OK, real cockerels; military history walk; chickenny goodness

Went to London for the LLN Research Forum meeting last Thursday and was shocked to discover that an off-peak Travelcard is now over £20, at £20.50. I remember when it was tuppence, etc etc.

After the meeting, wandered past the Torrington Place branch of Planet Organic and couldn't resist a quick browse. I spurned raw hemp and organic yam nuggets, but bought a carton of organic chick pea sprouts, which stated on their label ‘These sprouts are grown with the conscious awareness of the interconnectedness of everything and all life’. Far out.

Was suitably blown away on Thursday evening at Reading Film Theatre by Mike Leigh’s Another Year – a subtle, understated piece that never resorts to melodrama. Before the film, as it wasn’t worth going home, I braved the Students' Union's 3sixty bar for a drink and bite to eat. Emerged from the bar after an indifferent chicken burger feeling about 110.

Have been forced to eat humble pie as regards cockerel, as after staying over at the house last Friday night I did indeed hear it quite clearly myself while standing in the kitchen early on Saturday morning. Sounds like it’s only a few doors down. Wouldn’t be surprised if there are complaints from neighbours come summer – though that would possibly be a bit rich given the general noise of traffic and late-night drunks that already pervades the area.

Claire came for tea and banana cake on Saturday afternoon and admired the flat, before going off to her staff member's 30th birthday party armed with Stella Artois-themed presents (sounds like a classy bird).

Ray and I went over to Greenham Common on Sunday for a walk about. There’s an interesting website here with a virtual tour. The USAF returned Greenham to the MOD in 1992 and it was declared surplus to the Ministry’s requirements the following year. The Common has for some time now been in the process of being returned to being common land – most of the runway appears to have been dismantled, although you can still see quite clearly where it was – apparently a million tonnes of concrete have been broken up and removed – quite a task. The six cruise missile silos are still in place, behind fencing – and I assume they’ll be staying in place, given that they have been designated a Scheduled Monument of national significance. There were originally plans to turn the derelict Control Tower into a visitors’ centre, but judging by this Newbury Weekly News cutting from 2000, these were later shelved – not sure why, as it seems a reasonable idea to me.

There are various colour-coded walks – halway through the Taxiway Walk, we decided that the scenery was getting a bit samey and it was also getting a bit cold, so drove back into Thatcham and after a quick drink at The Swan by Thatcham station walked along the canal as far as the footbridge at Bull's Lock and then up the path that leads to the Bowdown Woods Nature Reserve. Once inside the woods we lost our way a bit – eventually managed to emerge into a car park off Bury's Bank Road and trudged back down to Thatcham. Drove back to Reading via Waitrose (Thatcham now has a Waitrose!) for Ray to pick up a pizza for his dinner.

Went round to the house on Sunday evening for a lovely dinner with my lady, who had prepared one of my favourite recipes, a Nigel Slater griddled chicken dish with garlic butter and thyme. In fact she just had to fry it as I've pinched the griddle, but still lovely.

Started yesterday by walking to the Bulmershe campus for a meeting with the lovely Carol and Tony from the Institute of Education, to check on the progress of a project we are funding. Spent an hour beforehand working in Bulmershe Library. I have expressed my affection for Bulmershe before and agreed with Carol that we both like Bulmershe Library – quiet, space to spread out, easy access to books as opposed to PCs (not necessarily a given in modern libraries). However, sadly, it’s going – its closure is scheduled for July 2011 and the University’s education resources are due to be absorbed (somehow) into the main library at Whiteknights. In the room where I was working the books had already been cleared from the shelves. Took these discreet photos. RIP proper university buildings.

Temporary move to suburbia; offloading of cr*p; phantom cockerels

Have completed first week in my new temporary home. Slightly weird to be back in Lower Earley, a large 1980s housing development on the south side of town where I lived for a year with my sister about 17 years ago. Maiden Place, where I’m living, is a low-level apartment development built around a central car park, with a few shops, pub, community centre and Baptist church. The small precinct includes a large off-licence and a creditable Indian restaurant, which Ray and I tried out last Wednesday evening after his van had helped to transport a large plant and my remaining odds and ends.

