:: The Wendy House ::

HIF: Did you enjoy your holiday in Italy?

Wendy:  yes

HIF: are you all fresco’d out?

Wendy:  yes

The Piccolomini library in Siena was outstanding, fabulous books, floor tiles, wall frescos, ceiling frescos, quiet ambience, excellent lighting and virtually no other visitors.

On Friday in Joe Allen’s*   Exeter St. restaurant Mrs. Pouncer partook of some Chardonnay,  Scarlet Blue imbibed some Mules and I took a small Boddingtons or four.

I can unreservedly, with miss spellings and split infinitives, confirm that Mrs. Pouncer is in person everybit the stylish counsellor that her entertaining blog suggests.  During our brief encounter I discovered the true extent of my lack of knowledge of advance eyewear handling techniques.  Mrs. Pouncer arrived at Joe Allens equipped with both fabulous stories and the four sets of eyewear necessary to fulfill all advanced eyewear handling techniques.  Needless to say I learned a thing or three. 

I can also confirm that Ms Scarlet Blue’s hair was of a certain colour and that meeting her has brought new dimensions to my understanding of the word ‘cute’.

* no relation of Mrs. Pouncer’s acquaintance Keith Allen, father of Lily Allen.

chap:  I have to smoke in bed,  I wake up at 3am every morning regulalr as clockwork just to have a fag

wendy: oh (signifying:  failure to segue effectively into another topic)

chap:  I can’t give up,  I have a fowl temper if I do (his hand is shaking as he scrunches his face while taking a long deep draw from his hand-rolled, warped, filterless cigarette)

wendy: oh (recalls him slamming doors, stamping his feet and throwing things all with a fag balanced in his mouth)  I’ve locked myself out,  got to go and pick-up my spare key.

chap:  do you want a lift?

wendy: no, I’m alright (signifying: no way am I getting in a car with a chap demonstrating signs of emotional instability)

chap: where are you going?

wendy: not far, bye  (signifying: no way am I letting this chap know where I store my spare house key)

Wendy House service will be temporarily sub-sub-standard while flagrant‘ Happy Birthday to us’*  activities are conducted in Italy accompanied by this years soundtrack courtesy of Eyan …

* us = people I know (Eyan, Jenn, Angela, Dr. Phil, Prof. Dave) and pobably quite a few people that I don’t know…

 Can you see them?

Scary!

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. 

When spottydog visited the Wendy House I gave her a full 1 minute tour.  The full 1 mintue tour is the executive version of the 30 second tour.  It is akin to the 15 minute Hamlet only quicker and with less literary credibility.  As audience, spottydog’s role was to provide her unique insight into potential lifestyle developments.  Half way through the tour,  near the end:

Wendy:  this is my wardrobe (US = closet.  A closet is a place where you keep skeletons, hence the title of this post)

Spottydog: that’s orderly

Wendy: its half empty

Spottydog:  its organised by colour and size,  even the shoes

Wendy:  Errrrrmmmmmmm…….   …is that bad?

Spottydog:  its not scatty

Lifestyle development suggestions involved, ‘open the beers’ and ‘you need more plants’.  Spottydog, spot-on again.

<soppiness warning>

Just a few of the too numerous to enumerate highlights:

• Gift registry:  www.epilepsy.org.uk & www.simoncommunity.org.uk 
• The bride wasn’t ‘given away’ like chattles,  bride and groom walked down the isle together.
• Isle-walk accompanying music:  You only live twice
• Readings including multiple references to Pooh in A.A.Milne’s ‘us two’  (read by AfH)
• Outstanding vows because they acknowledged each others strenghts and weaknesses and showed love, respect, knowledge of what it takes to make a relationship work and be fun too.  I particularly liked this one:

I promise to allow myself to be silly around you and to enjoy you being silly around me as well.

• 7 Henchman subtly and actively coordinating the smooth running of the event: Oddjob, Mr. Wint, Mr. Kidd, Nick Nack, May Day, Xenia Onatopp, Jaws
• Red wedding dress
• No ‘maids’
• A photobased childrens TV themed Quiz organized by table at the wedding breakfast.
• Bride’s speech toplining the other speeches. 
• Creatively quirky photographer:  http://www.vikmartin.co.uk/
• Local bands at the reception were friends of the Bride and Groom,  some included the Bride or Groom and all played at least one cover version of Bond theme tune,  compared by AFH.
• My yellow-red shot silk hat,  however, the relative lack of hats on other guests was actually a tad disturbing.

Tables were decorated in childrens TV themes, with models and soft toys, and each guest as a character,  I was Soo.  As you can see, even Bagpuss joined the fun.

<soppiness temporarily suspended>

Bros:  he was alright except for the lists

Wendy:  the lists?

Bros:  Yes,  the lists,  you remember how he would make lists all the time for even trivial things?

Wendy:  errr,  yes,  of course,  the lists

It appears that my brother has not yet noticed my pocket-size book of lists that has travelled all over the world (and Reading) with me. Nor has he recognised the intrinsic Wendy-appeal of someone that blazenly employs lists in public.

One of the larger (circa 1862) houses in my street hosted a street-garden party where I ate oodles of triffle and met dozens of neighbours who chose to buy homes there because of the:

• good nearby schools.
• curved, quiet, tree-lined street.
• proximity to town, buses, trains, work.
• nearby co-op store.
• beautiful old houses at reasonable prices.

Each of us introduced ourselves by name and house number, I became ‘Wendy at n(a)’.  My introduction received one of two common reactions:

1. Oh,  the cute one that isn’t really on the street!  We knew Marion who lived there before you.
2. Where is that?  We know [name] at n+1,  n,   and the empty new house n(b),  there is no house between them.

Uncommonly, the Wendy House doesn’t have a frontage on the Street.  It is hidden behind n+1 with the pathway approach unintuitively placed between n+1 and n(b) rather than intuitively between n and n(b).  I discovered that a prior resident of this Wendy House,  Marion:

• moved in soon after the stable was converted to a house,  mid to late 1960’s.
• moved out in 2002.
• died in 2005.
• was a kept woman,  no-one knew who her patron was.  My deeds show the house was owned by Brian during her time here.
• would stand at the gateway and chat to passers-by. 

My plan to become the wierd lady with the hats was generally well recieved.  One neighbour may give me an old set of oak gates from a local house currently stored in his stables which haven’t been converted into a residence for a working woman.

There are two customer entrances to Jacksons.  One entrance goes into the main foyer and is lined by accessories.  The other entrance goes directly into the Mens department.  A girls entrance and a boys entrance.  This weekend I went in through the girls entrance and got no further than the handbags.

Senior Scottish Shop Assistant (3SA): I must ask you to come out from behind the counter,  it’s against shop policy

Wendy: Oh,  yes,  of course.  Could you show me the black bag on the 2nd shelf down,  2nd bag in from the right, left a bit,  next one along, yes,  that’s the one.

3SA: this is Navy Blue not black

Wendy:  its certainly very dark,  I’m looking for something to carry my passport , money and camera when I go on holiday.

The 3SA gets enthusiastic and starts pulling out all sorts of bags from the shelves,  talking knowledgeably about her stock and even suggests that I try looking in TJMaxx!  A car at the traffic lights outside loudly rev’s its engine.

3SA:  Oh dear,  we see all sorts here you know

Wendy: Oh?

3SA: All the criminals pass by here,  with two police cars before the van and 2 police cars after the van,  the Crown Court is just around the corner, recently one of the prisoners escaped you know.

Wendy:  Oh!

3SA:  yes, they all come past here you must check your insurance.

Wendy:  Insurance? 

3SA if you are taking your camera on holiday  check that your insurance covers your camera,  my friend didn’t and regretted it.  Make sure you check your medical insurance,  my friend broke her arm on holiday and her insurance only covered her for one hundred pounds,  she had to pay for a hospital stay over night and to fly home early.

Wendy: I’m going to Greece,  they have a National Health Service and as members of the European Community…..

3SA:  Spain is in Europe and my friend still had to pay,  check your medical insurance. 

 Wendy:  I’m covered for repatriation and the same level of service as Greek citizens…

3SA:  Read the small print,  always check the small print (continues delivering advice based on her accident-prone friends’ experiences)

About 20 minutes later I emerged from Jacksons.  Smiling.  Armed with lots of extremely useful holiday advice, and a ‘Navy Blue’ handbag that looks black to me, feeling as if 3SA is already my honourary Aunite.  She is certainly more than a familiar stranger.  I should pop in after the holiday to show her some pictures and confirm that I got through it without needing an insurance claim. 

Jacksons really is quite the friendliest of stores as long as you stay the right side of the counters and know your bag-colours.

climbs trees with a nylon sleeping bag for a sleep-out party with his friend

puts his bum against the open window of the car so that his silent but deadly fart doesn’t disturb the other car occupants then giggles incessantly for 20 miles

chops off his fingertip with an axe then runs around shaking his hand to increase the polkadot patterning on mums walls

makes a multi-level gerbil cage out of an old sideboard

sings into a microphone strapped to a standard lamp,  without removing the lampshade

writes the name of the girl that he loves on the inside flap of his school canvas haversack in different pens,  fonts and colours

ramps up the volume on the house stereo and arranges an echo, closes the window blinds,  peeks through then whispers in high volume ‘this is the voice of god’ when he sees a schoolchild in uniform walking by outside

earnestly says ‘you’ve failed?  how did that happen,  you’re the clever one’

Takes me into a record shop and says,  you can have any record you want,  its on me.  I pick the first Album he ever bought ‘Ride a White Swan’ by T.Rex

Persuades a friend to drive him to the warehouse 2hrs away where I’m holding my 21st birthday shindig,  Gives me 6 marbles and waits for me to be disappointed,  then gives me a hipflask full of Napoleon Brandy saying ‘I was going to have it engraved with to my wonderful sister,  but I didn’t’,  stays at the warehouse when his friend decides to drive back before midnight

Says of his visits to me at university ‘I wish my time at University had been as good as this’

Calls his first cat ‘f*ck-off’ because the cat followed him back from a superstore and he didn’t want it to,  then takes the cat everywhere in his Trenchcoat pocket and renames her Hoagie after Hoagie Carmichael

Drives a soft-top MG Midget despite his head creating a big upward dent in the roof because he’s 6ft4

 corrects my pronunciation

also known as:  Remembering what to remember

I first encountered the currently popular (in Psychology of memory circles) ‘prospective memory’ as a term to describe remembering what to remember through Baddeley & Wilkin’s 1984 article ‘Taking memory out of the laboratory’ .  The Laboratory, Lab, was typically where British psychologists studied human memory using rigourous exprimental methodologies.  The lab was normally a windowless, beige, unadroned room lest participants, then ’subjects’,  be distracted or inadvertantly influenced by non-experimental phenomena that might undermine the effect of the experimental manipulation.  

I liked Baddeleys work because he’d systematically estabished the positive impact of re-instating memorising context on recall levels through various studies including the influence of alcohol (Vodka) or physically being under water (diving) when memorising,  and recalling.  Both these experimental studies sounded fun,  were themselves memorable, and were even repeatable* in less rigorous forms with colleagues at University during normal studenty nocturnal activities. 

‘Taking memory out of the laboratory’ was published in a book called ‘Everyday memory, actions and absentmindedness’ .  This was ground breaking news to me in 1984.  There I was in the middle of a degree course, approved as official content and jargon by the British Psychological Society, where I had focussed my study on memory research.  I had just about got the hang of the technically specific language of psychological memory research such as retro-interference, auditory-loop, digit-span, recognition vs recall and much more.  Then,  THEN!  Those gosh-darn leading memory researchers sprang some non-technical terms that made sense and weren’t part of the current disciplin jargon.  How cheeky is that?

