:: The Wendy House ::

On the small island of koufounissi they’ve rigged St. Georges church. 

One highlight of my Greek holiday involved sitting on this church wall in the early evening listening to the ceremony songs waft through the open doors,  children wobble in and out of the church,  two old ladies greeting attendees and shepharding the children,  watching the passers-by cross themselves as the sunset gathered on the horizon.

Picturesque sunset venues on the Greek Islands were frequently very sociable places.  By contrast,  sunrises were more deserted,  peaceful places,  highly recommended.

According to wikipedia the sunset at Oia, Santorini, is reputedly one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world.  As the evening sets in bus-loads of tourists seek viewpoints in the small hillside town.

Definitely a place for sociable people.

Images of elderly people are sold on postcards,  smiling positive images giving me the impression that the elderly are happy and valued members of the Greek community.

This portrait was taken by Labrador who is more plucky than I about asking people if she can take their picture.

t may be in the park,  but e is defintiely in the Greek Island beach disco bar.

In a disco infected bar on Santorini one of the pack commented on the extensive evidence of e-nhancements:

Poodle: I can’t believe all the boob jobs around here,  its increadible!

Wendy: you mean like that girl in the sequinned bikini?

Poodle:  Yes,  and that girl,  and that one, and…

The disco smelt of e-strogen affilitated enhancements and the bar music played ‘…you are just a sexy girl, nothing but a sexy girl…’ 

Poodle and my un-enhanced selves looked beautiful in our simple gently curved, gravity aligned, purity.

Why I love England #3.  closeness

closeness illustrated by analogy to the display system in a local store

Within 6 months of arriving in Reading I’d been invited to a local couple’s wedding,  into half a dozen neighbours houses for tea and general niceness,  out to numerous local events,  heard multiple personal stories of divorces, abortions, new-loves, disputes with the local council,  disputes with neighbours,  and, of course, the standard commute and job stories.  I experience a closeness with people here that is very heartwarming.

One night before my holiday,  after drinking Stanlake Park champagne in the company of extremely charming, senior, neighbours,  I discovered the potential benefits of a champagne-induced dreaming.  Obviously these are only preliminary findings prior to systematic investigation.  The preliminary findings are looking good.  The dream qualities included but were not limited to:

• warm squishiness. 
• high memorability.
• good mood inducing.

Padding removed from swimsuit bra's (flickr photoshare)

I reached my teens in the late 1970’s before the introduction of the ‘wonder-bra’.  Now,  bra’s without inbuilt padding, often called ‘push-up’ bras, are the smaller portion of the brazier market.  Luckily some designs do enable you to easily remove the default-provided padding and some celebrities are plucky enough to not-wear this generally unnecessary accessory and deal with the publicity that makes an issue out of their choice (e.g. Charlie Dimmock).

I can also verify that Jacksons stocks some fabulous bras without padding or underwiring,  Jacksons is a fashion rebel,  I love it!

first Man In Panama Hat (MIPH): that is the most striking womans hat at this wedding,  I didn’t recognise you earlier, is it new?

Wendy:  I have a tan.  The hat’s about 20yrs old, from Cornwall, it’s my favourite hat, though I rarely have a special-enough occassion to wear it (subdues jumping impulse based on the excitement of being in the company of 2 other people wearing hats).

first MIPH: it did SAY Cornwall to me (giggles). 

second MIPH: it is the ONLY woman’s hat at this wedding (giggles).

Headgearless guest:  Isn’t it good of the Bride and Groom to arrange a wedding so that we can all wear our favourite clothes (smiles).

On this fabulously sunny and very cheerful day the female wedding guests were not ruining their immaculate coiffures by squishing them under hats.  Instead a rash of fascinators were jiggling with the movement of their wearers.

As part of our briefing Afghan told us that we could not charge our small electronic devcies (phone, CAMERA, shaver, other) on jojo, the sailboat.  Evidently six guests with several small devices each could drain the boats motor-charged battery by device recharging.  Instead,  Afghan recommended that when buying use of a loo,  and drinking our free coffee,  we ask the waitstaff to charge our devices,  behind the bar.  

