For the second year running, Ray and I presented ourselves at Forbury Gardens at 5.30am on 1 May to see the Kennet Morris Men dance in May Day. This year, most of the troupe had been camping at the Beer & Cider Festival and turned up late and evidently quite hun
g over. Around four or five of us turned up to watch, though we were joined briefly by a gang of urban youth on their way home to London, who evidently had never seen Morris
dancing before. Later in the day Ruth and I joined Ray on his boat for what had been intended to be a nice trip up the Thames to Sonning and an overnight stay, but in the event it was too windy. Not exactly a gale, but apparently narrowboats don’t handle wind well if it hits them at the wrong angle – more than one person at the marina had evidently got into difficulties controlling their boat so Ray was warned not to go out. Instead, we went for a drink at the revamped marina bistro, now named The Boaters, and Ruth took this photograph of a swan on its nest rearranging its eggs.Ray and I got to do another restaurant review for the Chronicle on Tuesday 3rd, this time at Nino’s, an independ
ently-owned Italian restaurant that’s been in Reading’s Market Place since 1980. Have been there a couple of times before, but neither very recently. Left feeling slightly ashamed of this
fact as it is really lovely – a cosy traditional Italian with gorgeous food. The diminutive and quite elderly owner Nino greeted us on arrival – admittedly, they knew that reviewers for the Chronicle were due, so that may not have been standard, but on speaking to him later we gathered that he is still in the restaurant himself most days. We took a number of pictures of the food to send to the paper, so here’s one of my insalata tricolore starter and one of Ray’s paper-wrapped spaghetti al cartoccio, evidently one of the restaurant’s specialities.
Having been slightly stung last time by apparently not writing enough, I went slightly the other way this time and sent Sharon a couple of pages of effusive prose, which she evidently had to edit. Most of the final result (see right) is recognisable as mine, except the opening sentence - and God only knows where the title came from, as I have never yet described anything as a 'refreshing family experience', nor did I make any reference in my notes to the restaurant's family-friendliness. Perverse modern tendency to want to slip the word 'family' in everywhere.
Hosted Book Group at the flat on 5 May – my ambitions to produce home-baked quiches had fallen by the wayside due to intrusion of work, realism, etc, so we had an assortment of M&S quiche, cocktail sausages, crisps and dip, some dry cupcakes I had baked in joint honour of the Royal Wedding and Helen’s birthday, and some shortbread Helen herself had brought back from a birthday trip to Scotland. Our discussion of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation was a little disappointing – while not exactly drawn to Elizabeth, I had thought the book could spark some intelligent discussion around plausible causes of depression, the rights and wrongs of medication, etc, but mine and Claire M’s attempts at this couldn’t compete with the Daily Mail-esque rantings of certain other members of the group. May have to join more cerebral book group.
We celebrated Ruth’s successful interview at HCT Group on 6 May with an outing to the London Pet Show at the
Olympia on the Saturday. Heaving with people, including a good many children, but we managed to find some bits to enjoy before we eventually fled screaming from the crowds. Various breeds of dog and cat on show – I joined the crowds huddled around an unfortunate Sphynx – not much of a day for the poor thing, being looked at by crowds of people going “Eeuww” - and fell for a lovely chunky British Shorthair – how gorgeous are these cobby fellows? The highlight of the day (for us, at least) was Rabbit Show Jumping – we gathered at 1pm around the Small Furries arena to watch a crack team of Swedish bunnies take on – and I have to say resoundingly thrash – a team of British bunnies. The Swedish bunnies jumped the fences with seeming ease, whereas the British lot s
howed a distressing tendency either to refuse the fence until all but one bar had been removed, or to veer off altogether and start eating hay.We had had enough of the show after a few hours and took off down Kensington High Street, where we failed to find wedding outfits but did call into The Goat where Ruth had the Mini Pie Platter (right).
Two nice dinners out last week - one with Ruth at Bella Italia on Wednesday (still celebrating) and one with Claire at Prezzo on Thursday. Met up with a couple of guys from Claire's local beforehand, both crusty types who both apparently live on boats, currently moored somewhere up near Kennet Mouth. Mentioned them to Ray on Friday, to be greeted by low mutter
ing - Ray is rapidly becoming a purist boat type who disapproves of people who have scruffy boats, dogs on lengths of string, etc.Headed up to Milton Keynes again on Friday to check in to my new property, having discovered that the agency don’t do check-ins at weekends (blithering idiots; obviously they prefer letting to the unemployed). Had to beg Paul for a day off, which kindly he has allowed me to take in lieu rather than filing it as unpaid leave. Ray offered me a lift again – not sure how he is rearranging the work, but I didn’t ask questions – and we took the pleasanter cross-country via Watlington/M40/A43 route this time, stopping at Cherwell Valley services (still housed in a temporary building after it burned down last year) for Costa coffee and panini. Arrived back at my little box in Simpson, where I duly did the paperwork and we then headed to the Milton Keyne
s branch of IKEA (Yes! I have an IKEA 5 minutes down the road!) w
hich was blessedly quiet, and I bought some essential (obviously) bits of chunky white furniture. Returned to flat to assemble furniture, which really just involved me holding things and handing over the odd screw. For his trouble, I did treat Ray to meatballs, berries and gravy at IKEA and a cup of tea and slice of cake at a nearby Tesco Extra – can’t say I don’t treat people well ... Long but productive day; only hitch was that it turned out I had bought my Expedit bookcase1 in the wrong colour so we had to make a return trip to exchange it, which did at least enable Ray to indulge in a spot of trolley-surfing.Uneventful week so far but very happy to have just come across the theme music to the BBC’s 70s kids' show 'Screen Test' while browsing YouTube. Loved this show, and had quite a crush on Michael Rodd. Am incidentally only forced into browsing YouTube because my TV reception has died again, and obviously reading a book would be just geeky.
1 Been wanting an excuse to buy one of these for ages. Surely a modern classic.
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