:: The Wendy House ::

thirty-first post in a standard setting Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single”.

Reason # 31: entrance fee

The entrance fee for the wendy house boudoir toilette facilities includes at least one elegant pull-up. 

tall people are required to duck when passing into this room or to wear their bruised forehead with pride and aplomb.

TT = Tea & Tombstone*

Soon I will be leaving on a whistlestop tour of southern England including Cornwall during March 2007.  En route the tour will take regular rest stops in real English tea rooms for comparision with the US versions and graveyards to gather an insight into the passing of life and time. 

The excitement levels in the Wendy House are fast approaching hurricane warning levels.  Hatches that should be firmly battened down are furiously flappying.  Cumulatively this could result in a break in regular service.

This tour will be bought to you by the colour purple,  the letter T and the number 43

* the TT Tour T-shirts have not yet gone to the printers so I reserve the right to extend the name of this tour with another T word after the fact.

Highly recommended to people who enjoy independent films with all the components that make it a classic cult film.  In an outstanding directorial debut for Lee Daniels he demonstrates a level of maturity that can take many good directors decades to reach.

Ratings explained

The conversational style is akin to french films.  The plot is intricate and innovative akin to English gangster films.  The New York settings and characters are colourful.  I experienced the film as a blend between Nikita, Terminator and Lock Stock and two smoking Barrels with a touch of Pulp fiction thrown in.  If you like those 4 films,  you will probably enjoy this one.  Cuba Gooding Jr as the inscrutable lead and Helen Mirren as the, red, Rose provide weighty lead performances.  Music fan’s will enjoy the parts well executed by Macy Gray and Mo’nique.  The film has a sombre mood throughout with diverse music from a french sounding piano accordian through a classical Cello solo backing a poignient moment to soul music,  all literally setting different tones.

The unusual plot unravels at an even pace that is easy to follow and gripping in its twists and turns.  Helen Mirren takes a role that is not a role commonly given to a female.  There are seamingly surreal, or real life, touches like a Zebra roaming the night-time shots of a mansions garden,  Jessie at ladies night, that add amusement if they capture your eye.  Careful product placement Wild Turkey bourbon and social-cultural indicators, red nail varnish, chain smoking, drinking build the atmosphere.  Stylistic lighting with shifts between realistic outdoor colours and colour-themed indoors shots or fuzzy-edged back-lit romatic outdoor shots.  

 NPR reports on how the US Embassy decides not to pay the London congestions charges.   The report is rather disappointing because it focuses on Ken Livingstone’s expressive style, essentially criticising Ken, rather than the fundamental issue of whether the US Embassy should be exempt from paying the London congestion charges. 

More recently, the New York Times reports on the French Embassy’s announcement of not paying the congestion charges now that the congestion zone has been extended to include their embassies base.  The report includes userful information pertinent to the basic principles at stake here though does not focus the article whether or not Diplomats should be exempt from paying the charges

Excerpts:

The charge for a vehicle entering the center of London during weekday business hours is roughly $15 a day, and it has inspired some other European capitals, notably Stockholm, to follow suit. While European officials say that roughly half of the European Union’s 25 members are refusing to pay the charge in London, Sweden is not among the rebels….

…Ken Livingstone, announced a plan to cut bus and tram fares by half for about 250,000 people who live on welfare…

…According to Transport for London, the official body running the city’s transit system, the American embassy owes more than $1.95 million in unpaid congestion charges and fines already….   …“Those embassies that flout the law of this country and misuse diplomatic immunity to avoid the charge are enjoying the benefits of reduced congestion but contributing nothing,” Transport for London said in a statement.

My impression is that this toll is imposed as part of a set of measures to improve the experience of travelling in inner city London.  A praiseworthy social goal.  It is accompanied by other actions to improve the public transport system.  I do not see why foreign Diplomats should be exempt from paying tolls that improve the environment within which they are based.   I pay for the services that I use while I live in America,  Diplomats should pay for the services they use while living abroad. 

