wendy house

Would you stop by for a cup of tea with the person who’s Saturday shopping trip included

• cat food and litter
• a large axe
• soda crystals
• the axe is still quite large
• WD 40
• that axe has a handle for swinging
• long handled matches
• the axe has a blade protector
• lavendar shampoo
• the axe is in the corner of the front room, for the moment

The UK’s National Bullying Helpline (Charity) cited number 10 Downing Street as being a place where the bullying of 4 staff members happened.  Who did it?  The main assumption appears to have been that the Prime Minister is a bully. 

The reaction of members of the labour party to the accusation of bullying at 10 downing street probably demonstrates something of British attitudes toward bullying.   I’m not impressed.  These are the responses I’ve heard so far.

• Not me.  Gordon Brown is my friend, he’s never bullied me.  The most common response from Labour party members.
• Not Witnessed.   I’ve never seen or even thought of Gordon bullying anyone.  For example, the BBC reports Alan Johnson as saying “ in 17 years he had “never” heard Mr Brown raise his voice”.  The Telegraph cites Ed Balls as saying “I’ve known Gordon Brown for 20 years and at no point has it ever occurred to me that Gordon Brown is or would ever be a bully”
• Honest behaviour.  I’d rather be lead by a real person who has weaknesses and shows them than by someone calmly insincere. For example, part of this argument is illustrated by the Telegraph citing Gordon’s wife Sarah as saying “‘What you see is what you get“  While this is not the dominant discourse it has been expressed by several individuals and news papers.
• Expected behaviour. Gordon’s got a tough job, tensions run high, he cares about what he does, people should expect that he’s going to loose his temper and shout sometimes.
• Desired behaviour. Bully’s have the qualities to be exceptional leaders you don’t want a wuss leading the country.  For example, the Telegraph cites Ed Balls as saying “constituent…   …would say he gets things done, he is tough, he is a leader, and that’s what we need.’“
• Desired behaviour. Supporters actually demonstrating that bullying behaviour is acceptable. For example, in the Telegraph:  ”I think this attack on him by this prat of a woman down in – where’s she from, Swindon? – I think that’s backfiring on her”

The BBC is one of the few sources that mentions Downing Street’s processes for dealing with bullying, calling it “rigorous” but providing no evidence of the process or rigor. 

I’ve set up an anti-bullying hotline for the fluffballs but they still persist, Sampo ambushes Matrix on her way to the food bowl and Matrix pushes Sampo out of all the best sleepy spots.  My rigorous processes have failed to ameliorate the problem.

List-i-ness abounds.

Highlights of 09:

• wendy house garden pruned, blooming and growing
• Thomas joining planet wendy
• friends and neighbours (weddings, games nights, enouragement and support)
• visiting Cairo, a Sheepwash thatched cottage, Cornwall,  Canterbury, Hampton Court, Avebury, Chepstow castle and Penshurst place
• enjoying wonderful live performances by David Byrne, John Hegley and local bands at Reading Arts Centre tribute nights
• reading some outstanding books
• committing at least 6hrs per week voluntary contributions to a health related non-profit organisation, and enjopying it!

Lowlights of 09:

• Just a bit Brrrrrr in the house on cold days
• Some of my guests have to sit on stools at parties…
• Someone broke into the Wendy House!
• Matrix starting to get extreme old-cat wobbliness
• Sampo’s new nickname is ‘the pumpkin’
• Never got around to blogging on the books I’d read

New year resolutions for 2010:

• replace the wendy house front room gas fire with a wood (pellet) burning stove that will reduce my carbon footprint and increase the wendy house warmth and energy efficiency
• buy a Lloyd Loom sofa
• arrange a diet for Sampo
• do more health related non-profit work

These are possibilities rather than commitments…

• replace wendy house original 1840’s slate roof with felt-lined, insulated slate roof
• tile the kitchen and refit the kitchen worksurfaces
• design a garden mosaic based on the tree of life
• enroll as a student on a counselling course

