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

A birdbath, not fit for purpose.  Purchased at Wyevale garden centres in November, showed cracks in December, fell apart in Januray, returned to Wyevale in February.

After patient waiting for, gently assertive haggling with, Wyevale staff.  They eventially raised their offer from nothing because I was returning it  ’outside the 28 day return period ‘ to a paltry refund of the current sale, half the original, price in vouchers.  I settled believing this pathetic show did less than Wyevale is required to do by law and very glad to get away from them.

Wyevale - not recommended for garden furniture.

In the foyer of Reading’s downtown homebase an Owl collects donations for a rescue and sanctuary.  Big, beautiful, fluffy owl with efficient looking talons.  The handler talks about giving young criminals lessons in how to look after owls.  How this skill and responsibility enables them to develop self esteem and respect for others

Spoilt for choice in a local antiques shop

Picking a plain wrought iron poker for the to-be-installed over-hyphenated wood-burning stove

Breathing-in was required to walk between the goodies.  The tiny antiques shop brimmed with lovely practical gadgets. It was like walking through a museum store room. There were leather straps for sharpening razors, there were copper kettles and iron flat irons. I was lucky to get out of the shop having bought only a poker

My self-control can be utterly astounding

Paul from warm interiors popped round to look at the Wendy House’s wooden roof beams.  When the fireplace is opened-up to install the woodburning stove Paul will be making a fireplace opening lintel from oak to match the roof beams. The lintel will have bolts and hooks like the original (circa 1845) beams.  Excitement levels are on their way up in the Wendy House.

Cas:  hello Dr. Wendy

Wendy: Wow, I’m impressed that you remembered me and that I’m a Dr!

Cas explained the differences between multifuel and wood burning stoves as she pulled together a costing for converting my fireplace (gas fire). 

Paul:  you’ve over-estimated the cost of the chimney liner, knock 20 feet of the height, Wendy lives in the cottage

 Wendy: you even remember where I live!

Paul: and we put the fireplace in there about 7 years ago for the last owner.  We’ve done most of the fireplaces round here, we’ve been here for 20 years.

Cas handed me lots of manufacturers brochures to help me choose a stove and I bounced out into the wet snowless winter weather.

There is a national shortage of kitty litter. 

The National press are conspiring to supress this story. Some regional press are sneaking out reports. The Burton press managed this excerpt:

Tesco, on St Peter’s Bridge, sold out of cat litter on Thursday as customers grabbed supplies to use as a handy and effective substitute for gritting salt. Sales have rocketed by 70 per cent in a week.

The East anglia times noted panic purchase of pussy essentials

Customers at Tesco stores in Kesgrave and Martlesham are reporting a shortage of eggs, bread and milk, while there was also word of rapidly emptying shelves at Sainsbury’s in Warren Heath.  Anti-freeze products, boots and thermal underwear have also proved popular, alongside a surprise best-seller – cat litter.

Local councils are running out of grit for the roads so private citizens are stepping-up to fill the void left by the hording and abusing of the litter of the cat.  This reduces supplies for normal cat toilet abilities.  There could be unanticipated consequences.

Your eyewitness, on the spot, roving reporter [ME!] is out and about interviewing the kitties that matter, those suffering from this very shortage.

In this revealing interview footage we listen to

• a vey frustrated, unlittered cat
• icicles melting
• the police sirens as they chase people deliberately over-purchasing kitty litter for elicit purposes

Matrix has difficulty walking on the snow and fails to find an acceptable toilet.   Her experience is similar to that of many of the UKs mainly outdoor kitties. 

What will happen next? 

How can I improvise when my stocks run out and my indoor kitties refuse to conduct their ablutions in the snow. OH!

Perhaps I was a bit premature with the melting snow post.

Thomas has been buried alive.

I’ve cunningly avoided yet another Gym subscription nightmare by resorting to digging out the Wendy House garden path.

After 24 hours of snow, 30cm in my back garden, the local shops are suffering from depleted stocks.   People who when stranded at home must have a steady supply of toast, ideally spread with marmite, are buying thier bread. No new deliveries.  You do the maths…

Toastie!

