The best photo EVER

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Hinterland

Hostages Sharon Morgan and Brochan Evans

I often post about movies from all around the world on Going Gently, but it is rare for me to big up a Welsh film or tv series of any note as generally most Welsh offerings are pretty dire.
Hinterland is an exception.
Filmed twice ( once in English and again in Welsh ) it is a crime show set in the unlikely university town of  Aberystwyth which is headed by a flawed detective, Richard Harrington ( aint they all?) and his team of supportive cops. Moody tense and thoroughly entertaining, this drama benefits from its subtitles, detailed characterisations and mean and bleak country backdrop.
Tonight's siege storyline was a cracker!
Watch it on youtube if you get the chance

Boys


Four ten year old boys running amok in the street is a somewhat rare sight nowadays given the fact that modern parenting seems to be micromanaging childhood but there they were this morning sprinting up and down the lane, shouting about a den made over in the fields beyond Trendy Carol's house.
They didn't see me, as I was busy planting a peony in the back garden, but I heard them, and so did Albert who was sat on the cottage wall, swishing his tail in temper.
It's amazing just how much noise four small boys can make at full pelt.

For a second or two there was a worrying silence, and I was surprised to glimpse what looked like a banana skin flying past Albert's head to land with a plop on the path.
The boys galloped away before I could even stand up and Albert bolted for the safety of the kitchen.

I've been crouched behind the wall waiting for them all to return for the past half hour
I'm going to lob the banana skin right back at em !

What larks Pip! 

Ps I'm 54

I was still lurking in the garden, banana skin in hand when a rather natty woman poked her head over the wall, bearing gifts!
She brought me these Teacups, Gifts that once were sold in the village shop sometime in the 1940-50s ( Newmarket was the village's former name and it was changed to Trelawnyd in 1957)

Update

I 've just had an email from Phil ( one of the Male Voice Choir's bigwigs) to tell me that Auntie Glad is doing ok in her new home. ( He and many of the choir members have been so supportive to her over the years)
It is her birthday today....... she is 98.
I plan to visit on Thursday



Early Doors

Thats the Prof's ' happy face'

Here, in Britain, there is a pub phenomenon which is known as " Early Doors".
Early Doors refers to a time when people pop in to the pub, namely in the afternoon to very early evening to sink a pint or two and chat.
It is sometimes a favourite time for the elderly to middle aged drinkers who don't like the " crowds"  of an evening bartime, the after work brigade, the newspaper readers and of course the hopeless. alcoholic.
The Prof is still on holiday today so I took him to The Albion in Conwy for an afternoon drink. I was driving so had a few large coffees, he had a few of the guest ales and a pork pie.
Mary had a bag of crisps!
The mid afternoon clientele was a quiet bunch. Mainly old men with sticks perked up by a middle aged drunk woman who slurred her words from the get-go. I reminded the Prof not to catch her eye. There is nothing worse than a latched on drunk when you are sober.
I don't do early doors, anymore.
One of the last times, I did,  was over  a decade ago when I got so pissed in All Bar One with my fey sidekick John 'Bel-Ami', I eventually fell down two flights of basement steps into a firedoor, broke my spectacles and gave myself a black eye.....and never felt a thing!

Hey ho.



When were you most scared?


For the whole of the Easter Weekend I have been either sleeping or working, and the night shifts have been busy ones.
The Prof has been pleasantly sanguine about the ruination of his one of all-too-few holidays, a fact that I put down to chocolate and some downtime with the children.
Mrs Trellis dropped off a couple of Easter bunnies too, which was nice of her, she asked if the Flower Show had indeed been cancelled this year as per village gossip.
I assured her that it had not, and promptly conscripted her in the boiled fruit cake class.

Over the weekend one of my patients likened his admission to intensive care to one of the "most frightening experiences of his life". The " most" as it turned out, was a time when he was attacked by a lioness in Africa, a story that unfortunately we were unable to catch up with throughout the shift.

But it got me thinking.....what WAS the most frightening experience I have ever suffered? 
HUMMMMM.....

Well, my answer must, thankfully,  be very few indeed, !
Anything to do with heights really freak me out,so the time I found myself alone on the observation deck of the Seattle's Space needle in a rainstorm would figure high on this list.
The time I was attacked by a Russian terrier ( the leader and most aggressive member of a pack of nine housedogs) still brings shivers to my soul when I think about it, as does the time I was first attacked my a psychiatric patient whilst on duty.
But these are just minor scare times compared with a man facing down a lioness in the African bush!

