Signing off; breakfast; boat-building

The main triumph of the last week has been obtaining approval and subsequently a completion certificate from Reading Borough Council Building Control for Ray’s re-roofing of the house and fitting of a Velux window. We were pretty sure that we had done the necessary in terms of stuff BC had asked us to do, but you can never be sure until sign-off. Now, if I ever do in future get to the stage of compiling a HIP, the certificate can slot right in. Grateful to little R for doing a good enough job during a difficult time.

Weekend got off to a good start with breakfast with Ray at the lovely Palmieri’s in Maidenhead. Fabulous coffee (had two cups) and probably the nicest ‘full English’ I’ve had – I don’t normally order full Englishes in cafes/hotels as I’m wary of being presented with a sea of grease, if I’m really unlucky, swimming in an additional sea of baked beans (which I like, but not for breakfast). However, Palmieri’s slight Italian twist on the full English was perfect, and included some perfect little charred cherry tomatoes. Ray’s baked beans were served in a separate little bowl, rather than on the plate, which was a nice touch. Palmieri’s is out of the town centre (probably no bad thing – for a presumably wealthy town, Maidenhead has a particularly drab and uninspiring town centre, although there does appear to be a regeneration planned) but it seemed to have plenty of custom when we were there at 9am, so I hope it thrives.

Then we trolled off up the M40 and out past Banbury to see the progress of the construction of Ray’s narrowboat. I was reassured to see that it does appear to be being constructed of solid-looking steel, rather than the pieces of coloured wood glued together that I had imagined.

Finished the day with a lovely walk around Bisham Woods to take full advantage of the weather. The going would have been tough if it had been wet as the ground had been well churned up by horses – much muttering from Ray about horses ruining footpaths. Luckily it was dry but still a risk of spraining ankles in ruts created by hooves. We didn’t actually see any of the huge beasts – perhaps they’ve moved on to churn up pastures new. In fact we didn’t see anybody at all, which was strange given the lovely weather.
At Book Group this weekI was slightly startled at the amount of hatred directed at our book for the month, Danny Wallace's Yes Man. I had regarded it as an appealing piece of light entertainment but I seemed to be alone in this.