:: The Wendy House ::

was I going to tell you something?

can you remind me what it was?

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.

These reasons for not catching the bus to work have been cropping-up rather more frequently than I anticipated before moving to Reading:

• The cat ate my homework.
• I can’t get my computer to work.
• Washing machine, drains, pipes, roof, (replace with home-feature of choice) is broken and I have to wait for the repair-person.
• Aliens have surrounded cemetery junction.
• I’ve got a cold.

In a small Siena courtyard the walls mimic windows,

forgetting to mimic shutters or reflections. 

Silence and darkness within the windowless rooms.

Protecting the people within from too much colour,  too much light,  noises from neighbours and the street,  from the prying eyes of passersby. 

In the silent darkness occupants can float on siestas unseen, unknown.

Freedom to dream of the luxuries of everything and nothing

dusty dry cold rigid fox deftly holding a long-dead bird in yellowed teeth.

Rustic pane

According to wikipedia providing legislation for females to have equivalent to male voting rights happened in

• 1920 in the USA,  males of colour were given the right to vote 50 years earlier 1870
• 1928 in the UK, males over the age of 21yrs, irrespective of race of property were enfranchised from 1919. 

Both countries legally enfranchise males of different races before they enfranchised women.  What might that imply about beliefs of equality?

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?

Not natural,  arguably not beautiful and definitely not with a feather as implied by the imagery in this advert.  According to this advert natural beauty without surgery can be achieved by the injection of long lasting stuff.  Surely this is an abuse of even the 1968 trade’s descriptions act? 

To achieve naturalness you need injections?!

If the woman pictured in this advert is an exemplar of naturalness you also need lots of product such as dark eye-shadow,  mascara, lipstic, hair-dye, with some additional refinements in the form of eyebrow plucking, dental adjustments and airbrushing.

Burn me as a witch for saying it, but I’d much rather wrinklefest without layers of product on my skin and hair however ‘unnatural’ that might be.

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.

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!

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.  

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.

‘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)

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.

The exciteness levels have been raised from the bog-standard, yet rare, red to the yet-more-rare blood-red level. 

Defining characteristics of blood-red excitement level are

• Foul mood [insert a liberal dose of varied expletives here].
• unanticipated menstrual timing adjustment.
• optional clothing stains due to unanticipated timing adjustment.
• the level automatically reverts to the red level after a period of approximately 60hrs.

Today I am focussing all my emotional energy on striving to achieve the dizziest heights of most strikingly ordinariness.  The cats have already fallen into snore-laden sleep. 

I’ll let you kno ho it goes, though it ont be anything special, so maybe I ont let you kno ho it goes.   e’ll see if its orthy,  after a bout of affly indecisveness of extremely ordinary proportions and hacking my mini-hammer on the wwwwww key.

when smell of book,  or smell of plastic just isn’t enough for the women in your life,  try smell of car …

Sunday Times and  online Times article ‘Sex and the Sixities’  by India Knight includes the following rousing calls to womanhood:

“the essence of modern womanhood, the one hard-to-define component that makes us all want to cheer the loudest…“  is  “…possibility that we may, at 62, perhaps look like Helen Mirren in a bikini”

“a 62-year-old woman looking hot – properly hot, not “hot for her age” or hot as in “fanciable, even though you know you shouldn’t” is a thing that simply can’t be celebrated enough.”

‘Mirren in her red bikini says more, more succinctly, about what women want and can achieve than any amount of turgid feminist preaching ever could’

Gosh, I don’t think I know people who think spending time and skill to dress for the occasion is shallow,  but India thinks that view might be held by some Times readers because she considerately quashes it “if you think that’s shallow, I would humbly posit that you understand nothing at all about real women’s hopes and ambitions.”  Trying to following India’s humble reasoning,  leads to the suspicion that if I don’t want to look like Helen Mirren in a Bikini then I may not be a real woman,  Ooops!  I think I may have fallen over.

Apparently the social construction of ‘woman’ once meant “no longer being “a girl”, which translated into bad clothes, bad hair, bad make-up and, if you were especially unfortunate, a bad figure.”  and “Worse, having reproduced meant that in the eyes of society you no longer existed as a sexual being“. It seems that India believes promoting yourself as a ’sexual being’ , sexbot, should be an aspirational goal for real women and it is equated to looking young. If you don’t look sexy you look old.  Whhhooooops!  I definitely fell over this time.

India’s view also implies that, normal, aspiring real women have no financial or legal obstacles to not looking youthful and sexy because ‘deregulated’‘ ‘minor surgical procedures’ are ‘nothing that is outside most people’s league’ .  It is all part of the groundwork for achieving ‘a triumphant assertion of easy, carefree femininity’.  While fake women should embrace the freedom and “life-changing power of hair dye“.  As a self-identified, terminally-fake, woman I  ”might know better if they [I] made an attempt at living in the real world“.  Maybe downtown Reading is actually a figment of my nasty, demented, Ivory-tower, imagination?  Deary me,  I  must get out more and take my zimmer-frame.

