Reading Roars!

I’ve just realised that Reading Roars! has passed its 3 year anniversary.  Three years!  I’m not convinced I can/should keep it going for another three.       

To date, there have been 412 posts (not an awful lot) and more than one theme change.  Culture is king: no other category has come close content-wise.

Regrets?  A few.  I wish I’d tried harder with the name (I quite like “The Reading Rover” now).  I made promises I couldn’t keep.

Anyway, keep buggering on, as Churchill famously said.

Again, it’s been a while since I last posted on this blog (though I have continued to provide updates on Twitter).  I have been out and about, doing this, that and the other - including recording fab new Roarcasts (= Reading Roars! podcast episodes) at Mix cocktail bar and Sushi One0eight.  More on these soon…

What makes a town unique?  It is said that the people make the town.  It is true of Reading, in my opinion, derided by some outsiders who describe it as “soulless” or a “commuter town” (quite a derogatory tag). 

There really is more to Reading than a busy railway station, commercial high street and shopping centres.  There are buzzing personalities who give the town a distinctive identity, through their community deeds for example, or their running of independent cafes and historical pubs.

It is a theme that I am exploring with a new podcast series, Roarcasts.   In this series, I aim to find out through informal conversations what makes busy people (local business owners, artists and community leaders, for example) in Reading tick, why they do what they do in Reading (as opposed to anywhere else) and what they have planned for the future.      

The series begins with a chat with Tutu Melaku of Tutu’s Ethiopian Table, the Ethiopian restaurant and catering service based at Reading’s Global Cafe.  In Roarcast #1, Tutu revealed to me why she started Tutu’s Ethiopian Table, what her most popular dish is, the importance of Ethiopian coffee and more. 

Before going any further, I should add that I was inspired by podcasts giants Nick Saalfeld and Mike Southon with their Beermat Radio podcasts and Alex Bellinger of SmallBizPod fame.  As for the apparently curious name “Roarcast”  (sounding somewhat like “broadcast”), this was wittily suggested by Joff Hopkins of Reading 107 FM.

Without further ado, the running order for Roarcast #1 (11 minutes 10 seconds) is below.  Please let me know what you think.  It’s a first for me, so plenty of room for improvement!  At times you will hear the sound fade out and in.  It’s a fairly crude editing technique for when I want to snip certain sections, but I’m a newbie and expect to come up with something better.

• 00:00:00  Introduction
• 00:00:48  Tutu’s Ethiopian Table: how it started
• 00:02:46  About the food
• 00:03:29  Authenticity, Fair Trade and keeping it local
• 00:05:52  (Ethiopian) coffee and popcorn
• 00:07:30  The most popular dish
• 00:07:57  Global specials: food from other countries
• 00:09:00  Ethiopian music and dance
• 00:10:10  Tutu’s Ethiopian Table opening times

 Roarcast #1: Tutu Melaku and Tutu’s Ethiopian Table [MP3]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I will be using pun-free headlines from now on. 

Thinking about it, half of my previous headlines with what I thought was cleverly-engineered wordplay didn’t really work anyhow (several headlines I wrote many months back now appear baffling to me).   Now I will try to make them as relevant as possible.

I’ve been experiencing all sorts of technical issues in recent weeks. 

This blog was infected with spam links, my wireless network is on/off/on/off (mostly off) and my home computer is wheezing.  All very irritating, on a par with midges, outdoor advertising and public transport, and the reason why there have been few updates lately. 

Technology can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be so achingly unreliable. 

I’ve been doing a bit of spring (winter?) cleaning on this blog.  A number of other sites, mostly blogs, appear to have “died”, so I’ve deleted links pointing to these ghostly apparitions.  It’s a bit sad (only a bit) as these were once vibrant communities - and now they are gone.  Does any reader know of a blog cemetery?

Anyway, the entire Community category has now disappeared.  DateReading.com is “coming soon”, and Oxford Road Area Community Website and Talk Reading seem to be with us no longer (does anyone have information about these last two sites?).

I have been experiencing a problem with my email (I’m unable to receive messages).  This is currently being looked at and I believe that it will be working again soon-ish.

If you wish to send me a message in the meantime, please submit a comment below.