The flat was the third flat I viewed and is light, airy, white and an interesting design, which combined to sell it to me. It also has a balcony, which after some difficulty have just managed to obtain the key to. Contemplating setting up a small Zen/tranquil thoughts-type area with strategically-placed Buddha, grasses, wind-chimes etc. The only downsides to it so far (apart possibly from its location in deepest suburbia) are the saggy mattress on the bed and the feeble shower. Going to try a foam mattress-topper to assist with the former; the latter I’ll probably have to live with but at least I can now take baths without fear of the room flooding.

Although the plan is to live ‘light’ for the next six months, meaning that I haven’t had to move any furniture, only selected possessions, Ruth and I still ended up transporting four car-loads of stuff across town. Where does it come from? I also took the opportunity to recycle our huge backlog of bottles, with a view to some sort of New Year fresh start of not accumulating quite so many. Ruth had some amazing success Freecycling the army of bags of rabbit dung that had also accumulated in the garage, and I finally managed to get rid of a wine rack that I've unsuccessfully advertised at least three times before - the eventual taker was a chap who wanted somewhere to store his homebrew.

Have been lucky enough to acquire a completely free 32" LCD TV which Ray got as a gift with a recent mobile phone upgrade. Can't quite understand how, but I gather it's something to do with his having quite an expensive contract but only requesting cheap phones due to tendency to ruin them by rubbing grit into the screen/dropping them into lakes etc. Have generously left Ruth my sturdy old Beko that still refuses to die.

Ruth claims to have been plagued recently at the house by the noise of a cockerel crowing in the early morning. Have suggested that this sounds to me like auditory hallucinations but she has threatened to telephone me at cockcrow with the idea that I'll be able to hear it down the phone. I await this with a certain degree of scepticism.

Finally, have just noticed from the Wikipedia article linked above that, apparently, "Earley also contains the most radioactive residential property in England". Hmmm. I comfort myself with the thought that Wikipedia is just an ill-informed free-for-all.

Reflections on service areas; rural festivities; plumbing problems again

Was up bright and early on Dec 23^rd to collect hire car and fill it with petrol. Discovered that, despite the roads largely having thawed, the lane at the back of the house looked icy so I had to park down the road (thought of attempting the lane, getting stuck and Norman appearing to help was just too terrible). We delivered the bunnies to Reading Rabbit Rescue and were greeted by an uncharacteristically cheery Steve, who gave us a Christmas card (cheeriness also odd given that he had apparently just had to make an overseas phone call to a bunny owner to inform them that their pet had died). Went home, loaded car and were then ready for the excitement of setting off for Ruth's family home in Norfolk. Left about 11.30am, traffic and weather both fine, stopped once at Birchanger Green services on the M11, and arrived (I think) about 5pm. I mistakenly assumed that leaving the M11 meant that we were nearly there, but no - took the best part of two more hours to drive the rest of the way to Ruth's parents' home near Scoulton, not helped by driving in darkness on country roads for the last part of the journey.

Returning briefly to service stations: according to the Wikipedia entry, in 2006 Birchanger Green had the lowest overall rating of all UK motorway service areas on the independent Motorway Services Info website. Can't say it struck me as that bad - but it sounds as though proneness to congestion was the cause of the ratings. We obviously lucked out. Over Christmas, I had a brief conversation with Ruth's father about service stations. He seemed to think that they've gone downhill, but this is of course wrong. If my memory serves, a typical service station in the 1970s would feature one enormous refectory-style eating area with fixed plastic seating and stinking of chips. At least these days, you can get a nice coffee and toastie in Costa and leave the sweaty masses in their tracky bottoms to go to Burger King. One that stands out particularly in my memory is the one on the English side of the (now old) Severn Bridge, which I remember having a huge dining area where I recall eating on several occasions, as it would have been on my family's route to Gran's house in Cardiff. It had a view down to the Severn, but according to this, that's now gone. See here for fascinating facts about UK motorway service areas.

