Billy No Mates

Even the living room is empty, the dogs are all asleep in the kitchen

The Prof has just facetimed me from the pub. He's there with his family, fitting them in between work in London.
I'm sat at home feeling like Billy-No-mates

But I have lots of mates..I've had mates for years.

Craggy faced, Tom Stephenson, Rachel-of-the-Fens, Pudding of Yorkshire, Farmer's wife Pat from North Yorkshire and Ann Marie with the New York accent.
Raymondo, Jimbo, Jon, Steve,Mitchell,  Andrew and Dave.....gays with something to say.... Dave, Nick, dave, Andrew, Chris, Cro, Gary and Kev , all straights with something to say too!
Those with nicknames...like Miss Norm, Parsnips , trailer Trash, and a hundred others
Sue H, John W, from around the corner, Simone, Twiggy, Elephants Child and CoffeeOTP a little further on..
And Yael, Carlinpa,Francis and a ton of others from exotic far flung places......
Lots to read, lots to read you...sorry I have not mentioned you all, new friends and old
Oh and not forgetting the bitch Ursula, who always enjoys a debate

Lots of friends
Hey ho

Blogs That Just Stop

On Monday's post, I found a short comment from " David"
It was as chilling as it was succinct .

David11:04 am

Jacqueline (aka cranky) suffered a severe stroke last week. Unconscious since then.

ReplyDelete

I called into Jacqueline's blog but allI could see is a post from last week. A typical blogger's post. Chatty, frothy, friendly.......then.....nothing.
I like many of us here, I send Jacqueline, her family ( ? david) and friends my best wishes but if that brief message is true, things do seem rather bleak.........a banal blog entry sitting on the internet like an unfinished chapter of a book.

It's a reminder to us all that life isn't a Hollywood movie.
The narrative is never linear.
A begining, a middle and an end....then.....fade to black.
It's not always the case.

Crush!

Winnie was beside herself when I got home from work this morning.
Graham the workman had already stripped the toilet roof by 8 am and all she had been able to do was to to blow the odd bulldog kiss at him through the cat flap for presumably a hour or so.
She was exhausted at the unrequited effort of it all.
" She wants to watch what I 'm doing " Graham noted when I walked down the path and I refrained from the comment of " she wants to shag you, that's what she really wants to do"
It was far too early for such things to be discussed.
Especially as we now have an open air outside toilet ...all in pink!
I don't understand when Winnie first started this unsavoury love affair with male visitors.
It never used to be such a problem when she arrived at Bwthyn y Llan, but very slowly, over they years she has morphed into one of those slightly slutty MILFs that frequent the more offputting depths of the internet.
I blame the Prof's " slippers of sex" for it all.

So dear readers have you ever had an unhealthy crush on anyone?
I'd be interested to know!

Ghost Stories

It's the wee small hours of the morning and I am on my break at work.
Wards, even the noisey ITU can be creepy places in the dark!
I am reminded of a story I was told on night shift back in the asylum days
I was working graveyard shift with a EN ( enrolled nurse) who enjoyed telling ghost stories to frighten the student nurses.
The ward was a 30 bedded mixed ward for mainly severely affected dementia patients and at that enlightened time in the 1980s the clientele were termed officially as psycho- geriatrics
After a lull in the conversation my supervisor asked me if I had heard the story of one of the staff nurses who had  suffered a severe heart attack on duty only weeks before
I told her I had not, so smiling she sat me down and shared the tale.
The nurse in question was working with a student nurse like myself, only the student was a shy girl of perhaps nineteen and the workload was as busy as it was for us, as every patient was totally confused and disorientated of time , place and person.
As the patients slept both nurses made a round around the dormitory and as suddenly as heart attacks strike, the staff nurse collapsed to the floor without warning.
The student nurse panicked, and not knowing that she needed to call for help by telephone she crouched by her colleague tried to rouse her then started to cry.
Suddenly one of the patients, an elderly man in his seventies clambered out of bed.
The patient, who was mute, incontinent of urine and faeces and considered a " husk " of his former self hurried over and said in a clear voice " we had better get her on the bed"
The two of them, then lifted the collapsed nurse onto the spare bed after which the patient told the student nurse to call for help.
The student grateful for clear instructions did just that and help arrived within minutes as the nursing officer on duty rallied the troops, and surprisingly the collapsed nurse survived her heart attack though never again returned to work.
The patient involved never spoke again. His cognitive abilities were assessed and remained unchanged from those performed before this incident, and it was never explained just how he behaved the way he did when the student cried out for help.

