Feeling pleased with myself for first discovering how to create a useful survey in Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2003, then created one, I finally sent a link out to some colleagues asking for feedback on the survey content.
Colleague: Do you want feedback on all the typing, spelling, grammar and spacing errors?
The words ‘wind’ and ’sails’, (or sales), with a liberal dose of ‘removed’ colons; semi-colons, commas and apostrophes galloped around my mind as I wondered whether ‘discrete personal editorial coaches’ is a job description gaining momentum in the service industry …
Obey the person running the pub quiz, no matter how enbriated they are, how imprecise their questions are, how innacurate their answers are. By all means heckle and lobby them, but remember its just a pub quiz not a defining statement on your intellect.
This BBC article describes the cultural experience of pub quizzes in a slightly mythicalised manner, it quotes a quiz attendee as saying:
I took two American friends to a quiz once and they thought it was some sort of registered insanity, they just didn’t get it at all
employee: do you have permission to take photographs?
Wendy: um, no, do I need permission?
employee: no, but it would be polite to ask
Wendy: yes, you are absolutely right, sorry, is it alright if I take photographs of this wonderful store, not staff or customers?
employee: yes
more about what menswear department (Jacksons) employee showed me… …next week…
Readers Digest, asked 1,162 of its readers, who are also parents, and enjoy completing surveys to rate 12 features of a ‘good place to bring up a family’ on a 10 point scale. It’s not clear how they picked these 12 features. Average Readers Digest Survey-completing parents ratings were:
1 Good state schools 8.4
2 Low crime rate 8.4
3 Good local hospitals 7.7
4 Affordable family housing 7.7
5 High employment 7.2
6 Low risk of flooding 6.8
7 Lots of families live there 6.4
8 Local universities/colleges 6.0
9 Under an hour to a major city 5.7
10 Warm, dry weather 5.1
11 Under an hour to the coast 4.9
12 Under an hour to a National Park 4.8
It looks like these average ratings were subsequently used by Readers Digest employees as ‘weightings’ for statistics provided by other national sources (e.g. home office crime figures) to create rankings of 408 UK ‘authorities’ as family-friendly or not. Reading Borough mysteriously came 408th.
I still can’t escape from the fact that the people who made the rankings probably both read the Readers digest and complete it’s surveys….
A narrow boat called ‘Chavori’ on the River Kennet. A google search for the word Chavori produces very few search results (3 pages) and perplexingly questions whether I wanted to search for ‘behavior’, the results include texts on the ‘Romany’, ‘Gypsy’ languages. One article, ‘A memoire of the language of the gypsies as now used in the Turkish Empire’ describes Chavori as ”a young female child.‘ Evidently, many English Romany words have become common usage within the English language e.g. lolly, cosh, cushy and most recently chav.
this cactus is security protected maybe I should get one as a buglar-deterrent for the Wendy home.
One recent Sunday afternoon the neighbours, local Reading celebrities, and a gal from West Sussex dropped by to warm the wendy house over lashings of tea and cake. A jolly civilised affiar with a little bit of dribbling. During the goings-on I discovered many useful facts including:
- a local granny can climb the walls to escape from a locked cemetry after dusk.
- the Wendy House was converted from a garage in 1968 partly explaining the dangerous staircase.
- my nieghbours have lived all over the world - Kenya, Italy, India, Edinburgh before settling in Reading. Excellent company.
- the Readibus preferred gift to welcome a newcomer is a bottle of wine.
- the bath works best for a person under 5ft 2 (as do the stairs).
- house numbers evolve. One person’s home had evolved from without number to number 4 then number 2…
I suspect I missed some real news treats while in the Kitchen warming the pots, I wonder what other goodies these people are going to share with us in the upcoming years….
Schrockthehouse recently pointed out that there is a shop in Oxford dedicated to keeping me informed about the goings on in the world, called the Wendy news shop.
In John Lewis’ this chap demonstrates a shoulder bag, hat and khaki cargo pants, he has almost all the necessaries to be a real dude.
Given that taking photographs of children would indicate that I am actually a latent criminal I decided to take advantage of the fabulous resources provided by the shop that is humbly known as Jacksons by photographing childrens outer-layers in their absence. Below are pictures of no children in neatly ordered school uniform Jackets, games blouses, and jumpers:
”’bring”’ ””’bring””: Hello… …Wendy House speaking, how can I help you?
American friend: Wendy? Is that you?
