The Curious case of Benjamin Bum-ache

It has been a week of cinema. Tonight we went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). I wasn't too bothered about seeing it, after all I remembered that it was three hours long and starred Brad Pitt! But I must admit I rather liked this overlong tale of melancholic whimsy.
I bet that director David Fincher loved one of my favourite films Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A very Long Engagement), as Benjamin Button has all the visual magic and cinematic style of the French fantasy film. Indeed the cinematography is the best bit of the movie, and every shot is framed and planned within an inch of its life.
The film is literally an exploration of kismet and fate. The acting is all pretty average (despite the Oscar nominations), but I must admit I did like the all too brief appearance by Tilda Swinton as a sad English diplomat's wife!
All in all I gave it an 8/10

I have been a bit fed up today as the car has had a cracked windscreen, our electricity bill standing order has doubled and the Albert's vet bill is due to be paid!.......too many bills in Febuary I feel....especially as the car is due its MOT and the dogs are due their inoculations.
Chris has been a sweetie and has calmed me down nicely.

Chris' friend from his work has called down this afternoon and has taken three of the buff chicks to augment her hen house which was nice. Rogo and Stanley somehow both escaped their enclosures at the same time soon after and have been fighting terribly. I managed to separate them , but both were battered and bloody when they stalked back to their own houses.
....boys will be boys.......

Learning difficulties

Well, it is unanimous! Apparently I have let myself "go".......this seems to be the consensus of most of my friends and family! Jo, Chris' colleague from work had a look at the blog the other day and thought I looked like someone with "learning difficulties!!" Tonight I picked Chris up from the station and as I got out of the car to get our tea from the chip shop, I caught him laughing at my state of dress!
I was wearing my allotment clothes- old combat pants, dirty jumper, trouser legs tucked into socks (I had taken my wellies off to drive) and had a half chewed pair of crocs on! My hair was uncombed ( as it has been all week) and I am sure there was a bit of uneaten breakfast still in my beard...
"You look like a retard!" Chris cheerfully told me.
Anyhow, I have hoed the four vegetable plots today, which has been a backbreaking job, and everything is ready now for the spring planting. My potatoes are set up in the shed for chitting (below pic). and most of the seeds are ready for the off.
You can just see William in the far left of the photo. He spent the day with me, but unlike the Scotties he had to be tied up at all times. The poor lad exhausted himself totally, just watching an ambling hen or the pigs in the distance

A surreal moment

Oh I almost forgot....I went to the hospice today to sign some paperwork before being able to start bank shifts there.....as I was waiting at reception I was joined by a lady who was a patient. We struck up conversation about animals ( I was in wellies and looking pretty farmer-ish)

Anyhow after telling her about the hens and the turkeys and the pigs...she suddenly turned to me and asked if I would like a tortoise!........

This caught me unawares so I simply said yes...........!....she now has our telephone number.....

Indulgence, real politicians and field visitors

Chris isn't home tonight. He is at some conference or other in Scotland, so I have the cottage to myself, and have had an indulgent afternoon and evening. Indulging myself is easy and simple. I have cleaned the cottage from top to bottom and am relaxing in the neatness, stillness and order only afforded by Chris being away!
I have eaten a large plate of sausages in front of "Cops" (Chris hates cheap American "trailer trash" tv and does not let me watch it on an evening but I do love the occasional "Video Justice", "Judge Judy" and "World's Most Amazing Videos"), I have had a long bath,caught up with phone calls (Nu) ,drank a load of diet coke and am now writing my blog half watching "House Doctor"......I am so easily pleased

Today I wanted to write something about the sad death of David Cameron's son Ivan. Yesterday I listened to LBC as I was chopping down the remainder of the far hedge, and the soundbites of support for the Cameron family from MPs from all political parties, I found quite moving and ever so slightly surprising.

I am healthily cynical about politicians, I always have been, but the measured,genuine and eloquent statements from the likes of Gordon Brown,William Hague and especially Vince Cable did literally made me stop what I was doing. It was a refreshing change to realise that a more human aspect of Westminster does exist!

The pigs previous ower called in today to give me and them the once over! She also brought me over the outstanding paperwork, which I need to send off as soon as possible. Gladys and Nora were galloping around after their football when she arrived which satisfied me ( and tickled her). They look very happy in their new enclosure she said....

As we were pig watching another lady arrived to pick up one of the adolescent Buff cockerels. She is a new-ish hen owner and couldn't quite believe how pretty the golden buffs actually are. I have only one cockerel to find a home for now. I am so pleased the two boys have gone to good homes.

Gran Torino

I bet that Clint Eastwood loved the John Wayne swansong movie True Grit (1969) and in many ways his character in Gran Torino (the sonofabitch racist Walt Kowalski) does resemble Wayne's Marshall Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn. Both men are way past their sell by dates, both have trouble relating to the rapidly changing worlds they now inhabit, and both have a deep routed sense of morality and tradition.
And like Wayne's likable rogue, Eastwood dominates the screen as the bad tempered bigot with a heart of , well if not gold, a slightly tarnished silver.
The story is not rocket science. Korean vet Kowalski reluctantly becomes involved with his neighbours ( a Hmong family) who defies a local Asian gang. Unable to deal with his own demons and his faulty relationships with his own grown up sons, the old man redeems himself by acting as a surrogate father to the teenage Thao (Bee Vang) and his sassy sister Sue (the excellent Ahney Her) and in a homage to his old Harry Callahan days, acts as the family's vigilante protector.
Eastwood is wonderful as the growling old git, and his performance is a fitting , possible Oscar worthy end to his long career ( Eastwood is 78 after all!!), but the film itself is let down a little by a rather flat performance of Bee Vang as the son he never really had. The boy actor just doesn't have the sufficient range to mirror Eastwood's barnstorming acting!
I must also add that Christopher Carley also gave a cracking performance as the young family priest, who is convinced ( wrongly) that Kowalski has a terribly dark and sordid past!
7/10

Football Crazy

The cottage is a madhouse! I am typing this as I wait for the little man to read our electricity meter. The Welsh terriers and Albert ( who is now almost walking without his usual limp) are watching a slightly hysterical Maddie and George fighting energetically over a football. The Scotties have been racing around like this for the past hour or so, after neighbour Joanne called around with a present of two balls for the pigs!!

