Reading Roars!

Sunday 14 February is not only a day for lovers, but the first day of the Year of the Tiger on the Chinese Lunar Calendar.
London offers the best Chinese New Year celebrations in the South-East, but if you’re inclined to stay in Reading, here are several ways of getting the Year of the Tiger off [...]

Do you “heart” Valentine’s Day, now only one week away at the time of writing?  Here are 7 things to do in Reading and the Reading area to make it a romantic day to remember:
1. Go for a romantic walk in the gorgeous countryside surrounding Reading and combine this with an intimate Sunday pub lunch.  Country pubs [...]

Yesterday’s result wasn’t bad, was it?
Reading’s 2-1 defeat of Liverpool, knocking them out of the FA Cup, was an historic achievement.  It was not as great as the Royals’ first victory against Rafa’s side (when Liverpool lost 3-1 in December 2007), but it was the more significant of the two. 
For a start, the encounter was at Anfield, a [...]

I’ve not updated this blog since early July 2009.  That’s a whopping 6 months of silence.  I’ve been overseas, making it pointless for me to keep the blog going, unless I comment on external news related to the town or perceptions of Reading from afar (generally speaking, the football club is known but that’s pretty [...]

I mentioned in a previous post last week’s Reading Borough Council Scrutiny Panel meeting with First Great Western and Network Rail.  I have to do the right thing and confess that I wasn’t present on the occasion, simply because I work in London and wasn’t able to get back to Reading in time (my fault, [...]

A new Workhouse Coffee is in the works.  The new-look cafe will look like this (according to WHC’s Eva Marie Fels):

Will have a completely new flooring system.
All new espresso machines including a unit being built in Italy right now that is not for market release until 2010.
Look even less than it already does like a shop [...]

A local UI designer, Ros Horner, reached out to me recently, saying that Reading’s Zerodegrees had won a CAMRA Pub Design Award in the new build category. 
Ros observed in her blog post:
It goes to show that Real Ale doesn’t have to be all beardy old beer bellies and horse brasses. (Not that there’s anything wrong with [...]

Last night, I was fortunate enough to experience the Las Iguanas launch party, held at their new Reading restaurant at The Oracle Riverside.  This was my first Las Iguanas (Spanish for “The Iguanas”) visit, although I’ve had a peek inside two of their other restaurants, in Brighton and on London’s South Bank.
I’m grateful to Lucy Harwood, Las Iguanas Marketing [...]

I was pretty stunned to read that Network Rail bosses are to receive six-figure bonuses.  I don’t like seeing executives rewarded for failure anyway, but this really stung.  The UK rail travel experience is often unpleasant and horrendously expensive.
Fortunately, if you feel similarly frustrated, you can have your say this coming Tuesday evening, as Network Rail and [...]

Like Reading’s blogosphere, the town’s Twitterverse is flourishing. 
I believe we now have what can be described as a legitimate Reading identity (or strands of identity) on Twitter, shaped by 4 key developments:

#rdg was created
#rdgtweetup event and corresponding hashtag were created
Journalists from getreading/Reading Post and Reading Chronicle joined Twitter
Reading Chronicle and getreading/Reading Post began using #rdgnews to publish [...]