Am I missing something here?

I’m a visionary and I’m not refering to my outstanding collection of eyewear.  Apparantly, according to this visionary philosophy, espoused in Sephora, wearing make-up is optional.  An amazing revalation.  I’ve been a visionary for decades and I didn’t even realise it.  Thanks Sephora for pointing this out. 

No wait!  read the small print.  

Optional make-up is only legitimate if you have a skin problem that needs intense treatment.  Darn.  Maybe I’ll have to develop a skin problem to qualify as a visionary… …or a legitimate US female.   

Unlike extreme ironing,  EXtreme crocket,  and extreme tiddly-winks, extreme grand piano playing is not YET a considered an extreme sport.  But,  Extreme piano playing is a sport though it doesn’t require risky locations like the aforementioned extremities. 

I was drawn to this stairwell by the sound of a slightly miss-tuned piano playing the flight of the Bumble Bee ”recognizable for its frantic pace “.  Normally piped music in Mall’s has a slow pace.  The speed with the off-tune piano made the music feel out of place,  a little cheeky.  Hoorah!  The positioning of the Piano half way up the stairs added to the miss placed experience. 

Could this be the dawning of extreme grand pianism?

twentieth post in a Thursday series of unexpectedly girly experiences of taking tiffin with (black) tea in the NW USA.

Thursday Tiffin #20: barbie doll’s tea convetion

The Peach tree tea rooms and bakery provides an American style interpretation of English tea.  Excellent cakes & service for females with disposable income.  A Tea-lunch order cost $19.00.  Cheaper than Queen Mary’s, much better quality cake in slightly less ostentacious surroundings of a similar style.   

The tea rooms are based in the “Country Village” a stylish outdoor Mall of higgledy-piggeldy dark-wood buildings housings shops in Bothell.  The shops sell things to people with disposable income (art, non-mass produced furniture,  pottery shops,  candle-shops etc).  A gang of mallard ducks roam the Mall, intimidate the grannies, entertain the short people,  and splash in the Mall pond.  A cockerel strutted and cock-a-doddle-doo’d.  A pleasant atmosphere,  like a step into a sanitised ‘old west’ theme park with shops hidden in the buildings. 

 The clientelle in the tea shop were all female and ranged in age from approximately 12yrs to my 43yrs,  the majority looked to be in their 30s.  I could overhear all the conversations on tables near me.  This is not a place to come for a confidential conversation with a special friend.  

At the next table were 4 girls of different generations dressed in baby-pink with sequins and sparkly accessories.  4 barbie dolls.  If you want to ‘do’ barbie doll,  this is definitely a place to come.

The servers were excellent,  providing milk,  topping-up my pot,  timely removal of  used crockery and cutlery, inobtrusive yet friendly.  The biggest down-side of this place as a Tea room was that the strainer was for use as the tea is poured.  This is actually authentic to many English tea rooms.  The critical downside was that by the time I started my second cup the tea had already stewed to a tannine-heavy bitter flavour.  The server topped my pot with water,  but it was too late the tea had already stewed.  I toyed with asking for another pot but decided against it because I’d probably be charged.  Only one unstewed cup of tea per pot is rather poor show for a tea rooms.

If you’re not yet old enough,  or affluent enough, to fit into the Queen Mary Tea rooms then this Tea rooms provides you with an ideal training step with the added bonus of providing a potential Barbie-alike experience opportunity

thirtieth post in an happening Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single”.

Reason # 30: happen and happenstance

My computer at work was being a bit uncooperative:

Wendy: I need some help troubleshooting

Manager: I’m in meetings for the next 2 hours, I’m late now, I’ll come round at 5pm

A tall slim young fellow happened to wander in from the office next door

slim: I can help now,  I need to get out of my office,  I’ve been looking at my computer for too long

Manager:  OK (looks suprised)

Wendy: wonderful! (jumps up and down a little bit,  brings a full set of yellow toothipegs into the cloud filtered daylight)

The tall slim English man did all sorts of fancy things to my computer while I watched. I had discovered a critical problem.  He mentioned all sorts of undecipherable jargon that sounded really impressive.  I guessed that he knew what he was doing.

