ramblin’ – Page 8 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

Twenty Good Things About The ‘Ding

Over the August Bank Holiday in 2004, TLC and I packed up everything we’d somehow squeezed into a little end-terrace Victorian two-bed house in East London, and lit out for the sticks. The decision to move was partly to do with work—C’s job was relocating out of London and we needed to find a place within shooting distance of the Oxfordshire science zone near Harwell.

The main reason? We were done with the Big Smoke. Too crowded, too noisy, too dirty too—much. We needed a reset. It was time to go west, where the air is clean. We needed to breathe again.

So we looked at a map, drew some lines and circles, figured out the perfect midpoint between where C and I needed to be for work.

Slough.

We reconfigured.

A bit more research and we settled on a big town with a big heart twenty miles west of Betjemen’s bete noire, straddling a river and a canal. A couple of visits and one very fortuitous twist of real-estate fate led, six months after we started looking, to a bulging-at-the-seams Nissan Micra pulling away from Woodville Road in Walthamstow for the very last time, as R.E.M’s Leaving New York synchronistically rolled up on the car radio.

That was twenty years ago, and we’ve never looked back. Reading is our home now, in a way London somehow never was. We have built a life for ourselves here, and although it doesn’t have all the facilities that a big city can offer, Dingtown has a big double handful of gems which give it a bit of a hometown advantage. In honour of two decades in a town called Ding, here are twenty reasons we like it so much.

Dig in. Here we go.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 26

It’s sunflower season. Well, actually, it’s everything season, as the garden reacts to the hot wet weather with an explosion of fecundity. My cucumber plants, grown late from seed and slow to start, have filled the greenhouse in the space of a week. Our trug, which I planted with two tiny squash plants, is invisible under a ramble of greenery and fruit. The brambles from next door which I’ve somehow managed to keep in check this year have rewarded my patience with great heaped handfuls of sweet, finger-staining blackberries.

And of course, the sunflowers, high and proud, shining in late summer sunshine, some taller than me. In February they were seeds in a packet. Now they are a spectacular show. A little time, a tiny bit of effort and here we are, nodding along to each other, shoulders back and chins high.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 24

After last week’s adventures, my poor old brain has insisted on a reset. Consequentially, it’s a short chapter this week. I’ll regroup next week with a less scattershot offering.

This week: early rising, a Frasier murder mystery and the greatest Emmy acceptance speech ever.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 25

These are the strange times. The dog days. Summer is in full swing, yet at the time of writing (Thursday afternoon, a quiet time after work, TLC working away upstairs, Millie in the conservatory snoozing while pretzeling herself into increasingly impossible contortions) it is wet and windy and—well, a bit blah, frankly. Post-anniversary blues, I suppose, with our next break a whole (checks diary) SIX WEEKS AWAY! How are we to cope? When shall we breathe fresh Northern air again?

Oh well, at least the roads are quiet.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Long Road

A short section of a very long story—

A couple of days ago, TLC and I were heading back to our digs, aching and bone-deep weary after we’d somehow changed a quick stroll before dinner into a route march across poorly-mapped pastureland and rocky hillsides. Honestly, we do this to ourselves so often that it’s even funny anymore.

The last part of the track was, luckily, mostly downhill but there was one last upward dogleg to navigate. I sensed TLC slowing. She’s had trouble recently with her knees and Achilles tendon, yet she’s the one who will always lead us into uncharted territories. Wordlessly, I reached out my hand. Wordlessly, she took it and we negotiated the last slope together.

‘Thanks for the assist,’ she said once we were heading downhill again.

‘You know I’m always here for it,’ I said.

Copse End

I’m not sure I’d call it a breakthrough, but progress has definitely been made up at the troublesome end of the garden.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 23

I woke up on Friday morning seriously expecting the worst of news. That somehow, despite all reasonable predictions, the country had managed to fuck itself over once again. I still remember the day after the Brexit vote, reading the news in the small cottage where we were holidaying up in the hills above Coniston in the Lake District, wondering if it wouldn’t be better if we just never came back down the steep stone track again.

Sanity, this time, has prevailed, and the sorry bunch of chancers, incompetents and conmen who have blighted the UK’s economic social and moral landscape for the last fourteen years have been kicked unceremoniously into the long grass. Sadly, characters like Lord Scarecrow Jacob Rees-Mogg will be unaffected by their fall from grace. A little humiliation in the local sports hall, then off to have a little cry in their beds stuffed with money, It was all a game to them, a chance to extort power and money from the little people. We were ruled by vampires, and too weak from blood loss to do much about it.

In the end, I guess we have to thank that ridiculous ham left out in the rain Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson for the slow slide back into reason. If this was the sort of person the Tories thought was suitable for power, what did that say about them as a party, as a government, as human beings? From Johnson, found guilty of contempt and ejected by the same people who made him leader, it was a short and very bumpy run to BDSM-bot Liz Truss and finally, lastly and leastly, personality vacuum and nightmare gnome Rishi Sunak. Calling a snap election was the smartest thing he ever did. Pull the ripcord, jump out of the plane before it goes into the side of the mountain. He’s already quit the Tory leadership. I give it six months before he gives up his constituency and fucks off back to America. Sooner if the new team revoke non-dom status for creatures like his parasite wife.

To today, then. Rainy with the occasional shots of sunshine. That’s probably a good metaphor for the coming months. There’s a broken country to heal which takes time and yes, money. Let’s hope we start taxing those who can more than afford it and start taking better care of the vulnerable. Which, let’s face it, after the last near-decade and a half of battering, is most of us. I dunno about you, but I feel bruised and banged up.

I hope for change. I’ll settle for better. For now, at least, hope is back on the agenda, and that’s a feeling I really, really miss.

Sorry, rant over. Let’s have some links.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 22

I didn’t expect the new pool at Reading’s Rivermead Leisure Centre to be a place where I would be shockingly reminded of my own mortality. I like a bit of a swim, and thought the facility would be a grand place to get back into the habit. The problem was, I booked a fitness session by accident, and found myself trapped in a lane where there was no real chance to take it at an easy pace. Every time I turned I was faced by a determined-looking pensioner bearing down on me disapprovingly.

Readership, I lasted twenty minutes, and five of those were me perched on the side of the pool trying not to cough up a lung. When a concerned lifeguard came up and asked if I was OK, I knew I’d over-extended.

I’ll be back, but making darn sure to to book a gentler session. Obviously, I’ve been spoiled by empty hotel pools for far too long. Once my shoulders have fully popped back into their sockets, that is…

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 21

A busy old week, what with writing triumphs and social gatherings and an emergency plumber call out just when I was getting cocky. Things never run as smoothly as they could (including the first draft of Chapter 21, lost in a version conflict—gods I love repeating myself) ,so you might as well just enjoy the ride.

This chapter brings you alien tacos, the attempt to steal Graceland and a very insistent seagull.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.

The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 20

Doesn’t really feel like June, does it? TLC and I are still pulling out jumpers to wear in the evenings. As I sit writing, looking out at the garden this morning, I’m serenaded by the soft hush of rain on the roof. The grounds are looking especially lush right now, but oh what wouldn’t I give for a sunny afternoon to sip wine amongst the flowers? Oh well, you get what you get. We’ll probably all still be in shorts come November and we’ll have no-one to blame but ourselves.

Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.