Wednesday 18 March 2009

Last Thursday was distinguished by my partaking of the J D Wetherspoon’s Curry Club for the first time, during drinks at the Back of Beyond with my friend Claire. Usually the main thing that can be said about J D Wetherspoon’s food is that it’s cheap, but the chicken tikka masala was not half bad (and yes, I know it’s a British dish), although I had had a pint or so of lager by the time I ate it. BoB is one of three JDW’s in Reading town centre and probably the nicest – the others are the Monks Retreat (rough) and the Hope Tap (never yet ventured into, but suspect also rough). There’s also the supremely atmosphere-free Baron Cadogan in Caversham, where Ruth recently went for a quiet dinner and ended up being chatted up (by a man! how exciting!).

Hen dinner

Had a lovely day on Saturday at my friend Kate’s hen ‘do’. A handful of us spent the day at the revive Health Club & Spa at the Crowne Plaza making use of the facilities. I had a wonderfully relaxing De-Stress Scalp massage, followed by an Elemis Body Glow Treatment (bit of quite hard brushing, followed by exfoliation and moisturising, leaving you shiny and ready to slide right off any surfaces you might brush up against).

Was a member at revive until quite recently, but cancelled my membership before Christmas in a ‘streamlining of outgoings’ session. Kind of regretted it on Saturday as it reminded me how much I love swimming. Trouble is you often (at least, I often) get the scenario where you only end up going twice a month and then realise that a half-hour swim has cost you the equivalent of about £30 a time. Would be better to grit teeth and use the public pools, although it’s amazing how snobbish one becomes about them after one starts paying private health club fees. Also Reading’s main complex, the Central Swimming Pool, is now extremely dilapidated (or at least, was when I last went a couple of years ago) and appears to be having no money spent on its upkeep – one suspects it’s due to be a casualty of the Chatham Place development.

To return to the hen do … then met up with the larger group for dinner at Zizzi’s in Henley. Evening was enlivened by a ‘drink or dare’ game featuring horrible forfeits devised by Kate’s friend Sarah. Mine was to bite a stranger on the leg, which I eventually did actually do after a couple of the others had managed to nobble a willing (drunk?) volunteer to offer his leg. With hindsight I should have bought the poor guy a drink afterwards.