So tell me!
What was your most frightening experience EVER.
I'd be interested to know.

sleeping in the bath

I've just fallen asleep in the bath
My fingers and toes look like miniature crinkly testicles
God knows what my actual testicles look like
Night shifts all over Easter
They are trying to killme before I retire!

Happy Easter







New York


How lucky we are, in May we are off to London again, June we go to Spain, August a seaside break in Kent and in  November we have booked our trip to New York.
It's been a few years since we went, my goodness for many years we visited the city annually, so I am so excited to be returning .
I am reminded of a quote from Woody Allen from the movie Manhattan

" He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion........no make that: he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes, to him, no matter what the season was, this is still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of Gershwin" 

Another Year, Another Flower Show


With another level head on the Flower Show committee in the shape of Trelawnyd Val, we thrashed out the 2017 schedule in record time.
There was a bit of a debate over schedule layout, some lively talk about who will open the show ( we are toying with a Mary Berry lookalike named tantalisingly as Mary Cherry, but we may be in muddy legal waters here. Meirion & Daphne know someone from Coronation Street so we may have a real celebrity on the cards! If we don't I'll ask the newly elected counsellor for our area.......the local elections are just about to start!

The pub tv was playing quietly in the corner, so I was mindful that my Nemesis Terry was paying too much attention to a video of a Macarena rather than the strenuous conversation over the differences between a pie and a tart!
We all missed Auntie Glad's kitchen!
It's Gladys' 98 th birthday on Tuesday...I learned today that the village Male Voice Choir had planned to call on her to sing her happy birthday. They called in to her old care home to sing carols to her at Christmas which was a delightful tribute I thought. ( Gladys had provided refreshments to the choir for many many years)
Anyhow I am going to propose that we have a new cup " The Auntie Glad Cup" for a baking category in the show. I forgot to mention it tonight, the pub was rather busy and it slipped my mind.....
The food in the restaurant looked fab, I must admit.....
As I sipped my diet coke!
Hey ho

A Kid In A Sweet Shop


If you are ever " down in the dumps" I suggest you call around here. Pick Winnie up in the back seat of your car and drive, quicksticks, to the local pet superstore which is located just five miles away.
You know the sort of store I mean.
Spotless shelves with every feed, medication, plaything and grooming implement known to man , nose to nipple with bunnies in glass fronted enclosures, azure blue fish tanks and green smocked sales people smiling sweetly at you from behind the tills.
This is Winnie heaven.
I first found this odd fact out a year ago when she accompanied me into the store when we were picking another dog up from their in-house groomers.
Wide eyed with wonder she investigated every box, packet and snack carefully eyeing up anything that she thought different or interesting and practically wet herself when she turned a corner to see thirty feet of selected balls, squeaky toys and rubber " things" all neat and tidy in their containers.
Their selection of rubber chickens practically gave the old gal an orgasm on the spot and I had to put her on the lead again to prevent an over excited incident from occurring.
(I didn't have enough dosh on my to pay for any damages) but generally she behaved herself, sniffing the boxes, tins and packets with a smile on her big fat face.

As I recall we ambled on.
Carefully and over some time, the guinea pigs were watched and then the ratty things and gerbils in their boxes were given  the a serious once over, then the vet's receptionist had to be greeted as she yawned behind her desk.
To Winnie the store was a place of wonderment, to be savoured slowly like a good wine.
She didn't want rushing!
And so I let her march around, enjoying her enjoyment of such a simple activity.
Her happiness is incredibly infectious .
Remember that if you are ever down and you are in North Wales
Just call around and borrow a bulldog for an hour or so.

This morning in the garden with Mary



" Get away from her .....YOU BITCH!"


I'm sat in the vets.....it's going to be a long wait as there are two labs, an old spaniel with a bad heart,
and an RTA before us.
So I'm playing on the old ipad.
It stops people chatting to me, I hate small talk at the vets

A few years ago I found myself walking around the corner of Bloomingdales New York and I  bumped right into a tall, chic looking woman wearing a tartan coat.
She said " Pardon" and floated on.
I squeaked like a girl.
The woman was Sigourney Weaver! 

