wendy house

3pm. Somewhere near Didcot. 21st December

How sensible am I,  starting my journey back to Reading?
Unbeknownst to me, Reading had already come to a standstill
The Reading Chronical had already published the standstill*

6pm. Pangbourne. 21st December

This is where I encountered the full car neige,  the tail end of the traffic trying to get into Reading.  The traffic standing still,  sliding sideways, not yet abandoned.  Local radio traffic news talked 50 yards taking 2 hours to cover.  Urrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh……

Across the next hour I called and consulted with multiple friends. The phone network was often too busy to connect my calls.  Despite the presense of many car drivers I felt very alone.  My calm sensible friends and I agreed that I needed to get off the road quickly and get shelter for the night. 

wendy: do you have any spare rooms for the night?

receptionist: stranded?

wendy: yes, well, um, yes

receptionist: we have one room left,  would you like a toothbrush with that?

wendy: OH! (signifying relief at getting a room and supportive receptionist) Yes please, thank you, I was turned away from the hotel down the road, a toothbrush!  how thoughtful

Handsome Other Guest (HOG): we’re stranded too,  I’ve only got a hammer and some ski poles in the boot of my car,  maybe we can do a deal over the toothbrush?

wendy: I’ve got a blanket in my car, we could build something like a tent with the poles and hammer.  Not sure where the toothbrush comes in

HOG: (Huge smile then turns to receptionist) table for 6 please

receptionist: we’re waiting for the chef to get in before we finalise the menu,  we’ll try and feed everyone

HOG: Table for 6?  Can you put me on the waiting list

Clearly the snow car chaos called for some serious parking-up and a pint of Butcombe.  My party for one joined a few other party’s for one and we all shared stories of family, cars, hills, walking, the IT industry and other topical faerie tales. 

* the exceptional Number 17 bus was still on the move, albeit erratically.

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.

Cornish bus drivers would check when people got on their buses that they knew where to get off and how to get back. 

The passengers slept thought the journey while the buses dodged the plants which grabbed at them from the side of the high hedgerows encroaching from either side of single-lane roads.

For all your wedding-guest transportation from church to reception veunue needs.  A red London bus wedding special.  As you can imagine,  this was the highlight of the wedding for me. 

The reception venue in a cricket pavilion, while a match was in progress, was also so wonderfully English that soppiness abounded.

Years before I read Peter Pan when I was less than 4ft tall I had an imaginary friend.  Without wings, he could fly into my bedroom at night while my unsuspecting family carried-on their downstairs life-after-my-bedtime.  Unlike Peter pan, John wore ordinary clothes:  flared corduroy jeans, t-shirt, jumper and daps.  You could easily miss noticing John in a crowd of shorter children.  John had an ordinary quiet, thoughful, way about him.  His silences matched mine.  He was good company.

John could fly right through the force-field that protected me from the monsters beyond the wardrobe.  The force-field that looked like bedroom walls but was infact protection that moved with me as I travelled through planet Wendy.  John knew how to co-pilot the big red double-decker bus,  the bus that was cunningly disguised as my single bed.   Unlike my real friends John didn’t scream or throw the extra pillow at the slimey poison-tongued Lizards that chased the bus.  John could use his powers of flight to lift the bus out of the swamp.  John was magic,  he could corale the heard of wild unicorns into the wardrobe without saying a single word.   He was my secret, special friend. 

John stopped joining my evenings when, in my teens, evening adventures moved into the world beyond my parents home. I wonder if John’s still out there,  whether he grew up or maybe became someone real.

Sometimes I miss him 

Sometimes

Waiting for a local bus,  for local people, locally, my other brother skipped up to me with a big smile and HELLLOOOOOO Wendy HaHaHa.  I jumped up to hug him (he’s 6 ft 4).

skippy:  Here’s the bus,  three busses at once,  OooooOOOOoo HaHaha

I walked toward the first double decker

skippy:  WRONG!   we want the single decker, Hahahahaha

Wendy:  Oh (signifying disappointment at not getting the double decker)

Skippy is on the bus and has placed himself in the centre of the back row of 5 seats by the time I’ve joined the line and paid for a ticket.  I look down the bus too see him at the end of the isle,  he shows me all of his teeth and claps his hands,  then raises one hand and waves it at me, as if I might be leaving, while laughing.   I show him my recently cleaned teeth and run down the bus to take a seat next to him.  We chat loudly during the journey.  I laugh everytime Skippy talks because his enthusiasm and volume is brillliant.  He is clearly happy to be with his little sister and I with him.