Will I have to compromise the purity of my toast by taking my marmite on toasted teacakes? Tonight I’m planning to pop around my perky, yet elderly, neighbour’s house to…

…share some seasonal bubbly – more toastie!

…and snow stories in front of a glowing fireplace – even more toastie! 

then I’ll take their food order round to the corner shop where I’ll

battle for some buns.

 With the quick approach of my HOLIDAY to CAIRO I skipped out in search of some Holiday reading. Normally I pop into the tiny yet beautiful Reading Oxfam.  The friendly staff and customers chat, the book choice is excellent, always something to inspire and entice. 

One of my friends has recently moved to Cairo and made a specific request for a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Egypt.  Alas, the local Oxfam cold not deliver.

A short walk to the Waterstones chain, a small Victorian style shop front.  Inside the store is like the TARDIS  it goes backwards and upwards,  from house to house with glass roofs between.  The store is architecturally beautifully designed and maintains unusual features such as the mezannine floor pictured below.

Once I stopped looking at the architecture and started looking at book shelves  I was lost with no idea of where the ‘Travel’ section might be.  Looking at the labeling on the shelves only tells you what is here,  not where something that is elsewhere might be.  Unperturbed I wandered over to the foot of the stairs (both of them) expecting to find a list of the sections on each floor.  Nothing.

The front door did not offer a guide to the store store layout with the sections identified.   The cash and information desk by the door was being stormed by an outsized orderly queue of people.  Glancing back into the huge store I felt a little overwhelmed and wandered in looking at shelf labels and the people nearby,  which are the staff who might help me?  Before full panic could set-in, eye contact with a lady….

Lady: Can I help you?

Wendy:  Do you have a map of the store layout?

Lady: What section would you like?

Wendy:  Is there a display showing where the sections are?

Lady:  No,  I’m working on that,  what section would you like?

Wendy: Travel

Lady: upstairs ahead through the arch,  on the right hand wall arranged in alphabetical order by country

Wendy: Thank you, love the display thing you’re working on

Mumzie drives to another town to pick-up the only Rye crisp-bread that Dad considers to be like real Finnish Rye bread.

The myriad of quirky little things my parents do for each other shows they are still in love, 52 years after getting married.

As they strode towards each other through the bed warehouse John’s baritone reassured the young besuited sales assistant

“I’m looking for a bed”
“me too!” Sarah’s soprano sang,  John stopped, turned to face her
“Are you?” his slight Oklahoma drawl,  playfully suggesting a challenge
“No, I’m looking for YER bed misser” Sarah tilted her head and flashed her lashes to take up the challenge. John blushed with a hint of a smile before turning back to the sales assistant. 

The technical bed-purchasing discussions didn’t interest Sarah.  From across the warehous she interrupted their conversation to ask the sales assistant “If I takes me shoes off can I jump on yer beds… …to test em out like?” the young besuited assistant nodded. 

Sarah kicked of her pumps, leapt onto the nearest bed then launched from bed to bed across the store finally stopping by John who was lying on his back.  His body barely moved as she landed beside him. His eyes were closed, his fingers woven together across his chest. If she hadn’t known he was testing sleep she might have thought him dead. Sarah gently kissed Johns serene forehead.  

“Are you dead? Can I wake the dead?!” Sarah started trampolining by John’s side.  With a slow deliberate move he swung his arms round her legs and draggged them to the foot of the bed.  She fell neatly in a giggling bundle beside him.

“I think this one will do,  don’t you?” he said to the sales assistant while holding Sarah’s gaze.

No-one ever told me that when in a jewelry shop you must browse quietly.  Myself and the other jewelry shop browsers abide by this unspoken rule.  The churchlike atmosphere is dull, unlike the jewelry.   A spritely looking elderly gent stands in the doorway of the store and shouts across the shop to the lady behind the counter

Have you got any bright shiny things luv?

