Ruth's birthday 2025

3-4 January 2025

We did that thing we’ve done a few times now of having an overnight stay in London and going to a show of Ruth’s choice. This time, she chose the long-running Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap, probably from curiosity at its having been knocking around in the West End for so long, which I’d guess is the reason most people go and see it. We booked an overnight stay at the Hub by Premier Inn Covent Garden, and dinner beforehand at the cellar wine bar The Cork & Bottle – a gem of a place that we’ve now been to two or three times.

With this journey in mind, Ruth had recently renewed our Two Together Railcard. I don't currently take trains as much as I used to, but these are useful to have, enabling Ruth and me to get a third off the price of journeys we take together. Ruth was particularly pleased to change the photo she had in last year’s card. The pair of us did look a bit mugshotty. This year’s pictures are definitely better. Well, I think so.

Last year's railcard

The pictures on last year's railcard reminded me of a photo on a library card I had while a student that Dad said made me look like a member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Looking back, I had a number of cards from that era, and can't now say for sure which one it was, but it might have been this one. I didn’t really know who the BMG were but I seem to remember taking it as a vague compliment, though I’m not sure whether that was what he intended.

Also: best not to ponder photographs of yourself from c. thirty years ago, as I now realise having looked at that photo.

Our renewed railcard

Felt very high-tech managing to get both my theatre ticket AND our train tickets into my Google Wallet – no old-fashioned bits of paper for me on this trip. Ruth has been doing the electronic train ticket thing for a while but I haven’t really dabbled with it up until now, probably due to mild paranoia at the unlikely-but-possible prospect of my phone’s battery dying. Of course, it’s also possible to lose a paper ticket, which I certainly remember doing on one occasion.

Before dinner we went for a bit of a stroll around the Covent Garden/Bloomsbury area - Ruth had had a notion of popping in to the British Museum but we were put off by the enormous queue. Dinner was lovely, and as previously, we admired this mammoth wine bottle. There's probably a name for a wine bottle of that size, but neither of us knew it. I had crab and prawn linguine; Ruth had a steak. Definitely a special occasion restaurant. The white wine I tried - the Viognier shown on the bill - was delicious.

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

The mammoth wine bottle

St Martin's Theatre

The Mousetrap started out as a radio play called Three Blind Mice, apparently written for Queen Mary’s 80th birthday in 1947. It has been playing on the London stage since 1952, and at its current theatre (St Martin’s) since 1974. Ruth could have got the performance number stamped in her programme, but after the play we were funnelled out directly onto the street, bypassing the foyer, and she decided she couldn’t be arsed to go back in again.

Before curtain up

The above photo was taken while we were waiting for kick off. I am not someone who keeps their phone switched on during theatre performances, although there are people who do this and they should of course be swiftly ejected and booted down the street for doing so.

I enjoyed the play (though not the cramped seating – this is common in old London theatres but does make me assume people were smaller in the olden days). I have only ever read one of Christie’s novels, more through not having got around to it than from any distaste for the idea. Dad has a large collection of Christie novels that belonged to his mother. The one I’ve read was 4:50 from Paddington, which I remember thinking a bit meh. No idea whether it’s considered one of her better ones. 

The Mousetrap is set in a country guesthouse that’s recently been taken over by a young couple; a motley crew of guests arrives, and it goes from there. In addition to the inevitable murders, it has a reasonably gritty theme (child abuse). In terms of whodunnit, there's a tradition that anyone who goes to see the play is supposed to remain schtum about the twist towards the end: after curtain call, a member of the cast steps forward and tells the audience never to reveal the secret of The Mousetrap. I had, as it happened, correctly guessed which one of the characters it was who was not quite who they seemed.

Walking back to the hotel after the play

It was my second time staying in one of Premier Inn's 'Hub' hotels, after a solo stay in the Soho hotel in 2021. The Covent Garden hotel on St Martins Lane is wonderfully placed for any theatre activity, and priced accordingly. The 'Hubs' have tiny rooms, most of which is the bed. There's no room for any tea and coffee-making facilities, but you can get free hot drinks from the hotel bar/restaurant.

We could have got a continental breakfast at the hotel the following morning but decided we fancied something in the cooked line. We ended up at Ristorante Roma on Irving Street, one of a line of restaurants behind the National Gallery. Italian restaurants in London often seem to do breakfast and they always have good coffee, as this one did. They sat us outside, which I was initially sceptical about given that it was early January and quite cold. However, we were seated in a covered area next to an outdoor heater and they gave us a blanket each, and it ended up being nicer than sitting in the dark interior, although a number of lightweights who arrived after us did request to be seated indoors.

Ristorante Roma

Blanket supplied

Celebrations of Ruth’s birthday over the past few years:

2024: London day trip. We went to the Red Eight Gallery in the Royal Exchange building to see a collection of Hannah’s paintings that were temporarily being exhibited there. Then for lunch at Larry’s in the basement of the National Portrait Gallery. Ruth had a bacon roll that was so posh it was barely recognizable as one such. I can’t remember what I had but I think it was some sort of artsy Ploughman’s.

