Reading Roars!

Market Place. London Street. Napier Road. Church Street. Portman Road. Shinfield Road. Southcote Service Station. Hurricane Way. Knowsley Road. Buckingham Drive. That’s ten branches of Tesco within about five miles of the town centre.
Now they’re planning an eleventh, in the old Blockbuster Video unit at the east end of Oxford Road. Do we really need [...]

There’s not exactly a shortage of coffee shops in Reading, but now we’ve got one that promises something different to the mediocre-coffee-mass-produced-pastry-and-free-wifi crowd. Workhouse Coffee - until now located only on the Oxford Road, away from the town centre - has begun trading from its new branch after a low-key opening on Monday.
Based in the [...]

Remember how Reading Festival was granted an increase in capacity last year, up from 78,500 to a total of 85,000 by 2011? No? Well then you’ll definitely have missed the accompanying news: that Reading residents now get first dibs on a batch of 3,500 tickets to the festival.
If you live in an RG1, RG2, RG4, [...]

If you’re looking for something not at all lovey-dovey to do on Valentine’s Day, you could do worse than head down to The Hexagon to see Dave Gorman perform as part of his Sit down, pedal, pedal, stop and stand up tour. The slightly weird name stems from the fact that he toured the same [...]

We’re a little late with this one, so you might already have realised that Reading Borough Council has decided to chuck the town’s hat into the ring and bid to be granted city status in 2010.
Reading has tried this twice before; on previous occasions we were beaten by economic powerhouses like Wolverhampton and Newport. Third [...]

You probably got bored of hearing the phrase “adverse weather conditions” about two weeks ago, but the snow’s effect is still being felt. Market Place in central Reading is closed to all traffic this morning as a couple of impressively-sized potholes have opened up. It’s the freezing and thawing of water that does it, y’know.
Lots [...]

You might remember that Tesco opened one of its “Metro” stores at the junction of Crown and London Streets around a year ago. We took this photo tonight because we thought you might be interested to see what’s happened to the local corner shop since.
Six months ago this shop - less than a minute’s walk [...]

You know those recent stories about David Cameron’s airbrushed face? They might be a little exagerrated. Going by yesterday’s Cameron Direct event at the Madejski Stadium, the Conservative leader’s face really does have an unusually smooth texture.
It’s probably designed to match his smooth manner on stage, because, well practiced at this sort of unscripted Q&A, [...]

We’re a little surprised (but not displeased) to learn that David Cameron’s snow-affected visit to Reading has been rescheduled with impressive alacrity. The leader of the Conservatives will now visit the Madejski Stadium (we’re not sure which bit) on Thursday 14 January at 5.15pm.
We hadn’t anticipated the event being rescheduled so soon and have been [...]

One of the things we’ve enjoyed about this week’s snow is the range of snowmen and sculptures that have sprung up around Reading. There’s definitely something about the white stuff that inspires creativity.
We had a quick hunt around town yesterday with a camera (ok, round Forbury Gardens) and spotted these masterpieces. Click for full-size images.
We’ve [...]