We are going to New York in the Autumn ( instead of Australia) 
I wonder which famous bod I shall spy there.....
We have not been for a few years and I'm already excited

Who is the most famous celebrity that you have met, albeit briefly!??
I'd be interested to know 

A Worrying Turn

Blogs talking about the oldest and one of the youngest Village characters
Go figure

It's been public knowledge for a little while now, but the care home that Auntie Gladys is in has been recently under close scrutiny by  the Welsh Care and Social services inspectorate after it breached 11 regulations in the care of its residents.
I have not blogged about all this as in many ways it was not my place to say anything, but very recently things have changed yet again.
We visitors had no idea that things were not quite they seemed as Gladys seemed very happy with her care, and although the place looked somewhat shopworn there was nothing in the home that unduly concerned me, nothing, that is, that I could see on an hours visit.
I know that Gladys' family closely monitored the situation, and have kindly kept a few of us here up to date with what was happening.
Tomorrow, it has been decided that the remaining residents will be moved by social services to another care home and Gladys will transferred to a more appropriate place on the English border some twenty miles away.

I've got the details of the new home if any villagers need it.
I'll be visiting next week and I may post the home's address here! A plethora of supportive cards may underline to te managers just how well loved Gladys is!( hint hint)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-39469229

Boffin Thank You

I promised to pass on Cameron's best wishes to the locals ( and blog readers) who sponsored him on his run last weekend, hope you can read his text


D.I.V.O.R.C.E.


I went to fat club late this evening and left the cottage all cozy and toasty for the Prof on his return from work.
A chicken curry was warming in the oven and the dogs were all sorted
When I finally got home the fucker had eaten his AND my half of the curry!
I was so mad I could have clubbed  Julie Andrews to death with her own guitar

I Need A PA !


The Prof has his own PA.
She is an affable, and exasperated sort who is always hidden away behind a desk covered with paper,
I sort of know her feelings this morning as today I have spent several hours catching up with paperwork and phonecalls and phonecalls and paperwork.
Half an hour of my life that I will never get back was on the phone to an ever perky " Matty" at my pet insurers, after an unexplained delay in Winnie's operation payment.
" How is she now?" He asked in a desperate attempt to court favour after my third thinly lipped complaint of the amounts quoted
"Sexually very promiscuous" I replied shortly
"Oh!" Was all he managed to reply, albeit weakly.
Another thirty five minutes was spent on the phone to a dopey so-and- so at the pension department ( more paperwork outstanding) ten minutes booking dog haircuts, five minutes to the vets, and fifteen soul destroying minutes hanging onto the phone in the fruitless hope of speaking to a sales rep at Sky ! ( I had to give up due to an overdue bowel movement!)
10 minutes booking a badminton court at a local leisure centre ( I didn't understand the card system) 10 minutes on Samaritan business and two minutes ringing Animal helper Pat about the flower Show Meeting and finally after another 20 minutes of on line banking, I spent a joyless time answering a short on line questionnaire about the BBC, a product of a recent complaint about the odious Jeremy Vine, I emailed the radio 2 website last week ( fucking hell get a life John!)

Oh, and It took me a further quarter of an hour writing this shite! 

Bedroom Ettiquette


Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson had twin beds. So did my parents in the latter years of their marriage. Blogger Rachel has gone one step further, she and P has seperate bedrooms,each, no doubt, enjoying the starfish abilities of cool sheets and a double bed.
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow went a step further, they lived in seperate houses...but that's another story!
In our home, I sleep on the left and always have done. The Prof sleeps on the right with our only bedside table which is usually covered with books and ipads and phone.
The dogs take pot luck.
Until recently George has aways slept at the foot of the duvet, politely away from feet and movement.  Now he enjoys the armchair in the living room. Mary sleeps in her crate in the kitchen and Winnie enjoys the hospitality of the sofa. Winnie understands only too well that bed sharing with the Prof is a total no-no when he is in situ but after he has left for work she will gallop gleefully up the stairs and hurl herslf with gay abandon onto the duvet like a fat lady at the circus.
Willian is the only dog with any manners, for he will come up to bed after his first dawn wee stop and will place his head on the pillow next to mine.
If cold , he actually gets under the bedclothes like an old man.