We occupied ourselves on Christmas Eve by driving to Attleborough, the nearest town of any size, and having a quick look at Ruth's old secondary school and at St Mary's Church (with its ancient rood screen, dontcha know) before catching the train into Norwich for a lovely few hours mooching about. It was a very cold day but Norwich was awash with old buildings (probably always is) and twinkly lights (probably just for Christmas) so the atmosphere compensated. Our mooching included a visit to the Assembly House (apparently gutted by fire in the mid-1990s, but you'd never know now) where we had a lovely tea and slice of cake next to the Christmas tree.

Got off to an energetic start on Christmas Day by chopping vegetables, hoovering and helping to hump a table downstairs, before breaking off exhausted for a sherry. We were joined for lunch by two couples from Mrs Millard's bell-ringing group, who made for good company. Post-lunch featured the usual slumping on the couch, reaching sluggishly for yet another Milk Tray, before I feared I was about to doze off and retired to my room for an hour or so, where the ambient temperature rendered me awake again in short order.

Boxing Day luckily proved a nice day and Ruth and I went for a walk in the morning to the nearby villages of Rockland All Saints and Rockland St Peter and then back across fields to the house. We made our way back home again on the morning of the 27^th, once Ruth's mother had triumphantly filled our car with several boxes of Ruth's possessions which one suspects she had been trying to rid herself of for years. The drive back was tortuously slow, thanks to the M25 and people presumably either going home after Christmas or heading to out-of-town retail parks to the sales.

Caused some minor damage on the Tuesday evening by turning our annoying hot tap in the bathroom too far to the left and causing water to spurt violently from somewhere under the basin. We managed to stop the flood temporarily by turning off the water supply to the bathroom, but I was forced (with gun to head) to phone our friends Allwrights the plumbers the following morning, who came round and fixed the leak. In the interests of economy we opted not to have the tap replaced, given new bathroom plans, so have covered old tap with a plastic bag for the moment to remind ourselves not to turn it on (as apparently flood could resume if we do). We have both concluded that the house mocks us.

Took the train to Abergavenny on the morning of the 29^th to visit my parents (in fact the first part of the journey was by bus to Swindon, thanks to the complete festive closure of Reading station). Met up with Dave and Hazel for lunch at the Beaufort Arms in Raglan, and that evening Mum and I had a delightful dinner consisting entirely of nibbles (and wine), before tucking in to roast beef the following night once Dad had returned from a brief trip. As the weather was a bit pants we didn't go out much. Played a couple of games of Scrabble; true to form, Mum walloped me both times, though the second time slightly less shamefully than the first.

Arrived home late afternoon New Year's Eve. As is my practice for the last ten years or so, I eschewed New Year's Eve celebrations and stayed in for the evening. Cooked a few tapas dishes which Ruth and I ate while dozing in front of the TV. Rock on.

Ruth and I went for a walk along the river on New Year's Day, thinking we should get some air - turned out to be rather a longer walk than intended as I could have sworn the footbridge by The Roebuck Hotel used to be much closer to Caversham than it was this time. We were forced to stop for a hot chocolate at the big new Tesco on the old Battle Hospital site (plumbing the depths) before trudging home. In the evening we went for dinner at Ray's and admired his Christmas decorations, including cute little tree on the rear deck (pictured).

Took the train over to Hungerford on Monday 3^rd to have lunch at The Bear to celebrate Ruth's birthday. We had meant to invite several members of her family, but didn't quite get around to it. As the bar was packed out we had to dine in solitary state in the formal restaurant, but it was a very nice meal and luckily the staff didn't hover over us. Before the meal, we went for a mooch around the antiques arcade - still can't summon up much interest in antiquing but enjoyed browsing the books and old postcards.

Back to work on Tuesday and our team's first day with Ann at the helm as Director. Fay, our former Director, has now left to take up a post at UWE - I arrived to find a lovely email from her thanking me for my expertise, which I shall refer to in self-doubting moments, and suggesting keeping an eye out for openings in Bristol. Onwards and upwards.