If ‘looking good’ is primarily equated to looking youthful and sexy I have no intention of developing an interest. or skill, in it.  When looking good is constructed to promote wrinkles and twisty silver hairs ideally with a dash,  or spring, of surrealist creativity,  then I’ll be swinging my funky-stuff with the melting clocks but not with the people who aspire to portray themselves as sexbots.

For now,  if I place myself in India’s analytical framework I find that I am:

• Preaching (turgid?) feminism.
• intelligent, a blue stocking.
• a frump because I don’t pride myself in being fashionable.
• Living in an ivory tower (in Reading). 
• not recognising the equivalence of the value of having a face-lift with the right to paid maternity leave.

At least India has clearly given me the escape route to achieve real-woman status that luckily I can choose not to aspire to,  I must

• maintain my already abundant confidence.
• promote my sexual potential. 
• develop and interest in whatever the current fashion defines as looking good.  
• have minor surgical procedures so that I can look good in a bikini. 
• Die my hair.

Unlike Alan’s outstanding advice I wont be aligning the value-set outlined in India’s article.

* the sound of me and my zimmer-frame colliding with the ground when dropping out of our Ivory tower.

As you know,  I don’t need the help of heels to fall-over and scrape my knee, uppity curbs are sufficient, it is a wendy-way of being…

Sophie King received £7,200 compensation for ‘pain, suffering and loss of amenity’ due to a broken ankle resulting from a fall when the heel of her newly purchased shoe broke.  The Guardian’s Ariane Sherine thinks Sophie deserved a broken ankle and should repay the damages.  At least one fledgeling member of the UK caring(?), medical, profession agrees with Ariane’s view that women should expect to suffer pain for conforming to patriarchal, consumerist, pressures to wear sub-standard dangerous products,  in this case,  high-heeled shoes.  Both the Guardian and medical blog point out that Sophie, the victim, was 5 ft 9.  The sheer audacity to be a girl AND tall without recognising that she expected to suffer substandard, dangerous goods, while maintaining her social obligation to conform to patriarchal ’sexy’ values. 

This is a classic example of the patriarchal approach to dealing with systematic abuse against women by requiring an adjustment to the behaviour of the victim rather than the perpetrator of the crime.  Legally referred to as ‘contributory negligence’ , infamously called-out in 1980’s UK when a man convicted of rape was not given even a custodial sentence by Judge pickles because the woman (victim) was negligent in her behaviour by wearing a mini-skirt.  Huh?! 

I’m glad that this time, the legal system protected the victim, Sophie King. 

Shoe manufacturers systematically target physically-dangerous (high-heeled) shoes at women, not men. It is a clear case of female-gender abuse.  A trap targeted only at female health.  On planet Wendy an insightful, talented, lawyer would bring a class action against the shoe industry for being the instrument of perpetrating systematic violence against women.

In paper letters English service providers have more than once assumed that I am a ’sir’.   Yet another example of the multiple daily affirmations of womans’ ‘in’ and ‘out’ of approved place.  

This is the first letter that has assumed that I am actually a group of men.  The letter is from Her Majesties Customs and Revenue (HMCR).  It is addressed to an accountancy company who are trying to complete my tax returns.  It was sent to my home address rather than the accountants address.  The person dealing with my tax return is a woman,  not a group of men.  I am disappointed, sadly not suprised, that the default assumption for letter addressing here in England appears to be - if you do not know a persons gender assume male rather than use the addressees personal or company name.

In the letter HMRC ask why I want to make a self-assessed tax return.  If they can’t get my gender and single status correct,  they cant get my name matched with my address,  and my accountants name matched with her address,  they haven’t given me confidence in their ability to accurately complete the complex mathematical calculations necessary to estimate how much tax I should pay them.   

Completing a self-assessment is a double-check of HMCR calculations. 

Without the aid of dyes, stains, or peroxides, my wonderful mop of hair has developed some ‘arctic blonde’ with sparkly twisty effects thrown in for good measure.  It’s a pure swishy sparkly pleasure for anyone to squint at first thing in the morning and the pleasure’s all mine because,  suprisingly enough,  I’m still single!

“how are the cats settling in?”

Thankyou to everyone who inquired after the wellbeing of my darling fluffballs.  I am happy to confirm that they have quickly adapted to this Wendy House and are exhibiting a full range of healthy fluff-ball-ee activities,  most notable of which is the Monaco-ish,  formula-1-ish speed and agility,  dangerous-staircase dash.