Wendy (swoon)

Swooning just happened.  I do not proactively follow-up on such happenstances arising in a work context. 

buy

SMART WATER! 

SMART WATER perks up your grey matter and can end random bouts of ignorance and absentmindedness with just one gulp.  SMART WATER.  You know it makes sense. If you don’t know it makes sense,  you must be stupid so buy SMART WATER now and solve your stupidity.  Give it to your children,  your pets,  your granny…  …we all need a little more smarts every now and then,  you can rely on SMART WATER to solve all your ignorance challenges. 

“the only mystery I never solved was why my heart couldn’t let go of you“

This film is highly recommended for people who enjoy a stylistically conveyed, strong period-set script of a clever mystery drama including a love story.  This film successfully fits into all these genres with an additional unique angle that fits none and takes it beyond any specific genre.  Not a good film for people who like giggles, fast action with explosions, blood and gore, or plots handed to you on a silver platter.  The rotten tomatoes reviews generally align well with my experience. 

 ratings explained

Description without plot-spoiler

• The illusionist official website.
• Cast:  Rufus Sewell, Edward Norton; Jessica Beil; Paul Giamatti; Eddie Marsan.  Well acted. Edward Norton uses his talent for inscrutability very effectively in the role of the illusionist,  you can read into his behaviour that which you expect.
• Genre:  period costume drama, mystery, social commentary, love story.  The plot is not a standard Hollywood format unravelling in a pleasingly unpredictable path.
• Sets:  outstanding European venues including steam trains, theatres, palaces, country parks, mountain ranges.
• Music:  Philip Glass.  the modern music, referencing period genres works extremely well with the nature of the film, period with novel storyline detail.
• Female roles: only one notable role for a female.  The love lead,  now there’s a surprise.  Jessica Beil’s character is written with the standard ‘modern’ perspective on a period female-character expressing her control in a modern manner yet still managing to be a victim of the patriarchy.  The character is poorly written.
• chic flick?:  possibly,  not being a chic it’s difficult for me to tell.  It’s not a puke-inducing pinky film of dominantly girl-cast with bland males seeking them out.
• Photography: captivating, stylistic yet not intrusive camera work with a strong tendancy to using high contract sepia tones and fuzzy-edged backlighting.  Expertly interwoven visual effects including animations.

Ma’am!   (check-out person)

….oooops…. (Wendy)

I forgot to pick-up my cash-back when leaving the check-out. I don’t recall ever having being called ‘Ma’am’ before.  The uses I’m familair with have subtle intonational differences that get drowned in regional accents.  Familiar uses are:

1. mumsie talking to, and of,  her own mumzie,  a Northern English term. 
2. a way of addressing the Queen directly used in the film. 
3. an abrieviation of ‘Madam’ used for troublesome girls: “she was being a right little madam“;   people who run establishments that comodify the female physique; in the French sense a mature women beyond maidenhood.

I wonder whether the check-out person meant one, some or all of these?

One year of subscribing to a web service,  developing the Wendy House blog….

The isle closest to the entrance of the fridge is dedicated to breakfast.  One side is ‘pancake mix’ the other ‘cold cereal’.  The fridge is often this crowded.  A girl could get agrophobic agoraphobic in here or maybe I should try a stronger deodorant?

nineteenth in a hat wearing series of Thursday posts about taking tiffin with (black) tea in the NW USA.

Thursday Tiffin #19: red hat society.

What is the Red Hat Society?  According to their official website:

“The Red Hat Society began as a result of a few women deciding to greet middle age with verve, humor and elan. We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life, and since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next.”