I have old lady

• shoes (ecco)
• no-sholderpads (apparently the 80’s are back)
•  bras -because banana bras are back in fashion
• wrinkles
• natural arctic blonde highlights
• smile at babies reflex
• living arrangements (with two cats)

I wonder what comes next…

After my first 6 months in the English school system, in 1969,  the school headmaster observed me to be:

confident

left-handed

quiet

producing interesting conversation

enjoying drawing

a slow reader

occassionally shedding tears

animadversions is not a creative pastiche of

• animal
• advert
• versions

Animadversions is used by the Foriegn Office (FO) to describe the contents of the last despatch (message) by the British Ambassador to Oslo in 1975, Ralph Selby.  For Ralph, being a diplomat was a family business, his father and wife’s grandfather were ambassadors.  The style of expression within the despatch is rather fun,  I particularly liked this phrase

‘I agree with the gentleman who’s signature resembles a trombone’

In honour of this outstanding phrase I am considering changing my signature to resemble a swan.

Ralph’s animadversions included

• Newer diplomats did not put sufficient time and effort into studying languages
• Diplomats circulate way too much paper “the flood of paper which has grown in a single generation is fantastic”
• Diplomat’s wives are not paid for their valuable contributions – this disadvantages diplomats who’s wives choose to have a career.
• Domestic staff are exensive and time-demanding ‘I do not nowadays find it easy to recruit staff who are willing to lick other people’s boots’
• Retirement provisions are insufficient
• There is a temptation to eat and drink well – exercise is needed “our specific calling’s snare is drink; and it is profoundly depressing to see the number of members of the service who are engaged in the process of destroying themselves by it“
• Not enough freedom of thought 

Wandering around the stunningly topiaried gardens of a stately seat in Kent. There some some significant, and in significant, discoveries:

• a pole dancing topiary bear
• a Virgin balloon full of hot stagnent air
• Woodwormed Jacobean panels beside a spiral stair
• Ms Scarlet’s radical stealth mohican-style crop of not-ginger hair
• some bushes (not Scarlet’s)

This week I passed a threshold.  The ‘in my day’ threshold.  In my day…

• Phones were connected by cables to walls in the hallways of homes or in red-boxes on the street.
• Televisions had a dial with 4 positions on it,  one for each of the known channels and one spare channel

And much much more or less

what do you cook? unless you include toast and porridge I dont really cook.  You don’t cook?  Do you eat out all the time? the question is asked with the intonation of shock,  disapproval or possibly repulsion.  I eat out once or twice a week, having a quality meal produced for me is one of my favourite luxuries. 

If you don’t cook and you don’t eat out,  what do you eat, microwave meals? My questioner is still intoning in a disapproving manner.  For a few moments I wished that I had aspirations to conform to the social norm of interest or pride in the preparing and cooking of food.  Those moments pass quickly.  My lack of indugence in use of the microwave,  only for porridge,  allows my interregator to release a wrinkly or two from her brow.  I mostly eat cheese, tomatoes, cheese cucumber, cheese, coleslaw, cheese, necturines, cheese, toast, cheese, marmite, cheese, twigletts, cheese, triffle, cheesecake, peanut butter, date and walnut or battenburg cake.  All raw,  no cooking involved.   You like cheese then?  My interregator appears to be reasonably satisfied with this reply.  But still their hangs a a niggling doubt over my ability to be a fully functioning member of society if I don’t cook.

can you cook?  It had never occured to me that people don’t cook because they can’t.  At high school all girls were required to take cookery classes, under the title of ‘home economics’ classes.  They taught me to do things I’d been doing at home for years.  I used to cook, a lot.  As a student I rarely ate out and hand’t yet lost my verve for food preparation.  In my 30’s I used to host about one dinner party per month and the food seemed well appreciated,  in my 40’s I hosted fewer parties with more guests and they seemed well appreciated.  I can cook.  I only really enjoy it when I’m cooking for others and not doing it in a rush.  My interregator appears convinced that I can cook.

All my lasting lovers have been excellent cooks,  deriving pleasure from whipping up food to whet my palatte and I certainly enjoyed them doing so.