Bridget Jones

The luminous and talented Zellweger

Much has been made of Renee Zellweger's " new look" over the past year or so.
I couldn't care less about it all, I really couldn't as in Bridget Jones' Baby with her rosy faced scrubbed clear of make up she looks fabulous, mature and sweet as a nut.
Shame the same cannot be said for the film.

It's a right old dog's dinner.
Now in her mid forties, Bridget remains a London singleton. She has split up,from long term partner Darcy ( Colin Firth- who now looks incredibly old and rather odd after a whole new set of teeth), Is slightly isolated from her three ""best mates" who now all have partners and children and finds herself battling hipster new blood at work, all things that the average middle aged Bridget Jones fan could identify with and would enjoy on film. But the writers have thrown into the mix a who-is-the -daddy mystery farce between Bridget, Darcy and an " attractive" American ( Patrick Dempsey) as well as shoe-horning in minor subplots featuring Bridget's harridan of a mother, exasperated father and an ill advised and un funny cameo from Emma Thompson playing a bad tempered  obstetrician

Apart from two slightly amusing set pieces there is only one laugh out loud moment when the three leads get stuck in a revolving door of a hospital accident and emergency department ( a wonderfully funny bit of slapstick)  But the rest of the film is a let down which is a shame as Zellweger is an actress of some charm and talent.
6/10

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've got a run of night shifts now, so shall be a bit thin on the ground. We've got a workman coming round too, to re roof our outside toilet! Happy days for Winnie.......difficult sleep days for me no doubt.....hey ho especially as the new mattress is somwhat " springy" the Prof and I seem to rolling about on top of it like two fat toddlers in a ball pool! 

Mike

The Hall this morning

The centre of Trelawnyd is dominated by the Memorial Hall, which is a community centre rather than a church or indeed large chapel which it is often mistaken for.
It was built around 110 years ago and was the brain child of one of the most unlikely patrons a Welsh village could ever ask for.
Michael Antonio Ralli ( or Mike as he was referred to) was a Greek living in Odessa in the 1800s . He made a fortune importing cotton from Russia when the USA could not during their Civil war and after a spell working as the Greek consul to Liverpool, he and his wife Polymnia came to live in was to become Mia Hall, a grand red brick house situated west of the village.

Ralli was a bit of a dish

Ralli built the Memorial hall not only as a gift for the village, but as a way of giving the local unemployed a job. It's referred to as the Memorial Hall as it was build in memory of his wife who died in 1896
He, like a former founder of Trelawnyd , John Wynne in the 1600s , wanted to see the village flourish as a market town.

The Hall around 1910 with it's cupola 

The Walking Dead Season 7

Not long now! 

The Challenge

Even though she can't now comment, I am sure this blog entry will get Petra's " untouched-by-a-man's-hand" knickers in a twist as I am going all saccharine about something.
Go stew Petra! For what you are about to read is all true!
Hey ho.

Anyhow whilst the Prof is marking a PhD thesis up in his study, I am presently on mattress watch. For the first time in 16 years we havebought a new mattress and it's being delivered today. For a small fee, the company will collect the old one but only if it is " sealed" in a plastic bag which they thoughtfully have provided.
What are we a bio hazard? Answers on a post card.

Grid watch

Mary is on " heightened alert" at the moment and is not sleeping. She cornered a mouse down the patio grid yesterday and spend the entire day watching it. After many hours she eventually caught and partially ate it causing the Prof to swoon somewhat theatrically in disgust when he side stepped the corpse when he got home.
She has been hyperactive ever since.
The Prof on the other hand keeps repeating the shrill phrase of " don't let her lick your face" when she comes near.
He worries so.

Ann & Terry

Anyhow , as usual I am digressing.
Because of PhD marking, mattress delivery and a row about cleaning the fluff from under the old bed, I took Mary on her powerwalk early .
And we bumped into Ann and Terry.
Now Ann and Terry are the most sweet natured of couples for they spend most of their waking day laughing at and seeing the good in most things. They are a blessed asset to the flower show committee as they seldom complain, they work hard and are able to turn most negatives into a positive.
For years now I have gone head-to-head with Terry in tbe baking classes and have soundly thrashed him for several years in our own " bake off" but next year, as Terry explained after we met this morning, would be a very different event.

" Next year we are both entering the art section !" He challenged cheerfully
"A  Hand made item out of wood! , a cross stitch or embroidery and a painting ! That's the contest"

Bloody hell embroidery? Woodwork? PAINTING,! I'm fucking crap at anything like that!

I'm scuppered!

Ps
Ifyou want a laugh read this
https://roadtokazakhstan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/for-one-day-only.html