wendy house

Magnus Pike’s arms, face, and language worked like a symphony.   Together they could explain and make  memorable complex science.  They could add unexpected, playful, dimensions to music videos. 

Thomas Dolby sings she blinded me with science

Now this is a decent tea cosy selection and display at a local craft fair

…interrupting you,  BUT….

the interrupter took the conversation winding off into outer space until a silence when my the interesting,  passionate monologue came to its a gentle landing, end.

Beyond the words ‘I’m sorry’ my interrupter demonstrated no ’sorriness’.  Quite the contrary.  Perhaps ’sorry’ in this context actually means:

 ’please don’t get angry with me for taking conversation to a monologue,  to another topic, but I have a really interesting thought that I’m bursting to share and I’m sure everyonelse will find it as interesting as I do’

After the silence my interrupter turned to me acknowledging the end of the interruption and encouraging me to finish my original question.

We came. We Swooped. We are camping. is the slogan on the bottom of Robin Parr’s ‘climate camp’ blog post.  This Bank Holiday weekend there is a climate change protest in London.  It’s a very British form of protest.  Camping.  It’s a protest against capitalism.  From their site:

the Climate Exchange is the system’s European stock market – must be exposed for the dangerous global financial game which it is. Carbon trading has not and will not reduce emissions. It simply makes corporations richer and allows governments to put on a charade that they are doing something about climate change.

A blog post on the Guardian cites the ‘Whitechapel Anarchist Group’ as complaining about the event,  not because the cause is inappropriate but because the the protesters are inappropriate:

“many of the protesters at the camp are middle class students and graduates who are about as revolutionary as the Scouts“

I love that this form of protesting, camping-out, enables anyone to participate,  because everyone should have a voice.  With as many as 1 in 6 households  in Britian not containing anyone who is ‘working’,  there are plenty of people excluded by the capitalist system.

Person At Party In Garden (PAPIG): is [chap] coming to the party?

Wendy:  I don’t know,  I think he might be out of the country,  he was in Australia on Monday

PAPIG:  is he YOUR man?

Wendy: (calmly spills drink over wasp while gatheirng composure)…no, he’s not my man…

PAPIG: I thought that was strange…  …I mean,  your man being out of the country

Wendy: Oh (signifying a brain-stall prompted by the assumption that I possess a man that is averse to leaving the country)

My parents took the family on a day trip to London, to the Tate gallery.  At 7 yrs I was not well equipped to appreciate the treasures on display.  Mum and Dad seemed to spend ages looking at dull boring pictures of clouds (Turner).  I asked permission to explore the galleries at my own pace and was allowed to wander off.  I walked briskly,  errr ran, around the building capturing impressions browsing for literally seconds at vaguely interesting paintings that I’ve long since forgotten. 

Then.  I turned the corner of a gallery to be confronted by the death of Chatterton. 

His vibrant orange hair glowing,  his purple velvet breaches full of warm lively texture in the daylight.  The torn paper on the floor.  His face white as marble.  Clearly dead.  I was captivated,  I stood studying the painting for what seemed, to a 7 year old, like eons.  I fell intrigued.  Who was this beautiful man?  Why was anyone that beautiful, dead before being old and wrinkly? 

He became my first love.  He was a local Bristol boy,  I was a local Bristol girl.  Later I read Peter Ackroyd’s book ‘Chatterton’ and wondered whether his death was an accident or deliberate. I visit St. Mary’s Redcliffe occassionally,  the place where Chatterton reportedly discovered the manuscripts on which he forged his texts.  He has remained young, beautful, and with my thoughts. 

From AElla

O! Synge untoe mie roundelaie,
O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,
Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie,
Lycke a reynynge ryver bee;

Mie love ys dedde,
Gon to hys death-bedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree.

please address your comments concisely and stick to the facts, no hearsay

Thankyou

My favourite 6 ft blonde bar staff in the ’sack of potatoes’ used to call me his favourite Cher.  Cher after Sonny and before her substantial body resculpture.  I suspect the nose, attitude and hairstyle were the main points of similarity.