Skippy is looking forward to the Easter special Dr. Who episode,  he tells me about it.  I posit that maybe this bus is a TARDIS and one of the passengers is a time lord disguised as a local,  the conversation deteriorates from here on. 

Hoorah!

Words of wisdom from either a specialist* or in this case a very friendly person at a bus stop who asked me what bus I was waiting for and where I was going.  I told her I was waiting for the X32 to Harwell innovation centre.  Based on this brief information she gave me a couple of tips:

you’ll be wanting the 32 to Chiltern,  not to Harwell,  there aint no atomic place at Harwell. 

Don’t get a taxi,  it costs 20 quid.  I’ll ask the taxi driver,  you’ll see.

The friendly person had a seasonal all routes bus pass and rather than sit at the cold bus stop waiting for her own bus she decided to get on my bus to make sure that I got off at the right stop then catch her own bus home. It never ceases to impress me how caring and conscientious bus users are.

* past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant and Reading Police

why I love England #7: surreality

Man On Bus (MOB): It’s all foreign to you innit?!

Wendy:  Yur, t’is!

MOB: Just shut one eye and whistle (smiles and winks as he disembarks the bus)

Next to the Marlborough St. Bus station in Bristol is a rather unattractive small shopping complex that has provided homes for budget shops. In the late 1970’s the shop at the end of the underpass (below) sold second hand vinyl records. It was one of the best second hand record shops in Bristol. 

The shop was good because it was big and the staff checked the quality of the records,  knew and cared about the music. 

I would enjoy spending hours in the shop. It was called ‘Virgin records’, before the first Virgin records mega store opened in London Probably around the same time the record label was founded

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.

overheard on a bus

….minor accident with a chainsaw…..   ….it was turned-off…   …he still has all his fingers…

Despite the provision of FREE buses to get from downtown Reading to the Thames Valley business Park (TVP) I regularly walk. 

This has the fabulous side effect of keeping me fit,  for FREE!

Why I love England #4.  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.

What is an English waterside ceremony?

Lots of people wearing gender-defined colourful, often impractical, clothes and hats travel to a small Oxfordshire town to shout at teams of very muscular young adults rowing boats rather fast on a straight-stretch of the River Thames.  Pedestrians weave between cars* jammed in the roads while police people politely suggest,  then instruct, that the pedestrians stay on the pavements.  Not to mention the barrels of Pimms flowing, gallons of champagne popping,  and glasses of Brakspear sinking in Public Houses,  car parks,  and by the riverside.  It was the annual Henley Royal Regatta.

 * I took the 850 arriva bus from Reading to High Wycombe, hopped off at Henley, and a jolly pleasant ride it was too.

 I am a traveller when commuting,  most weekends, and for a couple of weeks in GREECE (Whoooooopieee!). 

The word traveller is now used in the UK to describe people that take their home (caravan) with them when they move.  It apears to include the older reference groups (Gypsies,  Romanies,  Tinkers) that I am more familiar with and may include newer groups that I am not familiar with. 

Recently,  in the spirit of travelling,  I rode bus #20 around Lower Earley.  For fun.  I as able to sit above the driver at the front of the bus and wave at other local Reading people that I knew.  I saw some camper-vans parked on the grass of Cintra park (formerly Sutton Seeds sports ground) with people picnicing outside.  Get Reading reports that these are travellers that regularly stay in the Park every year,  this year they arrived just before a fence as due to be errected with the specific intent of keeping them out.   I wonder if they come to take full advantage of Jackson’s summer sale?

