For Sale

 Old Trefor’s house is on the market and already I’ve seen three 4x4 couples giving it the once over.

He was always careful with his money so the asking price would have made him wet himself.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/153666356#/?channel=RES_BUY

You can see my cottage from his back bedroom ( below) , and in his later poorly years , he would sometime signal me with a flash of the lights that all was well. 

Trefor was always kind to me and always accepting that I was gay, something that may have been a challenge to someone in a tiny village and was 80 years of age. 

I remember introducing The Prof into the conversation as my partner one afternoon as I helped him collect apples from his small orchard and for Trefor  saying rather nonchalantly that he already knew and that  Auntie Gladys had  told him in passing at Friendship Group ! 

Nana Mouskouri - Alleluia Sweet Maria and a Pure Heart.

I ended up watching a tribute to Nana Mouskouri last night on BBC4 which I surprisingly enjoyed. She had a pure voice, which I liked.

Now I have a colleague at work called Sioned . She is a sprightly, gloriously single Welshwoman who wears her nationality on her sleeve like a banner. For the five years I have now been at the hospice , she has been endeavouring in teaching me Welsh.

Suffice to say I’m better than I was at the start. 

Sioned has a pure heart , she is a good nurse, an excellent one in fact and she is retiring very soon, much to everyone’s surprise. 

I shall miss her

So I bought her this at the Apple Festival. A little Welsh woman singing the hymn Calon Lân.

There is a story about the gift.

Perhaps three years ago, near Christmas and after supper, the hospice was darkened and quiet.

From a patient’s room Came the voice of a nurse called Nia, and she was singing Calon Lân very gently. For a moment we listened then Sioned who was stood by the office door gently joined in.

And all of the nurses and support workers stopped what they were doing to listen 

It was a strange , moving, rather theatrical moment that I will never forget

Calon Lân literally means A Pure Heart in Welsh

Roger’s Day Out

 

I know I wax somewhat lyrically over Roger at times, but time and time again he had proved himself to be a delightful dog. 

Yesterday he accompanied me to the Apple Festival, and trotted in, amongst the crowed as if he has been doing it all of his life. Looking like he does, and with the demeanour of a quiet teddy bear, he is well used to what I call the coo coo attention givers. People who want to fuss over him.

And he loves this, but accepts a fuss shyly and with all of the dignity of Jessica Tandy receiving her Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy. 

I bought him a bandana from the Doggie Bandana stall ( not many of those about!) and he preened silently when the stall owner put it on for him . 

As I ate my lunch of jacket potato beans and coleslaw  ( with extra cheese added by kitchen helper, Malinka Le Vey with a lascivious wink) Roger sat quietly on the chair next to me watching everyone who passed. He posed for a photograph from a lady who I think had sampled too many of the gin stall’s free samples and let three small children fuss over him with chubby hands and chocolate stained fingers.

All of my Welsh terriers have had good natures

But Roger possesses something special. 

A sweetness people pick up on, 

Even though they are often meeting him for the very first time.

Trelawnyd. By Kelda

 Here are two videos about the Apple Festival today by Kelda whose mum and Dad are the infamous  Manleys! 

Apples

 

Saturday morning and I’m approaching the end of my second night shift.

It’s been a busy enough night for the thirty something support worker to be tired.

I look like a slapped arse

No sleep for me until late morning as I’m helping out Debbie ( my flower show judge) to mark the “apple” classes (?)

There is a cold nip in the air and the skies all week, have featured that weak watery blue of winter.

Horsewomen walking down Trelawnyd high street this week

An Apple press that could be used by visitors

My fellow apple pie judge  Debbie

Affable despot jason , Gill from choir, Animal helper Pat, velvet voiced Linda, Village leaders Ian and Helen, Boffin Cameron , Glam Malinka Levey, , everyone seemed to be there sipping gin and or cider or helping and talking. I sat with Roger at a table and ate my lunch/ breakfast, he was beautifully behaved and so I bought him and Mary a dog bandana each 

Humour

 

The postman only visits once a week now.