With the internet I can just type the name, make, model, serial-number and colour of my preferred bra and get an exact purchasable match in less than one minute.  Excellent,  underwear wooshing its way to the Wendy House.  All is well

 Then

The Royal Mail left me a little note to let me know that my ‘package’ was too big to fit through my letterbox.  Not being a larger lady in the underwear department this was a baffling concept.  This meant a trip to the Reading central post-office on Satruday morning during peak Reading shopping traffic congestion.  While listening to Jonathon Ross interview Spandau Ballet I noticed a shop with hand-crafted wood furniture in the window

Dangerous

An hour later I had picked-up my new underwear, removed the ridiculously bulky packaging and bought a hand made ‘gun cupboard’ for my mug collection

Expensive underwear

In different Falmouth stores Spotty dog and I simultaneously whipped out our new-fangled plastic cards to pay for lovely pressies.  Much to our suprise these words greeted us:

“we don’t take cards here, cash and cheques only’  

Neither of us use cheque-books.  We trundled off on a quest for cash-points,   only to find that Brett couldn’t help us and we couldn’t have called him for help even if we had his number.  Tricky.

The natural harbour at Falmouth is one of the cheapest places to store large, unused, container ships. 

We counted 7 of these large automotive carrier ships stored in the tiny, otherwise picturesque, Falmouth harbour.  The ships are waiting for the automotive industry to either come out of recession or decide to send them to the scrap yard.

My pink leapordprint mini-dress was a tad anachronistic in the quaint leafy streets of Burford. Families of pleasant, conservately dressed people wandered in an out of stores selling expensive clothes, kitchenware, art and antiques. 

My attraction to antique stores was aligned with the other people,  crowds,  that had accepted the pilgramage to Burford. 

I prayed in the antique fair,  strolled around the churchard then settled in the tea rooms.  On the journey I caught the sunshine and smiles.

Wendy: t-mobile’s colours are almost the same as HMV’s  – pink and black

t-mobile assistant: Magenta

Wendy: Oh (signifying recognition that the assistant’s correction was blunt),  I’m sorry,  is Magenta a technical term for pink?

t-mobile assistant:  There’s been an SQL error entering your details,  I don’t know what SQL is but its not your fault.  

Wendy: Sequal Server? Maybe it needs a t-mobile technical specification,  like magenta instead of pink? 

I’m not so environmentally friendly since I paired up with Thomas.  On the otherhand, I’m not using a jet to get around. With the exception of a classic cathode ray tube,  few things are actually back and white. 

The Monochrome set sang jet set junta

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.

Please indulge in a brief, chirpy, round of applause to welcome Thomas with the Diesel tank engine to the Wendy House team.  He growls in the morning but purrs after he’s had a little run.  Just like my first Diesel engine car. 

In his first few days Thomas has already become the star of the Wendy House travelling show:

Person in car park (PICP): Have you bought a car then?

Wendy:  Yes

PICP: It’s not the Mini?!  (raises pitch towards end of sentence)

Wendy:  It’s the mini

PICP: OH, such a lovely colour

In some circumstances computer systems can deliberately stop people from making ‘Errors’.  This is an example of a system preventing the people that use it from making ‘errors’ by trying to do rather useful things:  

Wendy:  can I move the car insurance start date back by one week?

Car Insurance Agent (CIA):  No

Wendy:  Oh (signifying complete suprise at this rude treatment of a potential non-customer)

CIA:  you will have to cancel the whole policy and then open a completely new one with a different start date

Wendy:  Computer system makes you do that?  It wont let you just change start dates?

CIA:  Yes

It took us 30 minutes to cancel,  then re-apply for the same car insurance with a different start date.  2 sets of documents are in the post.  

Wendy:  Are you from Hull?

CIA:  Leeds,  its quite near to Hull

Good weather in Leeds.

Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*.  In this case a Mini dealership sales person of a Canadian persuasion gave me this tip:

If you enjoy driving, and want a Diesel, I wouldn’t recommend the Mini One Diesel.  The Mini Cooper Diesel is much more fun, its in a completely different class.

I didn’t accept this tip on face value,  I test drove a Mini One Diesel.  Not fun.  I did enjoy driving the Mini Cooper Diesel,  though I found all the superflous fancy stuff, such as internal lighting schemes more embarressing than stylish. 

* past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant, a bus stop philanthropist and Reading Police

Stopping at the AA approved dealership with the low mileage Mini One D for sale:

Sales:  there’s virtually no difference between the old and new model Mini D’s,  except the styling and I prefer the styling in the old model. 

Wendy:  they have different Engines,  the old one is a Toyota Yaris,  I don’t know what the new one is.  A different engine seems like a significant difference.

