic; the publicity material for the Labour and Lib Dem candidates, entirely correctly, didn’t mention anything about their private lives. Personally I wouldn't care if my MP lived in a commune with seven other men, as long as he did good things for the community ...

We went up to Ray’s boat on the evening of Friday 7^th for what I had hoped would be a pleasant al fresco waterside drink on a balmy spring evening, but ended up being a huddle around the woodburning stove on a decidedly chilly evening. Made admiring noises as to how his tongue-and-groove panelling is progressing.

Trekked out to the ExCeL on Saturday 8^th to Grand Designs Live – quite fun, though unfortunately (given the cost of the ticket) by the time the day came around neither Ruth nor I were really in the mood and it was also rather more similar to the Ideal Home Show than I had been expecting. Our tickets entitled us to a complimentary copy of the Grand Designs magazine and a bag of rather random freebies, including a small packet of muesli and several free samples of fabric conditioner. The already quite long journey out to the ExCeL was lengthened by us getting on the wrong branch of the DLR at Canning Town (I blame Ruth) and having to wait around at West Silvertown for a return train. A bleak landscape – there’s a bit about the area here - but I did take this picture of the big golden syrup tin on the side of Tate & Lyle.

While at the show, queued to look around Eco Modular Living’s Ecohome. The company apparently markets recycled buildings ‘using a hybridisation of modular and container fabrication techniques’. Reminded me of my proposal, which I first expounded to Ray some years ago, for solving Britain’s housing problem by accommodating people in Functional Living Units (henceforth FLUs), medium-but-not-oversized living pods equipped with the essentials. Disappointingly, Ray always doggedly maintained that the idea wasn't viable, possibly because the plan included demolishing large swathes of the country's existing housing. I stick by it though.

A sold sign has gone up opposite UHO (see 14 April post), barely a few weeks after the house went on the market. This is good news. Remains to be seen whether the new owner will remove the nasty grey paint and metal windows.

Have recently written a letter of complaint to the (expensive) health club of which I am a member about the unpleasantly acrid smell in the steam room on several occasions recently. Am giving them a week or so to sort it out, but was briefly encouraged when I went to the gym on Monday to note that poolside was closed for maintenance, so hopefully this includes scrubbing the steam room or at least masking smell of wee with eucalyptus or similar. I live in hope.

Modern art; plumber round 2; Morris dancing

Batch of home-grown salad leaves, just for the record:

Popped along to Rivermead on the evening of the 23rd to the first Reading Contemporary Art Fair. We missed the official opening by John Madejski, though Ruth claimed to have spotted him on the way in. The Friday evening was a private viewing, for which we got free tickets (and a free glass of plonk) thanks to Ray’s sister Sharon, who works for Reading 107, one of the sponsors. Lots of stuff on show and I may actually have located a suitable piece of art for the living room chimney breast – fell rather in love with some of Alce Harfield’s brightly coloured canvases so intend to commission something as soon as I’ve measured the available space. Ruth bought a picture of a horse, which I duly admired at the same time as issuing a warning about any future acquisition of hunting scenes, horse brasses etc.

A piece of news of almost no interest to anyone else is that as of last Tuesday we now have a new gas meter. Looky here. How smart.

We had to get the plumber out again last Tuesday evening thanks to Ruth’s well-meaning attempt to replace the cistern valve in the toilet. We’ll be funding his summer holiday at this rate.

Hosted Book Group last Wednesday and a discussion of Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger. The book was my choice; having read several of Lively’s children’s books I thought perhaps I should read one of her adult novels, and the Booker Prize winner seemed the obvious choice. Good, but it would probably benefit from a re-reading at some point to fully appreciate the subtle passage-of-time aspects that seem to be Lively’s trademark. One of the Claires had accidentally read Tiger Moon (a 2008 children’s fantasy novel) instead, which rendered her contribution to the discussion a bit limited. Had to rebuke Harley afterwards for behaving like a little tease - running up to people in a "look what a cute little bunny I am" fashion and then skipping off as they tried to stroke him.

