Cultural stuff done so far in 2017

This House [play]

Garrick Theatre, 7 January 2017

AMAZING play. Pretty much the best play I've seen. Given that I'm not at all a politics junkie this is quite a statement.

Think this was an outing for Ruth's birthday. We had lunch beforehand in the Cork & Bottle, a lovely cellar wine bar on Cranbourn Street.

Interesting set in that they had members of the audience sitting on stage in what was meant to be seating in the House of Commons. I wasn't sure whether they'd been selected/applied for this beforehand, or whether they were just nabbed on the night.

Ruth in the Cork & Bottle

Interval. Members of the audience wandering around the stage

'Scots Jews' [exhibition]

Jewish Museum London, 21 January 2017

Exhibition of photographs by Judah Passow. This was a New Year outing with Helen. Think I just came across it in a search of 'stuff on in London'. Very interesting pics, and I never even knew the Jewish Museum existed - it's dead swish.

Here's Helen by a giant screen of some sort.

Helen by a screen

The Boys in the Band [play]

Vaudeville Theatre, 10 February 2017

We got tickets for this as it was apparently a revival of a significant 1968 play, was on a very short West End run and Mark Gatiss was in it, though it was a bit extravagant to go given that it wasn’t long after This House. It was OK though both Ruth and I were a bit underwhelmed by it. Here's a Guardian review. It's probably one of those plays that hasn't aged too well.

Susan Calman: The Calman Before the Storm [comedy]

Newbury Corn Exchange, 4 March 2017

Having chuckled at Glaswegian lawyer-turned-comic Calman's performances on Radio 4's The News Quiz, I started following her on Twitter a while back and we managed to get tickets for the Newbury performance of her 2017 tour. It was amusing enough, perhaps sensibly tailored more for a middle-class/aged Radio 4-listening audience rather than a gay audience.

America after the fall: Painting in the 1930s [exhibition]

Royal Academy of Arts, 18 March 2017

Went to this with Ray. Apparently it was the first time out of the States for Grant Wood's American Gothic. The blurb said "Experience the life of 1930s America through the many masterpieces in this landmark show."

Whitney: Can I Be Me [film]

Watershed, Bristol, 11 June 2017

I was never a huge fan of Whitters – I mean a great voice, obviously, but not really the sort of singing that appeals to me. However, Ruth fancied seeing this and it was actually very interesting, particularly in the way it covered her ambiguous relationship with her friend and assistant Robyn Crawford, and the clash between Robyn and Bobby Brown that seems to have led to Robyn’s disappearance from Houston’s life.

Queer British Art: 1861 - 1967 [exhibition]

Tate Britain, 1 July 2017

Very interesting exhibition. And I bought the book, which I don't usually, but it was reasonably priced. Shortly after the exhibition we caught a TV documentary about Hannah 'Gluck' Gluckstein, whose 1942 self-portrait features on the cover of the exhibition guide, pictured below.

Giacometti [exhibition]

Tate Modern, 1 September 2017

As per mention here.

Think that's all. Must schedule in some more stuff. Perhaps a ukulele orchestra next.

Walk from Theale via North Street and Englefield, 4.2 miles

24 September

Shortish walk out of ‘Rambling for Pleasure around Reading’.

Parked at the car park at the eastern end of Theale High Street. At this end of the village, the old route of the A4 can be clearly seen leading towards the M4 before ending in a dead end as it reaches the embankment carrying the motorway. There’s a pedestrian footbridge, presumably built at the time the road was cut off when the village was bypassed in the early 1970s, that leads over the M4 to Pincents Lane.

Old route of the A4, looking west towards Theale

Theale has the look of somewhere that was once quite a bit more significant than it is now – which it presumably was given that it must have once been on the main route from Bristol to London. The high street has quite a number of inns and some sizeable buildings, and the village has an unfeasibly enormous village church. Theale’s website claims that ‘Theale was a service station long before the advent of the motorways.’

From the car park we turned left onto a footpath and headed north, crossing a golf course, to the hamlet of North Street. Walked through the village and bore left towards the A340, crossing the road and heading straight on into Englefield. Passed the tea rooms, which we had been hoping would be open on a Sunday, but they’re evidently not. The gardens of Englefield House do open to the public, as Ruth and I visited a few years ago, but not at weekends (which I had forgotten). In fact the link states that they’re only open on a Monday, so it sounds as though they’ve reduced the opening hours further. Ruth went for a browse around the garden centre while I mooched about the driveway taking a photo of the 'Gardens Closed' sign.