Real sailing experience #6: charge your small devices in Tavernas

Taverna staff were extremely obliging.

On our 2nd day sailing motoring the skipper taught us how to tie bowlines, 

B-OH-lines not b-OW-lines 

Though the knot is used to secure the boat’s bow, and stern, to a mooring. 

Thats a knot, not a knot.

Real sailing experience #5: know your knots

The obliging Greeks will often place chairs on tables to ensure you get the best possible view.

7am on our non-sailing day on Ios while the rest of the crew slept  I found some deliciously freshly baked pain au chocolate in the port Bakery.  The merchandising of bakery goods at this early (late?) hour implies some party island requirements.

All day large ferries docked in the harbour and hundreds of young adults with backpacks and wheely-suitcases rolled on and off.

After mooring we grabbed our towels and wash bags and trooped off to the public showers.  We took turns using the showers for 3 Euros a turn.  It felt sooooooooo luxurious washing the crystalised Aegean salt from skin and hair in a room large enough to be able to wave your arms around,  a classic shower requirement.  No longer did I feel like a walking emery board or look like I suffered from all over body dandruff.

Real sailing experience #4: wearing white hides the cumulative sea-salt crystals

Over dinner we consulted with our cruise director (weather forcast) and persuaded Afghan to let us stay a second day and night on Ios.  No-one wanted a repeat rinse in the washing machine…..

We arrived in Ios exhausted.  The skipper explained we could not use the showers or do ‘number twos’ while in the harbour because Greek boat effluence is ejected directly into the harbour.  The small island harbours would quickly become noticably fowled if all the moored boat-crews used soap-suds and did our poos in it.  Afghan suggested that we could

‘get a free coffee when paying a couple of Euros to use toilets in the local hostelrys’

[seadog laughter]  Ha HA HA HA!’

real sailing experience #3: do not poo in the loo of a boat moored in a Greek harbour

We motored North towards the party Island of Ios, into the meltemi, into the wind, sails tightly packed-away, avoiding the katabatics.  Wind speeds were between 40 and 50 knots,  gale force 10, with what the skipper described as flying water from the tops of the whitecaps.  Red, Poodle and Spanial donned anti-seasickness wristbands.

Labrador in full sensible waterproofs stayed dry on deck to the left of the skipper.  To the left of Labrador Red lay back-to-the-bench shivering in full sun and swimwear.  Red was unable to sit-up lest the action give momentum to Red’s stomach contents.  I dragged myself along the boat, down the almost-as-dangerous-as-the-wendy-house-stairs and went below to bring-up Red’s fleece.  It was like navigating a fairground ride without a laughing audience.  

Poodle was buried beneath towels lying on the bench next to me, groaning.   All the colour had drained from Spaniel’s lips laying back to the bench opposite facing the sky.   Retriever was head over the side wretching while Spanial and I held a leg each lest the jerking of the boat lever Retriever ir-retriever-bly overboard. 

Skipper would smoke a cigarette every now and then… 

Lighting a cigarette is a tricky manouvre while helming a boat in a gale,  one has to admire the skippers dexterity and skill.  With each puff on the cigarette the pack pulled either hands, towels or jacket collars over their nose and mouth to filter any trajectile-style impact of the smoke on thier bouncing stomachs.

Skipper put the boat on auto-pilot and went below to brew a coffee.  As soon as he’d left the deck labrador elegently turned,  ejaculated a globule of stomach contents in one smooth action off the stern, then returned to face the wind looking like a true stalwart.  Good timing and action,  10 for technique I’d say.

I sat in my sea-spray-soaked, warm, neoprene jacket in the blazing sunshine with regular sea-showers.  Each sea-shower produced a seemingly choreographed choral groan from the lying-on-thier-back pack.   I waited unimpatiently for

real sailing experience #2: feeling sick

I never did get real sailing experience #2. 

