New Year; REM's birthday; RIP Barbara Talmage

What about those Nazi supercows then?


The absurd rubber caterpillar-type thing I received as a stocking filler is now installed on my desk. When you smack its head against something, it glows as per the picture. Judith seemed quite taken with it and observed that she will be able to tell when I'm feeling stressed because of the smacking sounds from the next room.

Ruth and I accompanied Mum and Dad for their by-now-traditional New Year’s Eve dinner out at Food for Thought in Peterchurch, though it’s now a considerably longer drive than it was from the old house. Very pleasant meal; I attempted to mark the occasion with a couple of photos but neither of them turned out very well. These two are about the best; in the other version of the first, I am wearing a diabolical expression which doesn’t look as though it bodes well for my parents; in the other version of the second, Ruth is staring with an expression of intense delight at her wine glass rather than at the camera.

We were cheered briefly by a claim in the NYE copy of The Times that Reading has come out second only to St Albans among towns experiencing the biggest rises in house prices during the final quarter of 2014. Apparently the average price of a house in Reading is now £318,333. Gosh.

Marked New Year’s Day with a nice though strenuous walk. I had suggested to my parents that I might fancy a walk, and had put in a variety of requests for (moderate) hill-climbing, trees and preferably a small lake in an enchanted glade where one might see elves, pixies etc. Mum did her best to comply with this and planned a walk taking in a fair bit of the height of the Blorenge and really bringing home to all of us the benefits of the regular moderate exercise we’re not currently doing. Dad parked at the Llanfoist Crossing car park and we walked up to Llanfoist Wharf, where we turned left along the canal as far as Canal Cottage, where we joined a road that works its way up steeply past Hendre Cwrt and Lower, Middle and Upper Ninfa farms, before turning off onto a path leading to the Punchbowl, a lovely hollow containing a lake. That makes it sound quite simple, but the road up was actually quite a slog. The lake’s apparently man made, but it’s a lovely spot anyway.

The last part of the walk descended via an old transport route along the Llanfoist Incline, the steep wooded slope that (apparently) descends Cwm Craf. Llanfoist Wharf was the terminus for a tram-road which transported stuff up the Blorenge. Dad pointed out the old stone sleepers with holes in them to secure the rails that the trams ran on.

The Punchbowl apparently used to be a secret meeting place for illegal prize-fighting. Not sure how long ago. You’d never think it now. Middle Ninfa Farm is apparently one of the UK's leading small campsites. You can go on a three-day workshop there to learn how to build a coracle.

To mark Ruth’s birthday on Saturday we went to Vue to see The Theory of Everything, as Ruth had fancied a cinema outing and we were obliged to pick from the available listings. It was very good, and presented a sympathetic portrait of Hawking’s first wife Jane, though that’s perhaps unsurprising as it’s adapted from Jane’s memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. Afterwards we had a very pleasant dinner at Strada.

Extended Ruth’s birthday celebrations into Sunday, as we’d put off her requested trip to the London Aquarium due to the wet weather on Saturday. Got up to London and, inevitably, eased ourselves into the trip with a second breakfast at the branch of Carluccio’s opposite South Kensington tube. We made our way over to County Hall and joined the queue for ‘priority’ ticket holders, which was ironically longer and slower than the regular queue and it took some time to be processed through the congested entrance and into the exhibits. Viewed some beautiful and fascinating creatures, including sharks. It was, inevitably for a weekend, quite crowded, but we did on the whole manage to find sufficient space to look at the critters on display. Although the central tank is certainly impressive, the whole seems crammed into quite a small area with narrow corridors, that made the congestion seem probably worse than it was, but I guess they are restricted by the space available – hardly any potential to expand as there might be in other aquaria.

Perhaps wrongly, I emerged from the aquarium with a yen for a fishy snack, so we stopped at the branch of Eat under the Oxo tower where I had a crayfish sandwich (the only fishy option available, though crayfish are pretty tasteless) and Ruth had something hammy and cheesy. Briefly considered suggesting that the aquarium should have a fish and other seafood-themed café where visitors can take refreshment (seahorse baps?).

After leaving the aquarium, we walked along the South Bank to Gabriel’s Wharf, as Ruth wanted to visit Vendula to try to buy the handbag she had seen while window shopping back in August. The exact one had sold out but she found one with the same colour scheme that she appeared equally pleased with. It’s for Gail for her birthday, apparently. I bought a pretty little pink purse that is going to be my Weekend Purse.

Although we mainly took tubes on Sunday, I made brief use of the fab Citymapper app just to find the walking route from the restaurant to Sloane Square tube (albeit that we didn't walk in the end). The app is brilliant for finding bus routes, as it finds your current location (once you have GPS enabled), you find your desired destination on the map and it plots you a route between the two points, via various transport options, including walking. If you choose to walk, it tells you how many calories you will burn off by walking the route, plus a slightly bizarre translation into foodstuffs – the walk from Carluccio’s to Sloane Square would, apparently, have enabled me to burn off 0.4 jellied eels. There’s a review of the app here, though I’ve not yet figured out how to get the app to illustrate the route with a flying Boris Johnson, which this review claims is an option.

The weekend ended on a downbeat note when Ray called me on Sunday evening to tell me that Barbara has died. I had arranged to call at her house for tea on 28 December, but she had telephoned that morning to postpone, saying that she hadn’t been feeling well all through the Christmas period and that the house was in a state, etc, though she had at least managed to go to Ray and Carol Clark’s for Christmas lunch as per usual. During the call she apologized for not having written Christmas cards, saying that she felt all in a tizz, or words to that effect – she appeared to be blaming it on having been persuaded to go along to a get-together for those with reduced vision, which she referred to disparagingly as ‘Blind Club’ though I doubt that was actually its name. One of her neighbours, apparently, had spotted that a light in her house had been on all Saturday night and alerted Ray’s mother, who went round to the house on Sunday morning and found B lying in the kitchen. Ray and his mother have apparently spent much of Sunday and Monday going through Barbara’s stuff – she was evidently more of a hoarder than they realized.She was an excellent if somewhat blunt woman, and always seemed to like me. I have few pictures of her, but here she is with me at Ray's and my flat in Henley after our wedding in 1999, and there’s this one taken in May 2005 on a windy day at Portchester Castle.

Mildly irritating Monday. Returned to work to a no doubt entirely justified prod from Hoa to check the data he’d passed to me before Christmas; did my best though realized I didn’t have nearly enough time to check in detail. Booked the afternoon off partly through sheer non-engagement and partly because I had two more flat viewings booked from 4pm onwards, both in Broughton, a newish eastern suburb of MK. Spent some time beforehand walking around Broughton and decided it seemed quite nice, and was fully expecting to take one of the flats; however the first turned out to be a maisonette, and following burglary shenanigans I fancy another door between me and the street; the second was OK but had a surprisingly grotty bathroom with black mould around the bath. Left with deflated spirits and made my way over to the Old Stratford Travelodge, where I took refuge in a bubble bath, and later that evening in a Channel 5 programme about obese people living on benefits.

Rallied myself on Tuesday to set up another flat viewing, but received a call from the agent late morning cancelling the viewing as someone else had already taken it. Grrr. Sulked briefly when Victoria asked if I wanted to go and get soup from The Hub, but then relented.

Call from Ray on Tuesday night after the poor chap had evidently spent much of the preceding few days attempting to clear Barbara’s house, helped by various family members. Apparently the keys to the house have to be handed over to her solicitors, who are the executors, on Thursday. Hardly gives anyone much time – technically, I suppose none of her stuff belongs to the family, as B is known to have left her entire estate to charitable causes, but there’s going to be sentimental stuff, for Christ’s sake. They have apparently unearthed a wad of old photographs in a suitcase in the bathroom and Ray has found B’s journals going back to the 1960s. Of course, there’s an argument to say she ought to have given away this sort of stuff beforehand or at least bequeathed it in her will – it’s not as though her actual possessions are going to have monetary value – but perhaps people don’t think to do that, or perhaps she just wasn’t sentimental.

This getreading article this week lists things left in Travelodges. A rowing machine does seem a large thing to leave behind - or indeed, take in the first place.