What do they do?  According to their offifical website:

Nothing

To me they represent a celebration of decadence.  They get dressed up and go to tea rooms.  This society, these ladies, encapsulate my main experience of USA versions of English tea rooms.  Luckily there are exceptions.  Possibly the society is the main target customer for the establishments I’ve found.  The dominant theme is that taking tea is merely something frivolous that only women to do, surrounded by flowers and small cute pink things.  To me this theme is a limited and unappealing experience.  Obivously, I am not, and have no intention of becoming a member of the red hat society.  It distrubs me that superficially I have a lot in common with their membership: a female in the USA,  approaching 50,  having distinctly silly tendencies, owning more than one red hat and requiring an almost constant supply of tea.  A glance at this local gathering of the society partially reassures me that my deportment visually distinguishes me from these ladies.

My understanding of taking tea is broader than the main theme I’m seeing in USA English-style tea rooms.  My understanding involves the taking of tea being the back-drop to worthy thought and deed.  In my fertile, inaccurate,  imagination I picture Einstein with a cup of tea while developing relativity theory,  Mozart with a cup of tea while composing the magic flute, Churchill with a cup of tea while planning the Normandy invsions,  Nick Cave while composing a love song, Aristotle with a cup of tea in the bath… 

13th Feb 1979  11.59pm

Single. 16yrs. In a sleeping household. Hardly lit by the streetlights from outside, sitting crouched shrouded in the darkness of the 4th hall-stairs step.  I cannot be seen though the mottled glass in the front door.  Heavy footsteps close on the door-mounted letterbox  …………thud………thud……….thud…….thud………  

shhhhhh…kerthump

an envelope sliding through the box; racing to slap the floor followed by the  THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.. of a speedy retreat.   Despite efforts to reveal the culprit, the valentine sender remains anonymous to this day. 

Good show!

 13th Feb 2007  11.59pm

Wendy house resident Love Cats use their x-ray eyes to beam love through the snooper-net directly to

….YOU….

why purchase only 1 Valentine’s card when you can save by buying and sending 8?

Saturday night, the Seattle symphony plays at the Benaroya hall.  Freddy Kempf  played Grieg’s piano concerto.  Beautiful.  The fringe from Freddy’s traditional short back and sides danced with his body movements as he pumped the piano.  The piece is familair,  even to untrained ears such as mine, and thoroughly enjoyable. 

I am unable to comment on the following Bruckner symphony #9, I dreampt and dozed through it… 

Before the full orchestra took the stage I sneaked this photograph of the gap between the very grand Piano and the not so grand piano stool.  Between them over the heads of the audience we can see the lead Cellist preparing for the evening.

The shere breadth and depth of the bulk of merchanding for Valentines day is invasive and more than a tad disturbing.  By contrast, the subtlety of the preparations in the produce section of my local supermarket are personally pleasing; 

censorable thoughts

bottles of food supplements, pills, with strange scientific sounding names,  to replace what?  Eating food with silly names like ‘potatoes’, ‘carrots’ and ‘oranges’ of course!  It’s much too complicated for me to work out what I am supposed to buy. 

I think I’ll stick to the ‘produce’.

The Daily Telegraph reports that an:

“English secretary is bringing a test case under French labour law after allegedly being sacked for bringing her employers into disrepute by writing a…    …blog describing her everyday life…

…Her blog postings… …do not reveal her own name….  …..and have never identified her employers*…. …..she made herself and therefore the firm identifiable by including her own photograph** on the weblog“

ce n’est pas de ja vu

• *my employer is the absolute dogs bollocks. 
• **any similarity to me in photographs on, or linked from, this blog is purely coincidental.

Paranoid?  Moi?  Non!  I normally walk this way due to an old injury sustained by falling off a bar-stool during a fit of impudently unanounced giggles and several pints of pre-planned Marston’s Pedigree.

eighteenth in a royal series of Thursday posts about taking tiffin with (black) tea and milk in the NW USA.

Thursday Tiffin #18: Queen Anne’s TeaCup.

Excellent.  On a snow-ridden Sunday afternoon I drove to Queen Annes and enjoyed a fabulous cup of tea inbetween freezing fingers of air winding thier way around my legs, ears and not-insubstantial nose. 

