Kew; ruins; summerhouses

Had a lovely day at Kew Gardens with Ray on the 21st (pictures here). We took the train to Richmond and walked from there up Kew Road to the Lion Gate entrance, tucked away in a corner of the garden, and had a lovely walk around parts of the garden that I don’t normally visit. Visited the Pagoda – which is looking much in need of a lick of paint – and then the Japanese Gateway (Chokushi-Mon), which I don’t remember ever coming across before, although apparently it has been there since 1911. We sat briefly in front of the little gate and its Zen-like garden arrangement and Ray expounded some theory about the rocks representing flowing water which, who knows, may well be true. We then wandered on via the pinetum to the boundary with the River Thames, and watched boats for a while, including a procession of narrowboats coming out of nearby Brentford Lock and heading upstream towards Teddington (apparently the gateway to the non-tidal Thames – you live and learn). After tea and cake in the White Peaks café we visited a couple of the glasshouses, though avoided the butterfly display in the Princess of Wales glasshouse as it was heaving with people. We wandered back to Richmond and sourced a late lunch in the quirky Pazza Idea – funky decor and nice enough food though places that don’t take cards are frustrating.

Torrential rain last week including on the (mainly very young?) revellers arriving for the Festival. Amazing queue of them on Thursday morning by Reading Bridge waiting for the boat to take them along the river to the festival site. Going away for the weekend ensured that we avoided most of the revelry though we did wake up on Monday to discover an abandoned Tesco trolley outside the house. I duly emailed the customer service line to report it and, sure enough, it has gone now. What service.

Set off down to Mum and Dad’s on Friday morning for what is becoming an annual August barbecue weekend. We left early and stopped at Membury service station for breakfast including the traditional overly-pink sausages. Closer to our destination, we stopped off at Raglan Castle on a whim – were slightly stung by the entrance fee, given that it’s a ruin, but I guess even ruins require upkeep, and Raglan is quite an impressive ruin (pictures here). We lucked out and there was a sunny window in the generally gloomy weather that allowed us to have a pleasant poke around the ruins, moat etc. Ruth bought a necklace in the gift shop and I bought a cute greetings card with a sheep on it.

On Saturday Dave and Ben did sterling work helping Dad erect his new summerhouse (pictures), complete with cute little acorn finial on the top, while Hannah burned a huge pile of leylandii branches on a (very smoky) bonfire. By the time the barbecue was lit the sun had gone in rather and it was slightly on the cool side, but we had it anyway.

Building work on the London Road campus continues apace. Demolition of the building adjoining ours is supposed to begin soon, so we are braced for loud noises. A 'track mat walkway' has now been set up across the main lawn as the cloisters are now largely blocked off to enable, among other things, removal of asbestos from their ducts.

An almost microscopically insignificant piece of news is that my rarely-used coffee bean grinder is no more. Had run out of ground coffee on Monday morning so resorted to grinding some beans out of the packet I keep in reserve on a top shelf, but was reminded that the grinder has never been very efficient. Ruth offered to try and fix it and duly took it apart and made me wash the rust and cobwebs off the components, but was then unable to reassemble it again (a crucial screw in an inaccessible position, apparently). Here I am throwing it in the bin. Ah well.