Celebrations; snow at last; office socialising

A group of us had a nice dinner at La Tasca last Friday to celebrate Claire’s having achieved a 2:1 in her Open University Psychology degree. Great stuff.

Having escaped the snow so far this year, Reading finally had a few inches of snow on Saturday morning. We took a few obligatory snow pictures, which are probably very similar to last year’s snow pictures. Remembering last year’s lethal pavements, I splashed out on some strap-on spikes, which are certainly handy for walking on packed snow and ice, though a bit noisy on tarmac so found myself taking them off yesterday once I got to an area that had been gritted. Today, ironically, there has been something of a thaw.

Came downstairs on Tuesday evening to find Ruth sitting on the dining-room floor with Lola upside-down between her legs pulling lumps of fur out of her backside, having just braved clipping her claws. All due to fear of being berated by Sandra at Reading Rabbits, where we are taking the rabbits tomorrow for their Christmas break. Lola seemed relatively calm once released and proceeded just to wash herself, but we fear she may be biding her time.

This afternoon was our team's scheduled 'At Home' for some of the other staff in our new building. Slightly muted from our end as in the event neither Fay or Ann, whose idea it had been, were in so Paul, Emma minor and myself were forced to act as hosts, with a certain amount of uncharacteristic disgruntlement from Paul about having been lumbered with the job. Despite that, lots of lovely people from Central Berkshire EBP turned up to make merry with us, so it went off fairly well. Now for Crimbo.

Jobsworths; dubious near-neighbours; festive crafting

Our chimney is finally supported! Cliffords have now installed a bespoke gallows bracket in bedroom 3 to support what remains of the rear chimney stack, which should avoid the probably largely theoretical possibility of it crashing through the ceiling and killing one of us. Ruth invited Building Control round last Friday to view it, as per the Building Notice we filed some months ago, only to be told that it looked inadequate to support the stack, and by the way we filled out the wrong form, and ignored the clause that says even if we raise no objections to the proposed work nor give you a deadline by which we will raise objections, you proceed with it AT YOUR OWN RISK and at any point we can turn round and decide we don’t like it. Luckily, by the following Monday, BC had decided that actually it was OK and we received a terse email confirming that everything was satisfactory. What happened in the interim? Was it dangerous on Friday, but not on Monday?

While they were here, Cliffords also repaired the piece of guttering that broke in last year’s snow (probably just in time for it to break again in this year’s snow). It never was on the cards that we were going to allow Norman from three doors down to fix it, but luckily he’s never raised the subject again anyway. On the subject, a week or so ago Ruth was sitting innocent and alone in the living room with the light on and the blind not fully closed, and looked up to see Norman outside on the pavement actually bending down and peering through the living room window. We briefly considered mocking up the scene that he was no doubt hoping to see, but subsequently decided not to humour the old perv.

Another piece of good news is that our somewhat protracted remortgage completed on Monday, following nearly two months spent over what should have been a relatively minor administrative process. Everything was resolved once the two sets of solicitors presumably got tired of firing insults at each other, our guy at Caversham Solicitors offered to make a seemingly very minor amendment to the title document, the other lot said “yeah, all right” and that was that. The whole thing is just orchestrated to DO PEOPLE’S HEADS IN.


Ruth and I had an uncharacteristic frenzy of home-crafting on Sat/Sun afternoon making our own Christmas cards, by printing out photos of snowy scenes from last winter and sticking these onto cards and envelopes purchased from John Lewis a week or so ago. Forgot to buy any glitter, but then that might just have been tacky really. We also decorated my little artificial tree with pretty much all the decorations we had, including Lester, and I bought some cute little bauble lights – battery-powered, to avoid tempting the bunnies with a trailing mains cable.

Monday was our team Christmas lunch at Loch Fyne. No turkey to be seen on the menu, which was fine with me - the meat option was duck, but I opted for gravadlax followed by a whole sea bass. Nice though spent more time than I'd anticipated spitting out bones. Received an excellent Secret Santa gift of a nice bottle of red.