Absentmindedness? 

Cognitive psychologists study the absense of mind.  It was too much, I had a couple of vodkas and fell in a local canal with my miss spelt revision notes to celebrate. 

PS:  If I remember I’ll tell you why I’m telling you about prospective memory in a later post…

* Actually conducting the experiements makes them more memorable and easier to understand an evaluate than just reading or thinking about them over a cup of tea.

Since moving to Reading I’ve found lots of familiar strangers,  I see them on the bus everyday during my commute,  in the local cooperative store when I’m picking up milk for my tea,  behind the counters in Jacksons,  in the local internet cafe.

During my 1986 final year degree course Environmental Psychology classes I learned that people are more likely to exhibit altruistic behaviours to familiar strangers (than complete strangers) when meeting those familiar strangers outside of the normal context.  Each will recognise the other easily but have difficulty placing the source of this familiarity. 

This means that when I meet someone who normally rides on the same bus as me everyday,  in Jacksons,  I will think I know them and be nicer than I would be to someone totally unrecognisable.  

Excellent. 

More familiar strangers means more oportunities to be squishy.  Given my natural curmudgeonist tendencies this can only be a good thang. 

During a conversation about films that are substantially at variance with the books that provided their original title and approximate plot and characters: 

Wendy:  W’thering Heights

Bros:  WUH,  Wuh-thering Heights

Wendy: yes,  that’s what I said W’thering Heights

Bros:  Wendy,  Wuh-thering has a U in it

niece & her friend: (snigger,  sniggger,  snigger,  hiding mouths behind hands and flashing smiles at each other and checking to see if we ‘adults’ notice)

Bros:  (shakes his head and tuts)

 Wendy:  (decides not to mention that Bros appears to have failed to count the double-u)

Schrockthehouse recently pointed out that there is a shop in Oxford dedicated to keeping me informed about the goings on in the world,  called the Wendy news shop. 

wendy:  which one was he?

colleague: the one sat to my left at lunch time

wendy:  with glasses?

colleague: the guy who sat in the front passenger seat in the car

wendy:  cute older man?

colleague:  (sharp intake of breath while smiling and moving hand to cover mouth,  meanwhile several colleagues nearby swing their chairs round and look at me while smirking)

wendy:  damn, that was both sexist and age-ist in one fell swoop.  sorry.

(giggling colleagues)

while visiting Seattle this April I met with many local friends, indulged in lots of purring, stroking, creaky-meowing, general faffing and furring-up-nosing.   All in the best possible taste.

A spiritual sensitive spent the night in the Wendy House guest room. He picked-up on Wendy House memories.

The house remembers several of policemen looking at the bedroom wall over the kitchen. On several occasions since I’ve since seen flocks of policeman on bicycles swarming past, the Wendy House. He also saw a fellow on the landing darkly dressed, silent, wearing a bowler hat, watching the police people search, not ominous. I wonder what the house remembers?

I wonder how I can find out what the house remembers through more conventional means than dream observations… …dreams have revealed nothing to me… …yet…

Kebab Shop Man (KSM):  are you married,  do you have a boyfriend?

Wendy:  No,  never married,  no boyfriend, its a long story…

KSM: I’m not married.  My family are all in Pakistan

Wendy:  You have friends here in Reading?

KSM:  these are my only friends (gestures to the 2 other staff members in the Kebab shop).  I want to get married.  I want an older woman (Looks directly at me)

Wendy:  good luck

sixty-nineth hypotheses about the multitudinal causal factors of my singleness

Reason #69: home improvements

Getting the new  old Wendy House running smoothly is going to be keeping my hands away from potential boy-girl naughtiness and may turn me into a bit of a bore judging by recent posts

sixty-eighth post in a series attempting to explain the subtle complexities of my singleness

Reason #68:  Teddy bears picnic

The chorus to this well known childrens song is turning-up as auditory hallucinations in my day today.  

