Dad: you can make elecronics stop working just by walking into a room
Wendy: I thought I was being paranoid
Dad: No. Not Paranoid. You have a talent for disrupting electronics
Wendy: thanks dad, its good to know I’m not paranoid
Neverland:.
There is a branding, marketing, styling opportunity in the tea-cosey market which is woefully or wonderfully underdeveloped depending on your perspective. This collection didn’t prompt me to part with £5.37
My main tea-cosey was hand-made by my talented sister-in-law. My name is sewn on the inside incase a moment of scattiness leads to my losing it (the tea cosey). It fits on my head as snug as a custom-made hat. That kind of personal tailoring does take some beating and these shop displayed tea coseys just aren’t up to par.
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!
A fairly typical secondary school conversation about my brother in the late 1970′s:
Secondary School Peer (SSP): you know your brother?
Wendy: yes, I know both of them, do you mean [name]?
SSP: No, the other one, what’s wrong with him?
Wendy: What do you mean ‘what’s wrong with him’
SSP: well, you know he’s not normal…
Wendy: how is he not ‘normal’?
SSP: you know, skipping down the corridors, laughing to himself and clapping his hands
Wendy: Oh (signifying acknowledgement that my other brother does all these things), yes, he does that when he’s happy
SSP: he’s happy in the corridors at school?
Wendy: yes, he’s always been able to entertain himself and find things to make him smile
SSP: He’s weird
He is still a happy soul, able to entertain himself and skip down the street when he’s happy. It’s as cute in a man in his 50′s as it was for a boy in his teens. I just bounce, I find that the less complex up-down movement reduces the likelihood that I will fall over.
A deficit of skipping must be a very sad thing, as indeed the beautiful, be-hatted, talented, lip-synch-averse, wiggly, much missed Billie MacKenzie recognised:
The Associates sang Skipping
Can you see them? 
Scary!
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.
Lucid dreaming is apparantly quite rare. Excel has told me that the 10 friends and family who replied to my emailed question ‘do you lucid dream?’ were all wildly over educated, regularly creative (musicians, poets, designers, teenager), and all except 1 are either not-married or over the age of 30. More specifically:
5/10 people do Lucid dream, including:
It’s fun, I’d highly recommend it if you don’t already indulge…
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.
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
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)
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
Wendy: I accidentally pulled the bathroom light fitting on the ceiling, today I picked up a newer sealed light fitting.
Dad: Do you want me to bring me tools?
Wendy: Not really, [brothers' name]‘s coming round with his tools, advice, and innovative home-improvement books on Wednesday. I’d rather he climbed the ladder than you or I.
Dad: Yes, I do get a bit dizzy when my feet leave the ground.
In a fit of unfettered curiosity about the wonkily hanging light fitting on the ceiling of the Wendy House bathroom with a bulb that didn’t respond to the light switch, I turned off the mains electricity then used one of my fancy little screw-drivers to remove the fitting. It was not a water-protective fitting, the wires were bare. I need a complete new light fitting, not just a bulb.
Even Wikipedia acknowledges the pecularities of English home electirical wiring traditions. There are no sockets in English bathrooms and the light is controlled by a pull-chord. I noted the red and black wires hanging from the ceiling, covered the ends in insulation tape and bounced off to a lighting shop (by bus).
All the lights looked jolly pretty with a mass of small chandeliers both modern crystal and psuedo candelabras.
I asked the lighting assistant if I could look at the wiring on the lights to see how I would attach them to my two wires in the ceiling. The lights in the shop all had 3 wires, yellow, blue and stripey yellow-green (earthed). I asked about how they mapped to my 2 wires. The assistant tushed in a patriarchally concerned manner and advised that I get an electrician to install my light. Luckily, dad and one brother are electricans.
Phew.
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
I did my upmost to light family festive barneys by:
First time Taxiing Bros:
Bros: are we going the usual way (voice stress indicates some concern)
Wendy: I don’t know, you’ll have to direct me to the usual way
Bros: it’s the other way
Wendy: 180 degrees in the other direction is going the usual way?
