Give cheese a chance

Yesterday, we went off to the Great British Cheese Festival which was serendipitously being held at Millets Farm, a mere 2 villages away from Abingdon. 2 years ago we went when it was held at Blenheim Palace and though the day was cool and drizzly (conditions luckily not repeated yesterday, we even had a few glorious sunny spells) the almost overwhelming varieties of cheese, free water biscuits, real ale tent and general overconsumption meant for a cracking day all round.

This time there were slightly fewer of us going (we missed you Susan...) and the cheese sweats and cheddary limbs were conspicuous by their absence today. Learning from last time we didn't round the day off with the Dil Raj's finest curries, as this was the tipping point from which certain of our group did not fully recover for weeks, possibly even months. Instead we ambled along to Abingdon's finest - or indeed only - Lebanese restaurant for some cleansing salads and falafel, along with the finest of Lebanese red wine (actually quite nice).

At the cheese festival this year current Observer darling Alex James was there, presumably preening about his new found bucolic idyll and launching his Little Wallop cheese via a video podcast. We didn't see this, thank goodness, though Ali did pap him using his unfeasibly large lens. I'll post a photo up soon so you can see his drippy hairstyle and 'farmer's' tweeds in all their glory. We did try the Little Wallop - it was OK - but tellingly the guy that gave us a taste said he had only ever met Alex twice, and didn't even know if he had a dairy herd on his farm... There were so many other, better cheeses than this as well: Lincolnshire Poacher (vintage and non-vintage); endless varieties of soft and hard goats cheese; plus gourmet breads from de Gustibus were consumed with gusto, and the wide variety of real ciders and perries was smashing - amazingly far greater than the single real ale on offer. Ha! In fact the only real disappointment was the lack of free water biscuits, Carr's were obviously cutting back this year.

Bring on the brie!

These are a few of my not-so-favourite things...

• Cyclists who ride on the pavement and assume pedestrians will just skitter out of the way deferentially.
• Pedestrians who stop dead in the middle of the street with no warning, especially when you're right behind them.
• Train drivers (or more accurately, First Great Western timetable fiddlers who control where train drivers are going) who announce suddenly 'this train is now the fast service to Slough' when it was until a mere moment ago the stopping service to Maidenhead.
• People who chew gum noisily, with their mouths open (or any gum chewers at all, in fact).
• Royal Mail, especially their customer services department. If ever a department deserved to lose that title, they would be my first choice. Closely followed by Vodafone, of course.
• Running out of screenwash just when your windscreen is full of dead flies.
• Activex controls buggering up my Firefox browser. What's a dll file anyway?
• And finally, blogging platforms where all of the commands when you've logged in have weirdly become German. I mean, what's that all about? What's a tastaturkürzel when it's at home?
  

But on a positive note, the nights are drawing in, it's getting nippy in the evenings (time to bring the lime tree indoors) and that can mean only one thing.....Strictly Come Dancing is coming back on our screens again!!

Books, recommendations, and apprehension

At the last meeting of our book group, we discussed Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta. I really enjoyed it – it’s a collection of short stories, loosely bound together by the premise that all the storytellers are stranded in an airport waiting for a flight to Tokyo airport, which is closed due to a snowstorm. Thirteen passengers from a connecting flight cannot be accommodated in any hotels in the unnamed city they end up in, so are reduced to sitting around and telling stories all night. Quotes on the back of the book reference the Arabian Nights, Canterbury Tales etc – although this was rubbished by everyone in our group.

Apart from the last story, which was quite honestly just rather unpleasant and even distasteful in some areas, I thought the book was excellent. The tales reminded me in some respects of a book of Chinese Fairy Tales I had when I was little; and were magical, fantasy-filled, contemporary, intriguing, and full of vividly drawn characters. The style reminded me very much of Haruki Murakami, an author I rate very highly; and I think this may have coloured my view of the book as a whole, as I enjoyed the reading of it so much. I was, however, in a minority (that’s a minority of one) among my fellow book group-ees. A lot of folk didn’t like the style, didn’t think the stories had any point to them or anything to teach us about the human condition; lack of characterisation and plot was a common theme. And everyone loathed the last story of the thirteen.

So it doesn’t bode well for the next group meeting, at which we are discussing the frankly stupendous The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by the aforementioned Haruki Murakami. I recommended this book to the group a while ago; it made it onto the shortlist; and then was selected for October’s read. Last time I recommended this to a book group was a long time ago when I was attending the Blackwell’s Reading Group, and to a man they all hated it. Since then I’ve met a lot of Murakami devotees (and read about more, including the infamous Scott Pack who apparently is a Murakami completist and collects all known editions of the great man’s work. I haven’t yet gone that far) and so am feeling slightly more confident about this next meeting, especially as I know at least one person in the group was impressed when she read it before. However, I am still a little apprehensive about how it will go down (as it's also quite a chunky tome, and so needs a considerable investment of time).

I’m also slogging through The House By The Thames. It's been hard going, which I was slightly surprised by, as the subject matter has the potential to be really absorbing. But it's too focussed on the occupants of no.49 Bankside and corresponding census information (yawn) and not enough on the periods of London history that I find so fascinating. Not a bad read but just not that gripping.