The shere volume of flying water made reading my novel impossible,  the powerful swinging motion made  writing in my journal or sketching impossible,  the pack were clearly not in the mood for good conversation,  the views were rather predicatbly sea and sky, which can induce visual boredum.  Instead of developing seasickness I worked on fending off the boredum by considering the contents of this post and singing to myself… ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?…

After introductions Afghan told us that the weather forecast was too rough to complete a sail to the next Island, even Ferry’s were being cancelled due to the seasonally characteristic high winds known as the meltemi.  While clearly a good decision given the high waves,  this was a damping suprise to the whole pack. Afghan explained using essential information omitted from the promotional material, girls are in control:

‘mother nature is our cruise director’ 

 ‘the Aegean is a bitch’

[seadog laughter]  Ha HA HA HA!’

 real sailing experience #1:  be prepared not to sail. 

The pack spent the first afternoon on-land bonding at a beach-side disco-Taverna called JoJo’s; drinking beer, dancing, talking, reading books, sunbathing, sketching, meeting other tourists, swimming and making cell-phone calls/texts.  

In  subsequent blog posts my companions on our recent Aegean odyssey are represented by canines to allow your imagination to create scenes potentially more bizarre than the actual events.  Meet the pack arranged in order of sailing experience:

• JoJo: the 50ft Bavaria50 yaught, chartered by GAP, that housed the pack for 10 days this summer.
• Afghan Hound (50s):  JoJo’s skipper, German. Single, daughter at college.  Afghan wants to provide a genuine sailing experience, provide each pack member with a good, safe, holiday and manage the Greek based team of GAP skippers.
• Chocolate Labrador (46): Rhode Island, US, married.  Owns a small sail boat.  Labrador is using time when sailing-unenthusastic spouse is working away to indulge passions for sailing and exploring foriegn cultures.  Labrador has attempted to learn Greek conversation with the support of utube.  I met Labrador in 2004 when we shared a room on a GAP tour of Costa Rica.  Labrador doesn’t snore or produce smelly farts in the night.  Knowing this, we planned to share a cabin on JoJo.
• Border Collie (44): Reading, UK, steadily single (me, Wendy),  I have an ancient RYA Dinghy sailing licence, level 2, acquired at a Royal Navy training base.  The training methodology involved a perplexing frequent use of the Anglo-Saxon word for copulation in an apparently unsystematic and technically inaccurate manner.  I joined in with the liberal and unsystematic use of this term which did appear to stump the Navy trainers.  For a couple of years I owned a Byte that successfully decorated my garage in the US.  I want to explore the current and past Greece at a leisurely pace, repeatedly dive off JoJo, avoid the sunshine, drink beers, read books, practice sketching and bolster my memory with notes and photographs.
• Golden Retriever (30): Minnesota, US, has pottered about on boats on the Great lakes,  is married to
• Springer Spaniel (30): Minnesota, US, has also pottered about on boats on the Great Lakes.  Spanial has known the Retriever since pre-school,  started dating in high school.  They are interested in Temples,  archeological artefacts, museums, social anthropological history and sunbathing on-deck.
• Red Setter (30): Seattle, US, recently divorced.  No sailing experience. Red doesn’t tolerate unfairness, and is equipped with the intellect to quickly talk-back when encountering mistreatment and unfairness.  Red wants to dance and explore culture.  This is the first vacation Red has taken alone abroad,  Red arrived early and tried out the Youth Hostel in Thira.
• Standard Poodle (26): Sidney, Australia, Greek parents, no sailing experience, unmarried and behaving as if in love.  This involved cell phone predominantly attached to ear and conversations like ‘no you hang-up first’ and sleeping with the cell-phone clasped between both hands on their sternum.  Poodle had saved a long time to be able to afford this holiday which started in Spain,  involved visiting family in Athens and ould continue after the sail in Corfu.  Poodles luggage was of a different opinion.  It never arrived in Greece. As far as I know it is still AWOL. Poodle arrived with the bare essentials; cell-phone, credit card, swimwear and toothbrush looking forward to meeting the luggage, sunbathing,  dancing and partying. 

Inside Jojo before setting sail:               

Just incase there is any residual doubt amongst my readers that generally women are not considered praiseworthy, or enabled to take-on prasieworthy roles beyond those condoned by patriarchal values,  the BBC reported an analysis that confirms that celebrity females are more likely to be HATED and less likely to be LOVED than celebrity males:

In a nutshell, despite years of equal opportunities, the media - and the people who watch and read - prefer the stay-at-home mother over a woman who lives her life in public, particularly one who is overtly ambitious or successful in making money. There is great satisfaction among many people in seeing them humbled

I do hope no one is terribly suprised or shocked by this result.

Reasons to retire Darling,  part 4

1. Increasing requirements to contact computer support services

2. I am developing obstreperous-w intolerance.

3. 8loody hail, breeding task manager

4. I WANT Vista

I’ve used a Vista machine and I love all the search-stuff (start menu, control-panel),   I no longer have to remember where I put things.

Its got a thing called ’snippit’ which takes pictures of what’s on your screen in a much easier way that control-print-screen,  open-paint,  then paste. 

It’s pretty! The computer I used running Vista is a rather ugly thing,  unlike Darling.  I want to marry the two,  prettiness of Darlings body-work with the human-memory-complimenting functionality of Vista.

The Great Western Hotel in Reading has been re-branded to a Malmaison Hotel. This style appears to be referred to as ‘chic boutique’.  Judging by the internal decor boutique chic means purple velvet furnishings,  lashings of pink,  large-swirly-print dark-wallpaper and an angular-geometric floor covering all held together with elevator music and a hint of stale cigarette smoke. 

According to the Malmaison-branded paper-wrappers on the Napkins:  Malmaison. Eats. Drinks. Sleeps. 

This sounded uninspiringly basic 

I tried the eggs benedict,  or rather egg benedict,  just the one egg and half a muffin.  The ‘eats’ were not impressing me,  the ‘drinks’ didn’t include any real ales.  Apart from myself the only other customers in the bar on this Saturday afternoon were a couple of Hotel guests from the romantic together while speaking in Dutch.  After trying the ’sleeps’ while waiting about 15 minutes for any member of the Bar staff to actually come into the bar I  gave-up on the ambition of eating a pudding and walked into the boutique reception area to ask if they could arrange to bring me my bill (US = check). 

It was unisnpiringly basic

However,  all of that said, I do have it on good authority that they have a fabulous suite with an en-suite train-set that is mumzie-impressingly-good.  I may have to get a second, mumzie, opinion on this.  Certainly I can see how a train-set is in keeping with the original,  pre-boutique, Great Western Railway (GWR) branding…

Luckily,  the chic boutique rebranding hasn’t yet spread to the external original architecture that conveys something of the original standing of the GWR.

Words of wisdom from my outrageously expensive and handsome, former professional-brick-layer, young product-dispensing hairdresser:

treat your mum to a night in the Mallard suite at the Malmaison,  it has a ground floor patio,  an en-suite train-set and wooden sinks which look like you can pick them up and walk away with them

As usual,  I’ll be taking Alan’s tip very seriously and following up on this gem of wisdom

‘run, run, as fast as you can,  you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man’ 

I have fond memories of this traditional story (fable?)  at home and primary school.  Recently, I found this little chap in the canteen at work,  a real treat on a hectic day.  He escaped the hungry keyboard,  computer,  and phone but was no match for foxy silver-haired me.

wandering through an empty mall, alone,  wearing fitted jeans and t-shirt, I stopped at the information centre for some vital information:

Wendy:  Excuse me,  can you tell me where the restrooms are?  (Soprano voice)

I still haven’t sufficiently re-adjusted to England to actually say the word ‘toilet’ out loud in a public place without sniggering.

Mall Information lady (MIL):  Toilets?

Wendy:  Yes (smiles, manages not to giggle)

MIL:  Womens? (no hint of a smile,  a stern facial expression)

Wendy:                     …..Yes?…   (stops smiling and listens to the directions from the seemingly grumpy looking MIL)

The Ladies toilets were next to the mens toilets.  The directions to find either of them were the same.  Why do you think the MIL wanted to establish with me whether I was asking for womens or mens toilets? 

My outline form in said Jeans and a t-shirt (flickr photoshare)

Jacksons pay attention to branding detail. 

The store is branded with a dark green background to its main name sign above the mannequinned window displays and below the large lettering that eponymously announces ‘Jacksons corner’ .  The text on its custom plastic bags and the piece de resistance is the wonderful font used to announce Jacksons on the green marble entrance way. 

