:: The Wendy House ::

The Hexagon Theatre in Reading is running its annual pantomime, Dick Wittington. 

Interactive theatre where the audience, predominatly under 4ft tall, get to shout out ‘He’s behind you’, and “BOO!” and hisssssszzzzzz as loud as they want when the clearly marked baddie comes on the stage.  The baddie in this case was dressed in black leather with a huge fake furry chest,  long tail,  and the name ‘King Rat’. 

The pantomime hero, the principle boy,  is played by a girl wearing tights, no trousers, and thigh length leather boots who enjoys repeatedly slapping her outer-thigh with her hand and falling in love with the leading lady who is a lady.  A man in outrageous, colourful costumes plays an unmarried woman,  the ‘Dame’.  A young chap coordinates audience participation, facilitates the storyline and everyone’s happiness.  I’d quite like one of those.

In Dick Wittington there were doses of singing competitions, where volume supercedes musicality, between the two halves of the auditorium.  Some songs required rather tricky accompanying hand-actions, during which I accidently whacked the lady sitting next to me and generally got everything all topsy turvy.  There are also some slow,  soppy,  songs in a pantomime.  Luckily, watching the shorter contingent of the audience wave brightly coloured lit-wands around made the soppy songs entertaining.

For those who enjoy a heated debate, like myself, there were many opportunities to argue with the cast ‘Oh no he isn’t'….’oh yes he is’….   The occassional slap stick humour, outstandingly bad jokes and the Dames costumes that beggar belief ensured the tone of the event stayed firmly in the realm of the fantastically ridiculous.  At one point the Dame wore a dress in the form of what looked like the Tower of London.   

Audience birthdays on the performance day were announced in the penulitmate scene. I’m thinking of relocating my Brithday to mid December. 

Plot spoiler (look below the next paragraph)

The plot invariably ends with the leading man (woman) and lady (woman) getting together,  the baddy being converted (normally by magic), and the dame continuing to be a dame.

Plot spoiler over (start reading here)

It was all jolly good fun.  Happy holiday season.

Hoorah!

<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>

Since moving to Reading I’ve found lots of familiar strangers,  I see them on the bus everyday during my commute,  in the local cooperative store when I’m picking up milk for my tea,  behind the counters in Jacksons,  in the local internet cafe.

During my 1986 final year degree course Environmental Psychology classes I learned that people are more likely to exhibit altruistic behaviours to familiar strangers (than complete strangers) when meeting those familiar strangers outside of the normal context.  Each will recognise the other easily but have difficulty placing the source of this familiarity. 

This means that when I meet someone who normally rides on the same bus as me everyday,  in Jacksons,  I will think I know them and be nicer than I would be to someone totally unrecognisable.  

Excellent. 

More familiar strangers means more oportunities to be squishy.  Given my natural curmudgeonist tendencies this can only be a good thang. 

”’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

sixty-eighth post in a series attempting to explain the subtle complexities of my singleness

Reason #68:  Teddy bears picnic

The chorus to this well known childrens song is turning-up as auditory hallucinations in my day today.  

Once I’d manage to throttle the teddybears into silence Marc Bolan turned up singing Debora,  a much more desirable intrusive thought,   you’ll find me attempting to harmonise with the Marc in my head,  its enough to put-off even the most soppy of suitors and definitely a downer for T.Rex fans.

March 15th 1984

It will take several months to read the varied scrawl of miss-spelt ramblings in my early diaries.  Mumzie recently discovered these diaries in a dark corner of her home.  The diaries stop in 1984 when I switched to letter writing…

A second sheet was added to this 1984 entry during my first year at University.   The day went something like this: 

A morning of contemplating whether a fascinating but somewhat screwed-up boy should have the benefit of my influence in his life.  

An afternoon sketching portraits of 2 handsome boys while they supplied me with lots of tea.  The tea taking isn’t explicitly mentioned because it is understood as a part of the ’spending an afternoon with a handsome fellow’ process.  The boys had the afrontary to keep the sketches.  Sadly,  I don’t actually have copies of any of the portraits I used to produce.  I was fairly prolific with my sketch-book as well as in my diaries.  

The evening involved drinking ’side cars’ in a disco and helping a girl-friend disrupt the dancefloor during some of those slow girl-boy cuddling dances by jumping around between the soppy-people.  

A fabulous day indeed.

I saw a Leyland doubledecker bus in Seattle. Whooopie!!!

Instant over-excitement. 

I shouldn’t read the branding on bus-grills while driving.  It’s one of my naughty habits.  I think it was a Leyland “Olympian“.  An Olympian bus with views of the Olympic mountains imported from Britain built by the British National motor industry with engineering specialism from Bristol. 

I’m getting all soppy again.   Time for more Tea.

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….

1. I gather from this Times Online article that soppiness may well be a British trait
2. In this case, home = living with my parents.  I have way too many ‘homes’,  different cities,  houses,  countries…. 

my world traveller friend is moving to NY this weekend.  In the 6 years I’ve known her she’s lived in:

• Seattle
• China
• Madrid (Spain)
• A private yaught (Alaska, Mexico, the Pacific coast)
• Ellensburgh (urgh?!!!)

She’s a special friend.  We met during my first week in Seattle at a pub quiz.  Hardly knowing each other arranged to runaway to Mardi Gras, a weekend in New Orleans. 

Travelling separately.  I sat on the porch of our 2 star hotel with a bottle of wine I’d corked by forcing the cork into the bottle.  In the heat of the evening I drank the wine and waited for the stranger,  my room companion,  to turn up.  An asian guy arrived at midnight.  The hotel staff had gone home.  He’d booked a room, had no-where else to stay. World traveller turned up with a tiny back-pack and all the enthusiasm of a toddler.  Of course she didnt mind him staying in our room.  We looked after him for a a couple of days, expored the city,  had our fortunes read,  met strangers and lived stories that warrant thier own blog entries.  She’s so easy to be with,  so bright in many ways.  I’ll miss her presence in this State painfully because friends like her are rare.  Friends like her are usually somewhere else.  My friends are usually somewhere else….  I’m not often a soppy bugger, but for tonight there will be BIG

BLUBBING

in the Wendy house this weekend.  Actually there will be blubbing in a sleeping-bag on the floor of her packed apartment,  but you get my drift….   

This photograph made gray, rain and carparks feel romantic. The single street lamp seems courageous. Having felt the cold and seen the snow drifts so unfamiliar to me adds something special to this picture.

No puking, I get soppy, get used to it.

I’ve made this picture my ‘desktop background’ it compliments the XP ’silver’ theme quite well.