Bored in Reading?

Looking for something to do in Reading? Local blog Reading Roars offers a few good suggestions here. I have to say, I've done hardly any of them, but intend to change that!

Scenes from around town

The face in the windows at Kings Point on King's Road.


Someone thought the Girl and Swan sculpture (there's a swan above her head) could use some hand-shoes. Everyone's an artist these days.


The gate at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Walk looks like the writer, and always remains open so that anyone may pass freely. The walk is just outside the old Reading Gaol (that's pronounced "jail" y'all) where Wilde was imprisoned for two years .

Getting dodgy with dollars

My mom loves the Dollar Tree. It's a little store not far from her home in rural Alabama. Everything is a buck, and she can have fun shopping on just a little money. I have been the recipient of many silly, often tacky, gifts from said store, all of which were appreciated because they were purchased with love by someone for whom every dollar counts.

Last week Mom told me there's now a sign at the Dollar Tree that says they won't take dollar bills. Say what?! How can you not take a dollar when it's in the name of your store? Isn't that false advertising? That would be like if Pizza Hut stopped selling pizzas. It just seems wrong.

Apparently the reason for the ban on bucks is that someone has been passing counterfeit dollar bills at the store. So that means some criminal mastermind decided to not only go to the time and effort to make fake one dollar bills instead of tens or twenties, but he or she also decided the place to spend them that would be worth risking prison was the Dollar Tree. Because stale cookies, out-of-date toiletries, fuzzy dice and various other things not worth more than a buck anyway are worth risking a few months eating cheap hot dogs and dreading shower time in county jail while you await trial. And he or she will spend the time in jail, 'cause you can't post bail with $10,000 in fake dollar bills.

The beauty of bad dancing

This video called "Dancing" by Matt Harding is a must-see. It shows Matt traveling around the world doing a silly dance, with brief clips in dozens of cities filmed on digital cameras. Crowds and children sometimes join in. The background music, composed especially for this video, gives a poignant feel. Seeing so many people around the world come together in a joyful celebration to do a goofy dance with a stranger actually made me cry a little. It's lovely, fun, funny and touching. Shake on, Matt. You can learn more about his story at his Web site.

Getting rural at the museum

We visited the Museum of English Rural Life on Saturday as there was a special event with people doing demonstrations of old-timey crafts, music, etc. And peppered throughout the museum on various displays were stuffed toy rats, an homage to the lovely dark corners, grassy areas and rubbish bins of Reading. One supposes. There was even a game in the courtyard called Smack a Rat or some such in which darling tykes could take a bat and try to smack a toy rat dropped down a tube by a volunteer. Ah, a glimpse of the good old days!

But besides an odd preoccupation with rats, the museum was a perfectly nice example of a small museum preserving remnants of a past way of life, with old farm equipment, milk bottles, wagons, and homespun clothing. They even had the obligatory gift shop, complete with bookmarks made of sheep poo -- the perfect gift for that recycling fanatic on your Christmas list!

Porn at Poundland

No, I'm not talking about some adults-only club with a graphic name -- Poundland is a store where everything costs £1, kind of like The Dollar Tree in the U.S., except with everything costing twice as much (£1 = $2).

This morning I found shelves overloaded with one-pound porn DVDs, bearing such titles as Suburban Wives 1 and Girls in Uniform 2. But I just noticed I got Suburban Wives 1 *Volume 2*. Oh no! Will the story still make sense if we didn't see Volume 1 first? Ditto with the other DVD, as it's part 2, Volume 5. They also had Suburban Wives sequels through to No. 7. Hubby wondered if they manage to carry the characters' storylines successfully through to the end. Hmm, I'm guessing there are no storylines.

I arrived home to tell my hubby what a good wife I am. Yes, I was out spending his money. But hey, I also bought him porn. At Poundland. You want to hand some surly cashier a pile of cheapo porn? Ok, maybe some of you do that regularly anyway. But in my case, that shows love, man. And I wasn't really embarrassed; you may recall me blogging about how this store sold vibrating stuffed penises with smiling faces around Valentines' Day, in among all the other fare you normally see at a dollar store (or 2-dollar store, in this case). So I think the cashiers have seen it all. And after we watch these films, I will have, too.

Yes, Virginia, editorial meetings really are boring

The Liverpool Daily Post became the first UK newspaper to broadcast its editorial meeting live on the Web on May 13. I couldn't get through more than two and a half minutes. God, editorial meetings were dire when I had to go to them, and I sure wouldn't want to sit through them without being paid. At least if there are no cameras around, most meetings are slightly spiced up by the possibility of a good argument, chastisements over screw-ups in the previous day's paper, and once in awhile an inappropriate comment that has everyone whispering afterward about how so-and-so should watch what he says 'cause someone could go to HR over that. (That last one probably only happens in the States, because I'm not sure what it would take to be considered inappropriate office behavior in the land of making sexual jokes at the office after having a couple beers at lunch, but it's got to be something heavy duty to get into trouble here from what I've heard).

And could the people at the Liverpool meeting look any more uncomfortable? At least if the cameras weren't on they could doodle, surreptitiously read a paper, or try to doze off with eyes wide open. I can't imagine how much it would suck to have a camera at one of these meetings. Check it out below: