:: The Wendy House ::

 Can you see them?

Scary!

stranger on the street:  have you got the time?

This is not a question I was asked in the US.  This question has been put to me on several occasions when walking from bus stops to appointments in the UK.

The question always makes me think twice before replying.  Am I being asked for the current time or does the asker suspect that I may be a professional street walker?

Shop assistant (Sa):  have you got a [name] card?

Wendy:  No,  what type of card is it?

Sa: Its like a Nectar card

Wendy:  I don’t know what a nectar card is,  what type of card is it?

Sa: its like a Tesco’s card

Wendy:  I don’t know what a Tesco’s card is

Sa: raises eyebrows…

Wendy: is it a customer loyalty card?

Sa: yes…

To honour Scarlet’s request, 6 psuedo-random personal things:

1. Peanut butter and cheese sandwiches without any bread,  spread the peanut butter directly on a wedge of cheese.
2. At 44.9 (.9 recurring) yrs old I still wear school daps.
3. I do not have enough hand-wind-up-clocks that tick loudly with unsynchronised chimes.   BOINGNGNGNGNGNG…
4. Beyond name and gender allocation I bear no resemblance to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan character Wendy. 
5. There is garden mud underneath my left index fingernail.
6. I will be breaking the tag rules (see below) by not leaving a tag comment on the blogs of those people cited below.

Tags for these 6 people that are worth reading to see if they ring your bell,  chime your clock,  peanut butter your cheese, or dap your feet :

1. Hilarious. Jenn’s ‘The Piehole’: http://liscious.net/piehole/index.php
2. Serious. Twisty Faster’s ‘I blame the patriarchy’. http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/
3. Windows. Raymond Chen’s ‘The Old New Thing’: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/default.aspx
4. Ambulances. Tom Reynolds ‘Random Acts of Reality’: http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog
5. Matronly. Mrs. Pouncer’s ‘Mrs Poucer’s counsel’ http://mrspouncer.blogspot.com/
6. Paramedic. Stuart Gray’s Paramedics diary. http://theparamedicsdiary.blogspot.com/

Tag rules: Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Write 6 random things about yourself. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted…

Comments on the fragrant wearing of non-specific-animal-print velvet trousers (NSAPVT) in a built-up area.

US:  Awesome pants!

UK: Top trousers!

Asian: (points at the NSAPVT, looks me in the eye and smiles)

why I love England #4: public service advertisements

The most recent series of public service advertisements are aimed at tackling ‘binge drinking’ culture that is painfully obvious on the Streets of British cities and by the behaviour of British holiday makers.

They are very direct and witty: Metro webpage with embedded media files of TV abverts.

My first memory of this striking style of advertisement was the 1986 anti-Aids campaign that leveraged John Hurt as voice-over and Nicolas Roeg’s directorial talent.

Reasons why I love Reading 257:  innovative mall decorations

This display made me smile and envy the people who constructed it for the obvious fun in both conceiving of the idea and implementing it.  Very creative and entertaining.  Excellent job. I wonder what their christmas decorations will be like?  I will certainly be returning to the Broad Street mall…

Bangladeshi restaurant in Earley, Reading.

Dressed in white shirts and black neatly ironed trousers the Garden of Gulab staff welcomed me into their restaurant and were able to find a table for one in the crowded restaurant.  The customers looked and sounded pale skinned English,  the staff looked and sounded more Asian. 

My choice was a Balti.  I love Balti’s,  ever since I started eating them in the mid 1980s in a local Birmingham Sparkbrook restaurant on Ladypool Road.  The Ladypool road restaurant I used had no flatware and the staff would treat you as if you were an irritant if you had the afrontery to insult their food by asking for flatware.  I learned to eat my food properly,  with my fingers. 

It’s not easy. 

In the Garden of Gulab I ate my meal with my fingers leaving the impressive, superfluous, traditional English flatware untouched.  In Birmingham I was given a thick soft damp heated flanel to clean my hands after the meal.  In the Garden of Gulab I was given an individually plastic-wrapped disposable wet-paper-wipe.  Functionally sufficient yet lacking the touch of quality that I had learned to enjoy.  The food was excellent if disappointingly mild compared to my Birminghan experiences.  The balti arrived in an ordinary metal dish,  not the sizzling hot Balti bowl that it had been cooked in.  

Mumzie doesn’t like Indian food,  I think she’d thoroughly enjoy this place and the food. 

The waiter bought a complimentary small brandy to my table explaining it was because I had finished my main meal quickly.  

Excellent English-i-fied version of an Indian restaurant and charming staff. 

chap: it’s not easy being a poof over 40

Wendy:  oh!  (signifying: suprise at being informed of sexual orientation)

chap: my boyfriend’s an artist,  he’s built like a brick shithouse, 6 foot 5, paints the same pictures again and again,  never makes any money, I’m getting tired of it.