Holiday warning!  Cornwall here we come!

With my

Rod Stewart haircut,

Oakley sunglasses,

figure hugging fab frocks,

I’ll be wandering over the rocks on the coast.    

Rock chic!

There will also be the standard Wendy, none-rock chic, outbreaks of:

• A bit of paddling
• collecting pretty coloured, pocket-sized, pebbles 
• eating fish and chips wrapped in newspaper for supper
• wearing Sunhats galore (consecutively)
• reading a book about the Medici
• blowing rasberries at the seaguls
• riding the local BUSES on windy cliffside roads

Excitedness levels are already Amber.  OH!

An action packed weekend in the Wendy House garden:

• a fuzzy-buzzy bee feeds on a rotund allium
• a Peacock butterfly feeds on another allium
• the garden robin feeds on insects attracted by my recent digging
• a harlequin spectabilis ladybird takes a break from aphid eating on one of the acers 
• Matrix snoozes under another acer
• A large hornet (2 inches) found its way into my bedroom.  I didn’t know it was a hornet.  They look scarey.   I panicked, squeaked, opened the bedroom windows,  wrapped myself in a curtain and wafted the corner of the curtain at the hornet until it took the hint and  left via the window. 

In a rare, mercifully quick,  shopping moment I replaced 3 pairs of well-worn, too-small, skinny, hipster blue jeans with new jeans that:

• fit
• don’t break along the seams when tugged
• say ‘not-a-soccer-mom’
• tone with my ‘I’m-a-professional-person’ jackets
• are not blue
• chafe to the optimum temperature in all the right places and none of the wrong places

Way too much excitement for one day,  I must lie down and breath slowly lest I become overwhelmed by it all.  You all take care,  don’t over exert yourselves,  its tough out there and a well stitched pair of jeans can help keep things under control.

Phrases to describe the experience of joining an organisation:

onboarding

ramping up

bedding in

induction

orientation

Can you spot which of these phrases I learned:

• in the USA and which in England?  
• at sea and which in the garden? 
• on the road and which in my boudoire?
• in a maternity ward and which on an electrical engineering course?
• planning outdoor activities and which during religious instruction?

to people relaying extremely sad stories,  such as the Samaritans hear, do you think I would:

1. use active listening skills?
2. tell people to stop whining and pull themselves together?
3. ask lots of rather silly, mispronounced, miss-spelt, jargon laden, incomprehensibubble questions?
4. laugh maniacally?
5. play with Excel and ignore the stories?
6. fall asleep?
7. all the above?
8. none of the above?
9. other, please specify…
10. wibble wibble wibble

I’m thinking about taking bets on this one,  what are the odds for each option based on your knowledge of my past performance?

The small ceremony of playing a vinyl Long Playing (LP) record has been temporarily lost from the Wendy House. Below are the Dr. Wendy recommended steps taken to play a vinyl LP*:

1. select the record, review the cover-art and song listing for each side. 
2. select a side to play based on personal taste or consultation with people in the room
3. Tip the album cover slightly with one hand to slide the LP from the cover into the other hand
4. Place the cover on a surface near the record deck
5. Slide the record from its protective sleeve taking particular care not to touch the grooves
6. Place the sleeve on top of the record cover
7. hold the LP up to the light and check there are no large visible scratches that might interfere with the quality of your listening experience
8. Place the LP on the turn-table with the side to be played facing the ceiling, the hole in the centre of the vinyl over the peg in the centre of the turntable
9. select the turntable speed by turning the switch to the slowest speed, 3rd position, 33rpm, the switch should make a pleasing clunking noise with any position change
10. Postion your body so that you have a good view of the position of the expensive diamond needle above the outside grooves of the record
11. Lift the record-player arm and move it towards the record edge it where it can gently drop onto the outside rim or the record, or between tracks if not playing the whole side
12. Pick-up the LP, album, cover and sleeve to review and admire their art work and content
13. Start bouncing around, waving your arms and singing
14. Laugh as any nearby cats run for cover

There is a risk that I may purchase a turntable this year in order to recapture this meditatively pleasurable ceremony wth my small collection of 200 or so pre-1986, rarely played, vinyls.

