wendy house

Overheard in the US:

• “I’m Swedish” says a rotund lady with an American accent that reveals no hint of Scandinavian rythm.    She demonstrated  no sign of the stylish dress sense  I’d witnessed on my trips to Stockholm and Linköping.   I didn’t ask ‘how’ she was Swedish.  I was only evesdropping on the conversation.   The American she spoke to accepted moved the conversation to another topic.
• “I’m Finnish” a slender girl in an American accent told me.   “How?”  two of her grandparents were born in Sweden before becoming naturalised American citizens.   She had met her grandparents though  never visited Europe.      She knew very little about the country.   I didn’t mentioned my lineage.   She didn’t ask. She appeared to be enjoying telling me about hers.   I was enjoying being an  attentive audience.

The US authorities do not legally recognize dual citizenship.     It seems you can be a US citizen and declare yourself ‘as if’ native of another county.   To be a native of another country doesn’t require  having the benenfit of parents born in that country,   speaking the language, or having visited that country.

My father was born in the Karelia isthmus when it belonged to  Finland.   He holds a Finnish passport and emmigrated to England aged 19.   I was born after he became a British citizen.   My parents were both British citizens.   I know a bit about Finland by virtue of visits to relations, holidays in Scandinavia, stories from Dad, and cultural objects around my parents home.   But that hardly qualifies me to say ‘I’m Finnish’.      I am English.   I only lived one year in Scotland and spent numerous vacations in Wales and Ireland.    I suspect there were probably some Vikings in my mothers family tree.   By American conversational convetions I can probably  say ‘I’m  Viking’.   Watch out for the pillaging,   its overdue….

11C

Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

Bored of buses yet?
Not me!
Just look at this flash fancy new bus that runs on the 11 c route now. I want a go!

Bored Now
Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

sat above the driver of an 11c bus, with your feet on the sill, heaven! I’m easily pleased

11 in Yardley 1

Originally uploaded by BrilliantMistake.

Note: this is a repost of a deleted post where the formatting totally f*******-up my whole blog lay-out. Apologies to people with RSS feed who saw all my attempts to correct the formating.   You’ll have to squint to read the  paragraphs because using copy and paste for the repost hasn’t worked,   I can’t work out how to get back to the default font size for this post

My first experience of ‘geekism’ was meeting ‘Transport Management’ students at the Univeristy of Aston in Birmingham. One student had wall-papered his room with the Birmingham bus schedule.   He had a telescope that he used to check whether the buses were running on time. Another had his room full of blown-up photographs of the aeroplane’s that he had flown on. I went on a day trip with three of them to Stratford upon Avon train station. We never left the train station.   We wandered around photographing the trains. One lad went on to become an Air Traffic Controller.   Another lad drives armoured gold bullion vans.   His quirk was kissing cars, he would kiss any beautiful car he saw. Once on a very cold day he left the  skin of his lips on a red Porche. Transport students were strange, very happy, individuals. Their enthusiasm was infectious.   From them I developed the skill to love the  circular, octagonal, windy 11c Birmingham city bus route. The Transport students  understood. They lived in the house with mice.   They didn’t mind because their love of  Transport seemed to fill their hearts blinding them to many, personally  insignificant,  details of social conformity.   In the picture above the 11c bus route is portrayed as an oblong with gently curved corners.

Can you feel the love?

Shall I go back into my hole now or later?

The spiral:

• losing things is distressing.
• distress induces scattiness.
• scattiness promotes losing things.
• losing things….(ad infinitum)

The onset of Wendy-(ex)-centric  scattiness is predicable.   Keys will use my scattiness to make a bid for freedom.   I can normally track them down after 15 minutes of focused crime scene recreation.   Some items,   things rarely used are more cunning.   Today was a day when a cunning item successfully escaped.

After 8hrs of searching every (list warning):

• pocket (suitcase,  bag and coat),
• book (removed from shelf and shaken),
• CD rack (all CDs removed, dusted then replaced),
• drawer (empied, contents shaken, stirred and neatly replaced)
• furniture (under the bead, the sofa crevice, behind shelves)

I’ve decided to let scattiness win.   This time.   Costing me some ‘replacement’ dollars and worse than that the time to complete at least four official forms and report the loss to at least 3 government agencies.   Poooeeey,   must kick this cycle soon.   Given alcohol’s known impact on memory beer could give my keys a good opportunity to make a run for it,    not a good idea….

my world traveller friend is moving to NY this weekend.   In the 6 years I’ve known her she’s lived in:

• Seattle
• China
• Madrid (Spain)
• A private yaught (Alaska, Mexico, the Pacific coast)
• Ellensburgh (urgh?!!!)

She’s a special friend.   We met during my first week in Seattle at a pub quiz.   Hardly knowing each other arranged to runaway to  Mardi Gras, a  weekend in New Orleans.  

Travelling separately.   I sat on the porch of our 2 star hotel with a bottle of wine I’d corked by forcing the cork into the bottle.   In the heat of the evening I drank the wine and waited for the stranger,   my room companion,   to turn up.   An asian guy arrived at midnight.   The hotel staff had gone home.   He’d booked a room,  had no-where else to stay.  World traveller  turned up with a tiny back-pack and all the enthusiasm of a toddler.   Of course she didnt mind him staying in our room.   We looked after him for a a couple of days,  expored the city,   had our fortunes read,   met strangers and lived stories that warrant thier own blog entries.    She’s so easy to be with,   so bright in many ways.   I’ll miss her presence in this State painfully because friends like her are rare.   Friends like her  are usually somewhere else.   My friends are usually somewhere else….    I’m not often a soppy bugger, but for tonight  there will be BIG

BLUBBING

in the Wendy house this weekend.   Actually there will be blubbing in a sleeping-bag on the floor of her packed apartment,   but you get my drift….

1. Airway Heights is on a flat surrounded by higher ground.. ?!
2. Fairchild Airforce Base is on part of State Route 2 near airway heights  labelled as ‘Rambo Road’, aspirational imagery or some form of joke?
3. Airway Heights Corrections Center (Prison) is sign-posted from Rambo, not Papillon,  road.
4. No sign of Dan’s bottom in  Reardan.
5. Tautological sign posting;    a road sign announced “scenic vista“.  
6. Northwest arts and culture museum attendant said “Miss, please do not put your stuffed toy on the cars“,    what a charmer, no messing with ‘Mam’, ‘Lady’ or ‘Oi! YOU”

There was quite a lot of giggling and some wincing  on the roads around Spokane

Our Barcelonean correspondent is a bit miffed.  Eyan  writes:

Am translating the most tedious web page ever, which makes Madrid look as exciting as a wet weekend in Middlesborough without a DVD or laptop. It’s probably written by some pijo (read posh kid or Ivy leaguer) who has connections to the Partido Popular (read Tory or Republican party), not unikely to have connections with Opus Dei and is bound to be somebody’s cousin, niece, or nephew. Meritocracy is not the word for Spanish society. Most overused words – offer ( used 27 times as a verb and noun in about 2,000 words), enjoy, importante, (which is often translated into English as significant).

My guide also describes the main gay area, Chueca,  without actually saying it is a gay area. It only refers to “subcultures” ( there are also a lot of trendy places nearby, but not actually really in Chueca). Gays offend Catholic fundamentalist sensibilities, along with poor people, socialists and immigrants.

While Eyan was tackling turgid sleep-inducing web-page prose,  I was tackling crossing the vast open plains of Spokane roads…   …how wide?