Dangerous-staircase dash

Starts in the garden where Sampo cues-up Matrix by strutting backward and forward in front of her just out of paws reach.  Next, Sampo runs for the front-door gathering sufficient speed to arrive before Matrix,  maintaining sufficient control to take the entrance-hall-front-room 90 degrees doorway-bend.  Occassionally Sampo misses the bend and ends up in the bathroom where she is cornered by Matrix and has clearly lost the chase.  After several months of practice she has the hall-front-room doorway-bend almost fully mastered. 

The subtle curve on the approach to the foot of the stairs occassionally causes loss of footing on the bare floorboards and is invariably accompanied by liberal doses of meowing from both teams.  The main course-obstacle is the dangerous-staircase u-turn.  The dangerous-staircase u-turn either involves a headlong crash into the front-room wall for those missjudging their momentum,  or falling down the first couple of steps for those misjudging their paw-friction.  Sampo tends to crash into the wall due to belly-induced-momentum,  Matrix tends to slip on the steps.  Once past the first few steps,  if Sampo is still ahead of Matirx she’s pounces safely to the finish line on the first-floor landing and is ready to start the next round.   Fresh water,  views of local trees and birds are provided on the landing at the end of the course for the competing kitties.  

The cats are regularly able and willing to practice this tricky F1 course on a daily basis often changing chaser-chasee roles and investigating route variations including the dinning room table top,  sofa-bends and comfy chair corner.  

Ringside tickets are available. 

Corporate bookings and sponsorship considered.

According to get Reading:

“She then fled downstairs and tried to call 999, but he grabbed the phone off her and punched her twice in the face.  She began screaming so he put his arms around her neck so she couldn’t breath“  she was “in fear of her life” and “honestly believed she might die”,

This behaviour is reported as ‘out of his normal character’ and he says

“He is dreadfully upset about what has happened,”

Whether ‘in’ or ‘out’ of character he chose to stop her seeking social support (calling the police),  punch her in the face two times and throttle her when she tries to get support locally by screaming.  He could have chosen to ignore her or do a silly dance.  It was his choice and he did choose extreme violence.  Evidently he ‘lost it’ (self-control?).  Lost it appears to be part of a socially acceptable storyline to excuse violence.  Psychologists label loss of control as a psychological disorder and use it to explain the curiously termed domestic violence.  

“perpetrators of domestic violence rarely receive adequate psychological treatment, because they are viewed as criminals, rather than individuals with psychological problems.“

In the above case the offender got a suspended sentence and fined the cost of a good night out,  60 quid.  No requirement for a psychological assessment or treatment with the fine hardly touching the actual expense of the social services his behaviour drew upon (e.g. Police, NHS). 

How safe do I feel in a society where the legal system thinks I can be justifiably (for 60 quid) be repeatedly punched in the face and throttled when I try to call for assistance if the agressor claims its not habitual and they regret it?    

Despite my deep affection for the Berkshire county town of Reading, formerly known for its ‘Beer, Biscuits and Bulbs’,  living in Reading does come with some inherent risks under the guise of a 4th ‘B’ 

Bricks   

The production of high quality bricks involves mining for materials,  including chalk which produces a yellow coloured brick.  The chalk mines of Reading are not all well documented.  People who built homes in Reading didnt know and didn’t ask the wise elderly locals for the location of the mines.  Homes were built above the mines.  Tourist and residents alike should take extra care lest they fall into an undocumented mine when exploring the extremely interesting streets of Reading.

Unfortunately, the normally plucky Reading Borough Council has not-yet maximised on the tourist potential of this interesting and valuable historical feature of the town.  There are no guided tours of the mines,  you cannot visit the Reading underground shop because it doesn’t exist.  In not-existing the Reading underground shop never fails to sell kitsch miniature bricks in red, yellow, and grey as paperwieghts.  The not-existing visitor centre doesn’t provide hands-on experiences for school children to make their own bricks during educational tours. The not-existing shop goes on to fail to provide an unwritten Two Rivers press book covering the history of brick making in the Thames Valley featuring Reading and Tilehurst.  The not-exisitng visitor centre tourguide doesn’t point out that the town Aldbrickham (Old brick town)  in Thomas Hardy’s  ‘Jude the obscure’ was inspired by Reading.  Without the visitor centre tour guide to tell them,  even former brickies no longer know that yellow bricks are produced by using chalk in the clay.  There are no ladders to climb down,  no safety helmets to wear,  and no dank holes to crawl through during the not-existant live and dangerous underground tour.

As you can imagine I was really rather upset at not being able to wander through the caverns of undeground Reading accompanied by an informative and enthusiastic pot-holing-expert,  probably from South Africa,  tour guide.  

Hankys were poised.

There are times when Reading quite simply isn’t up to par.

I’m sorry sir, 

we have just run out of subtlety, 

will a double dose of concise frankness do?

It’s 70% off.

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

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