* Singles and 78’s both have subtle yet significant variations on the above ceremony.

To honour Scarlet’s request, 6 psuedo-random personal things:

1. Peanut butter and cheese sandwiches without any bread,  spread the peanut butter directly on a wedge of cheese.
2. At 44.9 (.9 recurring) yrs old I still wear school daps.
3. I do not have enough hand-wind-up-clocks that tick loudly with unsynchronised chimes.   BOINGNGNGNGNGNG…
4. Beyond name and gender allocation I bear no resemblance to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan character Wendy. 
5. There is garden mud underneath my left index fingernail.
6. I will be breaking the tag rules (see below) by not leaving a tag comment on the blogs of those people cited below.

Tags for these 6 people that are worth reading to see if they ring your bell,  chime your clock,  peanut butter your cheese, or dap your feet :

1. Hilarious. Jenn’s ‘The Piehole’: http://liscious.net/piehole/index.php
2. Serious. Twisty Faster’s ‘I blame the patriarchy’. http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/
3. Windows. Raymond Chen’s ‘The Old New Thing’: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/default.aspx
4. Ambulances. Tom Reynolds ‘Random Acts of Reality’: http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog
5. Matronly. Mrs. Pouncer’s ‘Mrs Poucer’s counsel’ http://mrspouncer.blogspot.com/
6. Paramedic. Stuart Gray’s Paramedics diary. http://theparamedicsdiary.blogspot.com/

Tag rules: Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Write 6 random things about yourself. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted…

I do enjoy a good list,  closely followed by that wonderful feeling of achievement that follows ticking things off lists, or striking them out as ‘done’.  I’ve found a list provided by the BBC,  a fabulolus service,  that lists shops and eateries in Reading that sell fairtrade goods.  How fabulous is that?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/features/2004/03/fairtrade_shops.shtml

I will tick-tell-myself off if I use any other Reading shops and cafes. Naughty girl. 

Hip Hip Hoorahs all round

<soppiness warning>

Just a few of the too numerous to enumerate highlights:

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

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

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

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

<soppiness temporarily suspended>

Excellence

included multiple boob-topped churches,  deserted dawns shared with the departed,   livingly sociable sunsets announced by rather flat church bells,   mules trains,  smiling old people,   sculpted young people,  versataile windmills,  stylish alleys often containing sleek kitties,  oodles of sunshine, beer and clear blues. 

On top of all these standard Greek holiday experiences I learned about the real sailing motoring experience from a chain-smoking German skipper in the company of a pack of youngsters.  I learned real sailing involved:

1. being prepared not to sail.
2. feeling sick.
3. not doing a poo in the loo of a boat moored in a Greek harbour.
4. wearing white to hide the cumulative sea-salt crystals.
5. knowing knots.
6. charging small ‘devices; in Tavernas.

<list-overdose event warning>

Below is a list of the stuff that GAP recommended that I pack where the ticks (US = check mark) indicate how many of an item I carried.  Items not actively used during the holiday are struck-through:

• Passport (with photocopies)  ü
• Travel insurance (with photocopies) ü
• Airline tickets (with photocopies) ü
• Euros and travellers cheques ü
• Credit or debit card (see personal spending money) ü
• G.A.P Adventures vouchers, pre-departure information and dossier ü
• Any entry visas or vaccination certificates required ü
• Camera and film ü
• Reading/writing material üüüü
• Cover or plastic bags for backpacks ü
• Flashlight ü
• Windproof/waterproof jacket/rain poncho ü
• Small towel and swim wear üüü
• Warm sweater ü
• 4 shirts/t-shirts üü
• Sunhat üüüü
• 2 pair of shorts üü
• 1 pair of long trousersü
• 1 pair hiking pants/track pants ü
• Hiking boots/sturdy walking shoes (for shore excursions) ü
• Sport shoes with light colored soles/sport sandals (while on board) ü
• Biking gloves (if you wish to participate in sailing – optional) ü
• Sunblock ü
• Sunglasses üüüü
• Toiletries (biodegradable) ü
• Flashlight ü
• Watch or alarm clock ü
• Water bottle ü
• First-aid kit (should contain lip salve, Aspirin, Band Aids, anti-histamine, any extra prescription drugs you may be taking). ü

