This is our second Halloween in Henley, and golly, haven't things changed since I was a kid. To be fair, that was some time ago, but in those days, we children went out on our own, sans parents in tow and knocked on the doors of complete strangers. There was none of this trick or treat malarkey either - you were expected to recite a poem or sing a song before bagging your toffee apple or other tooth destroying sweetmeat.
Everybody's house was fair game then, but nowadays, you are meant to put a pumpkin outside your house to indicate that you are willing to receive a knock on the door from some small dressed-up person. So I bought a little LED pumpkin and put it on the doorstep. It worked well for the first couple of hours and I gave away lots of treats, which is just as well, as the Haribo starmix had begun calling to me as soon as I put them in the bowl by the front door. Naughty starmix!
And then the knocking stopped. Imagine my surprise when I looked outside and discovered that someone had pinched my little pumpkin! This is Henley, for goodness sake, not Hackney. I feel squashed........
It's a strange thing, but I had never been to Henley before coming to look at the house that we eventually bought and moved into. In all my years of being corporately entertained, I was never taken to the famous Henley Regatta. Talking of corporate entertainment reminds me of the time when I was working in the oil business in Aberdeen and ended up getting invited to an evening with strippers (female) by one of the employment agencies we used. Well, I say "invited", but the truth was that a colleague and I were fed up being excluded from the boyly outings and insisted that they ask us along. The best bit of the evening was the look on the faces of the other guests - all guys, of course - when we turned up. But I digress.
So what of life in Henley? Well, it's a big change from Singapore, that's for sure. Little Lola spends much of her time in what I call the "doggie donut" position, curled up tight on her bed, to keep warm. Frankly, I feel like doing the same thing on cold days, but there is no room in her bed for two, so I get out and about instead, as part of getting to know my new 'hood.
First up, Pilates on Monday morning with the lovely Michele. I used to go regularly to a class when we lived in London, but lost the plot rather in Singapore, so it's great to have my Pilates mojo back. Chris and I have also joined the HOT book club, which meets on the first Monday of the month in a local pub. This month's book was Ian McEwen's The Children Act, a great piece of writing, which provoked a really good set of discussions. While riding high on a tide of sociability, I offered to host the next meeting at our place. The book chosen for that meeting is A Christmas Carol, so I'm already thinking Dickensian thoughts and wondering whether I should decorate the house to resemble Dingly Dell. I can feel myself getting carried away with thoughts of roasting capons and sides of beef over an open fire, but perhaps I will just pop a few mince pies in the Aga and open a couple of bottles of red.........
The lovely C and I have also become members of the local cinema. The Regal Picture House is an absolute gem of a mini movie palace, with a lovely cafe, free wifi and nice comfy seats. We toddled off to see Mr Turner on Tuesday evening and it was just amazing. If you like film, go and see this one at the earliest opportunity. Quite frankly, even if you hate film, you might still like this one. Timothy Spall as Turner plays an absolute blinder and his housekeeper's skin condition, which developed throughout the film from a mild facial irritation to a full blown eruption of scaly, oozy, crustiness (I know, too much information), should have had its own credit at the end of the film, so spellbinding was it to watch.
I'm off now for my daily constitutional with Lola. Watch out for more tasty tales from the riverbank.
As I write this post I feel that the title of my blog should have been "Cold, wet and murky stuff", rather than HOT stuff, more of which in just a moment. HOT is an acronym for Henley on Thames, hence the blog title, so keep reading for my take on the goings-on in this lovely spot in the Thames valley.
We relocated here recently from Singapore and are still getting used to having everything more or less on our doorstep - a lovely cinema, theatre, Waitrose, Robert Dyas, not to mention numerous restaurants, bars and patisseries and of course, the river Thames. Sadly, there is no M&S, but I cherish the hope that one of the several empty shops (not a good look, BTW, if anyone on the Town Council should read this) might one day re-awaken as one of those mini M&S stores, like the one at Victoria station in London.
Anyway, so there I was, lying in bed and thinking it was time to get up and let the lovely Lola, our mini Schnauzer (and the best dog in the world) out into the garden for her morning pee. As I came down the stairs, I heard a strange noise emanating from the "orangery" as the people we bought the house from called it. Trust me, this is way too grand a title for the small, glassed-in passageway that links the kitchen to the utility room, but it does contain a lovely fish pond, complete with fountain. Well, I say "lovely fish pond complete with fountain" but there was nothing lovely about the sight that met my eyes as I went in search of the cause of what sounded like a large sumo wrestler asphyxiating, having swallowed a big Mac or twelve the wrong way.
The in-pond pump (why does that sound so much more technical than "the pump in the pond?") had fallen over and was no longer re-circulating filtered water back into the fishes' habitat, but spewing it out the back, so the water level had fallen dramatically and the fish were starting to look very concerned indeed. Well, if I could have seen them through the six inches of algae occupying the bottom of the pond, I'm sure they would have been looking a tad worried. Now, keen as I was to just stick the hose on and refill the pond, it did strike me that here was an opportunity to clean out the yukky green stuff once and for all. And so, dear reader, that is precisely what I did. I decanted the fish into the (clean!) recycling bin from the kitchen - not easy, those were some wriggly mothers - and set to with my hands, a scrubbing brush and a peg on my nose. Some two hours later, the pond was de-algaed, and scrubbed clean, I was filthy and smelling like a midden and the fish were back at home looking none the worse for their adventure. However, it appears that trauma can result in an emergency breeding response on the part of pond fish. Well, we had eight when they came out of the water and eight when they went back in. I have not bought any pregnancy tests as yet, still keeping my fingers crossed.