Boarding the outstanding,  yet not bio-ethanolically-fueled, free Thames Valley Park commuter bus I was forced by proximity to listen to a Scottish man wearing a back suit,  pink tie and highly polished shoes have a conversation with one of his work colleagues,  it started:

‘have those pissheads on the platform fwcked it up yet?’

and went down hill rapidly.  He alighted at the British Gas company bus stop. 

Recently,  while much of the UK was panic stocking on petrol,  in Reading pedestrians were riding Bio-ethanol fuelled buses on route 17.  In Sept 2006 Stagecoach single-decker buses were trialled in Merseyside, Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, and Greater Manchester.  Stagecoach introduced 8 singledecker buses in Kilmarnock running on cooking oil.  Apparanly nearby residents got discounted travel rights in return for donating cooking oil. 

According to the BBC,  who are terribly credible,  Reading is the first area in Britain to supply a BIG fleet of 14 bio-fuelled buses.  The first doubledecker bus trialled in Reading in October 2007,  was called ‘Ethel’,  as were 2 of my mumzies aunties.  Get Reading reports:

Reading Transport Ltd chief executive James Freeman watched the company’s newest and greenest bus roll in.  He said: “People in Reading are very environmentally-conscious, so now they can be sure when they choose to travel by bus they are making a green choice.

 Hurrah for conscientious, progressive,  Reading public transport services.  Route 17 is one of my absolutely favourite bus routes,  it carries over 6 million passengers per year.  That is LOTS.

Watch people on CCTV cameras,  LIVE,  on the number 17 bus!

Distributed social responsibility by having lots of witnesses to any naughtiness on the buses.  Everyone knows they are being watched.

Distributed snooping,  snooping in public, taking people watching to the next level.  The bus company will have witnesses to incidents, 

Reading bus services are cutting edge,  except perhaps for the requirement to pay to ride.  Using cash and having the exact change.  How archaic is that?  Why can’t I just have my retina scanned by one of these many inplace cameras and have the money directly deducted from the bank account of my choice?

The free Thames Valley Park bus service is outstanding.  It not only provides free wireless internet access,  it also provides signs to let you know where the internet access might be a bit buggy.

The buses here are so clean and shiny they just give me a warm feeling all over,  its sweet,  though it will never replace the sheer jof of sitting over the driver on a double-decker.  yay!

Sat on the top of a Reading bus route 33,  exploring the hinterlands of Reading from the comfort of a heated doubledecker,  we pull up at a bus stop and I hear:

hoards of passengers downstairs:  the driver’s missed the turn,  gone the wrong way,  let me off!   

sound of people stomping off the bus

little boy upstairs: the bus has gone the wrong way, do we have to get off?

man with litle boy: it might be the first time the drivers driven this route,  we can stay on and he’ll go near to our home.

The driver found a place to turn-around and continued on the right route without the passengers who like to have a good shout at someone who’s made,  what in the whole unvierse of mistakes is, a tiny easily retrievable mistake.

Waiting in the cold March night air at a crowded bus stop…

Ottowan: I’ve learned so much from you British
Wendy: give an example?
Ottowan: how complaining can be used anywhere, anytime, to entertain complete strangers, like at a bus stop where you’re waiting 30 minutes for buses that are sKeduled to turn up every 8 mins
Wendy: nods, giggles, “look, there are 3 buses coming now” and 3 buses did indeed arrive together

Does this count as a good commute story?

one bus makes advances to the back of another one and the whole world gets commercially romantic. 

Consider this post a freebie of affection,  bought to you by public transport. 

Happy Valentines day to all who made my visitors statsitics swell, 

you are swell 

Apologies are used in a subtly different way here in the UK than  in the NW US.  This bus uses a lively exclamation mark.  It feels more like a cheerful announcement than a humble seeking of forgiveness.  I don’t recall the word sorry used in this cheerful way as frequently in the NW US as in the UK.