The main driveway has evidently been designated as a Permitted Path (or so the walk book told us), so we walked down it and out through the main gates. Crossed over and walked down Englefield Road back into Theale.

Map of the route below:

(Almost) circular walk around Milton Keynes, 13.9 miles

27 August

Walked with Hai, Matthew and Sara roughly around the route of Heritage Cycle Trail A. The full thing is a 15-mile circular route, though in fact I bowed out slightly before the end, being knackered and it being a hotter day than I find ideally comfortable for walking.

Hai, Matt and I were scheduled to meet at Matt’s house in Willen Park, though I got off the number 7 bus a stop too early (not the first time) so took longer than planned to get to them, so actually met them setting out towards the canal. Both sensibly wearing hats – it was a warm day but I’d managed to leave my sunhat back in Reading. We set out northwards up the canal towpath, meeting up with Sara near Giffard Park. Walked through Linford Manor Park and along the canal to the old railway bridge. Diverged from the Heritage Trail route to follow an alternative route Matt knew, coming out by the Grafton Street Aqueduct. Took a path on the opposite side of the canal from the towpath – I hadn’t even known you could walk up this side – coming out in the Secret Garden at Wolverton. We paused for some photos by this sculpture of an old couple, apparently installed in the garden in 2007.

We walked up into Wolverton and followed McConnell Drive for a fairly dull stretch as far as the H2. Crossed the H2 and walked into Bancroft Park, pausing by the Roman Villa before walking along to the concrete cows, which Hai had particularly wanted to see. We lingered a bit while she attempted to mount one of the larger cows, before giving it up and mounting a calf instead.

Bancroft Roman Villa	Me at the Roman remains

After leaving the cows we passed under the H3 into Bradwell Abbey and followed a path down to Lodge Lake. We stopped in Loughton for a short snack – I think Matt would have happily powered on the whole distance without stopping, but Sara kindly suggested we stop, probably hearing my laboured breathing behind her. From Loughton we walked south-eastwards to Furzton Lake, passing through Shenley Lodge with its collection of interesting houses. Didn’t know anything about the Energy World project before, but perhaps must go for more of a meander around the area. One of the more striking houses we saw is mentioned in this interesting 2014 piece on the architecture of Milton Keynes (which also mentions Wolverton Park).

Hai with a cow	Some cow love
Calf mount	The cows

Hai, me and Sara with a cow

We were only at Furzton Lake quite briefly, but it seems quite pretty. Busy on the day we were there. Stopped for a welcome ice cream/lolly. Made our way back up northwards towards MK Central station, passing the National Bowl - I was dimly aware of this but didn't know much about it, but it seems as though some quite eminent people have played there. By the time we reached the station I'd had enough, so took leave of the others and caught the bus back to Wolverton, leaving them to tramp on through Central MK and Campbell Park back to Willen.

Map of the route:

Here’s the pace vs. elevation graph. There generally isn’t much elevation on a walk around MK, but looks as though we reached a reasonable pace at times. As expected, Matt and Sara were the pace-setters, with Hai and I some way behind for most of the walk, though the front-runners paused periodically to let us catch up. Some people just have to rush everywhere.

Birthday week

Took a few days off for my birthday back in August. For the day itself (a Wednesday), booked myself in for a Spa Day at Aqua Sana Woburn Forest, Center Parcs' newest 'village', opened in 2014. Had been quite impressed by my visit to the spa at Longleat Forest back in 2009; also had heard a number of glowing reviews of the Woburn Forest spa from people at the OU, especially my colleague Jill, who actually spent Christmas at Center Parcs a couple of years ago and recently spent a Luxury Spa Break there with her husband to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. The LSBs are rather expensive but I've tried hinting to Ruth that one might be nice for some special occasion, but have so far got rather a lukewarm reaction.

Have set up an Aqua Sana account, just in case I may want to go again. According to the copy of Spa Escape I picked up, the revamped AS website offers 'a fast track to spa bliss'.

Spa Escape also noted that, although spas are attracting more men than they used to, the UK still lags far behind the rest of Europe when it comes to spa-going. I saw a few men there, most with their wives or girlfriends though I did see a group of three chaps together making their way to the restaurant. My boss Judith recently told me a story of a work trip to Germany she once went on, where it was quite the done thing for work colleagues to go to the spa together after work, presumably in much the same way as Brits might go to the pub. Clothes were apparently not worn. Both our minds boggled somewhat at the thought of sitting around naked with your workmates/superiors, but I suppose it’s normal in context … Tricky to give someone a stern talking-to about their work progress the following day though if you’ve been nude in front of them the evening before??

