:: The Wendy House ::

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 #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.

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?

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. 

Bay 1 is popular!  Why?

1. children arriving and leaving with their skateboards for the nearby park.
2. there are 377 car parking spaces across the road by the only other bay,  Bay 2. 
3. frequent, cheap, fast, buses to downtown Seattle.
4. buses have bicycle carriers (Redmond is rumoured to be the Bicycle capital of the NW USA).
5. Redmond Library,  Police Station, Courts and shopping facilities are within 3 blocks.
6. the outrageously innovative, wild, humerous naming strategy used for this Park and Ride.  I fell off my chair laughing.  I’m going to write a poem about it.  Really.  I am.  I AM. 

Bay 1 doesn’t have a fancy ‘Robobus’.  It does have an open-fronted  wind-rain shelter painted brightly with pictures that look like a cross-between graffiti and children’s pictures that might be posted on a Fridge.   The quick, cheap, warm, friendly ride on the 545x to downtown Seattle is simply adorable.  It costs less than downtown parking!  The bus drivers are cheerful helpful people.  Wonderful service.

Actually,  I go there to hang-out at Bay 1. 

I like riding on buses

In the Wendy House,  road-trip excitements builds.  The first stage Greyhound ticket has arrived.  I have one outrageously oversized suitcase that can carry my tent, roll matt, sleeping bag, clothes for the week, wash kit and possibly even Flat Eric! All this is only half the check-in luggage for either bus or plane! 

The ‘C’ belongings will be hand luggage: computer, casio camera, cell-phone, chargers, connection cables, cash and cards….

(this picture was taken with the retiring fuzzy Canon)

I saw a Leyland doubledecker bus in Seattle. Whooopie!!!

Instant over-excitement. 

I shouldn’t read the branding on bus-grills while driving.  It’s one of my naughty habits.  I think it was a Leyland “Olympian“.  An Olympian bus with views of the Olympic mountains imported from Britain built by the British National motor industry with engineering specialism from Bristol. 

I’m getting all soppy again.   Time for more Tea.

11C

Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

Bored of buses yet?
Not me!
Just look at this flash fancy new bus that runs on the 11 c route now. I want a go!

Bored Now
Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

sat above the driver of an 11c bus, with your feet on the sill, heaven! I’m easily pleased

11 in Yardley 1

Originally uploaded by BrilliantMistake.

Note: this is a repost of a deleted post where the formatting totally f*******-up my whole blog lay-out. Apologies to people with RSS feed who saw all my attempts to correct the formating.  You’ll have to squint to read the paragraphs because using copy and paste for the repost hasn’t worked,  I can’t work out how to get back to the default font size for this post

My first experience of ‘geekism’ was meeting ‘Transport Management’ students at the Univeristy of Aston in Birmingham. One student had wall-papered his room with the Birmingham bus schedule.  He had a telescope that he used to check whether the buses were running on time. Another had his room full of blown-up photographs of the aeroplane’s that he had flown on. I went on a day trip with three of them to Stratford upon Avon train station. We never left the train station.  We wandered around photographing the trains. One lad went on to become an Air Traffic Controller.  Another lad drives armoured gold bullion vans.  His quirk was kissing cars, he would kiss any beautiful car he saw. Once on a very cold day he left the skin of his lips on a red Porche. Transport students were strange, very happy, individuals. Their enthusiasm was infectious.  From them I developed the skill to love the circular, octagonal, windy 11c Birmingham city bus route. The Transport students understood. They lived in the house with mice.  They didn’t mind because their love of Transport seemed to fill their hearts blinding them to many, personally insignificant, details of social conformity.  In the picture above the 11c bus route is portrayed as an oblong with gently curved corners.

Can you feel the love?

Shall I go back into my hole now or later?

 
Watford RoadOriginally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

some of the guys on flick-r are pulling together photographs of the 11c bus route. this is a picture of one of the ‘hilly’ bits. Notice how small the cars are compared to NW US cars. Riding above the driver on these buses can be pretty hairy! No need for a roller coaster ride when you’ve got an 11c…. 

The church spire in the background is another common sight.

1986

Unlimited travel, freedom printed on my West Midlands Travel pass.  Buses, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.  Trains too!  No more planning my journeys by cost or parental good will. No-one I knew could afford a car.  Riding Double Decker buses above the driver with views across the city and into first-floor rooms of street lining houses.  Everything is on show through those windows: loneliness; lovemaking; waiting; TV watching; eating; arguments; cats watching me watching them.

Sunday riding the “outer circle”, route 11.  A circle by name,  squished octagonal by map, and voluptuous curvacious rolling ride by road.  Either way if you keep going long enough you end up right back where you started.  The route is strewn with churches, graveyards, suburbs, slums, shopping streets,  industrial ‘parks’ and other passengers.  A couple made love on the back seat of the upper deck.   When they noticed me noticing them we all giggled.  I respected their location choice because its warm, dry, relatively private, and best of all it lacks the scent of rotting mice …

2006

Commuters reading books.  A lady explains to her phone how to treat dry skin then takes its advice on using a tea-bag to treat a sore eye.  Everyone looked busy,  except me.  Passengers in another part of Seattle could make a very different impression.  I wanted to ride the buses ’til the sun had long set and the buses carried me home, tired and sated.   But

My stop.   Temporarily mislaid freedom.

Maybe Sunday….