wendy house

what’s a second here or there?   Its the difference between counting time based on an absolute benchmark of

• planetary movement, astronomical time.
• Caesium atom movement,   oscilations.  

Astronomical time is based on the  earth’s rotation.   But the earths rotation is noticably slowing-down.   Clocks are sometimes adjusted by seconds at the turn of the year to account for the difference.   According to the London Times online boffins at an international level are not happy about this fiddling.   Apparantly this fiddling

“irritates some scientists who say that leap seconds create confusion and can cause software crashes”

As far as I can tell this involved  the choice of   either

stick with  astronomical time and maintain

1. the risk of breaking software.
2. irritated scientists.
3. time being slightly imprecise.
4. debates about how and when to adjust for the slowing of the earths rotation.
5. the relationship between time and experiential cycles such as night/day,   seasons,   noon being the point when the sun is highest in the sky etc.    

or switch to Caesium atom  oscilations and avoid items 1 though 6 listed above.    

Apart from a second at  midnight tonight have I missed any part of the argument?

In 1979,   at 15yrs, I was in full fledged teenage identity crisis. A  skinny insignificant white girl living in a box on a 1960′s Wimpy Housing Estate.   Several albums captured the  insignificance, energy and disorientation.   I’ve never liked Supermarkets.

The Clash sang Lost in the supermarket

In 1979 I was about to take my first set of exams,   Oxford University ‘O’ levels.   Family and  the School’s career officer  were encouraging me  to think about my career.    Should I be a

• a police person?   Not allowed,   too short.  
• a  jet fighter pilot?   Not allowed, too girl.    
• a  nurse?   No,   too much cleaning icky messes and being nice to  sick people.  
• a train driver?   No,   I’d have to follow-tracks and I like making my own way.
• an Engineer?   It’s what dad wants me to be,   but it seemed just a bit practical and dull to a 15 year old me.
• an architect?   Hmmmm… …possibilities….      how long to get qualified…   7yrs?!   I arranged some work experience for myself in an Architects office to get an idea of what 7 years would lead to…

Meanwhile, XTC were Making plans for Nigel who apparantly had a future in, a national industry, British Steel

can all be fitted in school uniform at Reading’s BHS.   As their sign says they ‘fit the Nation’.   If the picture is anything to go by,   they fit the nation of boys… I wonder why girls were invisible in their window display,   I looked for a partnering sign but none could be found…

Luckily their online advertisement includes girls in the nation together with boys, ethnicity and unisex,   I wonder why they opted out of this approach for their window displays.  

As ever,   Jackson is ahead of the game with its fabulous schoolwear department.

Not a European clothes size to denote adulthood or large children.   An exam used in the English school system that was taken by 11 year old students between 1944 and 1974.   It was used as a filter for to divide students stream students into entry to Grammar schools  or State schools.   If you failed you went into an ordinary State school rather than a Grammar school.

This BBC article provides  example of questions in a self-test format:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7773974.stm

I passed an 11+ exam in 1974 at the tail-end of the tripartite school system.

I went to a Comprehensive State School, formerly  a Grammar school with teachers that missed the good old grammar school days.    It wasn’t an ex-Secondary Modern’ state school that had  traditionally educated the children that failed the 11+

In 1973 my pre-teens were spent enjoying and observing the evidence of early outbreaks of  total clothes rights that came with the flamboyancy of Glam Rock as people on the street took their lead from popsters like The Slade, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Gary Glitter, Roxy Music, Wizzard, and around this time I belatedly discovered The  Bonzo Dog Doo-dah band  and of course….  

The Sweet sang Ballroom Blitz.

I credit them as inspiration for a pair of tight red trousers in my wardrobe that make appearances most winters like Sweet songs in the UK.

The following song’s lyrics were common playground chant’s that probably  significantly influenced the formative years of anyone from my generation  named William…

The Sweet sang little willie

Sign on the door of an office in the Reading Cattle Market.

* please see entry on 06-Jan-2008 for more details.

Since repatriating to the UK I have not been the lucky recipient of any spontaneous exclamations of ‘cute accent’.   It has been pointed out that I sound foriegn.    I attribute this ‘foriegn accent’ accusation to remnants of my regional, Bristol, burr.     It is possible that the following  comment counts as an English equivalent of saying ‘cute accent’,   it is also possibly something different:

English person in open-plan office (EPIOO):   I heard your dulcet tones nearby and thought I’d take the opportunity to talk to you

Wendy:   Oh (signifying a double message of I wonder if that means cute accent? and what does the EPIOO want?)

Apparantly the new version of Windows Vista is not for me,   its for some other user…

This quaint, effective system, for announcing your presence is in use in my local GP surgery (family heath centre UK style, not a ‘polyclinic’).   The receptionist is off doing useful things away from the reception desk and arrives very promptly when the bell sounds.

Ding Ding!  

its a pleasant sound and an easy system to understand…

Before I had any influence over the parental record collection, and I’m not sure that I do now,  mumzie would play music by  artistes that included at least one keyboard.   Mumzie has an impressive vinyl collection covering Rachmaninoff   through early Niel Sedaka to Barbara Dickson.   Her collection judiciously excludes Barry Manilow and the flamboyant charms of Liberace.  