Joanne was sure she had read that pigs like balls, and very kindly had swiped her son's "excess" footballs to drop off for Gladys and Nora.

I took one of the balls to the pig enclosure earlier, but the girls left it well alone as they seemed more interested in the pig food scattered in the grass. Mind you when I was looking out of the bedroom widow a bit later, I caught Nora angrily chasing around after it on stubby fat trotters! Even the farmer who had been racing up and down the lane in the muck spreader all morning stopped to watch her!

The day has been incredibly cold. I have repaired the rest of the hen enclosure netting, and cleared the field borders of debris and branches, but it has been too chilly to do anything else. The bantams are doing ok, and their numbers seem all present and correct. Rogo has accepted the whole 10 of them and seems to be watching over them all very well. The ducks have started to lay eggs again too!. I am starting to collect them to fill the incubator again

Off to see Gran Torino (2008) tonight

Having another field day

Well after the glitz and glamour of the Oscars, it is back to wellie wearing normality today! This morning I have re painted the pig shed ( do you like the matching draft curtain?) and it has been a somewhat difficult job because of a slightly over active pig.
Norma is the largest and most confident pig. She also seems to have a fetish for sucking and biting wellington boots, a habit which is slightly irritating when you are painting a shed in her enclosure. Gladys on the other hand is the sweetie of the two. Shy and more oriental looking, she ambled up to me from time to time to squint directly up into my face, as if to work out exactly who I was. Satisfied I was a safe bet, she then ambled off grunting loudly to herself.
I think both girls are slightly underweight for their size (reading about these pigs reinforces how difficult it actually is to maintain their ideal weight), but by the number of small parcels of fruit, and bread left on the cottage wall by interested neighbours, I have a feeling that they will be built up nicely in no time)
This afternoon I have started the huge job of repairing the rabbit damage to the poultry fencing. The bantams have totally outgrow their run now, so I have taken a chance and have let them out with Rogo and the other young hens. The tiny speckled bantams are lovely characters and quite happily let me catch them to worm. They are the size of a large blackbird, so are ripe for chicken bullying (more common than you may think)....I will try and keep a motherly eye on them
When I was repairing the duck fencing, I felt as though I was playing what's the time Mr Wolf! with Boris, as every time I sat up after working he was literally millimetres away, breathing heavily like a dirty old man and rubbed his chest against the back of my coat in a rather suggestive way!.
In actual fact, he was acting like a dirty old man, cos minutes later he cornered the now responsive Gloria, and shagged her like a good 'un!
Spring is definitely in the air!

I made a ton of savory and sweet pancakes for tea.....is there no end to my talents?

IN MEMORIAM 2009

Last night I kept up with the news of the academy awards by constanting ordering all the nurses' bloods on the computer on Intensive Care!!! As I was doing so, I could sneak a quick look at the BBC Oscar update!
By 4 am one doctor was getting impatient for a particular form..and I had to yell at him that I was waiting for the Winslet result and he would have to wait!!
Chris is ballroom dancing again tonight with Janet, so I have had an emotional romp watching memoriams from the academy awards!!! they always make me cry!!!!

Why I like Kate Winslet

I do like Kate Winslet. I have always liked her since I saw her portrayal of the pouting Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility over fourteen years ago now!
There is something quite robust and likable about Winslet. She has all the essentially nice qualities possessed by a middle class public school girl. She is a self depreciating,fiercely intelligent,fun loving, ever-so-jolly, spirit that won the war character, who looks absolutely fab in a designer gown. She likes a drink, does her own shopping and I always think that she would be able to roll her sleeves up in a crisis.
Kate Winslet is also a fine actor, she deserved Yesterday's Oscar for The Reader, indeed she should have won the statuette for the incredibly moving Finding Neverland in (2004) and the bleak version of Little Children in (2006).
Yesterday it was her turn to receive the plaudits, and in characteristic style she bounced a few "Thank yous!"around before asking her dad to whistle at her so she could find him the crowded auditorium. It was a nice, relaxed and obviously well thought out touch of normality.......

Gomorrah

I was excited at the prospect in watching the Italian film Gomorra (2008), as every single review seemed to rave about this violent, mafia story set amongst the underclass of Naples, but I was terribly disappointed by the whole thing.

Ok, the story of the "lower levels" in Mafia life (grubby drug addict thugs) does seem a long way from the stereotypes seen in the Godfather which is refreshing, and the energy of the film does mirror the innovative Cidade de Deus (City of God) but generally I found the documentary style of Gomorra and the lack of empathy or even interest in the characters and their lives somewhat distancing.

If an audience is unable to engage with the people they see on the screen, well then you might as well walk out and buy yourself a coffee!

6/10

Working tonight

Gladys

To answer Steven...Auntie Glad is not a blood relative, but she is somewhat of a local celebrity in the village. A diminutive powerhouse of energy she is the widow of "Bob the railway" who lives in the old private school house in Trelawnyd. She caters for the entire Male voice choir (scones, tea in mugs for the men), helps run our Flower show ( selling thousands of raffle tickets by marching around every village in the district, knocking on doors!) and supports every single social/community event without hesitation.
When I opened up the allotment last year, and despite the torrential rain, she marshalled the old ladies of the village and made her way down to the field to support the event....