Walking: Lewknor to Henley-on-Thames

I had the day off yesterday, and the weather forecast was good, so we took the opportunity to finish the Oxfordshire Way, returning via Lewknor and the Ridgeway to follow the trail up into the Chilterns at Christmas Common and then through wooded hills to descend to the Thames at Henley, twelve and a half miles in total.



It was a lovely day, sunny but not as hot as it was when we walked the last stage, and this is a really delightful stretch of path. A lot of it runs through beechwoods, interspersed with fields and occasional flint-and-brick villages. It may not have been as long as some of the sections we've done, but it was definitely the hilliest section, with three major climbs and corresponding descents, and quite steep in places. We stopped for lunch by the preetty little flint church at Pishill (pronounced, I gather, Pies'll), because if there's one thing that I've learnt from all this walking is that if you're in England and want a bench to eat your sandwiches on you're almost certain to find one in a churchyard. Pishill Church was particularly well-equipped, possessing not only a choice of benches but a kettle, mugs and tea and coffee left in the porch for the benefit of thirsty walkers, along with rather good flapjack in return for a suggested donation of 50p per piece. (I'd say "most C of E thing ever", except that on Sunday we went to see the helter-skelter in Norwich Cathedral.) After Pishill, we climbed the hill at Maidensgrove and then descended via the Warburg Nature Reserve to a stretch of road-walking before a final climb from Middle Assendon to cross Henley Park and head down to the town and river.

The end of the Oxfordshire Way isn't commemorated with a plaque or obelisk as better-known trails are; I think the last (or first, depending on your direction) sign is the one pointing off a road on the outskirts of Henley along the path to Henley Park. I don't think it's ever going to be a destination walk, and I probably wouldn't revisit the middle sections, but it's been lovely getting to know Oxfordshire a bit better and the first and last couple of sections were delightful. I wouldn't redo yesterday's walk as a linear walk, but that was mainly because of the awkwardness of the transport links that way; having to get the bus into Oxford and then all the way out again via Headington to Lewknor meant that it took us an hour and a half to get to the start, and the same again to get back via the two changes needed to get from Henley to Oxford by train. I would absolutely do a circular walk on the same paths, though, and as our book of adventurous walks includes one which starts and finishes in Christmas Common and returns via the Oxfordshire Way from Maidensgrove via Pishill, I suspect we definitely will.

Reading: Top Marks for Murder

Top Marks for Murder, the eighth of Robin Stevens's Wells and Wong mysteries, landed on my Kindle last week and because I was definitely in the mood for comfort reading I ended up starting it almost straight away. This one sees Daisy and Hazel returning to Deepdean School after their adventures in Hong Kong and London, where they find that both they and the school have changed in subtle ways. At the end of a rather awkward half-term, Daisy in particular is delighted when their dorm-mate Beanie sees what appears to be a murder from the window of the dorm, and the Detective Society swing into action to solve their next murder case.

While I think I'm coming to prefer the books in the series that are set outside Deepdean, in particular for their obvious dialogue with different classics of Golden Age detective fiction, this was still great fun. I enjoyed seeing Daisy and Hazel working with their schoolfriends to solve another crime, and the return to Deepdean really highlights how much Hazel has grown as a character over the last few books. Of course, the only problem with having read this one straight after release is that I have no idea how long I'll have to wait for the next one!

Watching: Blinded by the Light

After an uninspiring few weeks at the cinema, tonight we went to see the other music-based British film branded as "the feel-good hit of the year!" on the sides of buses. Unlike Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle's sunny seaside Beatlemania froth, Gurinder Chada's new film, Blinded by the Light felt like it had some substance to it. Along with, obviously, some of the greatest songs ever written.

Blinded by the Light is based on a memoir by journalist and Springsteen obsessive Sarfraz Manzoor, and tells the story of 17-year-old Javed, an aspiring writer who despairs of ever getting away from his Luton home. It's set against a background of the racial tensions and unemployment of late-80s Britain (the National Front march through Luton, and Javed's father is made redundant following swingeing cutbacks at the Vauxhall works), while at home Javed's traditionalist father refuses to countenance his son's moving away for university or even going to a party hosted by the neighbour he's been friends with all his life. Frustrated and despairing, having to lie about studying English for A-level instead of Economics, Javed's life changes when he listens to the Bruce Springsteen tapes a friend at sixth form college has lent his, and he hears his own life in the Boss's lyrics.

I loved how perfectly the film evoked what it was like to be a teenager in the 80s. There are so many elements that remind me how my past looked, from the blocky cars to the silk scarves Javed's girlfriend Eliza wears tied in a big bow round her hair (I had so many of those scarves!) to the Parker rollerball Javed writes with (I had a Parker rollerball. Did you have a Parker rollerball? If you were a teenager in the UK in the late 1980s, you quite possibly did). And more than that, I loved how it evoked what it was like to listen to the music that spoke to your soul; to put your headphones on, press play on your Walkman (or cheaper own-brand alternative), slide the volume to high and feel like the whole world was a music video unfolding around you. The film does this brilliantly through the use of quasi-fantasy sequences where the people around Javed join in dancing along with him; it could be cheesy and awkward, but for me it came down on the right side of that. There were lots of pop-culture in-jokes which raised laughs among the audiece (Michael Fish's 'A woman phoned the BBC to say there was a hurricane on the way...' and Javed's father's response to finally listening to Springsteen were the biggest ones), and while absolutely not romanticising either the 80s or Luton and not skirting the very real issue of racism, then and now, there are also a lot of moments where people are shown to be kinder and more generous than first appearances might have led us to believe. I definitely recommend this, even if you don't like Springsteen, though obviously it's even better if you do like the songs.