Meatloaf and Cher sing Dead ringer for love

Sometimes I’ll drive the hour commute home from work without noticing that the radio is off.  The conversations in my mind are so fast and rich they more than fill the silences left by the lack of radio programmes.

This week I passed a threshold.  The ‘in my day’ threshold.  In my day…

• Phones were connected by cables to walls in the hallways of homes or in red-boxes on the street.
• Televisions had a dial with 4 positions on it,  one for each of the known channels and one spare channel

And much much more or less

I am marked by a stubborn unwillingness to obey figures of authority such as dictionaries, alarm clocks, and flatware.

The TV remote isn’t working….

No, Wait.  it’s the TV that isn’t working…

Oh,  actually its the socket that isn’t working….

Hang on,  its the ring-ciruit that isn’t working. 

Ah,  the fuse flipped while I was out.  Probably some freak lightening storm over the Wendy House.  Wish I’d seen that! 

During the diagnostic process I discover that the Wendy House has at least two separate electric rings in the front room alone!   

BANG!  the fuse flips again.  No lightening storm in range.  Odd.  I flip the fuse back on 

BANG the fuse flips again.  Darn, its clearly broken and not fixing itself.  I call dad who walks me through a cunning diagnostic process that includes sniffing sockets and plugs,  switching various things on and off.  Using dad’s excellent problem-sourcing strategy I find the wiring of one socket is causing the banging. 

With a message left on an electricians answer machine I’m about to discover the joys of having my sockets seen to.  I’m rather looking forward to it,  aren’t you?

Questions have been asked. 

The anwers are mostly: YES,  Hooray!  Holiday in September.

This holiday is a secret mission. I can divulge it will be near Cornwall with the aid of mud, dirt, earth and soil.  Though not necesssarily in that order or spelking.  Blog posts will be coded.  Blog post codes will protect the anonymity of people I meet, tail and snoop around.

The Wendy House alert level has been raised to amber.  Over excitement is setting in with

• Spates of chaotic packing, unpacking, repacking
• Oubreaks of listing
• Incidents of falling over
• Tears before bedtime
• Turbo injected fiction

I’ll send you some blog post cards with the blog post codes

wish me luck

x

Noel sounds like null

Term of endearment or insult?  Sometimes it can be difficult to tell. 

The first time my college roomate from Sheffield called me a ‘Mardy cow’,  apart from having to ask her what ‘mardy’ was, I was a tad offended.  No-one had ever called me a  ’cow’ , to my face, before.  Clearly I’d had a sheltered youth.  My Sheffield room-mate quickly put my right on this one,  cow is a term of endearment.   Apparantly ‘Mardy Cow’ was an affectionate expression to convey her extreme disappointment that I wasn’t going to be joining her for an evening of heavy metal music appreciation.  Not really my bag. 

I’d rather be a crazy sheep listening to the likes of curiosity killed the cat,  I can’t help admiring the lyrics and behatted lankey body movements of the rather charming Ben.  But not my room-mates cup of tea.  I called her a mardy cow and she replied by demonstrating how her long hair accentuated the head-banging experience.  Excellent.

Curiosity killed the cat sang Misfit

My plan for choosing ‘A’ level’s was to pick topics where I got the best results.  Unfortunately my selection strategy didn’t work.  My results were the same in all topics.  Straight B grades.  I needed another strategy for deciding what to study for ‘A’ levels.  Mum and dad had clear guidance

Parents:  ‘you can’t go wrong with maths and physics,  you can become an engineer,  you can learn how to solve practical problems and look after yourself and your home properly’

Wendy: but I really enjoy Art, English Literature and History

Parents: You can study Art, English literature and History in your spare time,  you’ll be motivated to do it.  You probably wont study maths and physics in your spare time

This made sense to me. 

I talked to my English teacher.  He was furious,  I had a talent that I should nurture,  he would never speak to me again if I chose Math’s over English.  I chose Maths, Physics and History.  He never spoke to me again.  Complying with emotional blackmail is not a personal strength.   History covered literature (Nietzsche) and art (Futurism, Cubism).  

