Cynics say it gets earlier every year. If, like me, you work voluntarily for a certain radio station in the Kingston area, they may actually have a point – for us Christmas is celebrated in January! Before you say it, this is not woefully bad mistiming on behalf of the management. It’s just part of the tradition that is the Radio Station Christmas Meal.

Xmas meal - a social minefield?

This year I have been volunteered to help organise it, which no real problem as I’ve done this kind of thing before. Past experience has shown that the hosting of a successful Radio Station meal is a bit of a dark art, as there are many things that can go pair shaped at the first opportunity. One year, everyone found the food at a popular eatery near the Kingston Hill locale to be totally unpalatable. The news that the restaurant went out of business shortly afterwards came as no surprise!

At another meal, many years ago, I witnessed the only radio station fight – we had invited two representatives of a local commercial radio station along in an attempt to forge links with the community – it was something like that anyway. What happened was that one of them got incredibly drunk and was getting out of control – at one point he licked the bald head of an increasingly uncomfortable radio volunteer who had definitely had not signed up for this! Things came to a head (see what I did there!) when the representative’s colleague, after taking a whole evenings worth of his abuse, punched him in the face. It certainly calmed him down a bit though!

Another far less dramatic incident occurred when we all went to a remote restaurant that formed part of a hotel in Esher. Towards the end of the evening, myself and three other radio station members, all of us slightly the worse for drink, had just left the main building with a view to getting back to Kingston. A car pulled up and stopped in front of us. We all piled in grateful for the shelter from the winters chill, and waited politely to be asked where we wanted to be driven. After about five minutes the silence was starting to become uncomfortable. The driver suddenly piped up, and informed us that he wasn’t actually a mini cab, and that he didn’t have room for us and his family. We took the hint and went back to the bar to arrange a proper taxi.

That said, there have been some very good Christmas do’s, such as the one held at the function room of the Fountain pub in New Malden. Another aspect of these events is timing – December is a terrible month for trying to organise a social gathering as people are usually busy with their own yuletide preparations, which is why the mid January date has been favoured in more recent times.

Venue is another of those variables in the mix – trying to find a place which is easily accessible to all members is trickier that you’d think. At the moment I am considering the Rotunda in Kingston. This has quite a few restaurants within the complex, a couple of which do the Italian/English fare that tends to suit most people. Also, it has very good train and bus links.

At the moment I am just testing the water, trying to find out how many members would be prepared to commit to a meal. About a week ago I issued a memo asking for people to sign if they were interested. To date quite a few people have added their signature to it. These early signs are positive, and the fact that we are even thinking of organising a Christmas meal serves as another indicator that the Radio Station is turning the corner, and is coping with the difficulties that have beset us over the last eighteen months or so.

I’d wish you all a happy Halloween but it just passed me by…again! Earlier I was out in Kingston seeing a film (it was Johnny English Reborn in case you are asking) and a few of the natives were taking the ghost and ghoul theme very seriously indeed – the bars and pubs were full of those goth dressed ‘All Hallows Day’ revellers – the celebrations have certainly moved on from the days of trick and treating!

None of the above even remotely relates to what’s been happening to me for the last few months though – I’ve re-started something that I used to do a lot of in childhood. It can’t really be described as regression – it’s more a case of going ‘back to basics’ – I’m reading books again. It may not seem like much of a revelation, but up to about three months ago the only thing I could be bothered to read in the printed form was the newspaper sports sections when I had the odd five or ten minutes to spare.

tome-riffic!

This was not always the case. As a child I was a real book worm – I used to love reading.  Although I never could claim to have been much into the acclaimed literary stuff, I did read an awful lot of books. It all began with the ‘Cat in the Hat’ by Dr Seuss, and from then on the number of books I read increased exponentially. As a child I used to latch onto to certain authors and characters. I remember a series of books about the schoolboy adventures of  ‘Jennings’, who was pretty much in the mould of Richmal Cromptons ‘William’. Other childhood favourites were ‘Danny Dunn’ who was from the States, and there was the detective series ‘Agaton Sax’ created by the Scandinavian author Nils Olof Franzén. The works of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl got a look in, and I read tomes by countless other writers such as Jules Verne, John Mortimer, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie – just too many to list really. I just worked my way through the fiction section of the local New Malden library.

As I got older the stuff I read got a bit more specialised. I was an avid reader of science fiction – Harry Harrison’s ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ series was a firm favourite, and yes, I was one of those guys who bought a lot of ‘Dr Who’ books. In my teens I got really into horror – to this day I have read loads of Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson to name but a few. I also have a pretty extensive collection of Sven Hassel books, which are war stories of the flying guts variety, but I suppose there is no accounting for taste! This reading habit petered out in adulthood as I ended up doing other things. Work along with the development of the hectic squash playing, Kingston and Weybridge radio broadcasting type of lifestyle meant that I had precious little time to settle down with a book.

