Rundown of May

Top of Primrose Hill

Kicked off May with a day’s leave and an afternoon and evening in London. Arrived in town around midday, grabbed a takeaway lunch from itsu and set off to do one of my three-miles-four-times-a-week scheduled walks. Walked up through Regent’s Park and out the entrance near the zoo, crossed the road and walked up Primrose Hill, where there were a number of people sunning themselves. Meandered back down the other side of the park and ended my walk at the Wellcome Collection, where I had a cup of tea and then a wander around the ‘Institute of Sexology’ exhibition. The exhibition, which runs until September, is an eclectic mix of interesting stuff - as well as the stuff you’d expect on Alfred Kinsey and on Masters and Johnson, and on Marie Stopes’ work on birth control, there’s a section on Wilhelm Reich’s absurdly wacky Orgone Energy Accumulators, with some charming film footage of use of one such device. There’s also some interesting old film showing various species’ mating practices, including a bit on the unusual mating habits of the porcupine (the male anoints the female with a urinary shower – quelle romance).

Alfred Kinsey abandoned his earlier career as an expert on gall wasps to found the Institute for Sex Research. The current Wikipedia entry on Kinsey under ‘Personal life’ is so absurd – and the last sentence seemingly such a non sequitur, unless I’m missing something – that I feel compelled to reproduce it here.

Digressing a bit but sticking with sexual topics: the OU hosted this event back in April. I’m sure it was actually full of serious academic discourse, but it’s difficult to shake off a picture of dodgy-looking men shuffling in in macs.

After leaving Wellcome I wandered down to Soho and walked around for a while before meeting Ruth for dinner, which we had at the lovely Jamon Jamon, tucked away over the other side of Charing Cross Road and a little oasis of peace after the crowds of drinkers spilling out onto pavements. After dinner we went to see Jen Brister at the Soho Theatre – we had seen and enjoyed Brister’s supporting act at South Street Arts a year or so ago, though we didn’t enjoy her set quite as much on this occasion as – perhaps inevitably given the then-impending election – it contained a bit too much political stuff for either of our tastes.

Tanners Lane

Walking targets continue and still enjoying tracking with MapMyWalk. Three highlights from May:

Walk 1, a tramp up Peppard Road through Emmer Green, pausing to look at some cute baby moorhens on Emmer Green Pond, before turning down Kidmore End Road and heading out past Reading Golf Course, turning left down Tanners Lane (all this quite adventurously out-in-the-country for me) and then down the track connecting Tanners Lane with Highdown Hill Road, and then back into Caversham.

Oakgrove

Walk 2 has become a pre-work staple: up north from the OU's campus through Ouzel Valley Park, skirting Monkston Park, thence past Waitrose into the new Oakgrove development, then across to Woolstone and down through Woughton on the Green back to the OU. The houses and flats on the new development are by and large nice-looking and more interesting than the dull faux-classic dross that gets built these days. There was unfortunately a fire in one of the new buildings recently; I saw the smoke from campus and did wonder what was going on.

Walk 3: a meander one Sunday recently when up in MK. Walked into New Bradwell and then down Bradwell Road to locate the redway that goes along the route of the former Wolverton to Newport Pagnell railway line, a victim of the Beeching axe in 1962. I assume the platform in the picture was part of the former Bradwell railway station. Some old pictures of the station here, including things in a bit of a state in 1976, presumably before the redway was set up along that stretch. I only walked along a short stretch, westwards back towards the V6 - partly because I'm always a bit spooked out by disused railway lines. I maintain that it's not at all irrational to worry about phantom trains hurtling towards you. I may go for a bit of a cycle along it at some point, if I can ever heave myself back onto a bicycle.

Took a scan of my last-ever tax disc, to keep as a future record of How Things Used to Be. Seems weird to have a blank space in the windscreen. Must search for any companies doing cute smiley faces or similar. Various suggestions here about what the empty holder could be used for (actually I think I chucked my holder – maybe that was premature). Or why not replace it with an artwork.

Willow continues in seemingly robust health, despite our having been warned by Sandra of RRR over a year ago that her slowness to gain weight probably indicated a tumour and we should prepare for her not to last that long. While Harley, when released into the garden, skips about prettily among the plants, Willow shows a marked interest in the seamier side of things, usually to be found eating moss or bits of unidentifiable mulch or, as here, burrowing into the drain. As Ruth had blocked the entrance to the drain off with a brick, we weren't too alarmed by this until we saw her appearing to be turning and starting work on a tunnel under the path. Visions of her being lost under our neighbours' house have now led to further blocking off action. In revenge, she has been eating the hostas, which upset her stomach.

Wine tasting à quatre at Helen’s house on 15 May. As part of the seemingly numerous perks Helen receives with her job at the Prudential, she gets a free Gourmet Society card – I was unfamiliar with these, but apparently they can get you quite good discounts off restaurant bills, as well as other things including, in this case, a free Wine Tasting Experience.  As Helen is not a great consumer of wine, she kindly invited Ali, Ruth and me, who are reasonably great consumers of wine, to participate with her. We had been instructed not to drink anything in advance of the tasting – presumably to avoid contaminating our palates with supermarket plonk – and Ruth and I had dutifully abided by this, though Ali confessed to having tipped back a sneaky glass of white after getting in from work. In the event the chap doing it was delayed on another wine tasting and didn’t arrive until after 9pm, by which time we were almost ready to snatch his case of wine out of his hand. I think we were given 12 wines to taste in total, evenly split between white and red. We were told how to approach the wine, warming it in your hand and inhaling, then taking a sip and letting it rest in your mouth before letting it fill your whole mouth – i.e. including down sides of teeth – to get the full flavour. The last bit we didn’t care for as it felt too much like gargling – you certainly get an intense taste sensation from doing it, but I don’t think it’s something I’ll be doing regularly with wine. Interesting experience though. Left full of good intentions to buy fewer more expensive bottles of wine, and sip them in sophisticated ladylike fashion.

A Moon Jar

Ruth and I went for our usual mooch around Caversham Arts Trail on Saturday 17th. Started, at Ruth’s request, by trekking up to Caversham Park Village to call on Roger Smalley. Mr Smalley is a talented sculptor and his pieces do appeal, but he seems to have little idea how to market and sell his work – despite hinting that he wasn’t selling as many pieces as he’d like, he appeared somewhat confused when I enquired about the price of a small piece and gave the impression of not being too sure whether he wanted to sell it. He also regaled us with how few visitors he’d had during the Arts Trail and how it really wasn’t worth his participating and how he doesn’t attend the annual Contemporary Art Fair any more as it’s far too commercial – i.e., presumably, filled with people who actually want to sell their work. We moved on as soon as we could over to Kidmore Road and lunch at The Grosvenor, before visiting 224 Kidmore Road where I, finally, bought one of Debbie Page’s Moon Jars. Don't have a handy photo of it, but it's very similar to the one in this picture.

Ruth and Alys

Spent four nights staying at Mum and Dad’s place in Abergavenny while they were away on their recent Italian rail tour, Mum’s 70th birthday present from Dad. Spent a morning in Hay-on-Wye, where I hadn’t been for a while. We realized on entering the town that the morning we’d chosen was actually the first day of the Hay Festival; in the event, although there were obvious signs of the festival being set up, the town wasn’t overly crowded. Perhaps Day 1 only features the lesser-known literary type. We had a pleasant browse around including a trip to Booth’s and a browse in the Cinema Bookshop (prize for most obscure tome spotted so far has to go to A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, 1874-1957). We would have had lunch in Booth's café, which Mum has recommended, but in the event weren't hungry enough so instead we bought a pie in the butcher's to take back to the house.

The Enlarger

Dave and Hazel and the little girlies visited on the Saturday and Nia briefly went in the paddling pool, before I think realizing quite quickly that it wasn’t really that warm. Alys slept obligingly in one or other of our laps for pretty much the whole day. I've gathered since then that she does now regularly have her eyes open, so am looking forward to meeting her in a wakeful state. Hannah and Henry came up from Bristol to spend Saturday evening and then stay a day or so with plans to take back with them sundry pieces of photographic equipment that Hannah had recently purchased from eBay, including this scary enlarger which was occupying the front room looking like a giant praying mantis. It was apparently bound for the bathroom of Hannah's quite small flat, which she seems to have plans to adapt to function as a darkroom.

British summer spirit

Finished off May (more or less) by going for breakfast with Ray on his boat - currently still moored at the Thames & Kennet Marina, though Ray claims to have plans to go travelling the waterways any day now. It was arguably not quite warm enough to sit outside on his deck, but we were keen to do so having not done it for a while, so mufflered up. He elaborated to us his plans for a re-configuration of the boat's interior, though he later phoned me to say he'd decided to put this off until the winter.

My First Quiche Lorraine

As a final comment on May, I have branched out into quiche cookery. Following Delia closely, obviously, I have now produced several, all of which have miraculously avoided soggy bottom issues. Am quite inspired.