Bros: Yes
I turn around in the car park of a local Medical centre. Bros. explains this is the medical centre he normally uses. It will close for-ever when another one is completed further away from his home. Approaching Bristol, Bros continues describing the usual way then comments that he hasn’t done this for 2 years so the Roads might have changed. I managed to reproduce near-enough the usual way. A way I had never taken because Uncle Vaughan set the usual way for my brother.
Mini Wendy’s are herded by their parents into providing their Maiden Aunts with helpful lists lest they get the normal bizarre undesirable obscurities she normally offloads their way in the name of goodwill.
Lets take a moment for a thematic analysis of these lists. The 13yr-old has covered her back against seemingly being disapointed by adding the item ‘surprises’ to her clearly titled pink, heart-bulleted, picture illustrated, word-document list. Outstanding job, not least the request for a hair straightner, dropping the clearly superflous e was a stroke of pure genious.
By age 15yrs the Mini Wendy has grasped the usefulness of hyperlinks and chosen them over pictorial representations. The top-shop and over the kee socks references are clearly fashion references that perhaps I could learn from. Hmmm… And the lassie has clearly dealt with my impending myopia, excellent forward thinking there.
Good to see the mini Wendy’s are developing the Wendy trait for list construction. Clearly the girls are growing into fully rounded capable young Wendys
Shipping (air or land) frieght to the UK requires that the owner have a valid passport at all points when the freight will be moved. Frieght moval times are unpredictable because of seasonal and weather variations and because frieght, especially home-frieght, is very low priority. Remember by ditsy person’s annual passport? It’s due for renewal this autumn… …while the Wendy House is in transit…. Apart from guffaws of laughter this is what dad had to say when I asked him if I could hand-carry some stuff over to his home and leave it there ready for when I arrive, just to be sure it would actually get there…
Mum says that will be OK… …Passports and Passport timings are highly critical factors in travel – at least it is not as bad as in war time when you had to bring your Ration books with you if you were going out of the country – these had to be checked and if you had used next weeks rations woe betide you! That still applied the first time I came to England after the war – I nearly was not allowed to leave!
I should have guessed that it was worse during WW2. I’m lucky that Britain and the US prefer peacekeeping to war or I’d probably have to live in a bunker at the bottom of the garden.
1977. In Helsinki mum, dad, and both brothers were visiting dad’s family.
Dad took us all into the Kalnuun Puukko shop and we spent the afternoon each choosing a Puukko. After Puukko’s were purchased we went off into the woods around Helsinki to find fallen wood to wittle. We wittled together. All good family fun. Result? Lots of pointy small sticks left in the woods. My psyche was forever scarred by this experience and I’m now totally undatable.
When asked for some clarifying points on this ”knife’ aquiring experience Dad described the social-cultural significance of a Puukko beyond my constrained concept of a ‘knife’:
Knife in Finnish is veitsi – You should never call a puukko a knife – it is much more than that – it is the basic survival tool that you should have when you venture into the forest or into nature at wintertime or summertime. Its very name is associated with its prime use puu is tree or wood and kko implies a thing associated with the former – a woodworking tool. With it you can build a shelter in the forest, make a spear for spearing fish, use as an ice pick to drag yourself out of broken ice and much more. It does not weigh you down – it is essential in hunting and fishing. The original puukko had handle made of tightly woven young birch bark which often had a spell written on it before it was applied. This had to be replaced regularly – the modern puukko often has a solid handle often simulating the old type. Taken into cities and suburbia it becomes a weapon rather than a tool and it loses its basic character. In the Finnish – English dictionary the puukko is described as a sheath-knife as English does not have a separate word for a woodworking knife . It can and is used for stabbing by roughs and the verb puukottaa means stab with a puukko and the stab (noun) is puukonisku. The blade of the puukko is puukonterä. The man who makes it is a puukonseppä ( a smith) A true puukko should be bought from the man who makes it and you should visit him so that he can choose the right blade for you – However mass production does not allow for these old niceties and a tourist shops in the city is the source nowadays.
I wonder what equivalent stories with socio-cultural significance will be handed down to our next generations…
My parents moved home in April 1982 when I was 18yrs studying for my A level’s in June 1982.