Sales: Coopper Diesel has a Peugeot engine

Wendy:  My last car in the UK was a 5yr old Peugeot 309  1.9 Diesel in 1992, an awesome Engine, the car took me for 46,ooo miles in 1 yr with nothing other than standard wear and tear.

Sales: [silence]

Later,  while driving the Mini

Wendy:  that is a VERY clunky gearbox, 

Sales:  is it? 

Wendy:  No I was lying to get the price down, have you actually drivien this car?  its clearly clunky

Later,  on the forecourt after no beverage has been offered and no-one has asked to take my name, phone number,  other contact details or manage the conversation:

Wendy:  what sort of discount would you give me for having no car to trade-in part exchange?

Sales:  none

Wendy: what sort of discount would you give me if I could arrange a cash purchase

Sales:  none

Wendy:  do you actually want to sell this car,  I know its been on your books for at least 3 weeks

Sales: we can’t get enough good quality second hand cars,  with the recession the second hand business is good

Wendy:  I’ll look at the other Mini’s on my list and talk to the dealers and might get back to you if this one is still a possibility

One of a host of Jasmine plants that fill the Wendy Home with a wonderful aroma.   No chemical air-freshener arrives with throw-away packaging,  immitates floral scents and requires refills.   Lets hope that no guests have real pollen allergies….

This is a summary page from a UK Equifax credit report on me.  Accurate and incomplete.    

Equifax credit assessment covers 6 years in the UK,  US excluded .  Having been resident in the UK for just over one year  means that I don’t have a visible credit history for 6 years. 

I was unpleasantly suprised that neither my recent UK Morgage  nor credit card payment history were evident in the report. 

Getting an English home in order involves all sorts of equipment including a carbon monoxide alarm and a radiator inhibitor. 

My radiators are now fully inhibited.  You’ll be glad to know that there is no more bleeding necessary,  or is that necessary bleeding?

A senior chap wearing a flourescent yellow woolly cap and fleece is leaving the DIY store where I am going to purchase a carbon monoxide warning device.  Unlike his clothes,  the senior fellow’s fascial muscles are so relaxed he looks sad.  As he turns onto the Thames towpath he catches my eye, sees my hat, and his face rushes upwards as he sings out

Wondeful hat! 

my cyberdog (circa 2004) hat and I reply in kind

Yours too!

Words of wisdom from a specialist*.  This tip is about industrial strength white cotton bedding and is bought to you courtesy of the outstanding sales staff in Frere Jacksons Linens and haberdashery department:

Iron them while they are damp because its impossible to get the creases out once they’re dry.

I don’t plan to follow this tip because Ironing is a theoretical concept I’ve not yet fully grasped.

* past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist and Reading Police

can all be fitted in school uniform at Reading’s BHS.  As their sign says they ‘fit the Nation’.  If the picture is anything to go by,  they fit the nation of boys… I wonder why girls were invisible in their window display,  I looked for a partnering sign but none could be found…

Luckily their online advertisement includes girls in the nation together with boys, ethnicity and unisex,  I wonder why they opted out of this approach for their window displays. 

As ever,  Jackson is ahead of the game with its fabulous schoolwear department.

This weekend Kevin popped around with his supped-up white van and extensive De-Walt toolkit.  Kevin replaced the stop cock under the kitchen sink,  replaced a couple of washers,  showed me his toolkit and van customisations, offered me a half-price radiator, discussed replacing my kitchen, explained about the Canadian plummer training system,  and told me about his courtcase against a tap manufacturer because their tap design is just so silly it breaks within 6 months and he’d installed 26 of them in a rich client’s house. 

Kevins weekly visits are definitely one of life’s luxuries.

Jackson’s is the sort of store that sells stylish and practical items of a classic and often exclusive nature.  I cannot sing Jackson’s praises enough.  With winter settling in,  cold nights in the Wendy House,  this little bargain in the Jacksons christmas special decorated window calls out to me each time I pass by.  A Candlewick bedjacket.  How have the fluffballs and I managed without one to date?  Jacksons also have some mens paisely print brushed cotton pyjamas… 

…I really am at risk of shopping and bouncing and getting all over excited within a fun-packed 5 minute period…