Popped along to Rivermead on the evening of the 23rd to the first Reading Contemporary Art Fair. We missed the official opening by John Madejski, though Ruth claimed to have spotted him on the way in. The Friday evening was a private viewing, for which we got free tickets (and a free glass of plonk) thanks to Ray’s sister Sharon, who works for Reading 107, one of the sponsors. Lots of stuff on show and I may actually have located a suitable piece of art for the living room chimney breast – fell rather in love with some of Alce Harfield’s brightly coloured canvases so intend to commission something as soon as I’ve measured the available space. Ruth bought a picture of a horse, which I duly admired at the same time as issuing a warning about any future acquisition of hunting scenes, horse brasses etc.
A piece of news of almost no interest to anyone else is that as of last Tuesday we now have a new gas meter. Looky here. How smart.
We had to get the plumber out again last Tuesday evening thanks to Ruth’s well-meaning attempt to replace the cistern valve in the toilet. We’ll be funding his summer holiday at this rate.
Hosted Book Group last Wednesday and a discussion of Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger. The book was my choice; having read several of Lively’s children’s books I thought perhaps I should read one of her adult novels, and the Booker Prize winner seemed the obvious choice. Good, but it would probably benefit from a re-reading at some point to fully appreciate the subtle passage-of-time aspects that seem to be Lively’s trademark. One of the Claires had accidentally read Tiger Moon (a 2008 children’s fantasy novel) instead, which rendered her contribution to the discussion a bit limited.
Had to rebuke Harley afterwards for behaving like a little tease - running up to people in a "look what a cute little bunny I am" fashion and then skipping off as they tried to stroke him.Got up wackily early last Saturday morning to go down to Forbury Gardens to see the Kennet Morris Men dance in May Day at 5.30am. Some rather blurred pictures here, along with some video footage of the occasion. The troupe (I believe ‘side’ is the correct term) are a jolly bunch of mainly older gents, but there was one young chap among the group, who did a solo jig for one of the numbers. Ray, who is always a sucker for getting up at an unearthly hour to do eccentric things, came with me and between us we almost doubled the size of the audience; the others were a young couple who were on their way to the beer festival, and the wife of one of the dancers. They danced half a dozen or so dances and then sang Sumer Is Icumen In, reasonably tunefully. Given that they're apparently always on the lookout for new dancers, I had a go at persuading Ray to take it up, but he wasn't quite as taken with the idea.
Ruth and I went to a party on Sunday hosted by Ruth's colleague Jan and her partner, who had just bought themselves a Nintendo Wii that morning with the result that a good portion of the evening was spent playing on it. Had a go at tennis and didn't do too badly. Quite fun but I'm not sure it would induce me to buy one; have yet to become remotely hooked on anything resembling a computer game. In any case our living room is a bit too small to allow for even virtual-exercising.
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