Where is the Gnome of Winterbourne?

Those who don't know the ancient Royal County of Berkshire's capital often find the traffic system and ability to park rather baffling. The trains are so much easier - and one of the DH team has been know to say that the best thing about Reading is the station, where one can so easily get trains to fascinating places like Penzance, Carmarthen and even Scotland - and so escape from Reading. A town which was once, and probably still is, renowned for shopping, clubbing and fighting.  But if only those trains had all the personal comforts that every car now has as part of the standard kit. When the carriages come fitted with integral bluetooth connectivity, acceleration for 60-80 before you get to the next station, and double-fleece lined airbags, then public transport will start to claim the upper hand. But, as they say, one reaps what one sows. And today that included a horribly early start for members of the visiting team, and an anxious time hoping that the two hour parking zone would extend to three, as the discussions were too involved to get away exactly on time.

Another cars-in-Reading story very directly affected those at Winterbourne recently: a thief stole a car from just up the road and drove it off in something of a hurry. Unfortunately, he (or maybe she - but less likely) had rather a struggle to get the steering lock off. So s/he did not manage to deviate from the Newtonian principle of 'everything carries on in a straight line at the same speed unless acted upon by a force'. Unfortunately, the force that eventually stopped this runaway vehicle was the very solid hundred-year-old eight foot brick wall surrounding the centre's small garden. And that is where the car ended up, stationary at last. After many months of protracted contractual and insurance processes, the wall - and the garden within - were rebuilt. Hence the photos below, which the service users chose to have as their photo of something they wanted to be recognised.

Winterbourne's garden after rebuilding the wall

Unfortunately, there was a stronger but unfulfilled wish to have a photo of the Gnome of Winterbourne.

But this could not be found in the garden, and although there were rumours it was somewhere in the house - these could not be confirmed by the visitors.

Could this be who we are looking for?

If any members of Winterbourne would like to put the record straight - we promise to add the photo below, if you send it to us (we left our email details).

The quality of the biscuits ('decent shortbread') and coffee (freshly brewed) was noted favourably - especially as one member of the visiting team, with two very small children at home, was in great need of heavy caffeine doses.

The building caused some confusion - and although not exactly 'squashed olive controlled access' (see Cambridge, from Tuesday), it did have other more subtle ways of preventing visitors from leaving. One was to lead them from room to room in an effort to disorientate them, then to have strange twisting corridors leading nowhere when they tried to get away. The other (please forgive the indelicacy) was the loos. One was found hidden down a scary wood-panelled narrow staircase into the bowels of the building - where one could have well met a ghoul, or vampire or ork on the way; the other was up a strange curly staircase to another dead end corridor - with an oddly large loo at the top of it. Perhaps it is no surprise that accessibility requirements are demanding that the service moves to less haunted, or strange, premises.