Written pre-Christmas but published a bit late

Some seasonal decorations now up at the house, including this one of my two small artificial Christmas trees. Ruth subsequently set up the second of the trees in the living room, claiming that I had used all my favourite decorations on the first one and not used any of hers. Quite right. Also these lights at the flat.

At this stage am feeling reasonably prepped for Christmas, though still have some last minute cooking to do at Mum’s. Among the slew of pre-Christmas magazines and gift catalogues, came across Museum Selection, full of an assortment of variously nostalgic and patriotic gifts, including ‘The Little Book of Whittling’, apparently an introduction to creating ‘useful and whimsical objects using a pocketknife, twigs and time’. Have a feeling it might take me quite a lot of time to create anything useful, or indeed whimsical. The catalogue also features a charming-sounding – presumably ironic?? – book titled All The Countries We’ve Ever Invaded (featuring interviews with grateful natives?), plus other books with titles along the lines of Reminders of Yesteryear, ‘Twas All Much Better Back Then, etc etc.

Whizzing back over the last month: spent the last weekend in November in Abergavenny to celebrate Mum’s birthday. We had two (2) cakes, one a coffee and walnut that Henry had baked (excellent) and one a plain sponge that Mum had bought as a plainer alternative, and also with a view to Nia decorating it. She did indeed write ‘Nanna’ quite creditably on the top of it with an icing pen. Here she is assisting Mum blowing out her candles.

A couple of nice new things have opened for public use in Reading recently. The new footbridge over the Thames at Christchurch Meadows is finally complete, and jolly nice it is too. It's lit up at night by lots of little LEDs. Link to picture gallery here.

Also, on 6 December we ceremonially walked recently through the newly opened Napier Road subway on our way to Homebase (and, at my persuading, Toys R Us to look at Barbies, Lego etc). It’s been closed for some years, but has now been re-opened for pedestrian use linking Napier Road (and hence the oddly blue-roofed flats at Luscinia View) to the Forbury retail park and the town centre without having to trail up to the roundabout to cross the railway. The tunnel apparently used to be a route for two dear little trains that carried biscuits from Huntley & Palmer to a siding at Reading station.

Ray introduced me a few months ago to the baroque quartet Red Priest so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were giving a lunchtime pre-Christmas concert at the OU on 9 December. As he was eager to come up to the concert I took the morning off and we began with breakfast at Buskers before going for a walk around Linford Wood, somewhere I hadn’t been as yet. A few pics here. Well marked and surfaced paths – one of the finer features of going for a walk in MK, especially in the light of our later bog experience (see walk below) – and a series of cute wooden sculptures. The concert was well attended and held in the Hub Theatre rather than the church, so they must have been expecting a good few people. Red Priest are an amazingly lively act, particularly the recorder player Piers Adams, who bounds around the stage and switches rapidly between an array of different-sized recorders (far more types than I’d realised there were). Although the violin isn’t one of my favourite instruments, I was mightily impressed with the violinist Adam Summerhayes – though he’s not in fact a permanent member of the group but was standing in for their usual violinist Julia Bishop. I’d definitely go and see them again, and may seek out one of their CDs.

Linford Wood

Ruth and I went down to Chichester early on 12 Dec to pay a visit to her godmother Rosemary, as well as doing a bit of Christmas shopping in tasteful cathedral city, etc etc. We arrived at around 9.30 – actually a little later than I’d intended but the AA route planner took us on an ‘as the crow flies’ route along A-roads, which needed a bit more careful driving than just whizzing along the motorways. Parked up at the Premier Inn where we were staying for the Saturday night and walked into the city seeking a second breakfast, which we had at Artie’s Kitchen, a self-professed ‘Artisan Café’, which led to much scoffing at the modern over/mis-use of the word ‘artisan’ to mean home-made faux-rustic put together by leisured middle-class types goods. Our breakfast of muffins topped with bacon and poached eggs did indeed come with a tasteful mound of rocket on the side, which marked it out as dead classy.

My Chambers dictionary defines ‘artisan’ as ‘a handicraftsman or mechanic, a skilled manual worker’. At the time Ray worked at Temple Golf Club in the 1990s, there was an ‘Artisans’ club separate from the main club, to which working chaps such as himself could belong. (From what I recall, he had his membership terminated through non-payment of fees.) This site notes that ‘artisan golf was created in the 19th century to give working men the chance to play on good courses affordably’. I assume there are a number of such clubs across the country, as there’s an Artisan Golfers’ Association. It seems rather anachronistic these days but if it enabled play on quality courses at a reduced fee, I guess it was a good thing (though I can’t recall now whether Temple Artisans also required members to play at off-peak times, e.g. 3am, in the pouring rain, etc. Let’s hope not). The Artisans at Temple had their own clubhouse separate from the main clubhouse, presumably so as not to contaminate the company directors with their rough-hewn workaday qualities.

Southgate basin

Returning to Chichester: after breakfast, we continued into the city and did a spot of browsing, including around the Christmas market – reasonably busy but nothing like the pre-Christmas nightmare in Winchester a few years ago. We arrived at midday at the nursing home where Rosemary is now resident, to find her nowhere in sight – a member of staff confirmed that she wasn’t in her room and someone else chirped up that Rosemary had been seen leaving the premises some while earlier. In something of a panic Ruth hot-footed it back into town to the Côte Brasserie, where we had arranged to meet (I scuttled behind in manner of small panting person), to find Rosemary sitting at a table waiting for us. We had a pleasant light lunch (divine tuna carpaccio starter) though made somewhat frustrating by communication struggles due to Rosemary being slightly hard of hearing coupled with the ambient noise in the restaurant. After lunch we returned to the nursing home via a branch of Thorntons for R to buy a box of chocs for the home staff.

Bishop's Palace Gardens

We had a nice dinner at Wildwood on the Saturday evening. Made two attempts to visit the cathedral during the time we were in Chichester, but miscalculated rather as there were services on on both occasions. It looked jolly nice from the outside though. On the Sunday morning I had an early solo walk around the town, including a circuit of Southgate basin, the Chichester end of the Chichester Canal, before meeting Ruth for breakfast at Carluccio's. After breakfast we went for a stroll around the Bishop's Palace Gardens before heading home.

Had our first Strategy & Information Office joint Christmas 'do' on 15 December; pictures here. An attempt had been made to combine traditions from both former teams, which meant merging the Information Office 'tradition' of going out around 12 noon, having a largely sober lunch and coming back to work again, with the Strategy Office's rather more fun tradition of going out around 5pm after work for a meal and then on for drinks. The upshot was we went for a 2pm lunch at The Banana Tree, a pan-Asian chain that has a branch in The Hub, and around 10 of us went on for drinks at Missoula afterwards. The Banana Tree's Christmas menu contained pretty much nothing resembling a traditional UK Christmas lunch, which didn't bother me but there were mutterings to be heard beforehand from certain colleagues. There seemed general agreement though that the food was very nice. Jan and Louisa from the Strategy Office had brought several festive hats into work that day and the bar session was largely spent passing them around and taking photos of each other.

Among all the pre-Christmas chocolates being passed around in the office, Bart produced what were claimed to be dried worms, and had a good go at persuading all his colleagues to try one. I managed to resist, but several people did try them. I like to think I am quite open to trying new things, but certain things I'd have to be pretty much starving before trying.

Set out on the morning of Saturday 19th with Ray for a refreshing five and a half mile walk out of ‘Rambling for Pleasure around Reading’, this time the ‘Chapman’s Farm and Chalkhouse Green’ walk. A few pictures here. We parked in the car park next to Clayfield Copse at the top of Caversham Park Village and had a pleasant walk via alternately footpaths and country roads. VERY muddy in places, to a tedious degree that involved a choice between sinking into a bog or getting tangled in brambles (some law decrees that lanes prone to extreme muddiness must also be fringed with prickly bushes). I had artfully packed a picnic lunch, which we enjoyed sitting by the Millennium Green in Sonning Common, before heading across to Chalkhouse Green and thence down Chalkhousegreen Lane back to Emmer Green. Stopped briefly to look at the Emmer Green water tower before heading back to the car via Tower Close and Clayfield Copse.

Ray sourced me a Yule log in Clayfield Copse, after a short while communing with the woodland gods. It was duly carried ceremonially into the house, only to be immediately carried out again by Ruth shrieking about moss and spores. Carried it back in again while she was out of the room. Made it look pretty and dead spiritual.

In the evening Ruth and I went for dinner on Ray's boat - he has recently been getting back into slow cookery and had prepared us a shoulder of lamb, which was lovely. I had assumed that one could only prepare stew-type things in a slow cooker, but no. He also did a divine baked Camembert as a starter, with the result that we ate slightly less of the lamb than we might have done otherwise. Apparently it got used up though.