Since that fateful decision I’ve played with writing, painting, sketching, and plagued you with my laxadaisical spelling and grammar.

Listening to my home phone answer machine messages I hear an unfamiliar voice

Wedensday 10:39 ‘Hello, this is your mother, I’ll call you on your home phone’

Wedensday 10:47 ‘Hello,  this is your mother, I can’t remember if we’ve talked about my health issues,  it would be nice if you called me in your lunch hour’

She wasn’t my mother, there was no return call number, whether she found her child and what her health problems are will remain two of lives unsolved mysteries.  I called my mumzie and wondered whether chaos and karma would balance things out…

Jumping onto a crowded rush hour Paddington train I slump into the one remaining isle seat.  Resting my brow against the seat infront. Breathing slowly, eyes shut, shut-out the crowded world.

Boy in window seat (BIWS):  are you alright?

Wendy:  yes, I’m alright, thankyou for asking, you have a kind heart

BIWS: bad day at work?

Wendy:  time of the month, normal pain, nothing to worry about I’ll just close my eyes and drift away

I surf the pain to some other consciousness, completely missing the train journey…. ….and almost missing my stop… 

At 16yrs, the first time the pain stole my consciousness was from a chemist queue. I clutched a packet of unpurchased pain killers.  My unconsciousnes chose to examine the shop floor.  A  kindly woman carried me to the local Health Centre.  I woke in her arms and gifted her the contents of my stomach. 

At the health centre I begged the Doctor for pain killers.  He said pain killers were not warranted because I’d just puke them up. That the pain was natural.  He prescribed lying on my back until I felt able to walk.  Then I should go home. 

With his words the pain merged perfectly with incredulity.  Not offered a glass of water to swill the bile from my mouth.  I could taste the incredulity.  Stung by the indifference of professional caring staff.  As soon as I could I slid from the trolley and stumbled out of the Health Centre.  To the chemist shop.  The kind lady who’d carried me had gone.  No-one knew her name.  No-one to thank. 

Thank you kind lady.

Since that day I’ve learned to accept, immerse, and surf the experience to unanticipated, inarticulable ways and places.  PMT and Cheese. Mmmmmmmm…

Both are easily worried.  According to the Telegraph a mild bout of political correctness can prompt a Tory MP to worry

“It is very worrying that this literary masterpiece is being used for such a politically-correct purpose.”

The local cat herd has well choreographed dance routines.  The balletic movements involve sudden, synchronised, dashes and leaps that are contrasted with subtle coordinated pre-dash tail-fluffing demonstrations.

The garden stage provides props for leaping over, dashing around, hiding under, elegantly perching upon and a liberal dose of insects to piroette with. 

Here we find Matrix lurking in the Nigella,  where she prepares to launch straight into a dash,  bypassing her weakest move,  the pre-dash tail fluffing.

Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*. in this case a local Reading resident :

“don’t go there, its full of orange girls”

A little questioning established that ‘Orange girls’ wasn’t a reference to employees of a phone service company or a womens theatre group.  Orange girls are girls that choose to use recognisably fake sun-tan.  Evidently the fake tan looks rather orange.   The use of fake tan is associated with lifestyle and values that are somewhat superficial. 

* Past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant, a bus stop philanthropist, a mini salesman, Windows Network Diagnostics, Flat Eric and Reading Police.

Angst in penguin suits,  with plummy accents,  on plucky ukeleles, by post-teenagers.  Despite all the apprarant innapropriateness, it seems to work quite well. 

The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain sing Smells like Teen Spirit

Reading town’s resident international performance poet, AF Harrold, has taken the concept of performance poetry to new realms of existence.  How?  Using the AF Harrold website he has enabled people to download and construct an avatar of himself.  This effectively moves himself from real work to virtual world (website),  then from virtual world to real world (download and print) in multiple different places from printers all over the world:

“Want a cut out and keep A.F. Harrold paper doll, designed by Dolly Dolly, to sit on your desk? Right click here. (And choose ’save target as…’)“

The story goes further,  once AFH has been transported from real world to virtual world and then back to the real world,  AFH encourages his newsletter readers to take photographs of their dolly and send them to him,  some of them will make the journey back into the virtual world.  From AFH’s newsletter:

‘download the cut-out-build-and-keep your very own AFH paper doll’ link – download the template, build a paper AFH (please be careful when using sharp blades, I accept no liability for injuries or embarrassment) – and then… take photographs. Put your miniature AFH in curious places, with curious people, at exotic unlikely destinations and snap away.