Striking holiday characteristics hidden in the above list include my:

• Not falling-over (band-aids not used) .
• Not loosing my passport.
• Not wearing more than one pair of shoes during the fortnight.
• Only getting 4 mosquito bites.  I think the high winds helped.
• Wearing only 3 different pairs of glasses during the fortnight.
• Managing with only 4 hats,  I suspect I needed more.
• Being able to see by the light of the moon.
• not wearing trousers or knickers.

<list-overdose temporarily suspended>

Sunday Times and  online Times article ‘Sex and the Sixities’  by India Knight includes the following rousing calls to womanhood:

“the essence of modern womanhood, the one hard-to-define component that makes us all want to cheer the loudest…“  is  “…possibility that we may, at 62, perhaps look like Helen Mirren in a bikini”

“a 62-year-old woman looking hot – properly hot, not “hot for her age” or hot as in “fanciable, even though you know you shouldn’t” is a thing that simply can’t be celebrated enough.”

‘Mirren in her red bikini says more, more succinctly, about what women want and can achieve than any amount of turgid feminist preaching ever could’

Gosh, I don’t think I know people who think spending time and skill to dress for the occasion is shallow,  but India thinks that view might be held by some Times readers because she considerately quashes it “if you think that’s shallow, I would humbly posit that you understand nothing at all about real women’s hopes and ambitions.”  Trying to following India’s humble reasoning,  leads to the suspicion that if I don’t want to look like Helen Mirren in a Bikini then I may not be a real woman,  Ooops!  I think I may have fallen over.

Apparently the social construction of ‘woman’ once meant “no longer being “a girl”, which translated into bad clothes, bad hair, bad make-up and, if you were especially unfortunate, a bad figure.”  and “Worse, having reproduced meant that in the eyes of society you no longer existed as a sexual being“. It seems that India believes promoting yourself as a ’sexual being’ , sexbot, should be an aspirational goal for real women and it is equated to looking young. If you don’t look sexy you look old.  Whhhooooops!  I definitely fell over this time.

India’s view also implies that, normal, aspiring real women have no financial or legal obstacles to not looking youthful and sexy because ‘deregulated’‘ ‘minor surgical procedures’ are ‘nothing that is outside most people’s league’ .  It is all part of the groundwork for achieving ‘a triumphant assertion of easy, carefree femininity’.  While fake women should embrace the freedom and “life-changing power of hair dye“.  As a self-identified, terminally-fake, woman I  ”might know better if they [I] made an attempt at living in the real world“.  Maybe downtown Reading is actually a figment of my nasty, demented, Ivory-tower, imagination?  Deary me,  I  must get out more and take my zimmer-frame.

If ‘looking good’ is primarily equated to looking youthful and sexy I have no intention of developing an interest. or skill, in it.  When looking good is constructed to promote wrinkles and twisty silver hairs ideally with a dash,  or spring, of surrealist creativity,  then I’ll be swinging my funky-stuff with the melting clocks but not with the people who aspire to portray themselves as sexbots.

For now,  if I place myself in India’s analytical framework I find that I am:

• Preaching (turgid?) feminism.
• intelligent, a blue stocking.
• a frump because I don’t pride myself in being fashionable.
• Living in an ivory tower (in Reading). 
• not recognising the equivalence of the value of having a face-lift with the right to paid maternity leave.

At least India has clearly given me the escape route to achieve real-woman status that luckily I can choose not to aspire to,  I must

• maintain my already abundant confidence.
• promote my sexual potential. 
• develop and interest in whatever the current fashion defines as looking good.  
• have minor surgical procedures so that I can look good in a bikini. 
• Die my hair.