Jamie's; tour of Maidenhead; new flat roof

Met Kate after work on Friday 26^th and at her suggestion tried out the new Jamie’s Italian in the Oracle. Noisy and crowded – by the time we left there were queues at the bar for tables. I had a squid ink pasta dish with scallops and prawns – impressively black pasta and lovely flavour, though for the price thought they could have been a bit more generous with the scallops. Accompanied it with two glasses of a lovely Chardonnay. So to sum up: nice food, but not somewhere you’d go for an intimate relaxed dinner.

Kate and I eschewed Las Iguanas, the first place that came to mind, on the grounds that it's just too loud to have a proper conversation. Concluded that we may both be getting quite old.

Went over to Maidenhead with Ray the following day for another walk, in entirely suitable cold, frosty but dry weather (pictures here). Started with breakfast at the lovely Palmieri’s on Furze Platt Road before striking off across fields towards Pinkneys Green. Crossed the main A308 and headed across country onto Darling’s Lane with its large properties (one of which had this funky elephant in its driveway) and thence to Maidenhead Thicket. We took a detour to Stubbings Nursery to check out its Christmas display – not as OTT as more commercial garden centres but plenty of decorations, including a whole collection of birds made with what looked like real feathers. Being charmed by anything cute and round, I was forced to adopt one of them and have named him Lester.

Proceeded through the thicket, crossing the A4 and coming out onto Cannon Lane, where we begun something of a Clark nostalgia tour, beginning with sneaking along the exclusive Sandisplatt Road to have a snoop at the houses. In fact most of the houses are manifestly uninteresting suburban faux-Georgian with fake pillars, with the exception of the striking Solar House, which Ray remembers running past on cross-country runs as a schoolboy and being very taken with. It is indeed totally unlike any of the houses around it, and one hopes it’s owned by someone sympathetic.

We cut through an alleyway onto Altwood Road and went for a snoop at Altwood School, Ray’s old secondary school, a purpose-built comprehensive which in Ray’s day sounded pretty liberal and wacky by my standards, not having prefects and offering Esperanto as an O-level option. One suspects it’s probably somewhat less wacky these days. We called in for a hot drink at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts before proceeding back past former Clark family residences on Westborough Road and Courthouse Road – the latter being the scene, apparently, of Ray’s being kept off school more than once in the 1970s to assist his parents in unceremoniously ripping original fireplaces and whole chimney breasts out of the house. Not sure about the former, but the latter would be unthinkable nowadays.

We ended the outing by calling in at Ray’s Auntie Barbara’s on Alwyn Road for tea and buttered crumpets. Barbara is an intelligent and inspiring old lady but doesn’t believe in wasting heat, so although her back sitting room was nice and toasty thanks to the gas fire, the rest of her sprawling c. 1920s bungalow was the approximate temperature of an icehouse. Perhaps her generation were just hardier?

Went for a nice dinner with Claire at Prezzo in the evening. The following afternoon Ruth and I finished off the destruction of the back bedroom chimney, although with the unfortunate side-effect of making a hole in the kitchen ceiling (brick dropped onto by then wafer-thin section of floor). Drat.

Cliffords turned up on Monday morning to start repair work on the flat roof covering the rear extension, which leaked in heavy rain a few weeks ago. Our main goal, after speaking with Building Control, is to maintain that it’s a repair and not a replacement, as if it’s a replacement of the whole roof it requires building regulations approval (yawn). The decking under the roof cover was apparently rotted through, so it proved to be a more comprehensive ‘repair’ than originally planned, but Cliffords have apparently taken photos throughout to demonstrate that it has been correctly insulated, etc etc. Here's one (left) of the apparently rotted old roof (yuk) and one I took of the finished product (right).

