Reading rhymes with
I’ll be covering the unique and much maligned experience that is ‘Reading’ in many upcoming blog posts. A Brighton-based blog post exemplifies common themes of passionate disappointment in Reading:
the epicentre of new Labour, corporate, consumerist blandness… …despite its affluence and its growing population it can’t rise above the terminal blandness and ‘middle Englandness’ it seems to have always had… …It is bored and dissatisfied young people planning their escape, it’s a football club who plays in a shed resembling an out of town B&Q and whose torrid home games with their dire atmosphere are (ahem) bound to take the Premiership by storm this season… …Reading is a rip off, Reading is unfriendly, Reading is in a rush to purchase and then to get home.
Oh deary me!
A (fictional) letter from “chase me ladies I’m in the cavalry” to a Reading East MP (Member for Parliament) had me wetting my pants, or is it my trousers, I can’t be sure, but they are definitely damp.
There is good news about Reading provided by a blog called Reading Roars. Not ’Reading belches’ , ‘Reading pukes’, ’Reading falls asleep in front of the TV’. Wendy appetite wetting references includes a Sushi restaurant. yes, one! Wireless enabled bus service called the “Thames Valley Park” (TVP) that has been described as a ’farce‘. I love a good farce. I do like buses too. Two goodies in one! I can hardly wait to try blogging from a bus. Just imagine what a vibrating bus will do to my spelling, ability to fall-over, and general happiness… There’s a Farmers market. I do like farmers and I might find one or two ruddy faced farmers there. With my UK regional accent I might even be mistaken for a farmer, it has happened before!
Result!
Stay tuned to find out how my Reading investigations evolve, or even send me tips on highlights…
NOW!
The pumkins have been gathering in and around large stores. They are luring unsuspecting families to pumpkin patches. Be careful, they are everywhere in the US, they are sneaky, they disguise themselves as lamps and pies. They can make a very squidgy mess of seeds and gooey stuff. They haven’t yet taken a strong hold in England, where parsnips are more prolific but it could happen. Be careful.
do not, DO NOT, add a few more comma’s,
comment on this post,
not a good idea,
NO,
resist the enticing share your thoughts text box below,
Lovely,,,
if you invited the seven dwarf’s round for supper. You would also have to invite a couple of giants because you wouldn’t be able to eat them all by your self. At least not without raising your susceptibility to intestinal explosions.
just a handy tip for those supper parties that Martha Stewart hasn’t yet copywrited written.
you can go about your business now.
thankyou
Decision quality is inversely proportional to the rate of decisions made and directly proportional to prior experience of making similar decisions provided the hormone level remains constant which the bugger never does.
If you asked an English publican, in England, what their ‘rotating tap’ was they would likely look at you quizzically as they explain that it is the thing in the toilets that you turn to get water for hand-washing after having completed the necessaries. In the UK tap is a common referent for a fawcett.
A disconcerting reply to an unsuspecting US person who tries to avoid using vulgar terms like TOILET when the words Bathroom or restroom are more acceptable referents for a room with a toilet in it. Draft beers are described as being ‘on tap’ so after the initial surpirse the move to understanding your actual meaning will not be hard.
By contrast, if you go into a NW US bar and ask what are their guest beers they give you a quizzical look and after some basic clarification they will tell you that what you actually mean is what is their rotating tap. Doh!
these parting messages have been known to prompt giggles in NW US people:
- Bye-Bye
- Take care
- cheerio
- cheers
- bye-bye
- Ta-Rah
- Fair thee well
Use them with extreme caution. Obviously European phrases such as ‘Ciao’ are also used in the UK and I’ve heard them here in the US.
Parting phrases in the US are no less diverse or complicated. The US Bureau of educational and cultural affairs language programe provides 2.5hr guidance on how to say goodbye. very thorough!