Found my way to the Center Parcs site relatively easily but managed to become confused once inside and drove several times around a massive featureless car park, before retracing my steps to the entrance lodge in hangdog fashion, to be given directions by the friendly girl on duty. On arrival, discovered I was entitled to a complimentary coffee and pastry, which I didn't need to eat having in fact had coffee and pastries before leaving the flat, but did anyway. Changed and spent a pleasant few hours mooching about the various different areas within the spa, including a brief swim in the little pool. I had booked an Elemis Intensely Cleansing Salt Scrub (frangipani-fragranced), which was pleasant though more modest than the two previous all-over body scrubs I've had at spas, in that the therapist kept you partially covered by a towel the whole time (despite the paper pants) and confined the scrub to legs and the upper part of the back, leaving me - as I am, to Ruth's surprise, relatively unself-conscious in a spa environment - with a vague feeling that I hadn't quite got my money's worth. The spa itself is very nice with an impressive number of different rooms.

My first visit to Center Parcs was with a group of other young(ish) people in 1991. Can't seem to find a photo of myself, but here's a photo of two of the other women in the group, neither of whom I am still in touch with. The chalets have been poshed up a good bit since this. That visit was to Elveden Forest in Suffolk, at the time one of only two CP sites in the country, the other being CP's first village at Sherwood Forest in Notts. Sherwood's spa has evidently recently had a refurb and looks jolly nice. Already pondering how I might justify a visit.

On the Thursday, did some domestic stuff including arranging things in my lovely new Joseph cutlery organiser. Pic nicked from John Lewis, but I'm sure they won't mind as I've spent plenty of money there over the years. Drawer was certainly in need of a clean out.

Then went for a 7-mile walk via the new housing development at Oakridge Park, via Great Linford, where I stopped for a cup of tea at the Costa at the little shopping centre, and then into Central MK.

Grand Union Canal near Oakridge Park

Went down to Abergavenny for the weekend and baked myself some birthday fairy cakes to accompany a tub of gin and tonic-flavour icing I'd bought from Lakeland. Also baked a batch of regular fairy cakes, which Nia and Alys helped to ice and decorate - I'd purchase the tub of jelly diamonds imagining one per cake, but after Nia had arranged about eight on her first cake I abandoned the idea of there being any left over.

On the Saturday Mum, Ruth and I walked over to Abergavenny Castle to see a quite interesting exhibition in the museum on significant local women.

Castle grounds with Blorenge behind

Walk around Hurley and Temple, 6.9 miles

12 August

Bit of retrospective walk blogging.

Picked Ray up from the marina early and drove to Marlow. Parked in the car park off Institute Road and walked up to Bill’s on West Street, where Ray treated me to brunch as an early birthday present. After stuffing ourselves we waddled off down Portlands Alley to Pound Lane. Turned down Lower Pound Lane and walked for a while past what seemed to be the development of a flood relief scheme. As we passed the private house Pens Place Ray speculated as to whether there might once have been a larger and older house of that name nearby, but I couldn’t find anything on a Google search.

Reached the river and paused for a while for Ray to point out some planting across at Temple Marina that a friend of his had done, plus the new house owned by the marina owners. Walked on past Temple Lock and over the elegant footbridge, where Ray paused to ring his sister Sharon, who lives in the residential bit of Hurley Riverside Park with her partner Keith, to see if she was available for visitors – Sharon is currently laid up with her ankle in plaster following a fall down her decking steps. To give her time to get sorted we had a pleasant stroll around Hurley, including walking a short way down a footpath leading off the high street.

Old road from Hurley to Temple

This piece has some interesting stuff about an old tunnel running from the Olde Bell to the Priory. Didn’t spot the entrance gate pillars of the former driveway to Temple House referred to – will have to go back and have another look. The former Temple House looks to have been a big old pile judging by this photo. There’s now a new-build (though olde-style) house called Temple House next to Temple Marina, apparently formerly owned by the marina owners according to Ray but now sold as a private house. Rightmove picture here.

After leaving Sharon and Keith's, we walked along the old road - Temple Lane - leading from Hurley to the village of Temple - apparently this was an actual road for cars at one point though I haven't been able to find out when it was closed to traffic. Just before reaching Temple, some fellow walkers pointed out the jolliness that somebody had added to these slabs.

