Wednesday 27 January 2010

King's Road; Building regulations; Ashmolean

On Saturday Ruth and I went up to the King’s Road for a browse around Heal’s and Habitat with the specific aim of identifying a set of crockery that pleased both of us. Disconcertingly, we managed to agree on a set (the Thomas Loft range) quite quickly, so were then left to aimlessly browse for a few more hours to justify the train ticket. I am still awaiting the moment when I can justify spending £1000 on a Forum armchair - hasn’t arrived yet so I just enjoy stroking them whenever I visit Habitat. Ruth fell in love with a sofa in After Noah, forcing me to issue a reminder about the as yet unused sofa that was an impulse buy in Winchester two years ago and is currently in storage at her parents’ house.

I did purchase a couple of obscenely expensive bagels from The Grocer on Kings – beautifully chewy, unlike supermarket ones, but unfortunately not really viable as a regular purchase.

There are a number of attractive streets leading off the King’s Road, of which one of the most interesting-looking is Glebe Place – we took a brief detour for a bit of a stroll down here. It contains a number of former artists' studios, and an amazingly ornate folly at one end - I didn't take a picture but there's one here. 55 Glebe Place was up for sale last year, for a cool £17 million.

Had a brief meeting on Monday afternoon at Reading Borough Council’s offices with a surveyor from the Building Control department, who gave us some advice on the building regulations implications of our proposed turning-bedroom-3-into-new-bathroom project. Potentially the most annoying aspect is that now, it constitutes a breach of building regulations to move a bathroom upstairs without retaining a toilet on the ground floor (something to do with disability access). Luckily, the latest iteration of our plans does involve turning the single-storey extension at the back of the house (currently the bathroom) into a utility area with a cute weeny cloakroom in the corner, so we are all set to comply. Hard not to see this sort of thing as slightly ridiculous, though, particularly when applied to Victorian terraces, countless numbers of which (including the houses either side of ours) have installed a bathroom in the original third bedroom some years ago without having to have one on the ground floor. Presumably, like smoking, it wasn’t as bad back then.

Had team photo taken yesterday for use in our upcoming Annual Report. As usual, everyone else managed to smile naturally at the camera, while I managed to look as though I was about to be shot. Created this alternative version (below), which I slightly prefer:


This morning, paid my termly visit to Wheatley for the meeting of Aimhigher MKOB's Implementation and Evaluation Group, then took advantage of the expenses-paid train ticket to visit the newly-refurbed Ashmolean. The £61 million redevelopment is now complete and open to the public. I shall isolate three things that were of interest:

• The fascinating collection of little Cycladic figures in the 'Aegean World' gallery - bought this slightly naughty postcard
• The collection of 'English guitars' in the 'Music and Tapestry' gallery - I'd never seen these before; here's an online image I found. Wikipedia notes that the English guitar (alt. spelling 'guittar') was a small cittern that was fashionable between 1750 and 1790, most notably in the British Isles (figures).
• The apparent existence of a wrathful Buddhist deity named Dam can dorje legs pa - what a name. This webpage on the deity gives his name an alternative and slightly more sensible spelling. Imagine having to introduce yourself thus:
  "Name's Barry. Pleased to meet you."
  "Dam can dorje legs pa. Good to meet you too."
  His name, it says here, means 'oath-bound benign thunderbolt'.

Managed to include tea and something chocolatey in the basement café. For future reference, I'd note that the basement ladies' toilets don't appear to have been included in the refurb.