Parting phrases most commonly delivered by my US friends are:
- see you
- have a good (night/day/weekend/vacation etc)
- I’m outta here
- Peace
It is possible that one of the reasons for my singleness is that I find the excessive use of the phrase m-kay unengaging, maybe even irritatingly, unimaginatively, overused. Example phone call:
Wendy: I’d like to book a (censored) on Sunday, is that possible?
Lady: m-kay (click-click-click… ….click-click-click….click……click…. click-click-click… ….click-click-click….click……click….) m-kay…. ……m-kay….. (clic-click… ….click-click.. ..click…. ..click) ….mmmmmm-kay… (click… )
Wendy: (starts counting the number of times the Lady says m-kay because Perry Como is not providing the sound track)
Lady: Were you thinking morning or afternoon?
Wendy: Afternoon
Lady: m-kay…. …click-click (repeat 6 times) does 2pm work for you
Wendy: yes
More detailed questions required the Lady to sling dozens more m-kays into the clicky Perry Como-less void.
Aaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhhhh…..
not just slightly-inconveniently fatal
seriously fatal
not funny-ha-ha-fatal
seriously fatal
I’m glad we’ve cleared that one up
seriously glad
I know a Brit when they send me an e-mail. oh yes! i don’t need to hear the roundness of their vowel sounds or the cuteness of their accent. oh no! Just one introductory line
Hiya
and use of an awesome alternative
fabulous
can help super-sleuth-Wendy know she is emailing with a probably British person, possibly even a Northerner!
Hoorah, even people with typing-challenges, such as myself, can easily find my blog using Google search. Google also seems to know in advance that I might be interested in a handyhome!
‘ jobs worth
is a truncation of the phrase “it’s more than my jobs worth“. It’’s a phrase that I heard in the UK, not in the US
To me it means the activity is likely to cost the person their job. It is something they can’t, or wont, do. I’ve not heard the phrase in the US. It’s more dramatic than my experience of typical US ways of expressing which are more literally descriptive. ‘Jobs worth’ is a fairly dramatic refusal to do something outside of known procedures even in the UK.
Darling’s cascading start menu is
icky
because I have to be very dextrous with Darlings touchpad to pick the right item at the top-level, and it gets even more tricky to get the second level menu to stay there long-eough to get to a specific choice there. I rarely manage to get to the third level, at least not without buckets of tears.
fabulous
because it holds long readable lists of all sorts of things that I could use. They are hidden away until I click on whatever opens the menu and then I can see it all without clicking again. No multiple clicks to see something, no digging around, I can easily visually scan. I virtually never go there, having these things hidden then scannable even when I get the impulse to run a quick disc defragmentation. The cascade is works, I really don’t want to have to remember where things are.
A couple of fellows compared web-based cascading menus, with drop-down menus and in-page menus by timing people while they searched for things in them and asking them to rate their experience. In-page navigation came out with the fastest-performance and being most liked. Hoorah for inplace menus in web-pages. Please don’t do that to Darling. I defintiely would not like all of Darling’s start menu items on my desktop. Quick access to my disk defragmenter and my control panel from my desktop is not really what I want. I quite like them hidden away in the start menu.
Darlings lovely cascading start menu, you can see lots of things that I rarely use, all at once!:
In my local diner:
Wendy: “Hold the tomatoes”
Wait-staff: “No to-MATE-Os?”
Wendy: “Yes, No…” (gets confused)
The Banana splits used to say “hold the bus“. In the original Jessie James film (1939) the newspaper editor used to say “Hold the press” and in various films people in food shops would ask wait staff to “hold the pickle” and “hold the mayonaisse“. I learned all my original American from the TV. I thought this meant that in the US you could ask to have pseudo-vegetables held by wait-staff in diners. Apparantly it’s slightly more complicated than that.
On posting the reasons for my singleness. No time to explain.