Wendy: Oh  (signifying: the height is suprising)

chap: last night he smashed a chair on the bed right next to me

Wendy: OH  (signifying: violence is suprising and concerning)

chap:  he’s always been such a gentle giant before now, he says its my fault, but I don’t know what I’ve done

Wendy: oh (signifying: I am not qualified to help), I’m off to homebase to get some cheap loft insulation from the sale (signifying: BYE)

A family of biddies and the bunnies (SylvaC).  I really must put a cap on the bunny habit,  before I am lured into the church of the cosmic bunny,  or the odd hare that creeps in for a quick box while gazing at the moon. 

My London raised Reading friend encountered this innovative use of traffic cones to prevent traffic from disturbing a Swans nest,  or possibly to prevent the Swans from colliding with nearby traffic. 

Either way,  hoorah for the portable bollard, the traffic cone!

customer:  what is blue cheese souflee?

French Waiter: …..

overheard on a bus

….minor accident with a chainsaw…..   ….it was turned-off…   …he still has all his fingers…

I do enjoy a good list,  closely followed by that wonderful feeling of achievement that follows ticking things off lists, or striking them out as ‘done’.  I’ve found a list provided by the BBC,  a fabulolus service,  that lists shops and eateries in Reading that sell fairtrade goods.  How fabulous is that?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/features/2004/03/fairtrade_shops.shtml

I will tick-tell-myself off if I use any other Reading shops and cafes. Naughty girl. 

Hip Hip Hoorahs all round

Despite the provision of FREE buses to get from downtown Reading to the Thames Valley business Park (TVP) I regularly walk. 

This has the fabulous side effect of keeping me fit,  for FREE!

What is the best 45th birthday present for a Wendy?  A four day weekend in Siena with spottydog as

• tour organiser.
• tour guide. 
• conversational sparring partner. 
• first-aid specialist,  she’ll have the plasters for when I fall-over, which she reliably informs me that I will, because I’ll be looking up at the architecture rather than at street-level obstacles.
• personal shopper,  because she has this uncanny skill for inducing me to part with cash like no other person I have ever met.
• extended memory.

Excitedness levels have already reached amber.  Spotty dog has cunningly avoided booking through the recently defunct XL, travelling at ridiculous hours of the day,   waiting at transport interchanges for silly, silly, times and other such icky nonsense.

I’m now officially registered as a resident of the Wendy House in Reading Borough and entitled to vote.  Hoorah!

Next year I can re-register by text, free-phone or internet.  Very helpful.

Today is the anniversary of a day when the darned Normans (French of viking origins) defeated the Anglo Saxon’s (English of German and Danish origins).  The English were led by the recently elected (Witenagemot, Witan) Danish Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, the nick-namesake of one of our current princes,  just outside a holiday resort called Hastings on the English south coast. 

The invading Norman team were lead by William the bastard who had allegedly been promised the English throne by King Edward the confessor (Saxon).  King Harry’s team had just hiked from York (241 miles, 386 kilometres) in a remarkable 4 - 7 days after fending-off an invasion by the Norwegian King Harald the hard who may have been promised the English throne by a Danish King Canute the hardy.

The basic plot is that William the bastards’ team kills most of Harry Godwinson’s team. 

William the bastard, Duke of Normandy, became William I of England,  namesake of the current heir to the English throne, 2nd in line.  Most histories subsequently refer to William the bastard fellow as ‘William the Conqueror’ or ‘Guillaume le Conquérant’ .  Apparantly Londoners don’t acknowledge or use the ‘conqueror’ part of his rather convincing political spin, they politely refer to him as William Duke of Normandy.  

William’s arrival appears to have marked the end of the system of elected monarchy in England, though the Witan remained in name their role changed to that of the Norman feudally based system where membership was based on gifts of land originating from the King,  effectively a King’s court,  this system later evolved into the current Parliment.

On a linguistic note,  according to Jonathan Stern:

Anglo-Saxon and Norman French wouldn’t agree what gender some noun or other was… so they’d just forget about it and call it “it”.This has created a very flexible language (once referred to as “a lot of foreign words mispronounced”) which often has two subtly different words for things (e.g. compare our “come” and “arrive” with the German “kommen” and the French “arriver” - remember Anglo-Saxon would have been very like German; Norman French was closely related to Parisian French).

The small and yet pleasingly formed Reading Museum within the versataile town hall has its very own hand embroidered 1885 copy of the 70 metre long Bayeux Tapestry.

Homebase Till Operator (HTO):  would you like me to help you carry this to you car?

Wendy:  I don’t have a car, or a fitness club subscription

HTO:  …

Mumzie:  GWENDOLYN!  Remember to shut the fridge door after you’ve used the milk

Wendy:  ………

In the US my fridge door was weighted,  it fell shut automatically.  Slightly irritating when making a cup of tea at a leisurely pace.  Here in the UK my fridge door is not weighted.  If I forget to shut it the fridge tries to cool the whole kitchen. 

Memories of mumzies wise words shiver around the room…

while discussing some extremely impressive specialist stuff:

specialist 1:  does it do the whole gubbins?

specialist 2: yea

Wendy thinks:  Oh!  I need one of those,  haven’t had my whole gubbins done for years.

Words of wisdom from my outrageously expensive and handsome, former professional-brick-layer, young product-dispensing hairdresser are temporarily on hold while I investigate cheaper less product-pushing alternatives.  This tip is bought to you courtesy of Lucia from the Philippines in her own local family business salon:

keep your hair short in the winter

Before I could consider the merits of this tip,  Lucia had launched her scissors into the remnants of my mop which is now,  indeed,  short for the winter.