Unlike Alan’s outstanding advice I wont be aligning the value-set outlined in India’s article.

* the sound of me and my zimmer-frame colliding with the ground when dropping out of our Ivory tower.

The travel company has provided a trip dossier that includes a very specific pre-holiday check-list on what to pack!  Useful and appealing to my listophilia:   

I’m a tad concerned about the lack of underwear and nightwear worn by my fellow passengers, self, and the skipper. Publically displayed jiggly-bits can put one off one’s beer or book.  The lack of ’dressing’ requirements for evenings in the Taverna, or Temple visiting, is also a tiny disappointment.  Luckily for the male guests there are no requirements to bring skirts or dresses. All the listed gear fits into this holdall with space to spare, for an unlisted skirt, underwear, binoculars and possibly a pretty dress.   I’m still waiting for my promised paper airline ticket to arrive…

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.

in less than one hour of excited pre-holiday preparation I called the:

• credit card company to check on how to deal with a lost or stolen card while out of England and gave them the dates and location of my travel to make sure they didn’t cancel my card when used in GREECE.
• medical insurance company to verify my coverage and what I should do when I fall over in GREECE.
• home insurance company to order a copy of my policy and check on what’s covered if taken out of the country (to GREECE) and find out if I need to replace my locks*.
• Water authority** to check some billing details.
• mumzie to let her know that I’m ok,  haven’t fallen over today,  yet and I will be safe when abroad.

* Apparantly, my contents are insufficiently valuable for them to require that I upgrade the Wendy House stable-door bolts.

** This has nothing to do with my HOLIDAY,  but I was on a roll with the phone-calling and wanted to keep the momentum going.

<Essay warning>

Not distributed within the mind, distributed across people and other things.  The work of Yvonne Rogers in the 1990’s introduced me to the idea of distributed cognition.  Here are some examples from my everyday life:

• placing my empty bottles by the front door to remind me to take them to the bottle-bank when I leave the house (memory distributed between bottles and Wendy’s absent mind)
• going upstairs to get my passport,  when I get upstairs I’ve forgotten why I went there,  going back downstairs and seeing the holiday (excitement level: Amber) details on Darling I remember why I went upstairs. (memory distributed between holiday details on Darling and Wendy’s absent mind)
• At the pub quiz,  trying to name a song title from hearing a snippit of the tune,  I can only hum the continuation of the tune,  another team member can sings the lyrics to my hummed tune,  a third team member can now name the band then the fourth team member can remember the song title (memory socially distributed between team members). 
• I can’t remember my password as letters and numbers,  I can’t remember the layout of a keyboard,   when infront of Darlings keyboard I can reliably produce my password (memory distributed between keyboard layout and Wendy’s absent mind).  The recent move from US to UK keyboards has been a bit password-disruptive.
• I can’t remember how to get from St Nicolas’s market to Clifton,  but when I am in Bristol I can walk the route directly with no trouble whatsoever,  very pleasant it is too  (Memory distributed between the city-scape and Wendy’s absent mind).  Note that the Schrocks recently experienced the way that St. Nicholas market can suprise you by turning out to be exactly where you are wandering.

People, sensibly, strategically delegate the effort involved in constructing some memories to post-it notes,  lists, calendars, address books,  mobile phones, bag-contents, places, blogs, photoalbums, family and friends. 

A die-hard cognitivist might say this is just context-cued recall.  Both paradigms provide the means to describe human behaviour,  but the approaches to psychological  theory building and research are radically different.  The cognitivist would attempt to identify the specific cues that work most effectively and assess them in a lab,  one specific unusual context, rather than analyse everyday activities in commonly meaningful contexts.  These different research techniques would yield different practical,  application, recommendations.

The cognitivists make the research language and approach to understanding human behaviour their domain as specialists,  ‘everyday’ approaches enable results to be readily recognisable, understandable and communicable to people outside of a specialist discourse.  They also afford more meaningful pragmatic applications. 

<Essay warning over>

My next essay will probably be on Reading’s buses…

I did my upmost to light family festive barneys by:

• eating a whole jar of pickled beetroot at one meal.
• Using the wrong remote-control (choice of 6) to change TV channels. 
• asking for porridge.
• Securing the largest portion of Triffle.
• mentioning that ‘run cmd’ provides access to a DOS window in XP

Off to the shops.  The shopping tortutre.  Ick.  Luckily I was armed with a set of seasonal shopping lists from those short-people* that must be obeyed because of their lung, pout, and innovative-torturing-technique, capacity. 

Toddling home armed with short-people pacifiers and a book.  A book that lists Reading street names,  almost but not quite, alphabetically as it outlines the significance of the names. 

Here’s an excerpt from my current Reading, reading, material (my emphasis):

The Reading Paving Act of 1827 – a splendid document written in legalese that never uses one word where three, or better still nine, will do – talks only of ‘streets, Lanes, public passages and Places’. (It also says that occupiers have to sweep the pavement outside their houses, and specifies when they should remove Night Soil or filth from the Necessaries or Boghouses.)

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

Illustrated list of some basic steps to follow when looking for somewhere to rent in Reading

1.)  Use the internet and free classified listings to find property to let in and around Reading getting a feel for prices,  collect letting agent phone numbers,  call the offices,  talk to the agents about your needs and arrange a time to visit them.

2.) wander down to a letting agent with an impressive, alphabetically arranged collection of family names.  For example, “Vanderpump & Wellbelove & Wellesley – Smith & Co (Est. 1929)“.  This is just one of the dozens of letting agents I’ve visited in Reading.  

3.) watch while the pink-tied-male letting agents tap-tap-click-click on their computers,  chew their pens, adjust their hairgel and generally bicker amongst themselves about

- what the property is called.

- how many sets of keys they have.

- how long it takes to get from one property to the next, and

- what is the best route. 

Its actually a fabulously entertaining show.  A show well worth taking a vacation to see.  Which I did.  Hooray!

4.) go to look at property.  Ensure you have a convenient shop nearby.  My US person training together with my general level of un-adult-hood left me giggling at the name of this corner-shop.

5.) check-out the local parking possibilities,  one-way systems, speed bumps, then see if you can find a few nieghobrs to talk to.

6.) ensure there is an excellent pub within walking distance.  To complete this step you have to go into the pub,  order a pint,  drink the pint and interview the bar staff while observing the other clientelle.

7.) take a look at the district details on:  http://www.upmystreet.com/

Estate agent:  Are you sure you’re from the US?

Wendy:  lived there for the best part of the last 8 years

Estate Agent: you don’t sound American

Wendy: I’m not

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 readers are perhaps just a bit geeky, um, like me, because they are coming from universities,  financial institutions and the software computing industry. 

Google analytics tells me the Network locations of computers that have reqested page-loads from the wendyhome servers.  Often these network locations are clearly consumer internet service providers,  sometimes they are not.  Here are some of the Network locations that do not look like consumer internet services grouped by primary business type.

Software/Computing

• Microsoft Corp
• APPLE COMPUTER
• Intel Corporation
• IBM
• Macafee Security
• Research Machines plc
• Hewlett-Packard Company
• Cisco Systems inc
• Opera Software asa
• Honeywell
• Eastman Kodak Company

Financial

• Credit Suisse group canada
• Fidelity Investments
• Bloomberg Financial Market
• Bank of America
• Barclays Capital (UK)
• Nat West Bank group (UK)
• First Rand Bank

Universities

• Cornell University
• Purdue university
• Leeds University (UK)
• North Carolina State university
• University of Brighton (UK)
• University of Cambridge (UK)
• University of Washington
• Charles University

Local government

• Wolverhampton city council (UK)
• East Sussex local education authority (UK)
• State of Arkansas
• State of Minesota
• State of Tennessee
• Government of South Africa

Aerospace

• the boeing company
• lockheed martin corporation
• Patrick Air Force Base