Before moving to the temporary Wendy House in Reading I spent all of 5 minutes looking for bloggers who confessed to a connection with Reading.  I found Reading Roars and Scary Duck.  After turning up in Reading I built a ‘feel’ for liveable-in places in Reading by riding some of the local bus routes.  Most circular routes appear to take less than 45 mins.  That’s a sizist comment: “Reading,  the size of several 45 mins circular bus routes“.   Apparantly this photograph of buses passing on Route 24 was taken very near the cardboard box that ScaryDuck claims to live in. 

How cosy is that?

People who hail from Reading are (pick one option or add one of your own making):

• Readingensians
• Readonians
• Readibus
• Readifolk
• Readipop

Thanks to Adam Sowan for raising my awareness of these options. Obivously I like the Readibus option because of my prediliction for buses.  But how do you get to be a Readibus?  So far I’ve found 2 things:

1. living in close proximity to the big white house or at least being able to identify it by its address
2. Working for specific companies or at specific locations (e.g. Thames Valley Park) . 

What other things do you think it takes to hail from Reading?  When will I have been ‘localised’ (in a conmputer jaron sense of the word)?

This moving malarky is intense, unrelenting and exhausting:  decision,  decision, decision,  pack, pack, pack,  sell, sell, sell, donate, donate, donate, comma, comma, comma….

I will be treating myself to a long ride on the top of double-decker bus as relaxation one Sunday in Reading. 

I like the look of the N26 and the N11. 

The bus service in Reading is of award winning European standard!  Hoorah!  The Reading “PLUSBUS‘ service won the International Road Transport Union Eurochallenge Award 2007 judged by an independent panel of European senior transport experts.  Oh, OH, OHHHHH,  I feel a bout of bus-geeky over-excitement about to break out….  If I get one friend to come with me we can be a ‘group’ and buy a  bargain group ticket for all day Sunday travel for only 5 GBP.   I may take Flat Eric.  It’s oh too exciting,  don’t you just wish you could sit up there with us and make bus-appropriate sound effects and faces at the pedestrians we pass?  Simply hours of good clean fun to be had.

Its my birthday.

It’s Eyan & Phil’s birthday.

It’s international Jennifer day

I’m 44 (and British)

The wikipedia entry for 44 points out that despite not being a prime number it is one of an elite 12% of numbers that can be described as a ‘Happy Number’.

44 trivia:

• Its the international dialing number for the UK and that’s where I am today,  in Reading, in the UK, and that’s where I come from and I’m a citizen not an alien.   
• A bus, big caravan, production company in Germany.  I like buses.
• 44 was a leap year starting on Wednesday.  During this year Emporer Claudius returned from a campaign in,  yes you’ve guessed it, Britain!
• Psalm 44 is powerfully emotive,  excerts of the language within the psalm:  ‘crushing people’,  ‘trampling our foes’, ’scorn and derision’, ‘reproach and revile me’, ‘crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals’.  It is a bid to the christian God for support in torrid times.  Probably a bit more torrid than my current repatriation expereince* but in that sort of direction on the scale that ranges from comatosed to extreme torridity.

* I did phone someone up yesterday to tell them I was frustrated,  so that is pretty torrid on the Wendy torridity scales.  I used the word frustrated 4 times,  then had a cup of tea to calm down.  I feel a bit bad now about that impulsive outburst of saying I’m frustrated.  

Reading rhymes with

• bedding,
• sledding (if there’s snow), or
• wedding (if their is a significant other, which there isn’t).
• heading (an essential skill for a footballing forward)

I’ll be covering the unique and much maligned experience that is ‘Reading’ in many upcoming blog posts.  A Brighton-based blog post exemplifies common themes of passionate disappointment in Reading:

the epicentre of new Labour, corporate, consumerist blandness…   …despite its affluence and its growing population it can’t rise above the terminal blandness and ‘middle Englandness’ it seems to have always had…    …It is bored and dissatisfied young people planning their escape, it’s a football club who plays in a shed resembling an out of town B&Q and whose torrid home games with their dire atmosphere are (ahem) bound to take the Premiership by storm this season…  …Reading is a rip off, Reading is unfriendly, Reading is in a rush to purchase and then to get home.

Oh deary me!

