Continued birthday celebrations throughout the rest of last week. On Wednesday, while on my way to spend a lovely evening with my friends Julie and Dave, I stopped off for a few hours at Hungerford, where my parents lived for a few years in the early 1990s. I hadn't visited it much since then and there have been a few changes, including a couple of rather helpful mini-roundabouts, particularly the one on the junction of the High Street and Park Street. Som
erfield (formerly Gateway), where my sister and I used to frequently trot for that emergency bottle of wine, is now housed in a new building set back from the road. The former pub on Charnham Street that I last remember as a Tex-Mex restaurant called The Damn Yankee is now a garish shade of yellow and called Casanova.Despite not being particularly interested in antiques, I went for a wander around Hungerford Arcade to kill some time. If memory serves, in the coffee lounge on the upper floor there used to be a crocodile skin hanging over a side rail which I always found somewhat alarming, but as the coffee shop was closed at the time of my visit I was unable to check out whether it was still there.
The following day, I and my hire car (great notion, these - yo
u just show your driving licence and get given a new(ish) car! How cool is that?) proceeded westwards to spend a few days with my parents, which included a nice meal at their local bistro. Ruth joined me on Friday night and we spent a relaxing Saturday including a stroll to check out the views of the Black Mountains. We proceeded back to Berkshire on Sunday to spend an extra day rurally-retreating, this time near the Ridgeway being fed delicious food and, in my case at least, sitting around idly - though I did label some jam pots. Driving home on Monday, I was reminded of how it's best to stay off the roads in Reading on the August Bank Holiday while the Reading Festival traffic disperses.
No comments:
Post a Comment