Mum & Dad had been looking for a new home earnestly since 1977. After 2 years of their looking I no longer took their house- hunting seriously. I saw a fussiness that would rule-out all almost-right choices. Hmmm…. like parents like daughter? lets just not go there. Suddenly in January 1982 they found a house nowhere near my school and succssfully purchased it. They placed me in a foster-home for me to cover April 1982 thru June 1982. Due to a vicious bout of the flu I was bed-ridden and couldn’t join in the choice.
My parents picked hosts who were a couple starting on their second marriage, both recently divorced from their first marriages. He was a ‘Royal Engineer‘ who was thoroughly commited to the Faulklands war that started in April 1982 both were staunch supporters of the Ronald Regan and conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. I hated the stink in the home. Their Labrador puppy peeing on the floor daily didnt help. The couple made it clear that my coloured friend should not come to their house. She was not an appropriate person for me to spend time with. They explained to me that it embarressed them and lowered the tone of the neighbourhood to see her walking towards their house. Soon it became obvious that my male-friends were also not allowed to call at this house, apparantly it made their home look like it was a brothel.
I had friends of all colours and genders, but only the white females were allowed to be seen walking to their house. Even this honoured class had to be dressed appropriately, meaning some form of Victorian image of demure. Village life in 1982. It may be village life today. At the time I was furious with my parents for leaving me there. Retrospectively I think I learned a lot of valuable lessons from the difficult experience of living with these people.
Auntie Wendy’s Aunty.
Is preparing to die.
The thought makes me cry.
She knows how and why I love her
But I should double-check. Just make sure.
Spring to our 20′s,
Summer to our 40′s,
Autumn to our 60′s.
Winter to our deaths.
Winter is in my elders house.
Please wrap-up warm.
Take a scarf and hat.
Can I hold your hand?
Poem inspired by the photographed letter from mumzies sister, received the day before my brothers-daughter’s birthday. My neice, my namesake on a day when I am thinking of Auntly things. A day when I am glad that I’d booked a full 2 week holiday in the UK covering Christmas to be both aunt and niece in the same day, in the same company, in the same room.
I did not return to Britain for her brother’s funeral. I wrote letters, a poem and promised myself that I would join the family this Christmas.
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.
my father once mentioned that he has second sight. Apparently it runs in our family
“How do you know?” …he did not reply with…
‘how do you not know?’ …or question his role as my biological father…
He told me a story of how, as a teenager, he shook hands with a girl and foresaw her death. This had disturbed him so much that he avoided using his second sight, except, of course, in his job for divining.
Before retirement my father was responsible for the overhead and underground lines of a regional Electricity group before Thatcher sold them all off. Dad used his divining skills to pinpoint the location of underground electricity lines or other obstacles such as sewers when directing digging for repairs etc. Dad kept his divining rods in the house. As a child (5yrs, 1968) I would test him at the weekends. A fun game. The test involved him using his rods to find a single tuppeny bit hidden under reams of used computer paper I had liberally strewn across the living room floor. Dad used his divining rods to find the coin. I watched him intently to make sure he wasn’t feeling the coin with his feet through the paper or using some other cunning strategy.
Dad normally found the coin
then giggled
Niece (teenage): “I HATE YOU”
Bros: “do you know how to say that in French?”
Niece: “Je tu deteste”
Bros: “shouldn’t that be Je vous deteste?”
Neice: “NO, you are tu and I hate you”
By this stage I’ve fallen off my chair giggling and started dribbling tea on my woolly jumper (It was cold in England). During my 4 day stay I managed to avoid my niece’s wrath without ducking or walking into any nearby walls.
As a child I thought you peculiar, black hair, white skin, gawky behaviour.
Looking like the devil’s accountant, talking like a witty dissident.
Living alone? Could you be gay? It didn’t matter either way.
Antique bayonets, guns, swords, stamps, supplied your fun,
the Sunday Times shown your patience in our home.
Cryptic crossword skilled, five down quickly filled.
