Diary Of A 1950s Welsh Housewife

I get up before the Prof and make sure I am neat and tidy for the day ahead.
I check my reflection in the bathroom mirror before anything else
Hair perfect....make up discreet .....apron straight!
Now to prepare breakfast.
The Prof has his boiled egg and soldiers in bed with a strong cup of sweet tea, he is reading Boffin's Weekly.
I wake the children. They are such naughty children too as none of them want to get out of bed in the mornings! No pancakes for Winifred this morning as I notice she has put on too much weight recently. An extra few laps around the hockey pitch is the order of the day me thinks.
Men don't want to see extra large knickerbockers airing on the clotheshorse do they?
That sort of thing gets their roving eyes started .
After checking that William, Mary and baby George have washed behind their ears, it's a brisk walk around the village before breakfast and out they go to play.

I need to get cracking with my chores.
After quick race around with the old ewbank and some elbow grease with a duster and the house is looking all spick and span. I change into a clean apron and bang out a dozen jam tarts and meat pie before running hubby a nice hot bath.
I've already laid out a fresh cardigan for him to wear.
While he soaks I pop on my coat and hat and picking up my wicker basket I trot to the village shop.
Mrs Trellis is buying her usual quarter of tea and a French fancy as I wait in line.
Tut tut tut I think , " a moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips !" But I say nothing...I'm far too nice.
Mr Jason the shopkeeper gives me a wink and says he's got a Cumberland sausage just in with my name on it, we laugh gayly.
I politely refuse Mr Jason's sausage and purchase instead three slices of ham and a tomato for the Prof's tea. Keeping your man fed and watered is the sure way to maintain a happy marriage my
mother always told me....oh and acting like a right whore in the bedroom helps a bit too!

To be continued......

Sandwich

The Prof was attending an awards do and asked for me to pick him up at 7.30 .
He said we would go out for dinner.
I scrubbed up, donned my New York duds and was about to drive the 20 miles to meet him when I got the message
Awards overrun won't get out until going on ten pm
At 9.45 I was eating a service station coronation chicken sandwich in the car park

Susan Hayward

This is for a friend who is having a shit time

With much love

Frank

When I picked up William and Mary from the kennels I had to wait for a while in the farm courtyard for the kennel owner to be free.
William was trotting around like a puppy with a squeaky toy in his mouth and shadowing him was his " exercise mate" , a very elderly black Labrador . I was told the two dogs had " made friends" during William's stay.
The Labrador ambled over to lay his muzzle into the palm of my hand, and I could see that like William, he was a gentle old soul.
" He's been with us over a year" the kennel owner explained as she tried to catch Mary " His name is Frank"
I asked about Frank's story as he turned to William to lick his blind eye gently and it was a sad one.
Frank, was the apple of his owner's eye. She doted on him ever since he was a puppy and the two were apparently inseparable.
When the owner became seriously ill, her husband , through necessity , had Frank boarded for a while and when his wife died suddenly , he asked if the dog could stay a while longer.
Now grief is a strange affair for many people to deal with and the kennel owner explained that husband could not emotionally cope with the dog at home , a dog that was adored so deeply by his wife.
And so he was sent away like a child at boarding school.
" The owner is totally stuck" the kennel owner said sadly as Frank and William tottered around together " He's too riddled with guilt to rehome Frank and too brittle to have him home.....and so he stays here with us" 
Frank smiled like only labradors can do
And I felt awful taking William home

Souvenirs

The cottage is more or less Silent this morning.

No taxi horns, no police sirens, no bustle, no clatter.
All I can hear is Winnie's rasping snores and the crowing of the bachelors as Mandy from next door feeds them and Irene  stale bread.
The dogs and Albert are reunited on the duvet and are all fast asleep.
I'm washing and packing away the contents of the kitchen cupboards today in readiness for the new kitchen.
No radio, no music and no noise.
Everything is nicely zen.

The Prof and I have a tradition of buying Christmas decorations from New York
This time we have gone Camp " Opera" and oh sooo Gay
With The Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute and Clara from The Nutcracker

I placed them on the mantlepiece to look at for a while before getting cracking on washing and packing away the glassware.
Back to normal

The Glamour of real life

We are on the final leg of our holiday, namely the Arriva Trains Wales journey from Chester along the North Wales coast.
It's always a thankless Micky Mouse kind of trip with the great unwashed making the place look untidy.
The Prof is already bemoaning the lack of his daily Espresso Cocktail overlooking Grand Central Station's main concourse .
" Everything looks so dull and BORING" he sighed as he eyed the bedraggled and the forlorn
" Everything....Everything is so, sooo, soooo...unattractive!"
Well I feel somewhat unattractive, I can tell you!
No sleep on the plane and an hour snoring my head off on the London to Chester train where I dribbled crisp crumbs over my new hoodie top and got laughed at by two teenage boys, who thought that the sight of a near unconscious Welshman with a face the consistency of play doh hilarious!

Travelling is not glamorous !
You forget that in all the excitement of Espresso cocktails and foreign accents

The Last New York Post

Which one's which?