A quiet time

For once I am home before Ali; it is the last day of 'summer hours' in the office today before it's officially autumn (boo) and so as I haven't been able to take advantage of it any Friday before now I thought today ought to be the day. If First Great Western hadn't been their usual incompetent selves and cancelled the train I should have taken, I'd have been home even earlier. Still, there would have been no way I'd have made it home before 4.30pm on a Friday when I was at Virgin, so I'm thankful for this small quiet time on my own. This week has been somewhat manic, at least by my standards. God knows how folk in big cities manage to go out every night and socialise and still manage to get their work done and house organised and time to read the paper.

Tuesday evening saw an impromptu dinner with our agency - very nice Italian restaurant with a whole menu dedicated to ravioli. Yum. As were the bottles of Amarone my boss ordered. Wednesday was a night out with some international colleagues (ooh get me) who were over in the UK, in the Bel and The Dragon pub in posh village Cookham near work. Apparently Ulrika-ka-ka-ka-ka lives somewhere near and it's all very lovely and expensive everywhere. Last night the same crowd went to the Hinds Head at Bray, which is Heston Blumenthal's pub-that-isn't-the-Fat-Duck - somewhere I would have liked to have gone as well if I'd been free. But instead I met up with good friend Jenn in Notting Hill for a chat and a catch up, which was far more enjoyable.

All of this carousing has meant some interesting but probably very obvious developments:
1. It's normally Ali who is out and about during the week so this swap in our fortunes is actually quite nice - not just me eating meals for one at home for a change!
2. Our food budget this week has been quite meagre, as we've not had to buy anything to eat. Hurrah.
3. My diet has crashed and burned - 3 days into my week and already my allowance of treats has been fully used up (mostly by red wine) so it doesn't bode well for stepping on the scales next week, especially as we're off to Lincolnshire tomorrow for a bbq session with friends...
4. I'm far more knackered than I would normally be on a Friday, but in a much more content way.

Right, time to read the paper I do believe.

Musical memories

Ali and I watched a few of the highlights of the Reading Festival during the bank holiday weekend, in between a lengthy gardening session of highly satisfying pruning of next door's buddleias; a great sunny barbeque with some friends we'd not seen for a while (though I did over-cater on the meat and salads front somewhat) and a cycle ride-cum-pub crawl through some of the south Oxfordshire villages near us. This latter was meant to get us out and about in the fresh air - tick - spend some time together - tick - and get some exercise - no tick, could do better. We meandered round some B roads and a few cycle paths, got to the North Star at Steventon, Ali swooned with pleasure at the nectar that was a pint from the White Horse brewery (the name escapes me) and then went to the Cherry Tree for some lunch. Cycling through Sutton Courtenay on the way back, we weren't meant to stop at all, until Ali saw the 'Bank Holiday Guest Ale specials' sandwich board outside the George and Dragon and swerved over to take advantage. It would have been rude not to, as they say.

Anyway, back to Reading. I went 3 times in my yoof (christ how old does that make me sound) - 1995, 1996 and 1998. The first time was with a group of 5 friendly chaps from Cambridgeshire who I used to spend much of my vacation time going to gigs with when I was at university. That first year was amazing - the festival experience became well and truly ingrained into my soul. Highlights were the Foo Fighters' first ever UK festival gig, at which I almost got crushed and nearly passed out from the heat in the NME tent; and seeing Ash, who at at the time were all about 16 and whose official band t-shirt, complete with legend 'three boy hardcore action' on the back, I thought was the height of cool when I bought it. I was even fearless enough to go down the front to the moshpit and go kerrraaaazzzy, something I would rarely dream of doing now in my old and personal safety conscious state. I also (unlike my compadres who were all into US hardcore punk bands like NOFX and Bad Religion) attended Gene's headline slot on the Saturday night in the NME tent and completely fell in love with Martin Rossiter, little realising what a pretentious wanker he was in real life.

Subsequent years were also fantastic experiences and I went to Glastonbury in 2000 which was a whole other level of festival going. I did love Glasto but I do have a special place in my heart reserved for Reading, being somewhat of an indie kid deep down. So watching it on the telly, cider in hand (bad for the diet but that's another story) in the comfort of my own sofa, made me feel quite nostalgic for my mid twenties and the music that was around then.

Having said that, the bands that we saw were a real mixed bag of the good, the bad and the downright pointless. I mean, Razorlight headlining on the Friday night for god's sake. My personal favourites were Maximo Park, mostly because of the tunes, also because I love the fact that you can hear every word of the lyrics really clearly - must be something to do with the Geordie accent - but also (a teeny bit) because the lead singer, Paul Smith, is very fit (ooh what a 90s word). He used to have an atrocious hairdo but has seen the error of his ways and now sports a curly mop topped off with a bowler hat. He's also obviously been in the gym a lot recently...
CSS, Interpol and Kings of Leon were also great, and Trent Reznor doing 'Hurt' was pretty amazing too. Much as I find Zane Lowe a pain in the arse, I did agree with him when he commented that it was good to see NIN 'reclaim' the song as their own from the recent idolatry of the Johnny Cash version, which admittedly does also give the spine a tingle. We did settle down to watch the Smashing Pumpkin (Billy Corgan having roped in a load of jobbing musicians to take over his previous bandmates' roles) trawl through 3 greatest hits before being infomed that the BBC weren't allowed to show any more. Doing it for the fans eh Billy.

Oh, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were shit, as has been the case all too often recently. I love the quote Mandrew has on his facebook profile from Nick Cave: "I'm forever near a stereo saying, 'What the fuck is this GARBAGE?' And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers."