wendy house

New year really started in the bathroom of a 3 star hotel 45 minutes walk from Notre Dame. Not midnight amongst the Europeans singing, hugging, kissing and drinking. A houseparty of strangers. A strange flavour of tonic water.

It wasn’t raining, but the clouds seemed to crowd right into the bathroom mixing with the steam where the taps ran water into the bath as quickly as it ran out the plug hole.  I’d tired of scrubbing. Red and wrinkled skin from hours of soaking, foaming.  Sometimes if was difficult to tell if this was real or a dream.

The effects of the spiked gin and salty tears were gradually wearing off, being replaced by a profound silence and a kind of numbness I’d never known before or since. I drank more water. Sometime I would have to leave this room, through the one door back to the bedroom. Have to look into his eyes and see all that had happened the night before reflected there. All his questions and apologies, all his needs and regrets had to be faced.  There wasn’t enough room for me to run with the water down the plug hole.  Watching the water spiral down I wished as hard as I could to either wake from this dream or slide out with the water.

Slowly, precisely and with the conviction normally reserved for reprimanding criminals I turned the taps off, rose, dried and dressed myself. Blew my nose. Drank more water.  Closed the window. Composed, upright, dry faced.  In the privacy of my mind I could hear the applause and cheering for a well excecuted restoration job.

 I walked out of the bathroom

the snow is cold and fresh, lets go out on the downs and make love, I really want to make love outdoors, please…

I knew the pull of making love in freshly fallen snow.

But not with him. We weren’t even friends, let alone lovers. Once I would have considered that all part of the fun.  I’d learned the hard way that strangers with a sense of vitality, of living life to the full, seemed to come in a package that perversely included a need to possess, control.  To own you in a way that breaks legal and moral boundaries, that breaks skin, bone, hearts and noses.  I’m more cautious now.

Masturbate or find another partner, I’m not interested

 lover: you’re a very visual person

wendy: I’ve got two eyes and I like to keep them peeled lest I start to loose things and fall over more than normal

lover: no, i mean you like to make love in the daylight, outdoors

wendy: that”s so much more than visual. Thats the breeze drying the sweat on your back, smell of the dew on the grass and the leaf mulch in your hair, the shiver from the scatchy snow on your buttocks.  That’s not just visual, that’s living.

lover: that will take me a while to get used to

But he never got the chance to ‘get used to it’ because I wasn’t patient enough to be waiting for someone in their 40′s to learn how to make love out from under cover of darkness, sheets and comfort of artificially sprung surfaces.  There are times when throwing caution to the evening breeze is exhillerating and worthy of a plunge

wendy: i think I must be lonely

mary: rubbish, you are the least lonely person that I know, you just spend a lot of your time on your own

We met several months before.  We both started a ‘mountain glacier hiking’ course.  At 60 Mary was the oldest person on the course. She had not signed up as part of a couple nor was she treating the course as a mate-finding opportunity.   How refreshing. I soon started to seek-out Mary’s company while hiking and during the rest breaks.  I quickly tired of the chattering from other hikers, normally affluent couples considering what gear to purchase, what restaurant to recommend. 

At 60 Mary’s love for her terminally-ill bed-ridden husband was not stated, but it beamed stronger than a lighthouse.  She recorded our hiking sessions, the beautiful scenery and laughter,  for him with her new digital camera.  He could feel part of an active interesting life because she sought this life out and carefully bought it back to his bedside with love. What a fabulously generous heart. 

I fell in love with Mary. Not the love that hungers for sexual validation. Not a love that needed to be returned.  There was deep peace in her company. Knowing this I invited myself to her home in the foothills of Mount Ranier. The home she had built with her husband before his death so noticibly stepped towards him.

wendy: can I help you gather the leaves from your garden?

Mary: yes. they  will fall as fast as you’ll be able to gather them

After a morning gardening, mostly in silence, we went inside and Mary finished the home made french onion soup.  She talked while she stirred. Talked of how her father raped her and how the authorities didnt believe her story. Talked of how her sister committed suicide. How she left her bilogical family and built her own new family.  How she worked to help abused children and beaten wives. Clearly she has known and seen more loneliness than I could feel.

 The cedar dappled autumn sun played on her face.  No tears, no frown lines. 

It seems we have both found some form of peace amidst life, in the silences

young boy: but I love you, please.. …if you wont even give me a chance to prove how good a boyfriend I’d be for you, I might as well kill myself now

young girl: OH  P’Lease, grow up, I dont negotiate with emotional terrorists

Within 3 hours he had  written-off £4K of boy-racer Suzuki motorcycle to keep his threat promise.  He gave her name and address as hss next of kin.    She hadn’t had the chance to enjoy freedom from his persistent lobbying for access rights  when the police notified her of the accident.  They certainly added dramatic effect. Raised the terror levels.   How long before his capacity for violence, obsession with her, will put her in hospital?

As his confidence grew he followed me into my favourite local pubs.   I first noticed him when I left the ladies room.   He was leaning against the wall.   As I walked passed I heard him quietly sing.   Like you hear leaves rustling, just there and natural.   I thought he was a gentle natured  giant singing a sweet song. Nothing ominous,  as our eyes met, smiled,  he stopped singing as I blushed.  

Soon after I started noticing him everywhere I went.    I’d catch his eye across a crowed room,  hear him singing as I left the ladies room, bump into him at the bar ordering drinks.  We barely spoke. My friends told me he was a prop on the high-school first rugby team, not a man of many words.    He used a few of those words to  prop-position me,  a few more to  tell my friends and the  rugby team,  we were dating.  

As if saying it would make it so

I politely turned down his prop-positions, told my friends that I had not dated him,  had no intenion of dating him. I didn’t think that neanderthal was your type… …normally it’s the hookers you have to look out for,   you can see the props coming…     close friends didn’t buy his story.  Persisiting,  he started turning up at my home, writing letters,  song lyrics transcribed followed by some of his own  mechanistically pornographic explanations of why I should  date him.  

He didn’t understand a polite assertive no, I’m not interested

He didn’t understand a screaming, swearing, spitting  version of **** off and leave me alone    

I moved home, moved cities,, moved home several more times  before I  finally got away from him. ‘Where do you go to my lovely is probably a beautiful song,    unfortunately I’ll never really be able to hear it as beautiful.  

Peter Sarstedt sang Where Do You Go To My Lovely

According to a UK Nivea TV advert 77% of women feel sexier when their armpits are shaved.

Hooray for the 33% 23% who do not derive their sense of sexiness from increasing their physical similarity to pre-pubescent children.

Sheffield city centre on a cold, wet March evening hosted this advert, selling shorts.

Pressumably the advertisers believe there is something in this image that will make women want to buy their product. Something aspirational and attractive in this image?   The unusual placing of the arms, the lack voluptuousness?   The image firth  made me want to cry with pain then scream with anger.  I wonder why the advertisers didn’t try adding the humour  with a topical retro 1970′s theme and spread her across the bonnet of a sports car implying if she purchased these shorts she could get fucked by men who can afford a good sports car.

Oftentimes it feels like the 21st century redefinition of feminism is an appropriation of examples of  freedom of choice that in actuality  maintain the role of women as slaves.

brrrrrrriiiiiiiinnng  brrrrrrriiiiiiiinnng

wendy house:   Hello!

BT operative (BT-OH!):   Hello,   is Mr or Mrs House available

wendy house: my parents don’t live here

BT-OH!: Do you pay the bills?

wendy: Are you selling me something?

BT-OH: this phone number is a BT phone number and we have a special offer on Broadband

Phone sales people often want to talk to my mother, dad or to-be-arranged-husband.   It will be sad when my reply is ‘my parents are dead’ until then it’s mildly comical.

Today we listen to internationally* celebrated behaviour therapist Dr. Amelia Prank-Hirst present the key canons of her best selling clinical text book on effective  handling techniques for your pet human male – ‘he’s just a man’  

This lecture was performed for a small group of international psychiatrists and legal  specialists in the back garden of Doctor Prank-hirst’s  modest wooden wendy house  on the outskirts of  downtown Stockholm.   The meeting is more commonly known as the ‘Stockholm stand summit’ (SSS).

From this lecture we learn that men

• are irrational (hard to understand).   We are advised not to waste time trying to make sense of the complete gobbledegook that pet males are  prone to spew.
• have trouble standing up and require physical props.    Pet owners have tried many kinds of physical props but the most effective prop is the pet owner themselves.   I was particularly impressed by Dr. Prank-Hirst’s commitment to re-inforcing her hairstyle to add the versatility of extra height to her male-support function.
• should not be aquired  for christmas or any other gift-giving ceremony unless you are confident that the recipient has sufficiently strong back-bone and arm-muscles  to deal with the male’s unability to stand alone.   Several nations at the SSS are considering introducing a pet-ownership licence schemes to ensure owners  have  the strength to manage a pet  man.  
• need a nocturnal external heating system.   Several heating systems have been proposed.   Currently the wood-burning stove is recommended as an excellent souce of renewarble energy.   Possession of a heating system is likely to be a requirement for people taking-on pet males in the legislation being developed at the Stockholm summit.
• require love.   There has been some debate around the nature of love that is required by male pets,   with specialists proposing that food, alcohol, TV remote control constitues the necessary basics and the provision there-of could be described as ‘love’.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the results of these simple behavioural support guidelines not being followed by owners of males – gangs of men wandering the streets at night,   shivering,   falling over, hanging around in fast-food  joints and pubs.    

Tammy Wynette sang stand by your man

* In the style of Scarlet’s advertisement reviews.   Scarlet has  not condoned any of the views expressed in this post

by  Magnus  Mills

Highly recommended for people who  love watching the social dynamics of the British workforce.   This book was  a Birthday pressie!  

4 smiles: Ratings explained

What is the book about?  

A story of gradual social change within a nationalised industry featuring,  tea, cakes, chat, meetings  and canteens.   We watch the gradual decline of a national treasure – the scheme for full employment – through the eyes of an unnamed  employee.   Reminiscent of the decline of the national mining  industry,   national car industry,   and the NHS.  

The reader gradually learns how the scheme works through the daily experiences of  one employees.   We meet his colleagues, supervisers, and learn about what employees should do and what they acutally do.    The manner of storytelling reminded me of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, as the protagonist appears to accept and observe all that goes on around him.    The short sentences, descriptive focus, economy with works,  make the book  very easy to read.   I wish I could write that beautifully.

Unlike the majority of modern novels this one focuses solely on work contexts.     The action, and sometimes  inaction, all  happens on work time, in work venues.   There is only one female character named and present in this workplace.   The scheme is currently, predominantly,  a boys world of work.

Is the book boring?

Unlike Kafka, the story is full of  situational humour that Mills gradually reveals like clues in a detective novel.   Other reviewers describe the humour as ‘Deadpan humour’.    For me the funniest part is what the scheme for full employment does,   how it delivers value above and beyond full employment.   Many of the reviews I read actually gave this away rather than allowing the reader to discover it within the book.   I am glad that I didn’t read any reviews before reading the book.

The red arrows jet display team  have selected a  female pilot,   for the first time,   in 2010.   This is NEWS.    

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, in 1928,   she was
the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932, and the first person  to fly solo from Hawaii to California, in 1935.

Why do we think women were excluded from the Red arrows before 2010?  There is an elephant in the news item.

She ignored me. She blames me, but we both argued.   It takes two to argue. I drive from work straight to the hospital every night since the misscarriage and she lies there with her back to me.   She ignores me,   even when I shout at her she ignores me. She hasn’t spoken to me since the misscarriage.  She blames me, she lost it because of the stress.   I was stressed too, I hurt too.   She thinks she is the only one in pain and she just doesn’t listen to me, even when I shout. Bitch. At least she’s still there, at least I’ve still got the bitch.

.

Person At Party In Garden (PAPIG): is [chap] coming to the party?

Wendy:   I don’t know,   I think he might be out of the country,   he was in Australia on Monday

PAPIG:   is he YOUR man?

Wendy: (calmly spills drink over wasp while gatheirng composure)…no, he’s not my man…

PAPIG: I thought that was strange…   …I mean,   your man being out of the country

Wendy: Oh (signifying a brain-stall prompted by the assumption that I possess a man that is averse to leaving  the country)

Jumping onto a crowded rush hour Paddington train  I slump into the one remaining  isle seat.    Resting my brow against the seat infront. Breathing slowly, eyes shut,  shut-out the crowded world.

Boy in window seat (BIWS):   are you alright?

Wendy:   yes,  I’m alright,  thankyou for asking, you have a kind heart

BIWS: bad day at work?

Wendy:   time of the month, normal pain, nothing to worry about I’ll just close my eyes and drift away

I surf the pain to  some other consciousness, completely missing the train journey…. ….and almost missing my stop…  

At 16yrs, the first time the pain stole my consciousness  was from  a chemist queue.  I clutched a packet of unpurchased  pain killers.    My unconsciousnes  chose to examine the shop floor.   A  kindly woman carried me to the local Health Centre.   I woke in her arms and gifted her the contents of my stomach.  

At the health centre I begged the Doctor for pain killers.    He said pain killers were not warranted  because I’d just puke them up.  That the pain was natural.    He prescribed lying on my back until I felt able to walk.   Then I should  go home.  

With his words the pain merged perfectly with incredulity.   Not offered a glass of water to swill the bile from my mouth.   I could taste the incredulity.    Stung by the  indifference  of  professional caring staff.   As soon as I could I slid from the trolley and stumbled out of the Health Centre.   To the chemist shop.   The kind lady  who’d carried me had gone.    No-one knew her name.   No-one to thank.  

Thank you kind lady.

Since that day I’ve learned to accept, immerse, and surf the experience to unanticipated, inarticulable ways and places.   PMT and Cheese. Mmmmmmmm…

Words of wisdom from  an almost stranger*.  in this case a local Reading resident :

“don’t go there, its full of orange girls”

A little questioning established that ‘Orange girls’ wasn’t a reference to employees of a phone service company or a womens theatre group.   Orange girls are girls that choose to use recognisably fake sun-tan.   Evidently the fake tan looks rather orange.     The use of fake tan is associated with lifestyle and values that are somewhat superficial.  

* Past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.   Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous  manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant, a bus stop philanthropist, a mini salesman, Windows Network Diagnostics, Flat Eric  and Reading Police.

1984 involved discovering life outside of the southern 1968 Wimpy housing estate of my youth.   Catching National Express coaches to join  demonstrations  supporting the miners strike.   Being picked-up by the police  on the main streets of Birmingham city centre under suspicion of being a prostitue*.      A friends suicide,  numerous confidences of experiences of rapes.    According to the Birmingham rape crisis centre in 1984 an estimated 1 in 4 women were raped by the time they are 21 years.   There was a fabulous music scene in Birmingham  and it attracted many upcoming artistes from around the cournty  to the smaller venus.   The midlands had soul.    

In Birmingham Swansway played ‘Soul Train’**

(warning: this video  includes Sax)

* girls not accompanied by a men walking  outside after dark,   the only possible justification for this wreckless behaviour was prosititution

** the video ends before the eerie last notes of the song….   I bought their album ‘The Fugitive Kind’ which is exceptional way beyond its recognition.

“If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it”  
chorus from ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)’ by Beyonce Knowles

Is Beyonce singing about

• mobile phone ringtones?
• a runnaway bullock that wasn’t tethered securely by a nose-ring?
• a single lady,   as the song title implies?

What a plucky lady Beyonce is,   if she isn’t treated well (which appears to be equated with being invited to be a wife)    then she  moves on to find another chap who pressumably might ‘put a ring on it’.   Why does Beyonce appear to refer to herself as an ‘it’ that should be tethered by the putting of a ring?   Even with her plucky   ‘I can find myself another man’    attitude she still appears tied to the idea of being a male’s chattels.    

This fully trained corporate server IT specialist spends her spare time decorating newdspaper pages purchased for the coffee room of a forward thinking,   diversity aware,   equal-opportunity-implementing  corporate office.  

Well done that IT specialist for making your spare time work for you by selling views on your hardware that conforms to current male tastes in buffer stacks.   With your good IT job you can probably even afford to sculp your hardware to keep up with evolving fashions in male tastes.     How clever you are.  

I wish I knew how to manage the deployment and maintainance of  multiple mail servers.

These are the search results produced by Googling    ’Women’   and then ‘men’  on International Women’s day (8th March 2009).      

What do you (not) see?  

How much tea did I consume while  restructuring my budget for health, beauty then pregnancy and applying for a job as a naughty hot cheating chatty woman  ?

Unenlightened person (UP):   As a favour, can you give my friend, the IT man, feedback on the website we’re developing?

Wendy: I can talk to him about what’s possible and provide something even if its just first impressions

UP: Oh* thank you he’ll be so pleased.

Wendy: no problem

UP: …especially since you are a woman…

Wendy: Oh**…     …why?   (demonstrating outstanding facial muscle, vocal tone  and body posture control)

UP: He normally only gets feedback from men

Shall I tell the IT guy that the website lacks sufficient:

• PINK?  
• flowers in the design?
• promises of chocolate  in error messages?
• links to bargain shoe-purchase websites?
• links to sign-up for escort agency work  (and I don’t mean the classic Ford car)?

HahahahHAhaHAHAHahahahaha (the sound of manic laughing fading into the distance)

Perhaps not.   I’ll stick with giving useful advice which, you will be shocked to discover,    has sod-all to do with my being biologically female.

 * Signifying surprise that I didn’t start negotiating a fee

** Signifying an fake-innocent lake of understanding of why advice for this website might be different based on gender over website design knowledge and skills

Despite complaints, this advertising was passed by the advertising standards association as

 inoffensive

Apparently, advertising campaigns that are aimed at excluding women, portraying women as trying to be men, are not demeaning to women.     Insipid Missive provides a thorough collection of comments describing the history and arguments  for the campaign with a couple of comments against.    

I wonder if Nestle are planning to release a version in white chocolate and advertise it as ‘not for niggers’ with advertisements showing people of colour called Winston having trouble pronouncing the English words and difficulty removing the wrappers,   then defending the campaign as so obviously not true that its actually funny.   It would probably improve their sales to the BNP.

According to wikipedia providing legislation for  females  to have equivalent to male voting rights happened in

• 1920  in the USA,   males of colour were given the right to vote  50 years earlier  1870
• 1928  in the UK, males over the age of 21yrs,  irrespective of race of property  were enfranchised from 1919.  

Both countries legally enfranchise males  of different races before they enfranchised women.   What might that imply about beliefs of equality?

stranger on the street:   have you got the time?

This is not a question I was asked in the US.   This question has been put to me on several occasions when walking from bus stops to appointments in the UK.

The question  always makes me think twice before replying.   Am I being asked for the current time or does the asker suspect that I may be a professional  street walker?

Not natural,   arguably not beautiful and definitely  not with a feather as implied by the imagery in this advert.    According to this advert  natural beauty without surgery can be achieved  by the injection of long lasting stuff.   Surely this is an abuse of even the 1968  trade’s descriptions act?  

To achieve naturalness you need injections?!

If the woman pictured in this advert is an exemplar of naturalness you also need lots of product such as dark eye-shadow,   mascara, lipstic,  hair-dye, with some additional refinements in the form of eyebrow plucking,  dental adjustments and airbrushing.

Burn me as a witch for saying it, but I’d much rather wrinklefest without layers of product on my skin and hair however ‘unnatural’ that might be.

t may be in the park,   but e is defintiely in the Greek Island beach disco bar.

In a disco infected bar on Santorini one of the pack commented on the  extensive evidence of  e-nhancements:

Poodle: I can’t believe all the boob jobs around here,   its increadible!

Wendy: you mean like that girl in the sequinned bikini?

Poodle:   Yes,   and that girl,   and that one, and…

The disco smelt of e-strogen affilitated enhancements and the bar music played ‘…you are just a sexy girl, nothing but a sexy girl…’  

Poodle and my un-enhanced selves looked beautiful in our simple gently curved, gravity aligned,  purity.

Padding removed from swimsuit bra's (flickr photoshare)

I reached my teens in the late 1970′s before the introduction of the ‘wonder-bra’.   Now,   bra’s without inbuilt padding,  often called ‘push-up’ bras,  are the smaller portion of the brazier market.   Luckily some designs do enable you to easily remove the default-provided padding and some celebrities are plucky enough to not-wear this generally unnecessary accessory and deal with the publicity that makes an issue out of their choice (e.g.  Charlie Dimmock).

I can also verify that Jacksons stocks some fabulous bras without padding or underwiring,   Jacksons is a fashion rebel,   I love it!

After introductions Afghan told us that the weather forecast was too rough to complete a sail to the next Island, even Ferry’s were being cancelled due to the seasonally characteristic high winds known as the meltemi.    While clearly a good decision given the high waves,   this was a damping suprise to the whole pack.  Afghan explained using  essential information omitted from the promotional material, girls are in control:

‘mother nature is our cruise director’  

 ‘the Aegean is a bitch’

[seadog laughter]   Ha HA HA HA!’

 real sailing experience #1:   be prepared not to sail.  

The pack spent the first afternoon on-land bonding at a beach-side disco-Taverna called JoJo’s; drinking beer, dancing, talking, reading books, sunbathing, sketching, meeting other tourists, swimming and making cell-phone calls/texts.    

Just incase there is any residual doubt amongst my readers that generally women are not considered praiseworthy,  or  enabled to take-on prasieworthy roles beyond  those condoned by patriarchal values,  the BBC reported an analysis that confirms that celebrity females are more likely to be HATED and less likely to be LOVED than celebrity males:

In a nutshell, despite years of equal opportunities, the media – and the people who watch and read – prefer the stay-at-home mother over a woman who lives her life in public, particularly one who is overtly ambitious or successful in making money. There is great satisfaction among many people in seeing them humbled

I do hope no one is terribly suprised or shocked by this result.