It was the day after Easter Monday and a rousing end of The Village Easter Festival gig that saw a bunch of Brits dance to African music at a Polish club. What better time to celebrate more of our town's African affiliations ?

The Limpop Grove gig at Piwnicia was joyful and exhilarating at a time when so many people are trying to divide our communities. In my younger days I promoted African bands in London and all over the country and I look back fondly on those days.

So it was with anticipation that I headed to the Biscuit Factory for a catch up with the wider inReading team.

I love the Biscuit Factory but do think that it is not very competently run. It suffers from 'Starbucks Syndrome' whereby students sit here for hours with a cold or empty coffee cup or Pokémon players gather and consume a single drink.

Thia wonderful communal space needs some plants and a lick of paint and some TLC from someone who cares. Instead you feel that the people running it are just under the cosh, or couldn't care less...

It should be the perfect place for modern going out entertainment for the 'experential' works we now live in - a Blue Collar Corner indoors and with screen and stage based entertainment

But it's actually a rather depressing space that demands someonw who cares. A dreadful website, lack of publicity and a sparse offering, with the rather incongruous presence of a record store. How about a weekly farmers' market. a weekly crafter's fair ? Showing sports and opera and theatre live ?

And of late crisps or popcorn are the best you can hope for as good.

Now, please indulge me here. I stopped going to the cinema because I HATE the smell of popcorn. It disgusts me. And then the phones, the talking. why would you bother when I have a 75" telly and all the choice in the world at home.

So this is where my confession comes in. I was a film student. Ye, not only did I watch movies but I actually got an honours degree in watching movies (and writing about them).

With Vue about to close the perilous fate of the Biscuit Factory may be the last enclave for publicly watching movies in a town that used to have eleven cinemas with over ten thousand seats.

Since Sarv's Slice departed some months ago, it has lacked eating options beyond crisps and the dreadful popcorn, so it's good to see a new incumbent take up residence.

Many Vessels (at least that's what I think they are called - they have no website and no branding beyond an MV sign) offers largely Nigerian/Caribbean food. 

Now, this is my area of expertise. After spending my uni years and early time in London with a Nigerian girlfriend I learnt to seek out the few places where African food was available in the UK in the 80s (shout out to Balogums in Earl's Court and the Africa Center in Covent Garden). I also learnt to cook many Nigerian dishes competently. The cuisine is, not surprisingly, a cousin of Caribbean cooking which is probably better known in the UK, and more recently has been 'elevated' by establishments such as the Michelin starred Chishuru in London's Fitzrovia, nearby Akoko and Reading's own Avilah.

Today there are at least five African restaurants in Reading, reflecting the increase in the number of people from the world's fastest growing continent who have selected our town as their home. Many work in caring and the NHS professions and without them it is unlikely that we would have anything close to the standards of care we benefit from in our area. But some have obviously taken up catering as a route to a livelihood in our country like Jews, Chinese, Bangladeshis and many other before them.

Now, be warned that this is not fine dining - it is pre-prepared packages that are microwaved or heated.

We didn't try the many snacks and pies on offer which might be perfect for a film viewing or to accompany a Camden ale from the bar, and went straight to the main meals, selecting the oxtail and jolof rice, chicken and rice and dodo.

It is a shame that there are no stews on offer - chicken pepper soup, groundnut stew or egusi would have been welcomed.

The oxtail was somewhat paltry, but delicious - three bone pieces with gelatinous beef falling off it, the accompanying jolof rice was OK, but not great. The basmati rice used did not suck up enough of the pepper/tomato sauce for my liking. I always prefer my jolof with long grain and not the more delicate basmati rice and the microwaving did not help.

Likewise the chicken rice was fine, even if the chicken was a bit dry and the rice, flavoured with tumeric and other spices, with a few corn kernels and pieces of veg was plenty and unremarkable and tasted like nothing I have ever eaten in Nigeria.

Indeed, I kept on thinking this was Nigerian food done by way of the Caribbean. The cuisines are similar, but this had food been blown off course.

The dishes came with what I know as dodo - salted slivers of plantain deep fried. But here the dodo meal was a delicious veg dish in a pepper spice and onion sauce with plantain cubes. It was fab - the tartness of the pepper offset by the sweet plantain.

But there was a lot of bland rice and very little anything else. over the past few years. Have worked with a couple of Caribbean restaurants in Reading and this kind of cuisine is easy to do much better than this.

Many Vessels is a home cooking tryout masquerading as a cafe and is just totally wrong in this space.

The server saw us using the takeaway lids as plates and brought us a couple of proper plates, and then a spoon. Otherwise it's wooden forks like you find in fish and chip shops and takeaway containers. It's somwhat ironic that they do not really have many vessels..  Low cost and low maintenance but probably wrong for this context. The Biscuit Factory people need to visit the various Market Halls in London (there's even one half an hour away at Paddington now).

The place soon filled up with after school students each with a bottle of pop to last them the next few hours and open laptops. No one else seems to be eating from plastic trays.

We had some Camden ale and a bottle of decent white from the somewhat depleted looking bar. (Being a member gets you a discount on the booze and some free tickets.)

Like the Biscuit Factory, this food could have been so much more. No one else was eating, and even sitting on the outside balcony in the sunshine the whole experience was a bit miserable. Everything needed to be levelled up.

I couldn't help thinking that Glen and Tim and the Blue Collar team could really make something of this space as we wandered around the corner to The Rising Sun, contemplating the massive changes coming to this part of Reading .