Megalithic graves across Europe. Populated, or not, 3 to 4 thousands of years Before Christ. While in Ireland I toured the Burren and stopped at the Paulnabrone dolmen. Very atmospheric. “The Modern Antiquarian” a fabulous book by Julian Cope lists megalithic sites throughout Europe. The book is one of my most treasured possessions. Websites selling the book under-detail the sheer volume and depth of research that Julian put into constructing this fabulous book.
Before the advent of anti-aging products these dolmen represented the celebration of aging, death, and life beyond. Julian Cope is one of the most influential celebrity individuals in my formative years, I blame him alone for a pair of black leather jeans being a main stay of my wardrobe and, or course, my RAF orignial flight jacket.
My readers are perhaps just a bit geeky, um, like me, because they are coming from universities, financial institutions and the software computing industry.
Google analytics tells me the Network locations of computers that have reqested page-loads from the wendyhome servers. Often these network locations are clearly consumer internet service providers, sometimes they are not. Here are some of the Network locations that do not look like consumer internet services grouped by primary business type.
Software/Computing
- Microsoft Corp
- APPLE COMPUTER
- Intel Corporation
- IBM
- Macafee Security
- Research Machines plc
- Hewlett-Packard Company
- Cisco Systems inc
- Opera Software asa
- Honeywell
- Eastman Kodak Company
Financial
- Credit Suisse group canada
- Fidelity Investments
- Bloomberg Financial Market
- Bank of America
- Barclays Capital (UK)
- Nat West Bank group (UK)
- First Rand Bank
Universities
- Cornell University
- Purdue university
- Leeds University (UK)
- North Carolina State university
- University of Brighton (UK)
- University of Cambridge (UK)
- University of Washington
- Charles University
Local government
- Wolverhampton city council (UK)
- East Sussex local education authority (UK)
- State of Arkansas
- State of Minesota
- State of Tennessee
- Government of South Africa
Aerospace
- the boeing company
- lockheed martin corporation
- Patrick Air Force Base
It’s cold. While shivering and looking for a quick dose of warmth I push my hands deep into my jacket pockets. In one pocket I felt a warm fluffy object. Like a soft furry stick. It did the job but I didn’t know what it was. I pulled it out of my pocket to take a look. It was Matrix’s right front leg, apparantly recently severed from her body. Still warm and wet with blood.
I woke-up very suddenly. I suspect that was a real nightmare that wasn’t cheese induced. Despite distinctly recalling going to bed last night I was definitely not in bed when I woke on the floor about 20 feet from the bed. At least matrix is okay but I’ve gained a nasty bruise on the back of my head and an ache to match.
Ouch.
Barista: it’s not that I like your accent or anything, but I just have to say that I saw the queen, well 10 minutes of the Queen actually.
Wendy: The Movie? (deliberately uses the American word to keep the cuteness thing at sub-gushing proportions)
Barista: Yeah, and I didn’t know what it was about and that Diana is in it and I thought how important it is and that I should watch the movie. Would you like a free sample caramel latte?
Wendy: Yes please
Barista: and the government, I’ve seen that and they are so… ..so …how shall I say…. …candid… I like the way they stand-up and thump the table. It’s not that i don’t like America ….
Wendy : Thankyou (pays for yummy pie and leaves with extra free latte)
By Mark Haddon.
Highly recommended to anyone who gains pleasure from social dynamics or is an Anglophile.
review ratings explained
Lots of positive reviews of the book available on metacritic. The Daily Telegraph provides a succinct summary that maps to my experience.
“A spot of bother” is a phrase that I understand as being used to play-down the severity of a problem. It’s like saying, “yes there is a nasty problem but really you shouldn’t worry because we’ve got it all under control, lets not pay it any more attention“. It’s not a phrase or technique for managing conversational distance that I’ve encountered in the US.
The story is of family dynamics across generations situated around an impending Wedding. Everyone has an opinion on whether the wedding should happen and why, and different ways of expressing their opinions, or not. The book touches on themes such as prefering silence to talking, social intelligence versus academic intelligence and the bounds of realism and paranoia. Some reviews talk about it as a black comedy or farce. My impression is that it is something other than either genre, neither funny nor melancholic despite the topics and events.