In 1975 Mumsie was thrilled by a Niel Sedaka cover featuring multiple keyboards,   and a man called ‘captain’ wearing a hat.     Though still pre-teen, I was beginning to develop serious scepticism about my parent’s music tastes…

The Captain and Tenille sang ‘love will keep us together’ in  1975.  

The Hexagon Theatre in Reading is running its annual pantomime, Dick Wittington.  

Interactive theatre where the audience, predominatly under 4ft tall, get to shout out ‘He’s behind you’, and “BOO!” and hisssssszzzzzz as loud as they want when the clearly marked  baddie comes on the stage.   The baddie in this case was dressed in black leather with a huge fake furry chest,   long tail,   and the name ‘King Rat’.  

The pantomime  hero, the principle boy,  is played by a girl wearing tights, no trousers, and thigh length leather boots  who enjoys repeatedly slapping her outer-thigh with her hand and falling in love with the leading lady who is a lady.   A man in outrageous, colourful  costumes plays an unmarried woman,    the ‘Dame’.    A young chap coordinates audience participation, facilitates the storyline and everyone’s happiness.   I’d quite like one of those.

In Dick Wittington there were doses of singing competitions, where volume supercedes musicality,  between the two halves of the auditorium.   Some songs required rather tricky accompanying hand-actions,  during which  I accidently whacked the  lady sitting next to me and generally got everything all topsy turvy.   There  are also some slow,   soppy,   songs in a pantomime.   Luckily, watching the shorter contingent of the audience wave brightly coloured lit-wands around made the soppy songs  entertaining.

For those who enjoy a heated debate, like myself, there were many opportunities to argue with the cast ‘Oh no he isn’t'….’oh yes he is’….      The occassional slap stick humour, outstandingly bad jokes and the Dames costumes that beggar belief ensured the tone of the event stayed firmly in the realm of the fantastically ridiculous.    At one point the Dame wore a dress in the form of what looked like the Tower of London.    

Audience  birthdays on the performance day were announced in the penulitmate scene. I’m thinking of relocating my Brithday to mid December.  

Plot spoiler (look below the next paragraph)

The plot invariably ends with the leading man (woman) and lady (woman) getting together,   the baddy being converted (normally by magic), and the dame continuing to be a dame.

Plot spoiler over (start reading here)

It was all jolly good fun.   Happy  holiday season.

Hoorah!

This weekend Kevin popped around with his supped-up white van and extensive De-Walt toolkit.   Kevin replaced the stop cock under the kitchen sink,   replaced a couple of washers,   showed me his toolkit and van customisations, offered me a half-price radiator, discussed replacing my kitchen, explained about the Canadian plummer training system,  and told me  about his courtcase against a tap manufacturer because their tap design is just so silly it breaks within 6 months and he’d installed 26 of them in a rich client’s house.  

Kevins weekly visits are definitely one of life’s luxuries.

sat at the back of a bus heading to bus full,   approaching the Wendy House.   A man in front (MIF)  rises, stands looking at the packed standing passengers in the isle.

Wendy: are you getting off at the next stop?

MIF: I don’t think we’ll make it (looks at crowded passengers in the Isle)

Wendy:   If we start now we could get half way to the door,   I’ll follow you

MIF: (steps into crowded Isle and stands still)

Wendy: (offers my seat to a person standing and asks to swap places with a person ahead in the isle)

We start to make our way down the bus,   politely asking each individual to swap places with us…  …slowly we make progress.   We manage to get off near the Wendy House.  

Once again,   bus full is a destination  that has evaded discovery.

was I going to tell you something?

can you remind me what it was?

Jackson’s is the sort of store that sells  stylish and practical items of a classic and often exclusive nature.   I cannot sing Jackson’s praises enough.   With winter settling in,   cold nights in the Wendy House,   this little bargain in the Jacksons christmas special decorated window calls out to me each time I pass by.   A Candlewick bedjacket.   How have the fluffballs and I managed without one to date?   Jacksons also have some mens paisely print brushed cotton pyjamas…  

…I really am at risk of shopping and bouncing and getting all over excited within a fun-packed 5 minute period…

The combination boiler rattles in the kitchen,   warming water and pumping it around the Wendy House 5  radiators.  

Outside,   water on the patio has already  frozen.   Temperatures of minus 3 centigrade are predicted tonight.

Inside, the radiator-free  kitchen releases a trickle of water from beneath the kitchen units.    A leaking pipe?   A phone call to Kevin.  

I discover that the mobile phone service doesn’t work when my head and mobile phone are both in the cupboard under the chilly  kitchen sink while I  try to answer Kevin’s questions,   to determine how many millimetres thick are the pipes that lead to and from my suspiciously rusty stop-tap.    

Will the pipes survive the predicted below freezing temperatures of the night?   Stay tuned for the leaky-pipe fly-on-the-wall,  phone-under-the-sink, real life potential plumbing drama.

I do love the sound of a banjo before bedtime.   This lullaby  is the first song that I remember singing.   During those good old days, sing-along-a-mumzie was a regular and highly valued feature of my daily life (1966).    The lullaby musical genre appears slightly  under-exploited by current popsters.

The Seekers sang Morningtown ride

Thanks to Scarlet for introducing ‘jukebox monday’ on her blog, an idea I am shamelessly apeing here in The Wendy House.