:: The Wendy House ::

Not a popular Scottish music festival.  A testosterone fuelled five-aside football tournament in Palmers park.

”’bring”’ ””’bring””:  Hello…  …Wendy House speaking,  how can I help you?

American friend:  Wendy?  Is that you?

Wendy:  Yes

American friend:  OH MY GOD,  Wendy,  your accent has gotten so English that I didn’t even recognise you! So,  how are you liking being back in England

Wendy:  It’s the little things that you didn’t realise that you missed or thought were over romantised like the sound of leather on willow during a cricket game in a park,  followed by a brief silence then clapping as the players on both sides applaud a good shot,  the smell of freshly mown, damp, grass in the morning, the diversity of nose shapes, the plethera of watery blue eyes and men wearing shoulderbags.

American friend:  are you reading one of your blog posts?

Wendy:  I’m not sure,  I’ll check and get back to you on that one

A new, imitiation, old phone arrived to replace the genuine 1930’s BT compliant phone that somehow disappeared during my relocation.  When plugged into my phone socket,  no dial tone,  it didn’t work. The BT support operative was extremely helpful as she talked me through various in-house tests then finally succumbed to a request to send an engineer around.  The engineer was scheduled to arrive sometime between 8am and 1pm.  at 12.58 I recieved a phonecall from him to say he was only streets away.  He turned up and then disappeared again for 2hrs. 

Apparantly he’d tracked my problem to a green box outside Palmers park. 

He explained this was human error

its always human error

the technology works fine

people are stupid. 

Can you see any problems in this reasoning?   

There are strange,  repeating, symbols built into the buildings and public places all around Reading.  There are 4 scallops and 2 crossed pilgrim staff’s on the gate posts of Palmers park.  The Scallops turn up again in the Univerity of Reading’s coat of arms.  

Evidently the shells are thought to be an emblem of pilgramage because pilgrims to Europe would bring back the scallop shells from beaches.  The association with Reading is probably because the old Abbey claimed to hold the hand of St James as a holy relic that shell-carrying pilgrims would come to visit.  I wonder how St. James hand got to Reading Abbey….  

Scallop or i-pod?  visit your nana or some dead saints embalmed hand?   Such choices open to the modern traveller.

Four miserable looking people surrounding a chap in a crown on a bridge over the river kennet.  This same symbol also appears on one of the gate-posts of Palmer’s park,  though in not as much full delightful pale-skinned, blonde and blue colouring.  Aparantly this is Reading Town’s coat of Arms and the 4 people are probably burgesses…  ..and the miserable looking person is Queen Elizabeth (1 or 2 depending on how you feel).

A version of this cluster of people turns up on the symbol for ‘Reading School’  the people have an almost ominous range of sly through snide to surreal expressions.  Girl power gone wonkey?

Named after Mr. George Palmer of Biscuit fame who donated the land for use as a Park,  next to the South Park conservation area of Reading.  Palmers park currently includes a:

1) lot of trees and grass that are occassionally covered in snow or sunlight and are always beautiful.

2) sports stadium.  Featuring a velodrome with lots of people wearing colourful lycra and providing exercise classes called ‘legs bums & tums’ for people who have not yet earned the right to wear lycra.

3) library that is really rather cute.