Snow; Poet's Cafe; more snow

Awoke on Friday morning to a veritable blanket of snow. As always, given that snow is unusual in these parts, I snapped a number of photos before work, to preserve the memory. This ivy plant actually looked better with snow on it – I’ve a nasty feeling it might be dead.

Met up with Claire, Helen, Ali and Sarah on Friday evening for Ethiopian food at the Global Café followed by Poet's Cafe at South Street Arts, compered as usual by A F Harrold. The first half was devoted to the open mic slot, where about a dozen punters read their home-grown offerings, including Claire who read out a seasonal haiku she'd dashed off that day in a quiet moment at work. The second half featured performance poet John Hegley as guest poet, who delivered an entertaining set although with rather more audience participation than I go for.

Several of the 'open mic' participants were PC regulars and several appear to have produced mini-books of their work, with dubious justification in some cases. I always do enjoy Martin Haslam's offerings - his poems have a disciplined, spare quality that I like. Some contributors, I have to say particularly women of roughly menopausal age, don't seem to have grasped any sort of 'less is more' principle with poetry - yes, your ex-husband might well have been a complete git but no one else needs to hear three poorly-structured sides of A4 on the topic.

Ray and I had a day out in London on Saturday (pictures here) – started off by stoking up against the freezing weather with a slap-up breakfast at La Taaza on Praed Street (potted review of this café, which I’ve now breakfasted at 4 or 5 times: unsmiling staff; great coffee; very acceptable Breakfast No. 6, though it comes with rather more fried bread than is good for anyone). We had booked on an 11am Architecture Tour of the Barbican Estate, and as we had some time to spare elected to walk from Paddington into the City, which certainly bumped up my exercise quotient for the week. The tour group, probably partly due to the very cold weather and partly to the proximity to Christmas, was small – a quick subjective assessment revealed it to include me and Ray, two gay male couples and an elderly lady. The tour was fantastic and involved a comprehensive (and bracing) hour and a half long walk around the complex. The young tour guide was obviously a Barbican enthusiast and really knew his stuff.

We finished off the day with a quick unplanned detour to visit the appealingly-named church of St James Garlickhythe, before settling in at an en route Slug & Lettuce for a nice bottle of Chilean Merlot and some batter-covered snacks.

Abandoned vehicles in Reading

Last Friday's snowfall turned out to be merely a teaser, as a fairly unprecedented (for these parts) degree of snow fell on Monday afternoon resulting in traffic chaos and abandoned cars everywhere (see pic), and a whole slew of “how long it took me to get home” stories. Not owning a car, I have continued to trudge (wo)manfully into work. Today the roads look clearer, but the pavements are still like sheets of ice – but then no one much cares about pedestrians. AND we have to carry on going to work while car drivers claim time off for bad weather! If I were a bitter sort of person, I’d be seriously aggrieved. As it is, obviously I’m imbued with serenity and Christmas spirit. Much as I enjoy looking at snow, am now hoping for a thaw by tomorrow given need for Christmas travel.