Suo Gan - A Welsh Lullaby

I remember this being central to the music in the Movie EMPIRE OF THE SUN...but I didn't know it was in fact a Welsh lullaby

£12.50 a worm

Ann, my elder sister runs the Prestatyn Flower Show, and this year she organised a " Worm Charming" competition in order to publicise the main show which takes place at the end of July.

Chris' eyebrows did a Mr Spock when I informed him this morning that he was worm charming in my team (we are representing the Trelawnyd Flower Show!) and reluctantly he grabbed hold of the cheap rake we had bought for the occasion and smacked hell out of the metre square of vicarage garden lawn for the allotted half hour.


My sister Janet (below) took the plot next to ours and employed some nifty footwork in her efforts to raise the worms from their slumbers. but the little buggers remained stubbornly elusive!!!

I think the organisers forgot that we have experienced one of the driest summers for many a year, and the lawn was like a slab of concrete, but after 30 minutes banging, shouting and sweating Janet had found just two worms and we had found two!!! The other 8 teams managed a somewhat disappointing 3 worms amongst them

The adjudicator ruled in our favour! (one of Janet's worms had died of shock) and we won the prize money of 25 quid....which was a real bonus.

My Best Friend's Wedding - End Part

At my freind Nuala's wedding..... I was Julia Roberts.......Nu was Dermot Mulroney... and Chris was ( He will love this) Rupert Everett ... I have never looked better!!!!

My best friend's wedding song I say a little prayer for you

After the last blog I felt I had to be a little more ...well........gay!

I love this scene...........For my 40th Birthday Chris hired a cinema in Sheffield and showed this movie for me and a group of my friends...the lobster claws make you smile don't they?

A Cafe shock

Chris and I went to the supermarket this evening and stopped for a coffee in a cafe. As we sat with our drinks I read one of the cafe's papers and caught a sobering editorial that discussed the continual practice of the stoning of adulterers in Iran.
The above photo depicting the stoning of a woman in Iran, illustrated this newspaper piece and I must admit it has totally haunted me.
I don't want to gallop down the path of screaming at Iran's barbaric penal code. The disgust I have with practices such as stoning could not even be measured..no....what has upset me the most, is the sad realisation that man IS and always will be, consistently and depressingly cruel to his fellow man and this is all done in the name of law, religion and in the maintenance of some sort of control.
I despair sometimes

City thoughts

I caught up with my friend Hazel this evening.

She drank sparking Chardonnay

I drank some coffee and we had a good catch up sat at the kitchen table

She is toying with the fantasy of moving back to a trendy suburb of Manchester ( she lived there in the early years of her marriage) and is quite giddy at the thought of city life again......

I said all the right things during our conversation but inside I was totally upset at the thought of her moving away. (though I do realise that we are still at a fantasy level at the moment)

Hazel is my only "culture vulture" friend here in Wales. She does art house cinema better than anyone, has a critical "theatrical" mind and can "out snob" me any day.....and she is my only local link I have with my former city thinking life.....and quite selfishly I feel rather cold at the thought of her leaving.... The more animated she became at the thought of cafe society, museum visits and brick-a-brack mooching the more quieter I Know I became.....

Even though I love my life here.....I do need some pretentious time with my friends...and there are not many of them around here.

hey ho

Meetings

Yesterday seemed to be day of meetings.
The Flower Show Committee met up to discuss the August Show. Many of the established members are away on holiday the day of the show, so I have been ferreting away behind the scenes,conscripting new members and new blood for our big day.
The new members were a bit of a coup. My friend Geoff is the baby of the committee, and at 40 will have the ladies eating out of his hand soon enough ! and affable neighbours Terry and Ann will be a valuable and good natured addition to any committee as they bring with them a positivity and sense of fun.
We ironed out who was doing what for the day then finished up as there was another meeting scheduled in the village hall, concerning a proposed housing development on the outskirts of the village.
The need for affordable housing in rural areas is a contentious one, and emotions relating to the development of ten houses outside of the village envelope are running high. I personally feel that there is a lack of clarity and information about the whole initiative and have formally asked the community council for open village meetings to thrash out the worries and misconceptions of many people that live here. (we will see if this actually happens!)

Anyhow, as it turned out, the meeting was useful, but not entirely in the way that everyone expected. The woman who had undertaken a survey of the need of affordable housing by the areas population didn't turn up, so the new Chair of the community council held an open meeting to gauge the "feeling" and worries of the audience. The chair was measured and patient and his quiet authority, I think gave the villagers a forum in which to air their concerns and clarify questions in general.
I made the point that when people are not privy to transparency and information then misconceptions and worries flourish.........let us hope that everything can be a little more "open" in future.

hey ho

goslings

My friend Geoff caught me lumbering around the garden chased by the goslings.............off to the Flower Show Meeting now and then the Community Council open meeting!!!! should be fun!!!

Rick James - Super Freak

Two mugs of strong coffee and I am cleaning the kitchen like Kim Woodburn on speed......I am prancing around to this blast from MY past.......is it me but does Rick James look like a faded Donna Summer?

anyhow it certainly woke me up!