Wendy:  I’d like a big pot of darjeeling
Server-1: (hesitate)
Wendy:  4 to 6 normal cups?
Server-1: (hesitate) 36 oz?
Server-2: Would this pot be the right size (holding up an ideal size pot)
Wendy: Yes please!
Server-2:  there’s only the one seat available,  we’ll bring it over to you
Wendy: that’s wonderful, could I have a jug of milk too?
Server-2: what type?
Wendy: 2%?
Server-2: Fine, we’ll bring it over to you

The teapot arrived with timer to enable me to judge the brew effectively,  tea-cosey to ensure the tea didn’t get cold, dish to place the removed strainer of tea-leaves in,  spoon to stir in my dash of milk.  Excellent attention to detail,  fabulous smooth sympathetic service.  I was impressed.

Unlike the Queen Mary tea rooms the clientelle were varied age and gender.  Hoorah! On this Sunday they looked like students with paper note-books open (no wireless, no laptops).  While mixed gender the men did fit into my stereotype of effeminate. One sat in my line of sight constantly played with his gold necklet,  discussed the quality of his manicure with his colleagues and regularly re-adjusted his hair and clothing.  Overheard conversations from beside me also fitted my stereotype of Americanisms;  I heard phrases like “so, I said…. …it was really cool…  …mMMMMmm-Kay…  …I totally agree with you…   ….I have to get me some of that… “ 

The venue is small maybe seats 12 at most if they are all slim and breath in.  The counter at the back of the shop.  It’s a popular shop,  people are constantly coming and going,  buying loose leaf tea and accessories.  On this snow-ridden January day the shop door opened every 2 or 3 minutes.  Everytime a customer opened the door the fast freezing finger of January snow twisted around my thighs, yanked my ears and tweaked my not insubstantial nose.  It is impossible to relax and fully enjoy your tea when the freezing fingers are regularly poking around, breaking the serene atmosphere that should surround the taking of tea.

recommended for people who are already in the area to drop in and see if there’s a table free for a quick cuppa

twenty-nineth post in celebrity-crush-confession Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single”.

Reason # 29: Cave’d in

the love cupboard is crowded
I’m communing with the creations
of Mr. Cave and the Bad Seeds 
They’re there for my soul.

is not only Premenstrual tension,  its also Periodic Male Tension.  According to The Guardian online:

A study by psychologists from the University of Derby, England, suggests that men may experience cyclical symptoms similar to, or even worse than, those suffered by pre-menstrual women, including moodiness, discomfort and loss of concentration.  Everything, it appears, apart from the bloat.

 The study is based on ’self report’,  they asked people to report experience of symptoms traditionally associated with pre-menstruation.  They asked the women on 3 separate occassions and men just once.  There is no mention of the likely differences between men an women when self-reporting symptoms (example scientific study of gender bias in self-reporting symptoms).

Gosh,  and there’s me thinking girls had a unique experience around menstrual cycles based on hormones and physiological differences.  Silly me,  its just the bloating.  Boys clearly know what it’s like because the experience has been adequately described in answerable questions and measured by someone in Derby. 

The next grumpy boy I encounter will be asked “is it your time of the month then?‘   

Not my cup of tea. 

Only recommended if you like film’s that have

• focus on ‘Justice outside the law’ with some plot-unnecessary blood and gore.
• Beautiful desolate desert scenery (Australia).
• An impressive UK cast
• Nick Cave’s charismatic writing 

I choose this for the latter 3 of the above reasons.  The writing at a conversational level had all the ingenuity, subtlety, and economy I’d expect from Mr. Cave.  Awesome.  But this was a film,  not a collection of conversations.  Multiple good dialogs and character scenes are not enough to constitute a film, however well acted and located.  I didn’t understand this film. :-(     

 Ratings Explained

Captain Stanley’s (Ray Winston) early words set the tone of the whole film for me:

“Australia,  what fresh hell is this“

While the film is undoubtedly a high quality execution of whatever it is meant to be the film said nothing to me,  was unnecessarily violent,  had no humour.  I’m left wondering why so much talent was directed into making this film.  Rotten Tomatoes gives the proposition a good review.  I’ve found many good reviews that focus on details of music, scene, or character.  All of them failed to provide me with any strong insights into why I should watch this film. :-( 

(edited to try to make the into images)

How the Wendy House got deflowered:

I took a small star provided within famfamfam’s free mini icon set, then used Microsoft’s Digital Image suite to

• make the star’s white background transparent.  fiddly 
• obliterate the flowers in Ghyslain’s awesome ’rounded blue’ blog template.  Bye-bye flowers…
• liberally sprinkle the blog template image with stars

Then, while playfully browsing the Wordpress codex ‘plug-ins’,  I discovered  favatars, comvatars, and gravatars. 

…..ooo00OOO00oooo…  

The rest of the fun-filled friday night was spent foisting a favatar on you.  A favatar is the little picture that shows up next to a website name in the browser’s faviourites list and before the http bit in the browsers address line.  To commit this dastardly crime I used:

• Matthew Mullenweg’s guidance on how to create a ‘favicon’, 
• Microsoft’s Digital Image for editing,
• installed and activated a wordpress favatar plug-in,

Cat-discombobulating-bouncing ensued when the little star revealed itself in my IE7.0 address bar and Tab.  Before Friday I knew the experience of a favicon but not what it was called or how to set-one up for my site. 

Sometimes I even suprise myself by how easily I am pleased

Hoorah!

Visitor loyalty,  fabulous idea!

The bar-chart below from Google Analytics shows that between 24th and 30th of January:

• 8 visitors (probably unique IP addresses?) visited between 7 and 14 times
• 11 visited 15-25 times, and a further
• 11 visited 26-50 times

I’m probably one person who visited 50 times

This means that I may have 29 readers (unique IP addresses) that return frequently enough for me to guess-timate that its probably on a daily basis.  I hope this isn’t really because their browser keeps crashing when they try to open the blog….  

Of those 29 I can make a good guess about who 9 of them are… …based on both verbal and blog comments, people I’ve met…  Based on this sample of 9 people I’ll develop a “Robin the Regular Reader” persona.   I’m not assuming that these loyal visitors are the same visitors who stay for more than 10 mins when they get here.  That’s a very rash assumption.  The kind of rash that could go all red after a  good scratching…

And there isn’t ANYTHING you can do about it  …he he he….ha ha ha…he he he….

seventeenth in a filtered series of Thursday posts about taking tiffin with (black) tea and milk in the NW USA.

Thursday Tiffin #17: straining equipment

One of the key stages in making Tea is removing the Tea leaves after the brew is complete before the mixture stews.  A variety of utensils,  strainers, have been developed to achieve efficient drip-free removal of the tea leaves from the hot water.  In the Wendy house I will use the :

• tongs:  when its just me,  I use a set of tongs to remove a teabag from my pot.  I rarely make tea in a cup or mug merely because the shere volume of Tea I consume requires the use of a pot.   
• small infusion ball:  Rarely used, the tea cannot circulate in the ball  I have to manually ’swish’ the ball of tea through the hot water in the cup or mug.
• large infusion ball:  When its just me,  with loose Tea, I’ll use a Tea pot with the large infusion ball.  This supports my drinking from the pot for longer than 6 minutes without the tea stewing.
• tea-strainer:  when using loose Tea with guests I will normally use a tea pot with the tea-strainer (right hand side).  This removes the tea leaves as the tea pours.  The disadvantage is that the tea must all be poured within the 3-6 minutes recommended for brewing time. 

I may even splash out on a ‘Chatsford’ strainer for use in a pot.  I’ve heard good things about them.  All these utensils allow the removal of the Tea leaves before the brew has stewed.  Awesome inventions!