Wednesday 15 May 2013

Month's worth of blurb

Delay in updating partly slackness and partly PC issues. Although the new 3MobileWiFi is so far working perfectly on my new Galaxy Tab, trying to get it to work on my 8-year-old Mesh desktop PC has been proving a bit of a struggle, even once I’d retrieved my wireless network adapter from the attic. Have been forced temporarily to return to my T-Mobile dongle, whose performance has briefly rallied since I removed and then re-inserted the SIM card earlier today.

Slightly suspicious re the health of the Mesh as for the last few months it has started to make grinding noises on booting up, which according to this piece is not a good sign. I’ve never yet had a hard disk fail on me so am probably overdue for this. It is also frequently failing to recognise its CD drives and USB ports: not sure whether this is a sign of hard disk failure, but I’m attributing it to some sort of PC version of short-term memory loss, especially as it has started gleefully announcing ‘Found new hardware!’ whenever I insert something into a USB slot, even if it’s had the same thing inserted into that slot every day for the last year.

Had a weekend in Milton Keynes on 20-21 April for reasons that escape me now, but quite nice. Went into CMK on the Saturday morning and located the Yong Yu shop in MK’s now distinctly empty-looking Food Centre. From what I gather, Sainsburys were previously there, but have now decamped to a bright new store in the Hub. Waitrose were still there on the day I visited, but they have now moved to a new shop in Oakgrove, outside the shopping centre. So the whole place is now looking rather sad. I think Iceland are still there, but they’re hardly likely to raise the spirits of a place. Anyway, Yong Yu’s stock Chongga Cut Cabbage Kimchi; I bought two bags from the bored-looking woman manning the shop.

Another beautiful sunny day on Sunday so marched myself out for a walk. Keen for a change from the usual routes, I parked in the Peace Pagoda Car Park off the V10 and walked past the pagoda down to North Willen Lake, and did a circuit. Lots of cyclists/joggers/power walkers out and about. Didn’t quite seem cute duckling season yet, unfortunately, I guess because of the extended winter this year.

Started the Sunday by sending Hannah a text to wish her a happy 40th birthday (40? Crivens. I can just about remember her being born – or at least, I can remember Dave and me being summoned into Mum and Dad’s bedroom early in the morning where Dad informed us that we had a new little sister. I hope we displayed a sufficient degree of enthusiasm, but I can’t now remember what our reaction was. Also not sure why Dad was in bed at this point, but I assume he must have just got off the bedroom telephone extension. Good to know fathers got their rest in those days.)

Cute story recently in the MK Citizen (left) about a new addition to the concrete cow family, which apparently appeared suddenly only to disappear a few days later. This sort of thing adds a welcome subversiveness to modern life.

On the topic of amusing snippets from the papers: was charmed to read about this giant yellow duck that appears to have been on a world tour since 2007 to promote peace. There's a video here of it arriving in Hong Kong harbour on 2 May. I was a bit cast down to then read this a few days later. Is this a comment on the success of its peace mission?

Hosted Book Group at the house on Thursday 25th – I thought, somewhat chaotically, but the group appeared not to mind. We discussed Fay Weldon’s Big Women and, as generally with books of this era, looked to our oldest member Ali as an authority. Ali (60) is a big Weldon fan and, for those of us inclined to wonder why so much ‘strident’ feminism was necessary, related a real-life story from her days at university in the early 1970s when a lecturer, after commenting on her good marks, proceeded to then enquire as to whom she was sleeping with to have got them.

Loosely relevant to some of the events in 'Big Women': recently read this (long) piece by Susan Faludi about the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone, who died last year. What caught my eye, aside from Faludi's detailing of the destructive infighting within the feminist (and probably any) movement, was how her funeral seems to have been turned into a bit of a feminist revival meeting, a la Zoe's in the book. Another, more amusing, snippet from this 2009 interview with Fay Weldon: her second husband apparently left her for his astrological therapist who had told him that the couple's astrological signs were incompatible. That's certainly setting a lot of store by astrology.

Ruth and I went to the Reading Contemporary Art Fair on Saturday 27th, which we have done every year since its inception in 2010 - this year we made the decision that the Friday evening 'exclusive preview' complete with exclusive glass of warm white wine isn’t really worth it, so paid to go on the Saturday instead. Ruth acquired another piece of artwork, this time a giclée (apparently) print, which is now residing on the master bedroom chimney breast (see above).

Went down to my parents’ house on the May Bank Holiday weekend for a belated family Sunday lunch for Hannah’s recent birthday. On the Saturday afternoon I decided to attempt making cream horns, a teatime treat I have only read about in oldish children’s books – Ruth gave me some moulds as a Christmas stocking gift so I thought they had better be put to use. A fiddly business, in spite of the fact that I’d bought ready-made puff pastry as I couldn’t face trying to make it myself. The pastry cases ended up not being entirely watertight, but they tasted pretty good.

On the Sunday we were joined by Dave, Hazel and Nia for a roast lamb lunch followed by a birthday carrot cake. Spent a chunk of the warm weather on the Monday driving back to Reading, but then did manage to sit out on the patio for a while in the afternoon/early evening.

Ruth and I had an afternoon at the cinema on 11 May to see Star Trek Into Darkness - our motivation for seeing it was pretty much simply to ogle Benedict Cumberbatch, but actually the film itself was pretty good - the Kirk-Spock relationship is well portrayed and Simon Pegg's Scotty has a larger role than we'd expected. Ray has offered to lend us the DVD of the 2009 movie, which he has apparently seen four times, but hasn't got around to this yet. We had dinner afterwards at the newish Côte brasserie on the Oracle, part of a recent clutch of slightly more upmarket restaurants that have appeared on the Oracle's Riverside (presumably in an attempt to raise the tone).

On the Sunday we again visited a few venues on the Caversham Arts Trail, starting with several exhibitors at 4 Hemdean Rise (lovely house and walled front garden) - these included textile artist Lou Jessop and willow-weaver Su Macpherson. Something in the combination of exhibits and exhibitors started Ruth off on a rant about a perceived type of middle-aged woman who has the time and presumably income to devote herself to appliqué-ing hand-stitched felt female genitalia onto fertility-themed artworks - I think the rant began something along the lines of "They sit there with their long grey hair and their Mooncuppy lifestyles ...". We proceeded while ranting to painter Mary Phelan's home on St Peter's Avenue, where we ate some cake. The final venue we visited was on Kidmore Road and included Debbie Page's lovely Moon Jars, which I may well buy one of - though I may have said the same thing after last year's trail.

Other news: the saga of this 1930s bus shelter on Henley Road in Caversham continues. It's still there at the moment.