We continued on through Temple village to join the road that runs off the roundabout through Bisham and over the suspension bridge into Marlow. We had tea and cake at Satollo before returning to Caversham.

Ray on Marlow Bridge

Route below.

Here's the pace/elevation graph, though being mainly near the river there wasn't much elevation to speak of.

Week off

Took the week 3-7 July as leave. Had mooted the idea earlier in the year with Ruth of possibly booking to go somewhere, but that didn’t come off so decided a couple of months ago to go down to Abergavenny to visit Mum and Dad. Headed down to Wales on the Sunday morning, starting off by calling at Dave’s house in Newport, where he was spending the day in charge of Alys and Huw while Hazel was away for the weekend (and Nia on a Rainbows outing).

Newport Wetlands

Huw was a good deal more smiley and alert than when I last saw him and now appears to be enjoying the musical playmat that both the girls have used. The four of us went out for some air to Newport Wetlands, where I pushed Huw and Dave carried Alys on his shoulders for most of the outing, having tried unsuccessfully to interest her in walking. We spent some time watching the little fish in the lakes there and Alys reiterated that she does not like swans. Stopped for an ice cream in the café. Returned to the house where Dave and I had lunch and Alys had a sleep.

On the Monday, I went down to Newport again with Mum as recently she has been accompanying Hazel to the local leisure centre so that she can mind Huw while Hazel and Alys attend a mother and toddler swimming lesson. I sat with Mum up in the viewing gallery and observed the class, which hopefully Alys enjoyed, though I couldn’t really tell. Mum managed to get some milk into Huw – who is tricksy about food – but was then a bit downcast when he brought most of it up again. After the swim we walked through Newport’s new town centre development and had lunch at Boswells. Alys seemed underwhelmed with her chicken nuggets but excited by the play equipment in the shopping centre.

On the Tuesday Mum and Dad set off for their annual reunion with their school/college friends, this year down in Somerset though I’ve forgotten the name of the village. One of the trips planned by the organizing couple was evidently to some sort of willowcraft centre, leading Dad to make all sorts of doleful pronouncements before leaving to the effect that they were all going to end up ordering coffins.

On the Wednesday I went for the walk on Blorenge noted earlier. Ruth arrived by train late afternoon.

On the Thursday Ruth and I took the train into Hereford, as she hadn't been there before, and had a walk around. We went for lunch at Gilbies Bar & Bistro, which seemed nice, and then for a walk to the cathedral via M&S. Had an ice cream. Walked to Hereford's new Old Market shopping area and had a mooch about. Got the train back to Abergavenny. Cooked a meal for Mum and Dad out of Delia's Summer Book.

On the Friday we went for lunch at Plas Derwen, partly because Mum wanted to book rooms for Steve and his sister, who are wanting to stay there later this month. Nice lunch once we - and some other guests - had fended off the unwanted attentions of an annoying man at the next table.

Returned to Milton Keynes on the Saturday morning, and Mum and Ruth left together for Newport where Mum was heading into Bath to visit Hannah. Nice week though was plagued by hayfever for a good deal of it, coupled with developing a minor cold. Both have thankfully gone now.

More produce

Haven't yet tried the chutney.

A pic of the tiny aubergine that we managed to grow, though we realise that the plants are not best suited to being outdoors in the British climate. Along with some more of the still-green tomatoes, and a courgette.

Here's my previous experience at growing an aubergine, another tiny fellow that Ray and I managed to grow on our balcony at Belgravia Court in 2005.

Our courgette plant has produced a lot of courgettes, as is their way. I always like the idea of doing something with the flowers, ever since Mum told me about a delicious-sounding dish she and Dad were served in France involving courgette flowers stuffed with some kind of seafood, but have never actually attempted it. Have eaten a few of the courgettes, which tasted pretty much like courgettes from Waitrose, but hey, it's nice to grow your own stuff.

Luckily we only have the one courgette plant and so far have managed to harvest them before they turned into marrows. Mum and Dad still seem to have a glut of marrows on their allotment. From what I gather my Uncle Ian is the only known person who is keen on stuffed marrow, so quite a few have been going their way.

And we didn't grow these, but here are some peas our neighbour Kris gave us from his allotment. Or possibly his dad's allotment. Ruth seemed surprised I'd never shelled peas before, but I pointed out that most of us grew up in suburbia and have always had our peas out of the freezer. They were nice enough, but I have to say frozen peas will probably do me. There's only so excited you can get about a pea.