The staff at Jacksons are solution builders.  When something doesn’t work they fix it,  no unnecessary fuss. 

For example,  this light switch set in the Ladies underwear changing rooms controls 8 different lights in the main store.  The lights cannot be seen from the switch location.  Which lights are controlled by which switches?  You would need 2 people to find-out by a try it and see method.  Would you be able to remember from one day to the next which switch controls which lights?

The staff at Jacksons don’t have to learn or remember which light is controlled by which switch because they’ve cunningly labelled the switches!  Now, which lights are ’spot 3.4′?

IT support:  hello,  this is [name] in Salt Lake city  (US Accent)

Wendy: Oh!  I hope its sunny in Salt Lake city

IT Support:  it’s 4am in the morning

Wendy:  Ah,  gosh,  well,  not sunny then,  I’ve got this problem…

[problem fixing conversation and Wendy starts falling asleep then wakes up when]

IT Support:  Wonkey,  I’m even talking British now,  wonkey

waiting room receptionist:  are you being seen to?

I had my cats ’seen to’ as a condition of adopting them from rescue centres.   

Wendy:  someone has been notified of my arrival

Cunningly avoiding providing information on the impending existence, or not, of my reproductory organs. 

Phew,  near miss!

‘one over the eight’ is defined by a UK phrases website as ‘the drink that renders you drunk’. 

My one over the eight is actually number 3 with weak beer  (under 4.5% alc.)  with Liquor my one over the eight is drink number 2. 

These non-trivial life-style details have caused the normally supportive Excel to get a mardy on because 9 does not equal 2 or 3.

A couple of signs outside of the Royal Berkshire Hospital’s Medical museum left me completely discombobulated for all of 10 minutes.  How do these signs work together,  if at all? 

Ambulances only

• as Medical Museum exhibits?
• as Medical museum visitors?
• Can park when delivering Medical Museum guests?
• Can park outside the medical museum but their occupants have more pressing engagements than exploring the undoubtedly fascinating preceding accoutrements of their current treatments.

The Royal Berkshire Hospital building facade is very impressive.  Provision of a museum to enlighten the locals is a very thoughtful addition.

I thought I knew what this idiom meant until I tried to verify it online.  This is what I believed:

• cop. To view, gather or recieve.
• flack.  Tiny metalised paper strips dropped from World War II aircraft as a means of interferring with enemy radar that is attempting to identify their position to relay to the anti-aircraft guns. 

In Wendy’s world,  to cop some flack is to be on the recieving end of lots of small irritations that together add up to major disruption.  This interpretation is consistent with usage of the phrase in forums, blogs and news item titles.

Merriam-Websters 4th and last definition of flack is ‘anti aircraft guns’ or ’the bursting shells fired from flak’.  It cites the origin of the main meaning of flack ‘one who provides publicity’  as ‘unknown,  1939′ .  During WW2.    WW2 airplanes also used to drop publicity (propaganda) leaflets,  Dropping flack and dropping small leaflets have remarkable behavioural, if not intended funtional, similarity.

Dictionary.com’s 6th entry for flack cites the meaning of flack that looks most similar to my current understanding of its use

• Antiaircraft artillery.
• The bursting shells fired from such artillery.
• Excessive or abusive criticism.
• Dissension; opposition.
• Informal:  Excessive or abusive criticism.
• Informal:  Dissension; opposition.

Some snippits from recent cell-phone conversation with the fellow coordinating the builders (occassionally) working on The Wendy House kitchen roof replacement.

Wendy: not having a kitchen roof is very inconvenient.
Foreman: Not for me its not.

…

Wendy: so the slates will all be in place by end of day tomorrow?
Foreman: yes
Wendy: That’s Autumn!
Foreman: more like gruesome
…

Wendy: Cheerio
Foreman: Bye Darlin’

<long sentence warning, take a breath now>

Combat cleaning’s monthly stop-by to put their duster, vacuum, or wet-wipes in all those places that spiders congregate, to make sure that I don’t drown in the discarded natural insulation produced by the fluffballs, is a particularly pleasant luxury.   

<long sentence over, you can relax now>

Pleasant because they

• ask about the building work then giggle endearingly at the answer.  
• don’t complain when my tap (US = fawcett) handles fall-off (if twisted at the wrong angle) in their hands.
• take the drapes diving for the floor, because the super-glue holding the drape-hangers up just isn’t quite as super as the advertising would have me believe, in their stride.

The biological term ‘cell’ was coined by Robert Hook, most famous for the eponymous Hooks law and working as Sir Christopher Wren’s colleage on St. Pauls Cathedral and a substantial proportion of London after the great fire.  Evidently Robert Hook meant to leverage the connotations of a monks cell, one of many defined spaces with an identical yet sparse functional content.

cell phones are named after the cellular network that supplies the signal,  possibly the term cell has the same root in a monks cell.  Two very diverse current-use meanings (phone, biological component) stemming from one original use.  Possibly…