Thoroughly enjoyable, I felt right at home.
When I told mumzie that I was suprised to find a Castle named after the English King John in Limerick on an Island called Kings Island in English town, Mumzie wrote:
John (lackland) as he was called, was so annoyed that his brothers had their own land, dukedoms etc. that his father gave him Ireland.
King John was born the 5th and youngest son of King Henry II. All reports of him appear to agree that he was treacherous, cowardly and an ill mannered sloth. He was excommunicated by the Pope and divorcing his first wife well before King Henry VIII. He was the younger brother of King Richard I, Richard Couer de Lion. He ran Britain while Richard was fighting the Holy wars and Robin Hood was doing his legendary deeds in the North of England. Wikipedia has an entry specifically on John’s relationship with Ireland. I suspect you can now see why I was surprised to find a castle named after him, in a predominantly Catholic nation.
Mumzie also had some useful insights on the new ripping yarn in 10 episodes for the TV “The Tudors“:
Terrible history, and script….really corny. Got bad reviews here. Hairstyles a bit ahead of the times, more Elizabethan, and they certainly didn’t have underpants, just long shirts that tucked under.
sixty-second in as unstructured Wednesday series of posts explaining my singleness.
Reason #62: easily confused.
The not being single thing is all way too complicated. My theory is that when it isn’t complicated then that’s the right match for me! Slam dunk, I’ll know because its all effortless and unconfusing. It will be like an atronought landing on planet Wendy.
1977. In Helsinki mum, dad, and both brothers were visiting dad’s family.
Dad took us all into the Kalnuun Puukko shop and we spent the afternoon each choosing a Puukko. After Puukko’s were purchased we went off into the woods around Helsinki to find fallen wood to wittle. We wittled together. All good family fun. Result? Lots of pointy small sticks left in the woods. My psyche was forever scarred by this experience and I’m now totally undatable.
When asked for some clarifying points on this ”knife’ aquiring experience Dad described the social-cultural significance of a Puukko beyond my constrained concept of a ‘knife’:
Knife in Finnish is veitsi – You should never call a puukko a knife – it is much more than that – it is the basic survival tool that you should have when you venture into the forest or into nature at wintertime or summertime. Its very name is associated with its prime use puu is tree or wood and kko implies a thing associated with the former – a woodworking tool. With it you can build a shelter in the forest, make a spear for spearing fish, use as an ice pick to drag yourself out of broken ice and much more. It does not weigh you down – it is essential in hunting and fishing. The original puukko had handle made of tightly woven young birch bark which often had a spell written on it before it was applied. This had to be replaced regularly – the modern puukko often has a solid handle often simulating the old type. Taken into cities and suburbia it becomes a weapon rather than a tool and it loses its basic character. In the Finnish – English dictionary the puukko is described as a sheath-knife as English does not have a separate word for a woodworking knife . It can and is used for stabbing by roughs and the verb puukottaa means stab with a puukko and the stab (noun) is puukonisku. The blade of the puukko is puukonterä. The man who makes it is a puukonseppä ( a smith) A true puukko should be bought from the man who makes it and you should visit him so that he can choose the right blade for you – However mass production does not allow for these old niceties and a tourist shops in the city is the source nowadays.
I wonder what equivalent stories with socio-cultural significance will be handed down to our next generations…
STOP IT!
Wendy reasserts a previous reqeust to stop making noise so that people can hear the speaker. Reaction from the speaker was to attempt to immitate my accent:
I love the way you say “store pit“
At 11yrs old my school teacher wrote in my annual report that I:
- need to work on my spelling.
- work hard without any pressure.
- create interesting items.
- have an above average grasp of maths.
- work well on my own or as leader of a group.