A (fictional) letter from “chase me ladies I’m in the cavalry” to a Reading East MP (Member for Parliament) had me wetting my pants,  or is it my trousers,  I can’t be sure,  but they are definitely damp. 

There is good news about Reading provided by a blog called Reading Roars. Not ’Reading belches’ ,  ‘Reading pukes’, ’Reading falls asleep in front of the TV’.  Wendy appetite wetting references includes a Sushi restaurant.  yes, one!  Wireless enabled bus service called the “Thames Valley Park” (TVP) that has been described as a ’farce‘.  I love a good farce.  I do like buses too.  Two goodies in one!  I can hardly wait to try blogging from a bus.  Just imagine what a vibrating bus will do to my spelling, ability to fall-over, and general happiness…  There’s a Farmers market.  I do like farmers and I might find one or two ruddy faced farmers there. With my UK regional accent I might even be mistaken for a farmer,  it has happened before! 

Result!     

Stay tuned to find out how my Reading investigations evolve,  or even send me tips on highlights…

My first impression of Limerick is that it has welcomed many people from eastern European communities.

After a red-eye flight covering 24hrs Wendy-time I look more than a touch bedraggled and every bit my 43yrs.

Wendy:  what choices do I have to get from here to Limerick?

Shannon Airport Information:  Bus or taxi,  do you have much luggage?

Wendy:  Just this

Airport Information:  take the bus.

This is the kind of advice that I like to hear.

At the bus stop two young girls wearing heavy dark eye-liner shelter from the drizzle by me.  They chainsmoke wearing airport badges with their long hair pulled away from their faces.  The original colour of their hair is showing for 2 inches at the roots.  White-skinned  blonded brunettes talking with an urgency normally utilised by drug addicts or excited children they look slightly bedraggled too.  They are not talking English or Irish,  they sound eastern European.  

A couple looking over 50yrs wearing well-ironed bright clothes stand either side of numerous new-looking suitcases.  In an US accent the lady asks me  Is it daylight savings time in Ireland? In my English accent I reply  I have no idea.  It is 7.50am

The girls stop talking,  their cigarettes held close,  but not touching their lips.  They look at the US couple and me for a few seconds then resume their chatter. 

When collecting my fare the bus driver scowels at me.  Here my accent is definitely not cute it is that of a recent occupier and oppressor.  During its route the bus (30mins,  €5.70) picks up about 10 people.  Judging by their accents and language about half of them are eastern European.  On the journey, inbetween talking calmly,  slowly, continually, into an earmounted phone headset, the driver shouts obscenities at other drivers “Ya Prick!” in an Irish accent . 

Later downtown I find several shops that specialise in Lithuanian and Polish foods,  as I walk passed queues at the downtown bus-stops I hear eastern European accents mixed with the the Irish.  The two receptionists, half the bar staff and all the restaurant wait staff  in the Hotel sound eastern European….  

Mumsie packed older brother (9yrs) and I (5yrs) on a public bus for a 40min bus ride to the Marlborough St. City centre bus terminal. 

Exciting.  Adventure.  Upstairs on a double-decker bus without any adults.  Going to the big city.  Bother held my hand as we left the bus.  We walked up the hill towards the  Bristol Royal Infirmary.  I knew the way because I came on the Bus with Mumsie every Thursday when she came to the city to shop. 

Crossing the road,  very scary.  Mumzie always held my hand, checked for traffic.  I didn’t know how to cross the road.  I still find it particularly tricky.  I held my brothers hand tightly, walked fast and close to him as we crossed the road.  Once in the hospital I had no idea where to go.  My brother read the signs and found my other brother (6yrs) in the childrens ward,  who promptly started crying. 

What a wuss.  Here in this interesting big hospital with lots of fabulous toys and other children to play with and all he does is sit in bed crying!  I wandered off to play with the other children and big toys.   One of the children was bald.  Some wacky children in here.  Then dad turned up and we left crying brother in the hospital,  crying even more now.  We rode home in Dads pale blue Ford Corsair car.  I was allowed to sit in the front seat because Mumzie wasn’t there. 

All in all  a fabulous adventure.