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…
A sign at the check-out counter of a childrens toy department makes it clear that only adults can purchase imitation fire-arms. At least children wont be able to get their hands on imitation firearms when they feel the need to use them for nefarious purposes… …naughty children.
I can also report that there was not a group of children outside the store asking people to purchase the imitation firearms on their behalf, they must be using more cunning organised methods to acquire them.
while waiting for a train
wendy: a medium sized mocha please
cashier: £2.45
Wendy Hands over the cash and waits
barista: medium Latte
Wendy: is that for me? I ordered a mocha, are you making a mocha next?
barista: I don’t have an order for a mocha
man in queue behind me: actually, you ordered a Latte
Wendy: checks receipt, it clearly states Mocha £2.45, shows receipt to man in the queue behind me to verify that I remembered correctly, checks cost of Latte (£2.35)
cashier: she did order a mocha
train pulls into station
Wendy: I’ll take the Latte, keep the tip
why I love England #5: It’s near Europe
Learning about diverse countries, climates, cars, cities, cultures by actually visiting them is easy because they are close, part of the European community (EU) though Britain has opted out of many of the unifying practices such as the Social Charter and the Euro currency.
says the Very Nice Lady (VNL) from the highways and drainage specialists at Reading Borough Council freephone information.
VNL: if I don’t have any joy I’ll get back to you in just one second
Wendy: thankyou
VNL: I didn’t have any joy
Wendy:Oh
Lunching with an hearing impaired friend (HIF) who uses spoken words rarely, with good effect:
[silence]
HIF: you are the only person I know who talks less than I do
Wendy: is that good?
HIF: yes (laughs)
Wendy: (laughs)
[silence]
Hittavainen, the Karelian god of hares has turned up in the Wendy House garden.
According to the BBC Hares crop up in Mythology all over the place and are associated with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery.
This one is associated with pebbles purloined from beaches all over the world.
Words of wisdom from a personal grooming specialist,
normally a hairdresser,
mainly Alan the outrageously expensive and handsome, former professional-brick-layer, young product-dispensing hairdresser, and
occassionally Lucia the scissor happy hairdresser.
This month Alan’s tip is bought to you courtesy of Lulu, a downtown Reading manicurist:
treat yourself, buy a TV for christmas
According to Vanish ‘the worst time to discover a stain is during the Ironing’
The ironing?
hmmmmm…. …my cunning plan to avoid stains and purchasing products (an iron and stain-removing chemicals) is to avoid ironing anything!
Hurrah for wrinkles!
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…
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…
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
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.
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.
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
The Observer, also known as The Gaurdian, reports that:
Reading is ‘worse than Beirut’, claims Terry Waite
Former hostage Terry Waite stunned Women’s Institute members in Reading by telling them that dealing with their town’s traffic was worse than being held captive for almost five years, after being delayed on his way to speak to them.
Do I think Terry is exaggerating a bit at the detriment of our glorious town’s already overly maligned reputation?
OH YES!
The town traffic may indeed be a bit slower than the executive’s posh car, or Fiat Panda, can travel. It is, however, a reasonable, leisurely, pace for the good and even-tempered people of the town to go about their honest toil.
Even the BBC doesn’t cite Reading’s roads as main UK traffic black spots. No wonder those members of the Women’s Institute were stunned to hear such ill considered twaddle uttered from a professional public speaker and humanitarian.
Outraged-Wendy-citizen-of-Reading
Why I love England #3. welcoming
England welcomes all sorts of people, even bus enthusiasts, as long as they behave like responsible citizens by following health and safety instructions and reporting suspicious unattended packages to the appropriate security authorities.
The Wendy House kitchen is currently camping under canvas in the September rain, ruthless.
Much to my surprise the self-mutilating builders turned-up. I wasn’t expecting them because there have been more false starts than a particularly rusty old Fiat Panda on a frosty morning.
Words of wisdom from my outrageously expensive and handsome, former professional-brick-layer, young product-dispensing hairdresser:
you want asymmetrical
As usual, I’ll be taking Alan’s tip very seriously and following up on this gem of wisdom
Lady on plane with English accent (LOPWEA): where are you from?
Wendy: Bristol, England
LOPWEA: I though you had a foreign accent
Wendy: I’ve recently lived abroad for 8 years, where would you guess the accent is from?
LOPWEA: Austraila or New Zealand
Wendy: yes, its ex-colonial English, the NW US
The Islands of the Cyclades are strewn with white churches, often with blue roofs and all with bell-towers. The bells would ring between 6pm and 7.20pm a single tone, often flat, with a basic tune conveyed by a regularly varied pace between the rings.
Graveyards were normally accompanied by a small church, mainly churches stood alone on island high ground, often perched on Island mountain tops.
Greek graveyards were wonderful. White marble graves are adorned with photographs of the deceased, lit oil lamps, occassionally lit incense burners and well maintained live potted plants. The graves are tended regularly and often have a little cupboard built into the headstone where the carers store basic maintainance equipment. Some graves contained glass sliding doors behind which the photographs sat and occassionally a couple of glasses implying that the living came here to take a drink with the departed.
The Geeeks recognise their elderly and departed in a more noticable way than I am used to in either the UK or US cultures I’ve lived within.
This Imerovigli graveyard contains rows of mausoleum type rooms. Each mausoleum contained labelled wooden boxes with many different photographs, places for the living to visit the dead in peace.
I wonder whether the departed are carried to their resting place by mule…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Builder: you must want to shoot me, let me explain …[5 minutes creative explanation]
I wonder why he assumed I would choose a gun in a country who’s weapon of choice this summer is the knife. That aside, his cute Reading accent, entertaining excuses, with the lack of urgency for the renovations made the whole situation mildly amusing.
When the smell of car, smell of book, or smell of plastic just isn’t enough to please the peoplewho come within sniffing distance of your life.
When you long for the-day-after-a-night-in-the-pub smokey scent in your hair,
Try the new tobacco scented shower gel
you know it makes scents.
Not a popular Scottish music festival. A testosterone fuelled five-aside football tournament in Palmers park.
why I love England #2: The BBC
Public funded broadbcasting in the public interest rather than in the interest of making profit. With journalists all over the world who assume their audience has some intelligence and ask insightful rather than tabloid questions. I suspect that I have a crush on Jeremy Paxman. They produce high quality drama, comedy productions and Dr. Who. They backed Red Dwarf on BBC2 and Top Gear. They employed Dennis Potter and delivered Blue Peter who provided me with my first and enduring female role model in Valerie Singleton and gave me profound appreciation of the potential of squeezy bottles and sticky-backed-plastic to contribute to orld happiness.
Stephen fry quoted on Wikipedia’s entry about Valerie Singleton:
I have been pondering this business of fame since I was young enough to know Valerie Singleton from the Queen (for Americans and other non-Britons I should explain: one is a remote, god-like, autocratic woman endowed with powerful charismatic charm and the other is a constitutional monarch recently played on screen by Helen Mirren
What more could a girl want from broadcasting?