I think the Post Office think I don’t notice but I DO! 

For every Thursday or Friday I get a Couple of junk letters, a few flyers and perhaps two regular letters.

Bastards ! 

Yesterday there was a card, handwritten and stamped ( a rarity I thought) 

After 38 years I even recognised the writing, it was a card from Tracey my old psychiatric nurse mukker from the 80s. 

We have been corresponding on line for a little while now, and it’s been interesting to explore just why we were friends in the first place .

It was all down to humour. 

Most of my friends possess a good sense of humour.

Nu, is the most notable as she and perhaps Tracey possess the most overt and infectious types of humour. They light up a room with it upon entering 

And that is a skill I envy.

I say this, knowing full well that my humour is an asset, it is an icebreaker, defence mechanism, friend maker and friend. From an early age, I found it fended off bullies and helped me get by in school and at home, and although not honed in those salad days of psychiatry I learned quickly how to use it to my advantage.

People without any humour and warmth baffle me. 

Admittedly they are few and far between, but they do exist.

More commonly the humour is leeched out of them by sadness , circumstance or lack of use, but I like to think that grains of it remain, just waiting for someone or something to ignite it .

I remember a patient of mine , who was mute, laugh loudly and strongly when a bad boy in his hospital ward got knocked on the head by a vase, held by another mute patient. 

Just something in that odd moment hit that chuckle muscle and off he went like a bottle of champagne 

Little Korea

 

In an old post I bemoaned the much maligned phenomenon of the dinner party. 

It still exists I guess,  outside the old formalities, but now it’s called “ supper with friends” or some other dumbed down event epithet.

Yesterday my friend Ruth and I went to dinner with our friend Ben and his wife Sokyo in their charming cottage along the coast. Ben and Sokyo have just returned from a three year visit to Sokyo’s home in South Korea, and Ben is returning to his old job as nurse at my hospice.

It will lovely to have him back, for he has a warmth and a humour I adore and feed off. ( warmth and humour is something which has been sadly lacking in blogland recently I must say)

Ben also looks like an unmade bed,  a look I have made a lifetime perfecting, so I always feel at home in his company.

Ruth and I had planned to visit them in their trendy 1960’s Seoul a year or so ago but circumstances and events put paid to our plans.

Yesterday was catch up. A full Korean dinner with sizzling beef, and kimchi and pickles and miso soup, noodles and rice , all served in tiny bowls at a pretty table. 

The effort of the event was clear and much appreciated. 

This is what I miss by talking about the dinner party. 

I also miss talking and laughing in a group. 

I’m a good guest, I know that, but I’m a good guest because I enjoy not only talking but listening. 

Sokyo had a fascinating take on her own culture and how it has evolved so quickly over recent years but she is also an artist who has been trained in Japanese flower arranging ( something I would adore to do) 

It was a lovely afternoon and I could tell by osmosis that everyone thought the same.

Wonderful.

Tonight I’m working, so today is a mindful day. 

I’m mindful of my friends and readers in the southern states who are and have taken a battering in the storms 

Be safe 

Be kind

Growing Up

It’s raining and I’m taking the dogs over to Pen y Bont for lunch at my friends’ home soon.

The twins, of course have the run of the cottage, and photographing them is almost impossible as they resemble minnows in a fast stream. The best you can get is an arse here and a leg there.

The way of kittens.

I’ve had them nearly three months now and their personalities are starting to show. 

Weaver is bigger than her sister, more robust but emotionally is shy and is not a big one for physical affection. Bun is smaller, feisty, likes strokes when the lights are off and is playful with the terriers, though  the terriers have no idea what is play and what is kitten aggression . 

Both have allocated themselves to a small yellow chair in the back of the living room. It a spot they can survey their world safely.

The cottage looks permanently untidy as a thousand times a day these two little thugs, promenade around knocking over things, just like a motorcycle gang of the 1960s would do around Woolworths.

Roger is perplexed by their behaviour and will often shadow them from afar , looking back at me in a shocked way when another pot plant is moved or ornament battered.