Today we had our final breakfast at Pershing Square then walked most of the way down to Battery Park to catch the Staten Island Ferry( a tradition when we go to New York) it blew away the cobwebs rather nicely before Chinatown and an amble through Little Italy.
 I'm writing this on the way to the airport....full of dim sum and the most glorious pork dumplings this side of the Atlantic. Lunch in Chinatown in what could only be described as a " basic cafe Knocked up in someone's garage" was a surprising treat. We found the dumpling house Mistress Maddie suggested going to, only to find it shut, so we ambled down a street which looked as though it had been bombed during WW2 , found the nearest eatery and was promptly sat on a large round table with a family of Chinese locals.
The food couldn't have been better! A wonderful end to a cracking city break!

Pershing Square

Final Thoughts

Our hotel in on Lexington and 45th. We are sandwiched between the US post office and the shadow of the Chrysler Building. Just opposite is the vibrant  food hall of Grand Central's market with it's magnificent upside down tree chandelier.
We like this part of town.
We are both tired today.
We have walked over sixty miles in three days ( fitbit)
The Texan Church shooting is on the news but so is much local news including the Mayor elections.
It would seem New York wants an independent voice and someone who would stand up against Trump for the benefit of the city.
Watching the crowds that unceasingly cheered on the Marathon runners yesterday, it is not hard to see just how proud New Yorkers are of their city.
Normality tomorrow.
Bulldog masturbation, old dog puddles, cat hairs on my trendy New York hoodie ( mutton dressed as lamb - who am I kidding?) and a countdown to a new kitchen !
Hey ho
Ps I managed to watch The Walking Dead last night!

MOMA

Yes...but IS it art?

Walnut & Raisin cream cheese bagels for breakfast!
Shopping for clothes
A lovely visit to Christina's World at MOMA
Hot dogs in the rain as we watched some of the 40,000 New York marathon runners enter the final stages at Central Park ( a wonderfully uplifting experience thanks to the exuberant New York crowds)
Espresso cocktails then dinner a little later
Chinatown tomorrow!

La Boheme

The end of the second act had to be seen to be believed

All Too Much

My feet have been worn away to stumps.
Today's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. The 9/11 museum at ground zero is a truly humbling and emotional experience and is a place given universal reverence by the people who go there.
I was near tears several times during our guided tour, as I was sitting outside at the dramatic waterfalls situated on the footprint of the towers.
We ate pizza in the street in Soho then walked up Manhattan from the meat packing district via the High Line before coming back to the hotel in Midtown .
In a few minutes we are off to the Oyster Bar at Grand Central then it's La Boheme at the Met! 
Hey ho

72 Degrees

Angel of The Waters Central Park

Dedication on a Central Park bench

He " almost" smiled

A moody and rather warm and humid Manhattan

2am

I promise no more selfies!
As usual I was pulled by American customs at Newark so we got into Manhattan 2am GMT
Just enough time to have a short walk

Funny Farm

i'm driving him to distraction

Hello

Caption please

Discuss

How does it make you feel!

I forgot it is Halloween

Light relief following The below Spacey debate

The Bitch In Charge

I was feeding the bachelors when I heard a commotion.
There was a large lorry with it's engine running in the lane and I could hear the dogs barking from the cottage so I hurried back to see what was going on.
This was 8.30 am this morning.
Two delivery men were standing stock still on the garden path with a heavy radiator between them. They looked worried
For standing between them and the back door was a very angry barking Mary.
" She's come through the cat flap right at us !" One of the men said and he jumped as Winnie ever so slowly forced her face through the flap behind , to see what was going on.
I hurried round and picked Mary up and immediately she quietened down and started tail wagging.
Her job of protecting her home now thankfully over.
The Smallest of all of the dogs, Mary now seems to possess the bravest of hearts.
With me out of the house, it would seem that it was up to her alone to protect the older dogs and Albert from the threat of the dreaded radiator men!

Kevin Spacey How Dare You

Kevin Spacey..how dare you
How dare you attempt to hide the drunken molestation of a child
behind officially outing yourself  out as a gay man!
How dare you!

The Sins Of The Past

Towards the early days of Going Gently I wrote a blog about a childhood bully.
It was a short piece about a slight from another "country" in time. A once painful but then muted memory that seemed more anecdotal than cathartic, was shared on the blog inappropriately for I named the bully.
Months later I received an email from the former bully. Through osmosis and across oceans the blog entry had reached him and as it is common with memories of past sadder times, the individual had no recollection of the events I wrote about.
We corresponded for a short while, with the hindsight of adults, and, I thought that they were positive emails between two men who had perhaps had rather unhappy schooldays.
We left things wishing each other well.

Months later I received a very different email, informing me of the death by suicide of this man. I had no idea of the motivations for this terrible event and even though I immediately pulled the old post, the cached memory of it reverberated for a while afterwards and must have caused considerable heartache for this man's friends and family.

This is not a blog for debating his motivation, so please don't. It's just a warning to everyone to be very careful of what you write about even though memories from the far distant past seem that they come from a land so very far away.