This is not a Wendy House:
This is a Tipi on the Yakama Nations reservation. It’s BIG. You could fit a family of, oh, many, and one of thier SUV’s in it. That’s B I G. I want to go big-family camping, horse riding, hat wearing, and and and…. …more stuff… …let me out!
1990
While searching my drawers for material to take to this diary reading event I rediscovered way too much ‘poetry’, uhum. Below is a piece inspired by Swampthang, presented in original scrawl. To read it you need to
START SQUINTING NOW:
Judging by the uneven scrawl it could have been written on a #11 bus.
This is not a Wendy House:
It’s the gorgeous old (circa 1900) WILD WEST Lyle Hotel on the Columbia river gorge. It was built as an hotel when its main clientelle arrived as traffic on the Columbia river, about 200 yards away. Then nearby (100yards) train tracks bought more custom. The building has been used for many things in its lifetime including a Doctors surgery. Now it is an Hotel again. More photographs of the hotel on flickr. Very cute and wild west. The modern slant provided by the hotel included a very impressive and reasonably priced wine list and restaurant menu. The restaurant had white table-clothes and a live flamenco guitar player. It felt very classy. It even had vegetarian menu items! The foyer felt like a lounge with a large leather sofa and multiple books to please wine connoisseurs seeking information about wines and local wineries.
The staff were friendly, cheerful and totally unpretentious. For example, one server dripped red wine on the white table clother after pouring my glass. I winced, poor girl. She continued, easily, without making a fuss. Another cautiously admitted it was her first day with a big winning smile. She looked happy to be starting work there. For me, this made the place feel homely and friendly, a place I’d want to visit again. People expecting the kind of souless highly professional presentation you find in city centre establishments with a similar high quality menu might be disappointed.
i’m planning to take my biddies there next time they visit the US.
Joanna Lumley was an early ‘Bond Girl’ in ‘On her Majesty’s Secret Service’. She became a big star in the UK as a secret agent in the 1976 revival of British TV cult classic drama ‘The (New) Avengers’. This drama was unusual for having a female lead that was intellegent, pro-active, assertive, witty and sexy. Her character called ‘Purdey’ (after the gun) had a distinctive haristyle that became very popular in 70′s Britain.
Since that series Joanna Lumley has remained an icon of British female sexiness. She is probably more well known internationally for her role as “Patsy” in “Absolutely Fabulous”. Less well know for her long term support of the Free Tibet Campaign.
oOo look:
Darling‘s ‘Device Manager’ says she has 3 playful monitors! I can only find one. This baby is full of suprises, I’ll keep looking for the other two… …maybe they’re disguised…
was their compulsive chatter too cheerful to swallow?
it drowned the silences in someone’s life
that someone, using a taut silk scarf, stopped the air to their songs
now their silences float in, riding the morning tide
note: inspired by the theme of a night-long converation with a drunken suicidal anarchist circa 1988. My dawn chorus is loud and clear every morning in my inbox
1986
Unlimited travel, freedom printed on my West Midlands Travel pass. Buses, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Trains too! No more planning my journeys by cost or parental good will. No-one I knew could afford a car. Riding Double Decker buses above the driver with views across the city and into first-floor rooms of street lining houses. Everything is on show through those windows: loneliness; lovemaking; waiting; TV watching; eating; arguments; cats watching me watching them.
Sunday riding the “outer circle”, route 11. A circle by name, squished octagonal by map, and voluptuous curvacious rolling ride by road. Either way if you keep going long enough you end up right back where you started. The route is strewn with churches, graveyards, suburbs, slums, shopping streets, industrial ‘parks’ and other passengers. A couple made love on the back seat of the upper deck. When they noticed me noticing them we all giggled. I respected their location choice because its warm, dry, relatively private, and best of all it lacks the scent of rotting mice …
2006
Commuters reading books. A lady explains to her phone how to treat dry skin then takes its advice on using a tea-bag to treat a sore eye. Everyone looked busy, except me. Passengers in another part of Seattle could make a very different impression. I wanted to ride the buses ’til the sun had long set and the buses carried me home, tired and sated. But
My stop. Temporarily mislaid freedom.
Maybe Sunday….
fascinated by the evolution of euphemisms? This book could be good for you, it was for me:
when will jesus bring the pork chops? George Carlin
It’s proudly sitting in my Loo to hold the attention of people taking a short ‘rest’. It’s not due to escape soon.
I’m forcing myself to release the books I’ve been holding hostage in my home for years. Todays escapees:
Fabulous public librarys and internet access remove the ’need’ to own many books. Despite this lack of ‘need’ it is very painful to let books leave. I haven’t managed to release my 16th Birthday present from my brother – The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
What books would you have difficulty releasing?