Wendy: Yes
American friend: OH MY GOD, Wendy, your accent has gotten so English that I didn’t even recognise you! So, how are you liking being back in England
Wendy: It’s the little things that you didn’t realise that you missed or thought were over romantised like the sound of leather on willow during a cricket game in a park, followed by a brief silence then clapping as the players on both sides applaud a good shot, the smell of freshly mown, damp, grass in the morning, the diversity of nose shapes, the plethera of watery blue eyes and men wearing shoulderbags.
American friend: are you reading one of your blog posts?
Wendy: I’m not sure, I’ll check and get back to you on that one
A noticable style difference between UK and US males is that UK males have embraced the shoulder bag. This store shows a range fairly representative of what I see slung over young dudes arms, dudes in suits, dudes in jeans, dudes in khaki cargo pants, and none-dudes in all sorts of bizarreness.
Not ‘are you apprehended by the police for the ghastly crime of insufficient height’ but another clever euphemism for wanting to go to the toilet. The city of Westminster has signs to help you out with clever stick-people designs to illustrate the problem for those people who don’t understand the idiom ‘caught short’. My favourite part of the sign is the invitation to text toilet, for a toilet. Hoorah, no euphemisims there just send a text saying what you need, effectively the bottom-line…
It’s small, light, economic to run (no repeated purchase of bags), rather cute in an orange-metallic top kind of way, with more suction than a very sucky thing (e.g. limpet) its my Dyson (DC20) Stowaway Animal
After having fought my way through boxes and plastic bags of unnecessary packaging and branding materials (History of Dyson man and company) to get to this little beauty its proved worth the initial investment. Easy to put together and take apart without the instructions, I’ve grown obscenely attached to it. My kitty’s fluff seem very attracted to it too, result!
A friend cited a blog post on Jacksons that I hadn’t yet written. I suspect this is because my conversation and blog posts become indistinguishable over time as they ferment. I’m fermenting a whole series of posts on the outstanding store that is Jacksons, that rightfully has a whole corner in Reading named after it.
We’ll start outside with the outstanding window displays. These are reminiscent of the 1960’s. The paper backdrop of large flowers could have been made, lovingly, by my mother, or yours. Thoughtful, personal, tailored rather than mass produced, I find the displays enticing.
Even the Mannequin’s look like they’ve escaped from the 1960’s. With humour. The Ladies nightware is cleverly marketted as ‘Slenderella’ and ‘Damella. But the names don’t quite make up for non-topical goods. You have to prize non-topical good to buy this nightware.
The store cares, next to the sign indicating that they have the ubiquitous CCTV is one pointing out that their floors MAY be slippery when wet. another sign lets you know that for our own safety we should not lean against their windows. Is there an ominous side to this? Are they teasing us? Which floors are wet and which are dry? What will happen if we lean against their windows?
This slightly sinnister side is compounded by some of the mannequins. A child mannequin in a tutu appears to watch you with evil eyes… …she scared me… …intrigued me…
Other Mannequins display a slightly non-sober jaunty angle with their wigs and hats. Explore my flickr photographs of Jacksons for the full effect.
Rarely can I resisit going into Jacksons. The inside of the store is another set of stories altogether. Worth waiting for.
The sign over a Reading downtown establishment says ‘Vodka and Food’, not ‘Spirits and Sandwiches’ nor ‘Alcohol and Chicken tikka Masala’ not ‘Food and Vodka’, nor ‘Lunch and Liquor’. I wonder who their audience is? I’ve heard about ‘Chav’s’ since returning to Britian, do Chav’s favour Vodka?
What does he CCTV camera directed at the entrance tell me? Probably not much since CCTV cameras are almost ubiquitous in UK town centres, apparantly in 2006 there was one camera for every 14 people, but maybe it says something that I can’t hear…
Alan D Hayward IS Licensed to deal in game. That’s like 007 is licensed to kill, only this is licensed to deal. Merriam-Webster’s 3rd option (a and b) of the verb ‘deal’ defines it as:
a: to engage in bargaining : trade b: to sell or distribute something as a business <deal in insurance>
licenced to make a living from trading dead birds….
According to Wikipedia Reading (HM Prison) is the county gaol of Berkshire and formerly the site of executions. It was built in a cruciform shape in 1844, Victorian. It’s about the same age as the new old wendy house and built in the back-yard of the Abbey on the site of an old leper colony. Now its a ‘Young offender Institution and remand centre’ (1999 HM Govt report - includes interviews with prisoners)
Famous people incarcerated there include:
home made cakes rather than those that have been delivered from further afield are proffered by the wonderful little ‘picnic’ shop on the Butter Market.
This is in stark contrast to its new neighbour, Starbucks. I choose picnic with local home made cakes and delicious salads every time. But then directly across the Butter Market there are more choices, Munchees or big chain of Costa Coffee?
I felt impelled to excape cafe corner on the Butter Market, go home and make myself a sandwich after this imposing decision dilemma.
A new, imitiation, old phone arrived to replace the genuine 1930’s BT compliant phone that somehow disappeared during my relocation. When plugged into my phone socket, no dial tone, it didn’t work. The BT support operative was extremely helpful as she talked me through various in-house tests then finally succumbed to a request to send an engineer around. The engineer was scheduled to arrive sometime between 8am and 1pm. at 12.58 I recieved a phonecall from him to say he was only streets away. He turned up and then disappeared again for 2hrs.
Apparantly he’d tracked my problem to a green box outside Palmers park.
He explained this was human error
its always human error
the technology works fine
people are stupid.
Can you see any problems in this reasoning?
viewer of my desktop background (vomdb): are they yours?
Wendy: (?????) I took the picture
vomdb: yes, but are they yours?
Wendy: I don’t own the flats, but they looked pretty in the sunset so I took a photograph of them
womdb: are they your children playing football?
Wendy: no, but that’s my shadow behind the shadow of that tree
Words of wisdom from my outrageously expensive and handsome young product-dispensing hairdresser:
If you’re looking for a good winebar the best place in Reading is the Forbury Hotel restaurant bar
As usual, I’ll be taking Alan’s tip very seriously and following up on this gem of wisdom
According to Wikipedia Forbury = ‘borough in front’.
In Reading this was a gathering, market area in front of the now defunct Reading Abbey.
In the small cafes of Earley on Wokingham Road you can find mugs of tea, English breakfasts and free wireless internet access. You can also find many second-hand shops (US = Consignment, thrift) raising money for good causes: Sue Ryder, Barnados, Amnesty International to name 3 in but a mere 100 yard amble from Palmers park.
The Wendy House still doesn’t have its own internet access so public hotspots have become an essential part of my weekend routine… ..and jolly good fun it all is too.
they are just pretending, and they have allotments too, so they can’t be real beggars because they can grow their own food and stuff
Singing and high spirits in the streets near cemetery junction, Balloons tied to fire engines, lamp-posts, leaple and shops. Police directing traffic and cycling aound, smiling. A yound boy offered me bottled water and a leaflet. I took the leaflet and read… …Nagar Kirtan is a Punjabi term that literally means “neighbourhood hymn singing“. The seek new year is April 14th, the day that Sikhism was born in 1699. It is the holiest day of their calendar.
Wikipedia described Vaisakhi
Such singing and laughter and happiness, it was a joy to mingle with the crowds
A discussion amongst a group of people on when they could coordinate going to the Reading CAMRA festival included one American. The American seemed a little suprised that the default assumption was that if there are lots of different beers to be tasted then the result would most likely be a certain level of annebriation, this astute observation about beer consumption was summarised as:
You Brits have no sense of moderation
Young dude: …and it wasn’t the people that you would expect who knew the most, it was the young blonde scruffy girls not the older men in suits…
Wendy: Young dude, your prejudices are showing
wendy: which one was he?
colleague: the one sat to my left at lunch time
wendy: with glasses?
colleague: the guy who sat in the front passenger seat in the car
wendy: cute older man?
colleague: (sharp intake of breath while smiling and moving hand to cover mouth, meanwhile several colleagues nearby swing their chairs round and look at me while smirking)
wendy: damn, that was both sexist and age-ist in one fell swoop. sorry.
(giggling colleagues)
An exciting evening was spent studying pussycat-paw-preferences. If you are already yawning, stop reading now, this is the excitment climax sentence for this blog post. This is the sound made by the fluffballs decending the staircase of danger in WendyHouse:
Matrix: bur-bump, bur-bump, ber-pump
Sampo: bump—bump–bump-bumpbumbbump
Watching the bumpy affair indicates that Matrix always first puts her left-paw onto the next step while Sampo uses the not-insubstantial momentum of her stomach to launch herself down planting her left paw on every other step. The cunning corner two steps before the bottom of the staircase has occassionally taken advantage of Sampo’s momentum to literally bump her. Sampo, not the brightest of kitties.
Matrix = left-pawed
Sampo = Ambidextrous
The free Thames Valley Park bus service is outstanding. It not only provides free wireless internet access, it also provides signs to let you know where the internet access might be a bit buggy.