I'd like a bigger bed. I've always thought that American sized hotel beds are a delight because you can get totally lost in them. You could, if you wanted share one with a bull ox and still have room for Shelley Winters......but that's another story.

When I was a boy we had nylon sheets that always caught on your toenails. We also had bunk beds, candlewick bed spreads and hot water bottles.
Oh and those warming stripy flannel sheets in winter!


Mrs Miniver

I'm better slightly out of focus!

I'm more like Mrs Miniver than not today.
The weather is warm and the Sparrow Flock is causing a riot on the stone wall of the cottage.
The windows need to be flung wide open as the sky beyond the green hills is a Danial Craig blue.
A Spitfire drones overhead.
I'm not kidding a Spitfire IS flying overhead, it is a privately owned one from across the valley and you can always tell it's earthy tones as it grumbles past.
I'm suddenly transported to Kent in 1942. ( well the Hollywood version of Kent that is) but unfortunately Bwthyn-y-Llan is not Starlings, I haven't got a tittering housemaid called Gladys and I don't have to worry about telling my husband I 've just bought a new hat!

The Prof is out having a 1:1 with his 24 year old fitness coach.
It's something Walter Pidgeon would not have done. He just smoked a pipe and rattled his big pants!


I have been moving aquilegia from the back garden into the front. I am clearing the back garden for a make over and I want to save as many as the cottage plants as I can. Winnie is sunbathing on the warm soil.
She looks as though someone has hit her with a stick.
Greer Garson would never have owned a bulldog, she was a black labrador kinda gal!
I open the windows wide and hear the Spitfire again. I wonder for a moment if there is a German paratrooper in the larder?

I feel like Mrs Miniver today, popular but useless! 

Calling All Committee Members


It's that time again...the first Flower Show Meeting of the Year
So to Sailor John, Animal Helper Pat, Trendy Carol, Meirion & Daphne ( from the posh houses)
Chucklers Terry & Ann, Heulwen & Derek, Matriarch Irene and Trelawnyd Val
The  meeting will be held in the back of The Crown 7 pm on Thursday.
Items to be discussed include the format of this year's Schedule, refreshments and the future of Auntie Glad's stall!


Coming Out

My Uncle Jim and Dena


A woman I know told me that her daughter, who is 16 , recently noted at a family lunch that she was, in fact, asexual.
Another relative, a man in his fifties apparently chirped up with the question " A sexual what?"  And had to be patiently educated by his niece, who calmly explained that she had no sexual attraction to men or women .
I asked what was the family reaction to such news and my friend proudly shared that it was in fact a positive one, as the family apparently accepted the news with some interest coupled with slight indifference.
Perhaps that is a sign of the times....who knows, I am not privy to my friend's family dynamics.

When I was a child my uncle Jim divorced his wife and went to live with a woman from South Yorkshire ! The woman was twenty five years (?) his junior and hailed from a family that was colourfully working class and I remember so vividly just how shamed my grandparents felt at the news as they talked in hushed tones and cried together in the privacy of their bedroom.

I still love my grandparents so very much and it's nearly four decades after they died, but I know that they could not have coped with me being gay, not in the early 1980s. They thought and were shamed by things that shamed and upset people from another era........we don't live in that world anymore .

Having said this, my grandparents eventually came around to my Uncle's new life, much younger wife and bonny baby grandson. They did this because my new aunt was and is a decent woman with a warm personality. My cousin was a delightful little boy and my Uncle was loved so very much.
Loving him, for them, finally out weighed any prejudice they felt.

I would have liked to have come out to my grandparents. I would have liked to have come out to my
mother and father  too, but it was never to be and it was never the right time........ c'est la vie as they say in Frenchland.......

When I told Auntie Gladys that The Prof was my partner ( before we all met up for one of my first Flower Show Meetings)  I was acutely aware that in some small way I was "re-living" a moment I
wanted so much to have had with the matriarchs of my old family all now deceased .
It wasn't rocket science....in homespun psychology terms!
I said the words that I really didn't have to say and waited with winced eyes for the reaction.
Gladys was 86 back then.
"Will he be coming to the meeting too?  " She asked me, her eyes were bright and interested
" I don't think it's his cup of tea" I told her
" Right O  " she said busying herself with a tea towel   " " I'll wrap up some scones for him to have later" 


And she left him scones, tied in a bag to our front door for the next ten years!