Got up wackily early last Saturday morning to go down to Forbury Gardens to see the Kennet Morris Men dance in May Day at 5.30am. Some rather blurred pictures here, along with some video footage of the occasion. The troupe (I believe ‘side’ is the correct term) are a jolly bunch of mainly older gents, but there was one young chap among the group, who did a solo jig for one of the numbers. Ray, who is always a sucker for getting up at an unearthly hour to do eccentric things, came with me and between us we almost doubled the size of the audience; the others were a young couple who were on their way to the beer festival, and the wife of one of the dancers. They danced half a dozen or so dances and then sang Sumer Is Icumen In, reasonably tunefully. Given that they're apparently always on the lookout for new dancers, I had a go at persuading Ray to take it up, but he wasn't quite as taken with the idea.

Ruth and I went to a party on Sunday hosted by Ruth's colleague Jan and her partner, who had just bought themselves a Nintendo Wii that morning with the result that a good portion of the evening was spent playing on it. Had a go at tennis and didn't do too badly. Quite fun but I'm not sure it would induce me to buy one; have yet to become remotely hooked on anything resembling a computer game. In any case our living room is a bit too small to allow for even virtual-exercising.

Public school; chitterlings; curry

Mum arrived on Thursday evening to stay for a few days and after breakfast on Friday at the Alto Lounge we took the train over to Windsor and spent most of the day mooching around Eton, including going on a guided tour of Eton College (pictures here). Our guide was a pleasant fairly elderly woman whose four sons had apparently all been through Eton – after learning that the full fees are £30,000 per year, Mum and I were dying to ask her what her husband did for a living, but refrained. The tour includes only limited bits of the College: we had a quick whiz around School Yard and the cloisters, the oldest classroom in the College and the Chapel, before finishing in the Museum of Eton Life. So no getting to poke through boys’ bedrooms, but you can watch a video about life at Eton, showing boys eating their lunch and having intelligent group discussions in masters’ studies. (An amusing thought would be an alternative video of Eton life, showing boys getting bladdered and mooning the locals. I’m sure that doesn’t happen though.) The museum takes pains to point out that both beating and fagging have long since been abolished.

It did strike me, while wandering around Eton, as inappropriate to have a primary school called The Porny School. I know it’s because it was named after a Mr Porny (a former French master at Eton College called Antoine Pyron du Martre; how that got anglicised to Porny I'm not sure). It just seems wrong.

On Saturday morning we wandered to Reading Farmers’ Market, a twice-monthly affair held in the old cattle market on Great Knollys Street. One of the meat stalls always has an interesting selection of innards, including chitterlings (NB spelt chitlings by the stall owner). A quick Google search reveals a number of web resources for chitterlings, including The Chitterling Site. Here’s how to clean them. Just not sure I fancy eating something where the preparations include picking it clean of any faeces. One might perhaps legitimately ask whether something that requires this much cleaning beforehand is actually suitable for human consumption. Needless to say we didn’t buy any chitterlings, but did acquire some tomato plants and a lardy cake.

Spent much of the rest of Saturday sitting in the garden enjoying the sun and watching Harley skit about the garden eating the heads off flowers. Dad joined us for dinner in the evening at The Spice Oven, a cavernous Indian restaurant housed in a former nightclub¹. It has relatively restrained beige décor but recovers its kitsch credentials by having a small lake in the centre complete with fish, plants and a bridge. Saturday night turned out to be Buffet Night, which I hadn’t known about in advance, but my parents and I took advantage of the opportunity to try a few different dishes, while Ruth ordered something mild and creamy for herself.

On Sunday morning we all trooped up to the marina, where Dad had left his car, to squeeze onto Ray’s boat for breakfast. In the evening Ruth and I lit the chimenea for the first time this year and had a ceremonial burning of the goddess figure I made at Samhain. She went up a treat.

Unsatisfactory start to Monday morning when entered bathroom and realised after a few moments (it being pre-coffee) that I was paddling through water. After brief negotiations Ruth agreed to stay home and call a plumber, who duly came out and tightened various areas of slackness around the bath and basin taps. One of the few advantages of having a ground floor bathroom was that no other rooms were flooded. Apparently there had been a slow leak going on for some time, which might explain the occasional sprouting of fungus on the floor. Really must get new bathroom sorted.

¹ The Nue Valbonne, where I once snogged a bloke then stood him up the next day. In my defence it was 20 years ago and I was young and silly.