A place we’ll leave on Christmas eve,
our lounge chair, you’re not there,
Goodbye Uncle
Vaughan
The inspiration for this poem should be self-evident. Don’t worry, normal service will be ressumed after a brief bout of the traditional sadness-ranty-insomnia.
Happiness and Sadness.
Hand in Hand.
On my birthday mumzie’s eldest brother was found dead (heart attack) in his flat, several weeks after his death. He had lived alone ever since leaving his parents home in his late teens. Mumzie, his little sister, provided his family since grandma’s death (1980). Every Christmas, Easter, Bank Holiday, long weekend, he would move in with us. The old uncle chuckling in the corner, entertaining himself or completing the cryptic crossword with Dad. Liberal lashings of witty, dry and sarcastic comments all round. Interspersed with simply snoozing in his chair.
Death happens.
Old people are particularly prone to Death.
At the moment I’m angry becasue, for various unpublishable reasons, the best thing I can do to be supportive is nothing.
I’m going to line the dining room chairs up in front of me, like naughty school children, and give them a STERN telling off for being dining room chairs. Then I’m going to spank them with a fluffy pillow because I can’t imagine doing such a bizarre thing and remaining angry.
three leftys on the lawn, sinister!
Hear no evil. Partially obscure vision for good measure
Speak no evil. Put a thumb in it
Let me at it. No frill-laden panties will stop me enjoying Halloween, I can still crawl…
Poem inspired by Halloween, or Harlow-in as the US locals say, and an old family photograph, can you spot the wendy?
I see their heads, a pair of pinballs bouncing in the distance, as they scan the hall between the taller, faster-moving, arrivals. Dad’s thick heavy straight hair has a glass-fibre-optic luminance that is easily held in view.
Heading towards them, restraining the impulse to run, my strides extend. I’m bound to fall over if I run amongst unsuspecting normal people. A quick glance around confirms that adults don’t run in arrivals lounges. I’m an adult now. I walk, like the other arrrivals around my parents, very very very fast.
After the 200yrd dash I manage to approach dad head-on and get both arms around his shoulders before he’d recognised me. His shoulders? I don’t remember ever having been able to reach his shoulders before now. He kisses my cheek in front of my ear. He can no longer reach my forehead. Standing upright with his familiar cheshire cattish grin while Mum joins the hug simultaneously giggling and chattering. They had, they explained, ‘seen’ me but not recognised me…..
I hug-herd them to the luggage reclaimation rack while mother spills the first few lines of this story, then that, then the other, and another. I barely have time to savour the images she draws before being pulled to the next story. Dad grins silently, keeping his sparkly dark blue eyes trained on the baggage go-round, going round. In this moment of our studying the baggage go round, unobserved chattering mother wanders off, disappearing into the crowd, giggling and chatting to herself as she goes.
Is this how toddlers’ parents feel when they realise they can no longer see or hear their their toddler?
I’ll never know.
Pathetic Person Advisory (PPA): look away now if you can’t bare soppiness (1)
When I get home-sick (2) I take a trip to ScanDesign and look at the furniture. The wood is mainly an orange shade with simple lines. My parents home is packed with co-ordinated Scandinavian teak furniture. In the 1990′s, when I had no furniture, I begged them to leave thier front room to a Museum as an intact example of 1970′s Chic. It still is 1970′s Chic. Only now it’s really cool and I’d rather they left it to me, not that I could afford to ship it to the US.
Now, my front room looks frighteningly similar to theirs. I am becoming my parents. I have exactly the same dining table. When buying it I didn’t think, ‘oh my parents will like that I must buy it’, I thought wow that’s beautiful, cheap and I need a round table. The English cultural icon King Arthur made the need and value of a round table quite clear. My current table was oblong and identical to my parents’ table. Buying a round table marked my independence. Later, when I visited the biddies, I discovered they had replaced their oblong table with one identical to mine. The good news is that my parents will feel very ‘at home’ next time they visit.
Notice the blue glass grail-like challice on the shelf? It’s Marimekko, I have grown into a scandinavian design adict. I’m not looking for a cure. It just is. I’ll live with it. On a related note, I’ve noticed some Ikea products sneaking into my bothers home. Nothing sinister, just a chair and a bed….
