Wednesday 25 April 2012

Farm machinery; amateur dramatics; tights

Excitement last weekend of Ruth coming up to spend a Whole Weekend in MK with me. We began the weekend with a drink in The Living Room, a quite smart bar on Midsummer Boulevard though, like so many places in MK, it gives the impression of being miles from anywhere. We followed this with dinner at Strada and the bus back to my flat. I had decided that I wanted to visit the Milton Keynes Museum on Saturday morning, so we duly got on the Wolverton bus and got off in an estate called Stacey Bushes, which seemed to be the nearest stop, and walked to the museum on the site of the former Stacey Hill Farm. For some reason, I had managed to get the impression that it housed some sort of archive of memories and footage of the New Town’s construction – which I would have been genuinely interested in – but instead it appears to chiefly house agricultural artefacts and other Old Stuff presumably salvaged from the old farm. It does have an exhibition of telephones through the ages, which was more interesting than it sounded. And we had a jolly nice toastie in the Granary Tea Room.

After the museum, we were obliged to walk into Wolverton as I didn’t have enough cash for the bus fare back into Central MK, and, inevitably, it would have taken us about an hour to walk. We spent most of the short time we were in Wolverton, between getting cash out and leaving again on the next bus, exclaiming at what appears to be the depressed state of the place and particularly of the Agora shopping centre, which occupies a prominent spot in what’s presumably Wolverton’s heart. We walked through this, as we couldn’t see a way around it – presumably when it was first built it was a vibrant sort of place, but in its current semi-derelict state it’s a bit of a blot on the landscape and its days are surely numbered. Here’s a picture of it – I didn’t take any for fear of seeming ghoulish. And a local news article from January of this year.

As an antidote to Wolverton, we had a quick mooch around the shops in central MK, including the inevitable trip to Hawes & Curtis for Ruth to purchase more posh shirts. Later we had an early supper of an experimental halloumi and lentil dish, which Ruth gamely ate, before heading to the Chrysalis Theatre to see an amateur production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Improbable Fiction. I have seen several productions of Ayckbourn plays, both amateur and professional, but can never remember which ones I’ve seen; they all seem to blur into one in my mind. Fairly sure I hadn’t seen this one before though - indeed it's one of his more recent efforts. It’s a moderately entertaining play, though should probably have been funnier than it was – the inevitable slow pacing and occasional inaudible speech that seems to accompany amateur theatre affected that a bit, though on the whole they weren’t bad. Indeed, one of the reasons I went was to check out the group, with the vague idea that I might take up amateur dramatics again. Still not decided on that one. The Chrysalis seems quite a nice facility though. Ran into Guy, who was there with his parents - back at work last week he told me that he had taken them to the Northampton Shoe Museum on the Sunday. Who knew there was a museum of shoes? Obviously there are many hidden delights in this area.

We went for a walk locally on the Sunday, up the canal a bit and into Ye Olde Swan at Woughton (pronounced 'Wufton') for lunch, followed by a hunt for the remains of Woughton medieval village, which I’ve seen signs to on my walk to work. You’d never notice them if it weren’t for the sign and noticeboard marking the spot. A shallow ditch marks the line of the village high street. The village was apparently deserted when the villagers moved west to the site of the current village of Woughton-on-the-Green. No one seems to know why.

We got into one of those ridiculous “is that tune x” “no it isn’t” arguments on Sunday evening after watching a particular TV ad – I forget what it was advertising – with the sinister result that we ended up watching a YouTube video of Terry Wogan’s 1978 ‘Top of the Pops’ performance of The Floral Dance. Something that should probably never be spoken of again. We still hadn’t resolved the argument after watching it, but were cheered up by the infectious beat.

Much as I am a notional supporter of the idea of supporting post offices, I consider it completely wonderful that one can now license one’s vehicle online. Just tap in the reminder reference number and pay for a new disc. Obviously one also has to have a current MOT and insurance, but you don’t any longer have to scrabble around actually having to find your insurance certificate and take it to a post office. The more general problem with exhortations to support post offices, butchers, local riflemakers etc is that they ignore the fact that a big chunk of the population works full-time, meaning that you can only support these institutions on Saturday mornings, and (if you’re like me) one doesn’t necessarily want to spend a large chunk of Saturday morning in the post office. Do get the feeling that society hasn’t caught up with the fact that many women aren’t free to do their shopping/dry cleaning/Post Officey admin at 11am on a weekday.

Went up to London on Saturday to meet Helen, after a year’s gap in get-togethers. Helen is currently suffering from an Achilles tendon injury, sustained while running (one of the reasons I carefully avoid running – clearly a dangerous activity) and wasn’t up to our usual level of walking around, so we met for lunch at the All Bar One just round the corner from Charing Cross station and spent a pleasant three hours or so. Helen relayed a tale of woe involving an unreliable builder, which reminded me that we’ve been really quite lucky with the chaps we’ve used so far – not that we’ve had any major building work done as yet, but I’m sure plastering could potentially go horribly wrong.

Walked back from Charing Cross to Paddington across the parks (Green and Hyde); much nicer weather than forecast apart from a brief shower, during which I effortlessly slipped on new Muji raincoat (‘effortlessly’ here = 10 minute session of fighting with raincoat while leaning awkwardly against tree). Stopped to marvel briefly at some pretty trees and take this photo, though almost got mown down by cyclists on rented Boris bikes.

Ray came round on Sunday morning for a late breakfast and to assist us (well, Ruth) with installing a new water feature centred around the granite orb purchased at Dobbies back in March. It’s now working a treat. We went to Homebase straight afterwards to acquire a couple of bags of stones to put around it.

Purchased a pack of tights from Waitrose a week or so ago, and was surprised to note that they now come with operating instructions, including a stern directive at the outset “To obtain the maximum benefit from your John Lewis Tights always ensure they are put on correctly”. This seemed ridiculous to me, but a quick Google search revealed a number of web resources devoted to how to do it properly, for example this and this; also a number of YouTube videos, which I’ve refrained from watching. My own advice on how NOT to put tights on might read as follows:

• Linger until late for work. Then grab tights from drawer, catching them on that fingernail you meant to file. 
• Try to unroll and separate tights. Catch tights again on fingernail, in several new places. 
• Force tights over feet and pull up. Discover that they are not straight over one foot. Take tights off and try again. 
• Pull tights on again and pull up. Encounter resistance. Swear. Tug sharply while cursing freely. Insist that tights are being made smaller than they used to be. 
• Eventually get tights in roughly correct position but discover crotch is at mid-thigh height. Resist taking tights off again; instead grab material and pull upwards. Delude oneself they now feel fine and go to work. 
• Spend morning tugging at crotch discreetly. Finally retreat to Ladies and adjust tights. Tights ladder from crotch to toe. Weep.