I’ll put up some of the best or most interesting pictures (only those suitable for family viewing, though under-the-counter prizes may be awarded too) in a gallery either on www.afharrold.co.uk or on my Facebook and/or my My Space space.

The prospect of participating in this treat may well prompt me to spend some money on a colour printer.  Participation is just to, too,  two, tempting! 

I love the idea of 4 dimensional,  group performance poetry,  its the best. 

Thankyou AFH

Before an evening of fun and games we gather our provisions together to make sure the evening of Gloom wont be interrupted by the need to gather nibbles.

Sanyo Samsung shouts for the value of their laptops.  From the walls of the escalator and between the handrails,  red blue and green for people who value minimalist design.

Are there people who value both minimalist design and maximalist advertising? 

I wonder how the ladies, dressed in tight fitting black clothes with with long legs and high heals,- fitted into the selling strategy? Looks like Sanyo Samsung are primarily selling to men.

On a cold rainy August UK day my high school friends and I warmed our hands on hot Mocha’s outdoors in convent garden under the shelter of a large unmbrella.

A real frothy treat.

During our trip to Cornwall Flat Eric made some west country friends, including Jamie Bear, who now sends Flat Eric post cards, care of the Wendy House.  Jamie Bear prefers surfing to crosswurdz and indulges in creative spelling, 

Hoorah! 

Looks like curdles aw ’round

I like my cheese cooperative

None of the rebellious ‘jump off the plate, run up your nose and tweak the little nasal hairs’ cheeses for me.  No.

My cheese lies submissively on the toast.  Raw and ready.  It slips down my throat and pimps up my dreams.  

I’m feeling lucky tonight….   ….oh yes…

While studying for my Doctorate I saw the talented Dr. Robert and marvelled at his ability to complete a Doctorate so young.  In those days I used to confuse optimistic love songs with optimistic political songs.  

Still do

Nursing a heavily chaffed-heart under a recent piercing, a 100% cotton vest and an outsized mohair jumper.  Yet I still managed to believe this song was a rallying call to vote against Margaret Thatcher rather than an optimisitic love song.  Planet Wendy can be pretty twisty at times. 

Most times

The Blow Monkeys sang It doesn’t have to be this way

The early hours of a march morning,  dew is forming on the grass,  the clear skies above reveal more stars than I can count.  After a long evening meandering around country lanes I found myself sat on the sweet smelling damp grass of the hillside. I pull my dufflecoat tightly round me for warmth.  The black line of the Severn in the distance cuts the view.  Above the black slash I could see the flickering lights of Cardiff.  Only visible on a clear night. 

Have dinosaurs roamed this very hillside?  Running my fingers through the grass I pull a pebble from the earth.  Turning it in my cold fingers, feeling ridges, it is a fossilised shell.  The cotswolds were once the seabed.  Difficult even to begin to imagine how much has happened here on this now hillside.  How many people have lived and died in this world.

The enormity of my insignificance seared. 

A plane rummbled across the night night sky above.  Sniffling while tears silently crossed my cheek.  The rough cloth of my duffle-coat sleeve clumsily failed the tear sponge test.

Casper the cat rides Plymouth’s number 3 service.  The Cornish passengers make sure he get home okay after his ride,  just like they did with me.  Casper loves Lorry’s and Buses.  He’s a very well behaved cat that likes to roam

“He queues up in line with people and just sits patiently in the queue good as gold – it’ll be ‘Person, person, person, cat, person, person.’

A white cat that the bus driver has named Macavity catches the 331 from Walsall to Wolverhampton for one stop to the fish shop

cats, busses and passengers are a recipe for happiness.