Wednesday 9 September 2009

Ruth and I wandered down to King’s Meadow on Saturday afternoon to sample Reading Pride, as I had never been to a Pride festival before and felt I should sample the local offering. Ruth, a veteran of several such festivals, spent much of the time muttering about how it wasn’t as good as London/as Brighton/as it used to be in the 18th century, etc. It had a slightly scrappy feel to it, possibly because of its attempt to be a family festival as well as catering for the LGBT (loathsome acronym) community – hence funfairs, candy floss, loads of pushchairs etc. We enjoyed a quick browse around the various stalls, at least half of which were political parties and campaigning groups such as Amnesty International. There were a few people waving ‘Against the National Front’ banners, obviously not having realised that the NF had already cancelled their planned protest – they had threatened to picket the march but in the end pretty much announced that they couldn’t be arsed to turn up. We then met up with our friend Claire and used the dodgy weather as an excuse to decamp to the pub for a beer or two, and thence to Carluccio’s for an unplanned dinner (damn the beer or two).

I was quite taken with the gay Conservatives stall and intend to read through my list of bios of top gay Tories.

We now, hopefully, have a rabbit-proof fence, as Ruth spent a good few hours on Sunday nailing chicken wire down the whole length of one of the back garden fences, in the hope that this will prevent Harley escaping. We then coaxed him out into the garden to test it - certainly he stayed within the confines of the garden tho' this may just have been coincidence.

Went up to London on Monday morning for a meeting at the National Gallery Dining Rooms. The DRs are dead posh though it took my boss Paul and me a while to locate them, as we didn’t realise they’re located in the new Sainsbury Wing – managed to visit the Café and the shop before finally locating them. As it was mid-morning I just had a mint tea but the food on offer looked very nice.

On the way in to the gallery, the sight of a chap sitting reading a newspaper on top of the Fourth Plinth reminded me that Antony Gormley’s One and Other project is now underway.