It’s darn right spooky how little I’ve changed. Luckily we have spell-checkers now (though not in Wordpress), my job requires maths skills and creating ’interesting items’. Um… and I still let team members and leaders know when I don’t understand their contributions….
According to Google analyticals I have one regular reader in Tring. Excellent, Good show. The internet reaches the person in Tring who is curious about middle-aged English girlies in the Seattle region. hooray! Who would have guessed?! Welcome reader from Tring, You know who you are….. …isn’t Tring ’cute’? Oh my, I am definitely developing Anglophile tendancies…
1994-2007
This sofa with design and print chosen by a person I lived with in 1994.
He wouldn’t take it when he left. He dumped me with the sofa-print from hell. It’s fabulously comfortable and works perfectly well as a Sofa if you shield your eyes or use a throw. Hence the sofa and I spending 13 years together despite the ‘looks’ issue. But.
Enough is enough
Craigslist put an end to the relationship. Hoorah. Furniture Freedom!
I have trouble keeping my categories stable. Evolving categories. By using mini-series such as ‘cute accent’ and ‘dreamy cheese’ I’ve tried to curb my tendancies to create categories and re-assign posts. The Wordpress categories are painfully insufficiently fuzzy for my taste.
The new version of Wordpress (2.3) has support for tagging and tag-clouds. Tags could easily evolve to replace my categories because they support the natural emergent and fuzzy quality of both my categories and interests. Hoorah!
Replacing my categories with tags could clean-up the Wendy House archive navigation for you and me. Tags do not yet offer some of the useful properties of the category system such as hierarchical relationships and hence similarity groupings. I’m starting to use tags on my new posts but old posts are not tagged.
Will adding tags to old-posts spam your RSS readers? I’ve asked the Wordpress support forum to clarify before I start wrecklessly adding tags to past-posts to while away the long winter evenings.
sixty-first in an weak weekly Wednesday series of posts explaining my singleness.
Reason #61: limp appeal.
Despite the well-known hobbity effect, and a limping Wendy being a fairly regular state of affairs, my limp hasn’t induced an affair but has induced a wobbly state. Maybe I should just cut the falling-over part of being Wendy?
I like to test the diverse effects of gravity in different countries and continents. normally with the help of a curb.
While walking home from the atmospheric, smoke-free, Tom Collins pub after one, well two, actually three, definitely not four pints of Smithwicks, while crossing the road I tustled with the uneven curb and ended up sitting in the gutter
Passerby: Are you alright?
Wendy: I’ve twisted my ankle
Passerby: No dancing for you tonight then!
I scooped myself up and hobbled home. Once back in the US I hobbled myself to a medical center to be triaged by my fabulous nurse:
nurse: what have you done this time?
Wendy: twisted my ankle, I wasn’t skiing, just crossing the road
The last 3 times we met she confirmed that I had broken a bone during a fall while downhill skiing. She’s recommended that I stick with cross-country skiing. No broken bones. I have got the ankle wrapped-up in fancy medical bindings with streamline black velcro.
Wendy: are ‘the williamites’ people that support William of orange?
Barstaff: I don’t know, my history is not very good and I’m not from round these parts (Irish accent)
Wendy: where are you from?
Barstaff: Cork
Wendy: can you visit Cork on day trips?
Barstaff: No. It’s only the third week of term and already I’ve got 3 projects to do.
Wendy: That’s tough. If you didn’t have the projects would it be possibile to do a day trip to Cork?
Barstaff: It’s 2hrs by car, that’s too far for a day trip. you could do it ….but…. and the trains are expensive, it cost 58 Euro to get to Dublin. Everythings really expensive around here.
… Later ….
Wendy: I live in America. Americans seem to love all things Irish
Barstaff: I thought I heard an American accent! American troops stop at Shannon airport to refuel their planes on the way to Iraq. We encourage them to leave the airport and spend some money here.
Wendy: When i flew in I saw about eight US Marines in desert uniform at Shannon airport. Desert Uniform in the rain!