Structural work; luxury hotels; mail order brides

Took the train down to see my parents on the 13^th (pictures here) – Dad cooked a delicious prawn curry on the Saturday evening and on the Sunday we went for a walk around the village of Middlewood, taking in the odd-looking Middlewood House, seen on this Geograph link. The house looks to be empty and in a poor state of repair – who knows whether it will find an owner willing to pour the necessary money into it. We called in to the newly-revamped Castlefield for a drink – the place was packed out with people eating Sunday roasts, so we had to perch at the bar but Mum and Dad managed to book a table for dinner the following week to try the place out.

Disastrous day a couple of weeks ago when not only the ridge of the roof in the back bedroom leaked in heavy rain and wind, but the flat roof on the bathroom also started letting in a considerable amount of water. We consulted with local roofing company Cliffords (Reading) Ltd who have already given us a quote to fit a gallows bracket. Luckily the problem in the back bedroom is a minor matter of the join between the two houses needing to be sealed better, but the flat roof is likely to need replacing. The extension is 30 years old so the roof may well have reasonably reached the end of its natural life, but it will still be a bill we hadn’t bargained on.

With a view to the gallows bracket: Cliffords came round last week and, very excitingly, fitted something called an acro prop to support the stack in the roof space so that Ruth could start removing the portion below – we are hoping to save £300 by removing the chimney breast ourselves. Last weekend was duly a frenzy of chimney work, with Ruth dismantling the structure and me ferrying buckets of rubble to a waiting Hoppa Bag (cunningly cheaper alternative to Hippobags, distributed by local man) and ferrying the good bricks out to the garage, where we may now have enough bricks stored to be able to build a small structure in the garden. Here’s some footage from the scene. I omitted to photograph the scene where Ruth dropped the chisel down the hole and had to go fishing for it with a pair of barbecue tongs.

Had an appointment in Henley first thing on Monday morning to seek some legal advice from fresh and funky solicitors The Head Partnership, who had been recommended to me as apparently marketing themselves as a new kind of solicitor. Had a brief but helpful meeting with the approachable Melissa, then called in to Maison Blanc for a nice enough but overpriced breakfast next to a table full of au pairs.

After the appointment, returned to Reading station to join my team to travel up to this year’s Lifelong Learning Network National Conference, held this year in Manchester. Spirits rose considerably on checking in to the extremely smart ABode on Piccadilly – high ceilings, enormous bed, flatscreen TV, ‘monsoon' shower, allegedly handmade biscuits and selection of herbal teas and real coffee. Fancied the idea of ordering room service and settling down to watch TV, but dutifully presented for the conference dinner instead and watched several colleagues getting tipsy on refills of pre-dinner complimentary Prosecco. The event the next day was held at The Studio, a self-consciously funky venue a few streets away – lots of coloured portholes and inspirational sayings daubed on the walls, though Godfrey, Jude and I were distracted by the persistent misuse of 'its/it's'. THESE THINGS MATTER, even if you are terribly creative.

This Wednesday was our first day at our new home at Earley Gate, in Spur K of Temporary Office Building (‘TOB’) 1. The building as a whole is a cold spartan place that was never intended to be a permanent structure, but our suite of four rooms has been given an express paint job and isn’t looking too bad. Am quite enjoying having a few more people around us, even though the journey to work now involves a bus ride.

Book Group met at Claire’s house on Wednesday to discuss Richard Wiseman’s 59 Seconds, supposedly an antidote to all those silly self-help books but actually quite similar to a self-help book. We ordered pizzas from Tops Pizza at Cemetery Junction.

Have just been immensely amused by the news that a former boyfriend is now dabbling in the catalogue bride business. Ray met the now ex-wife of my ex-boyfriend Andy in a chippy in Maidenhead – as is the way, she recognised him despite the time lapse and engaged him in conversation, apparently mentioning three times in five minutes the fact that she’s now ‘young, free and single’, though according to Ray her interest seemed to wane on discovering that he lives on a boat. Apparently she and Andy had a total of four (4) children together, all of whom now live with Andy, but best of all, after she and Andy finally broke up, Andy went to Thailand for a holiday and came back with a wife. Hope he warned her about all the kids.