It's a wonderful lift! Look at the curves and chrome!
This is a little unfair. Reading is a perfectly pleasant small city. However, its historic heart has largely been obliterated by a 1990s mall and its recent replacement, The Oracle; this is identical to the new Norwich mall, complete with House of Fraser at one end and a World of Sports (note: no actual sports equipment sold) at the other. There are a few nice streets and buildings -- with a particular shoutout to the quaint Merchant's Arcade and its secondhand bookshop, collectors' store, and brand-new sweet shop -- but you can't get anywhere near the prison, and the abbey ruins are closed. As with most other UK cities, corporate buildings and small apartments are being thrown up, but it remains to be seen whether they're ever occupied. It also has a fiendish one-way system that seemed determined to stop us from reaching our hotel and led to angsty three-point turns.
However, we managed to have a rather nice weekend. Scarily, it was my first night away since we moved into our new home ... back in April! The weather was good, and our parking was free, thanks to NCP's credit card payments system not working on Sunday morning. The kittens got to spend their first nights in a cattery and appear to have survived -- although they've been quite mouthy since getting back from pokey this morning. We had a lovely meal at the Malmaison Brasserie and even managed to find me a winter coat and jacket, courtesy of Ben Sherman (in the aforementioned mall). Best of all, we met up with friends, both for coffee and cake on Saturday afternoon at Picnic, one of the few independent coffee shops near the main shopping area, and then at a noisy, sweaty 40th birthday party at Afroba on Saturday evening. And at the end of the day, that's what really counts -- not buildings.
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