Hannah's paintings

Extremely fancy bacon roll

2023: Oxford day trip to see an exhibition at the Bodleian of photos and other bits and pieces from the Tutankhamun dig. Then later for dinner at the London Street Brasserie in Reading.

2022: Cabaret! At the Playhouse Theatre, fully decked out as the Kit Kat Club. With the ORIGINAL LEADS, Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne. I am not a huge fan of musical theatre so Ruth normally refrains from picking it for a joint theatre trip, but she is a big fan of the 1972 film and felt she couldn’t pass up the chance of seeing this stage version while it still had its original cast. In fairness, it was very well done and I was glad to have seen it. I wasn’t familiar with Buckley but she has a belter of a voice. It was apparently Redmayne’s musical theatre debut. This London Theatre piece notes that they both won Olivier Awards for their performances. We stayed at the Premier Inn London Waterloo, part of which is a former lying-in hospital.

The Playhouse, done up as the Kit Kat Club

2021: from looking back, nothing – we would still have been under the newly-invented ‘Tier 4’ restrictions that had prevented me travelling to Mum and Dad’s for Christmas a few weeks earlier.

2020: The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. Trip already blogged about here. We had dinner beforehand at the Cork & Bottle then too and almost lost our table through failing to spot the entrance to the restaurant (it's got two, and we'd been in via the Bear Street entrance previously).

Previous dinner at The Cork & Bottle

2019: Circus 1903 at the Royal Festival Hall. Stayed at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge. Mentioned here.

2018: in Wales. Windy walk up Blorenge and then afternoon tea at The Angel in Abergavenny. This was one of a couple of hill walks in 2018 that resulted in my decision later that year to take up running.

In 2017: This House, a political play, at the Garrick Theatre. Mentioned in this post. We ate at the Cork & Bottle before that one too.

We've been together a few years longer than that but that'll probably do.

Ruth's birthday 2020

Friday 3 January

As per last year, we decided on an overnight stay in London and seeing something theatrical. We arrived in London early afternoon on the Friday and made our way over to the hotel to check in. We went out and sourced tea and cake at Cojean on Ludgate Hill. Then, as Ruth isn’t as keen as I am on just walking around in London with no clear aim in view, we had a look for somewhere specific to visit. Briefly considered St Paul’s, as it was nearby, but we’d left it too late by then as it only had half an hour to go before closing. We made our way to the Bank of England Museum, as Ruth thought it sounded moderately interesting and the internet had suggested it was free, but we arrived to find it closed (contra the internet, which had suggested that it was open). In a last-ditch attempt to go somewhere, we spotted the London Mithraeum on Google Maps, and my curiosity was piqued by the name so we went to have a look.

Turns out it’s the ruins of a Roman Temple of Mithras. The ruins are underneath Bloomberg’s European headquarters. We did a complete circuit of the Bloomberg building before locating the entrance. It’s clearly had money poured into it as it’s all beautifully done. At ground level there’s a contemporary art space, which when we visited was housing an exhibition of pieces by Daniel Silver called ‘Human Activity’ (one of the pieces above). There’s also a display of some Roman artefacts – apparently the excavations prior to the current Bloomberg building’s construction produced a large number of Roman finds. The exhibition also shows how the ground level in the City of London has changed (risen) quite dramatically over the centuries.

Going downstairs takes you to a darkened room with an audio narration talking about what’s known about Mithraism (not all that much) and the temple of Mithras on this site. On a lower level again are the reconstructed remains of the temple itself. These are enhanced by an audiovisual installation that’s pretty good. We were lucky and saw the ruins in the company of just one other couple, which made them more atmospheric.

The remains of the Temple of Mithras

Today’s exhibition is a recreation of the original structure discovered in the 1950s (a chance discovery on a WWII bomb site). After its discovery, the ruin was dismantled (for reasons I didn’t quite get) and ‘reconstructed’ about 100 metres away, but this 50-60s reconstruction seems to have been viewed as a bit of a hatchet job. The present-day reconstruction follows Bloomberg’s acquisition of the site in 2010, and was done in consultation with conservation specialists. The latest reconstruction is close to the original position and level of the temple.

We’d booked an early pre-theatre dinner at the Cork & Bottle wine bar, having been there before for lunch and liked it. Although we thought we’d allowed plenty of time for the walk there, finding the place proved a headache and led to a lot of swearing at Google Maps. We were also thrown as Maps took us to the official entrance on Cranbourn Street, while on both our previous visits we’d been in via the other entrance on Bear Street, resulting in us standing around for a while just outside the door without seeing it. By the time we got in we were about 15 minutes late and weren’t optimistic that they’d have held our booking – the young waitress did tell us she’d just given away a small table but seated us in some sort of wine cellar-esque alcove, bigger than we needed but quite cosy, and we were just happy to be seated. We had a lovely dinner: we both had the beef carpaccio followed by schnitzel with capers. We even had dessert; I had the Hokey Pokey ice cream; I forget what Ruth had.

Ruth at the Cork & Bottle

Ruth had taken a while to decide on a show to see in the evening, but had eventually decided to get tickets for The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. The Fortune is a fairly diddy theatre, with undoubtedly the smallest ladies’ toilets I’ve ever come across. It was apparently once described as “this most intimate of theatres”.

The Woman in Black has been running in the West End since 1989, and is apparently the second longest running non-musical play in West End history, after The Mousetrap. The play has only three actors, and one of them (the woman playing the Woman of the title) doesn’t speak. On the night we saw it, the play featured Stuart Fox and Matthew Spencer in the speaking parts. It’s based on a novel by Susan Hill, which I haven’t read but Mum says she has. In adapting Hill’s novel for the stage, the playwright (the late Stephen Mallatratt) opted to make it a play within a play (the play opens inside an empty theatre where the lead character Arthur Kipps, now an old man, is getting coaching from an actor in reading aloud his life story). I couldn’t quite decide if I liked that aspect of it.

In general the play was enjoyable, and they do quite a good job of making it scary though frankly that is a bit challenging. The second half wasn’t enhanced by the young couple to my right munching their way loudly through a bucket of popcorn – since when do theatres sell popcorn? We both vowed to complain to the theatre about it afterwards but I don’t think either of us has got around to it.

We got lost again walking the barely a mile back to our hotel, completing a day of useless navigation.

The following morning we checked out and walked back to Covent Garden where we had breakfast at the Carluccio’s on Garrick Street. After this, Ruth was keen to get home but I wanted to make a bit more of our time in London, so she went off and I took a meandering walk back to Paddington, via a visit to Innerspace, where I bought a book that probably won’t make me a better person, but it’s a nice thought, and via the Marble Arch M&S where I bought some sourdough bagels from the bakery counter.

Walk up Blorenge, 8.13 miles

3 January 2018

Belatedly got round to walking to the summit of Blorenge – Ruth was keen to do it, seemingly being fired with greater enthusiasm for walking if there’s a summit in view. As 3 January is her birthday and we were down at Mum and Dad’s for a few days post-New Year, we ended up doing it then. I’d intended for us to follow a route that’s part of the Iron Mountain Trail, which goes around the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, situated between Blaenavon and Abergavenny and a World Heritage Site since 2000, though in the event we only followed part of it.

Our route shown in red

We started from the Llanfoist Crossing car park and made our way up the lane opposite, past the church and through the dank and somewhat off-putting tunnel under the canal to come out at the base of a path leading up steeply alongside the Llanfoist Inclines, formerly used to transport stone, iron and coal down to the canal where it got loaded onto boats for its onward journey. I’d expected to find the path demanding but hadn’t realized quite how out of hill practice I was, as it was a struggle to reach the top bit where the path emerges from the woods onto open hillside. Had to stop frequently and clocked heartbeat at around 145 bpm at one point. (Looking at this BHF advice on a safe heart rate while exercising, my maximum heart rate would be 171 beats per minute – so not in the danger level I guess.) 

At the top, leant against a fence briefly, threatening to be sick, but thankfully recovered reasonably quickly. Ruth had been working out at the gym recently on the rowing machines and performed better than I did. After recovering, we walked on around the side of the Blorenge into the Woodland Trust reserve and stopped by the Punchbowl for a snack.

Path around the side of the mountain

The Punchbowl

Continued on eventually turning onto a path leading to the summit, after various tricksy false summits. Stopped near the small brick building apparently once used as a wireless hut (whatever that was) to take pictures – excellent views from this point.

Up we go

A view

As we neared the summit, the weather started to turn rather, and the rough path through the heather that had been pleasant enough on my walk there the previous July was distinctly boggy on this occasion. By the time we reached the summit sleet was in the air and a strong wind was blowing – sufficiently strong that we struggled to stand upright at the trig point to take a photo (it was the day of Storm Eleanor).

Me at the trig point

From the summit, we walked on to Foxhunter car park and the road. At this point, I started fretting about not getting back to the start in time for the afternoon tea we had booked at the Angel Hotel, so suggested walking back to Llanfoist along the road, which was less boggy underfoot but I’m not sure it was actually any quicker. We did just make tea on time.

Would like to do the rest of the Iron Mountain Trail in due course though possibly cutting out the initial climb next time – there are thankfully a couple of car parks near the top.

Blorenge is in the south-eastern corner of the Brecon Beacons National Park. To put its cuddly size in perspective, its highest point is 561m, just under two-thirds of the height of Pen y Fan, the Beacons’ highest peak, and around half the height of Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales. And, to give an international perspective, just over 6% of the height of K2. Not that I have any ambitions to scale that.

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.