This was basically the state of play up to this August. Due to some structural changes at work I was between projects – I suddenly found myself with time on my hands. To fill the void I started reading the Millennium trilogy by Swedish author Stig Larsson that I had bought ages ago from a well known bookstore in Kingston. These provided the inspiration for the ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ series of films, and even though I have seen all the movies, the books proved to be a riveting read.

Even though I am back working full time I still try and find time to read. These days my book time is usually confined to my lunch hour. Once more, reading is back up there as part of my life.

I have literally a shed load of annual leave still to take, and about two weeks back I made a monster leave application that if successful will mean I’ll be off for most of the Christmas period! The only fly in the ointment is that my team leader is away on holiday, which kicks the granting of my mega break into touch until her return. As you can tell, these are trying times indeed.

Troll-tastic!

Like most situations in life there is a silver lining amongst this dark cloud of uncertainty – I have definitely got today off. Since I booked this weeks ago, the weekend is definitely starting now, and the itinerary is sounding good – I’m meeting an old school mate in London, and after lunch and a coffee, the plan is for an early evening cinema trip to catch a Scandinavian film called ‘Troll Hunter’. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of a movie with subtitles about the pursuit of a mythical being from child folk lore sounds positively high octane! Afterwards it’s dinner in town, followed by the return to Wimbledon for a few pints in the Prince of Wales.

So, in summary then, my day off is all about food, booze and trolls. I think it has potential…

That’s what was happening last Friday, and it was the result of some pretty nifty last minute organisation, none of which was done by me. It all started with the email a few days earlier – it was from a friend I hadn’t seen in a long while. Like me, she was a bit of a film buff, and as we usually go for a meal and a trip to the cinema I was surprised at her suggestion for a place to meet up – she wanted to go to a Prom!

For those of you who don’t know, ‘Proms’ is short for promenade concert, and this refers to the ones hosted by the BBC at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which normally take place over an eight week period during the summer. Although they sound a bit La De Dah, they’re actually OK – I have been a couple of times before with the guys from the radio station at Kingston, and despite not knowing much about classical music, I found the live performances entertaining. My only real Prom bug bear is the price of seats – on previous trips this averaged at around £25.00, which to my mind is a bit pricy.

That said, as I read her email further, this one sounded like a Prom with a difference as the BBC Orchestra were playing scores comprising solely of music from the movies, which would make it very accessible to someone like my good self. Another plus was the ticket price – £5.00 sounded very reasonable indeed!

As with most things in life, there was a reason for the cheap entry cost. The price of a fiver provided admission to a part of the Albert Hall known as ‘The Gallery’, which as the name suggests, is a circular walk way situated above the seating area, following the inner perimeter of the building. Also, unlike the seats, there was no way of making an advance booking for the Gallery, so in order to ensure our place we would have to resort to the old fashioned method of queuing! As this didn’t sound too bad, I agreed to go.

The day of the 12th came soon enough, and on what turned out to be a sunny Friday afternoon, I made my way to South Kensington tube. We had agreed to meet at the steps of the Albert Hall. All I had to do was to find out where the queue for the Gallery was. This was fairly easy to do – a very helpful staff member took me around to the side street where the Gallery queue started. It was all very well organised – I was given a ticket number that represented my position in the queue – once this ticket was obtained I could leave the queue for periods of up to half an hour at a time, so long as I informed the people around me of what I was up to. I tried to get a ticket for my friend, who was running a bit late, but was told that they had to be collected in person.

My friend’s arrival revealed that there was a few extra additions to the itinerary – there was a free talk on writing music for films which was due to start in the nearby Imperial College about an hour later. That still left some time to kill so we took one of those half hour breaks and went for a drink in the Imperial College Student Union Bar, which was conveniently nearby. This took me right back to my college days as the beer was so cheap – we are talking 1990′s prices here!

The talk turned out to be interesting – it took the form of a forty five minute interview of two guys who had written music for the film industry, and questions were taken from the audience. On rejoining the queue, the organisers signalled that we had to make our way to the Albert Hall – it was time to get our tickets. Once these were purchased we just had to make sure we turned up to the Prom. Following a brisk meal at the Imperial College Student Bar, which again did not disappoint (I got Scampi and Chips for £5.50!) we were back for the beginning of the concert.

We made our way to the top of the building. The Gallery turned out to be a pleasant venue – although it was crowded along the railing where you had to stand to see the orchestra, it was wide enough to allow people enough room to sit or even lie down. The amenities like toilets were easily accessible, and you could take along your own refreshments. That’s exactly what my friend did – she bought along some water, soft drinks and a bit of food which we had during the interval. The atmosphere up there was very informal and laid back.

The music was impressive – the orchestra belted out loads of film scores which I recognised instantly, including the one from ‘Star Wars’. The Bond Theme medley was especially good. Time flashed by, and it didn’t seem long before it was all over.  After leaving the Albert Hall, the rest of that warm summer evening was spent in the garden of the trusty Imperial College Bar. All in all we had a really good, reasonably priced night out, which doesn’t happen a lot in Central London!