I swooned. 

 I am easily pleased

The US the tax year runs from January 1st to December 31st.  The UK Tax, fiscal, year runs from April 6th to April 5th based on 18th Century ‘quarter days’ when servants were traditionally hired and ’rent’ was gathered from the predominantly non-home-owning population and,  of course, the introduction of Tax to support the Napoleonic wars.  Those darned French.  The UK corporate financial year runs from April 1st  to March 31st,  something to do with not loosing money when the Gregorian calendar was introduced.

I think of my P60,  provided by my employer as being like my US W2.

Do not destroy

The P60 helpfully announces this instruction in bold type on its authority-imbued graduated pinkness.

Excerpt from BBC article:

A woman who was seen being punched by a police officer in CCTV footage has said she is disappointed after it was confirmed he will not face charges.

Punching a female suspect (guilt undetermined) five times while the suspect is on the floor after having fallen down a flight of stairs, while colleagues watch, is legally acceptable according to the ‘Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)’ who stated that the police officer being investigated used

“justified and proportionate force”  

Watch the BBC video footage which includes a brief explanation of legitimate subdue techniques that include punching.  I had naively believed that the Police are trained to act in concert to restrain suspects using a range of effective techniques prior to resorting to punching.  

The BBC article is at pains to state that the victim boes not think she has been racially abused.  Unsuprisingly, whether this is an act of hate against females is not raised.

Imperfection alert

Sometimes I say, do, or type things that are miss-spelled, poorly punctuated, mr-typed, or otherwise perceived as jarringly inconsistent with being a self-professed fake-woman.  This effectively makes me a fake-fake woman, a double-fake woman,  it’s not like a double entendre,  double identity or double indeminty.  It can be perceived as duplicitous. 

My duplicitous behavior is normally revealed with an exclamation of ‘but I thought YOU were a feminist!  followed by citing my behaviour that fails to conform to the exclaimers perception of what a feminist should be or do. 

Common sources of this apparant inconsistency are my

• lack of awareness of that behaivour’s genderised nature.
• lazy, lack of, self-censoring of the bad genderised habits I picked-up through a miss, or mr, spent youth.
• use of irony, sarcasm or subversion has not been recognised by the exclaimer.
• temporary excursion.  Excursion from being harrassed for failing to strive for conformity to the current definitions of feminine ideals,  to being praised and harassed for aligning with them.  For example,  I’ll have a manicure, wear shoes with heals, wear a pretty dress, possibly use some make-up.

Reasons to retire Darling,  part 3

1. Increasing requirements to contact computer support services

2. I am developing obstreperous-w intolerance.

3. Generally increasing bizarre behaviours that do not actually require support calls because they are solved by reboots. 

In this example we see the results of my having hit control-alt-delete (CAD) in an attempt to get the task-manager so that I can Zap the program that for some reason is now using all my processing power….  nothing happened… then…   …I didn’t press CAD that many times,  its been breeding…

8loody hail, breeding task manager

Jonathan Feinberg’s free (creative-commons licenced) web-tool,  wordle word-cloud, made the picture below.  I gave wordl the Wendy House blog address as the word-source. Wordl analysed the content and produced a black and white display.  I played with the presentation tools,  colour scheme,  font,  word orientations…  Thank you Jonathan,

Much fun

The internet and free creative tools have enabled me to fully express my full mediocrity in public, see:

Title: The day before my Greek holiday

Garden designer guest:  it’s not many people that can look straight into their garden when sitting on their toilet

I will have to put something in the line of view to make it a tad more pleasurable than just patio and fence.  As I’m sure you can imagine,  I’ve been contemplating the garden rather a lot recently…

According to the principles of Feng Shui,  I should change the layout of the bathroom, keep this door closed, change the colour scheme from blue and white to red and red then add a few candles or my career will flow into the sewers.  Alas,  I’m way too busy building my career and going on holiday to bother with arranging and paying for builders to rebuild my bathroom in a Feng Shui approvable layout and colour scheme.  Pleasing plants in line of view will have to suffice.