Once I’d manage to throttle the teddybears into silence Marc Bolan turned up singing Debora,  a much more desirable intrusive thought,   you’ll find me attempting to harmonise with the Marc in my head,  its enough to put-off even the most soppy of suitors and definitely a downer for T.Rex fans.

Sixty-seven in a non-conversational-style series of posts detailing many reasons for my singleness

Reason #67: conversationally challenged

I haven’t got an engaging commute story,  I haven’t got neighbours from hell stories, in the US my food-centric conversations were decidedly below-par,  there are times when even I recognise that my conversational skills take a nose-dive,  I’m gradually realising that all the stock legitimate popular conversational topics are not part of my standard repetoire.

Wendy aged 12 (1975): can I have my ears pierced?
Mumzie: when your are 18yrs
Wendy: will you pay for it?
Mumzie: yes, when you are 18yrs
Wendy: if I pay for it can I have it done now?
Mumzie: yes if I choose the place that you get it done and come with you.

-

Wendy aged 18 (1981): remember you said you’d pay for me to have my ears pierced when I’m 18.
Mumzie: you’ve had them pierced already, I’m not paying for a second piercing, I’ll throw you out, if you get them pierced a second time.

-

Mumsie didn’t notice the second piercing for nearly 6 months.  Rather than throw me out she sighed very heavily and used the mumsie version of the Chinese water torture.  almost lethal.

The younger generations of the House family have, more topical, gory, body-piercing stories, because time has changed the etiquette of piercings

Sixty-sixth in a slightly opaque,  and yet slightly transparant,  series of posts detailing many reasons for my singleness

Reason #66: glass brick fascination

When I saw this wonderful glass brick wall,  with the beautiful plain font and circular windows in the door I not only photographed it,  I stood their gazing at it for minutes.  Taking in the beauty looking like a catatonic crazy woman.  This glass wall made me very happy,  I may just go and visit it again for a repeat performance.  Oh yes,  show me a well placed glass-brick and who knows what soppy messes will ensue. 

Reason 65 in a slowly emerging series detailing the reasons why I am currently not diddling with anyone.

Reason #65: slow learner

An unpleasant flavour mixed with the mild dizziness of nausea and a desire to be elsewhere. What prompts such an unpleasant physical reaction? Not the graphic goriness of Sweeny Todd but the sight of a small beautiful old pub in Nottingham, Bell Inn, where I spent many happy evenings in the early 90’s with my then intended and one enduring love. Who would have guessed that nearly 20 years later the sudden evocation of those happy memories would prompt such an unpleasant physical reaction? I begin to understand why over the years we’ve exchanged letters rather than met for lunch.

I’m a slow learner….

Sixty-forth in an in-sight-full series explaining the reasons behind my single-ness

Reason # 64: scary eyewear

Wearing Teflon Rohan trousers and a ski jacket with the hood up makes me look like I’m touting for business. While ambling home from work in the dark I notice that a car driving towards me slows up, passes, does a 3 point turn and starts to crawl the curb, matching my pace, next to me. I walk over, stoop to look into the car and give the obviously confused driver some advice. Upon seeing my scary eyewear he puts his foot on the accelerator.

sixty-third in a sporadic Wednesday series of posts explaining my singleness.

Reason #63: subconscious stalking. 

Geordie:  are you stalking me?
Wendy:  Probably,  but not that I’m aware of…

I’m currently somewhere in Cambridgeshire dressed as a 1940’s French Cabaret artiste pretending to be at a dinner party in Casablanca while trying to work out which of the other guests,  or me,   murdered someone.  

I’ll probably need some character witnesses so vouch for me,  if you see me.