I need a snooze

I just cannot get going today. Last night I was caring for a a poorly but "awake" patient who constantly (for 12 and a half hours that is) tried to pull all her IV tubes, naso gastric tube, catheter, central line and invasive arterial lines out.
In one shift she managed to remove all but two of them!
Supervising a confused patient who is seriously ill, is a challenge to say the least and driving home, I was more weary as weary could be!
I fed the dogs, sorted out the animals and took the goslings into the front garden for their feed and promptly fell asleep on the grass ( still in my uniform)
I woke up after about half an hour after one of the farm hay wagons gave me a "beeb" as he turned the lane corner....both goslings were neatly tucked up under my chin as I lay on my side,all safe and warm.
I took the dogs for their walk, bought dog food and again fell asleep on the couch after checking my emails.....
The then had a choice...........clean the duck house out or mooch on the couch!! and for once in an absolute age I mooched on the couch and watched an old Audie Murphy movie The Guns of Fort Petticoat.
It was a cracking movie! -
"Murphy deserts the Union Army to warn former Texas neighbors of impending Indian attacks triggered by Army massacre. He overcomes initial distrust and convinces the homesteaders (all women whose men are away fighting in the Confederate Army) to take refuge in an abandoned mission. He trains them to fight and shoot in anticipation of the attack. Surrounded and outnumbered, the defenders prepare for the final assault.."
Mind you the movie' poster's tagline sums up the action much better...as it screams:
GOOD WOMEN...BAD WOMEN...BRAWLING WOMEN...BRAVE WOMEN! They were all soldiers in skirts!
Yeap I think you get the picture
off for a very strong coffee............Chris is working away again
I need a sleep

Spartacus and cauliflower overload

I am a sucker for an underdog. The stocky, deformed and most silent of the battery hens has just about won me over. I was resolved not to name any of these hens as they are earmarked for eating but this little chap, who has the look of John Mills in Ryan's Daughter , has been dealt so many bum deals at such an early age, I feel that it is only right that I give him a little bit of freedom!.......so it felt only right that he/she is called SPARTACUS

Anyhow enough of me being an overly soft puddin. I am working tonight, a shitty night to work but a computerised rota system has suddenly been introduced at work which starts the week on a Sunday not a Monday.........the long and short of all this..means that staff are working more weekends.........Chris will lock up the animals tonight but wont watch over the field I would do, With the last sighting of the fox over two weeks ago now, I hope things will be ok tonight.

My first major crop of cauliflower is ready. We have blanched and frozen a load, and tomorrow I will make soup to freeze. The slog of harvesting has started

The American President "End Titles"

I watched this movie last night and although I am not a fan of Michael Douglas..I found this bit of fluff and sweetness rather moving, thanks mainly to Annette Benning who was wonderfully sympathetic.

Loved the music too.

The Ghost hens improve

The power of home grown raspberries!
I dropped a couple outside the battery hens' house and after a few unsure steps, five of the youngsters tottered out on shaky big feet.
A small but intensely satisfying little victory

Barbarella and Hot Lips

Funny what you remember when you listen to music.
My last post (Cool and the Gang) got me to thinking about my CB days way back in 1980 (30 YEARS AGO!!!)
I shared an austin 1300 with my sister. It was a shitty brown/green colour, had furry seats and a 5 foot "whip" aerial which allowed me to use my trusty superstar 120 citizens band radio!


They were all the rage back then, and most geeks aged between 14 and 35 had one. At night the airwaves would be full of "1-9 FOR A COPY?" as saddos like me searched the ether for friends that you could chat to or even meet ( this was called rather bizarrely as an "eyeball")


Official and unofficial groups were formed by these CB'ers, and once a week the Prestatyn despots would troll down to a dive in Greenfield for a night's eyeballing complete with too much beer and individualized T shirts with our names ( or handles as they were known as) emblazoned upon them.


My handle was POCKETS! and yes even back in my teenage years I was slightly film obsessed!
as Pockets was the nickname of RED BUTTONS in the film HATARI....I was an unofficial member of the Prestatyn group of teen CB fanatics which consisted of BOGEY MAN and his sister SILVER FOX...., sisters RUSTY NUT and CHERRY BLOSSOM. GREEN GIANT, BLACK SHEEP ( a guy who was a lot older then we were and was,on reflection a bit of a sexual predator), his waspish wife SWEETIE PIE (! no comment) and various other hangers on with the dubious names such as PSYCHO, PONYTAIL , SHADY LADY (pronounced shady laaayyydeee),PEPPERMINT PATTY, SUPERTROUPER and RAMPANT BUDGIE (who was unfortunatly my massive GEEK of a cousin)....


On reflection our social group was fairly benign, but some of the younger girls could have been put a risk from the more full blooded members of the CB fraternity..I am only saying this on reflection as at the time we seemed to have lived in a safer more trusting time......nowadays I suspect that teenage girls would never be allowed the freedom that they had then ( humm mind you we never had the internet then either!!!)


Of course there were icons amid the CB community, those that had been established for months before we came on the scene! Two of these icons were the velvet tongued HOT LIPS and her sister BARBARELLA.

Every time these Talullah Bankhead sounding sex pots came on for a "copy" there was always a clamouring from the more desperate men who had been lying in wait for a hopeful chat or eyeball..... On the radio, I guess , like the internet the imagination can run wild!and with deep sexy and breathless voices even I would imagine that Hotlips and Barbarella ( Babs to her close friends!) were stunning blondes with legs up to their armpits.


LOL..I should have known better.....both girls lived "over the tracks" in Prestatyn and one fellow CB'er one day informed me that Bab's glamorous job as a beauty "technician" was in fact a part time job in a pet groomers..........when we all finally got to meet these two celebrities of the airwaves, we were slightly underwhelmed by the sight of a pair of grossly overweight, heavily made up teenage girls in grey sweat shirts with the words BABS and HOTLIPS undulating over their chests.

The craze lasted a year or so. We teenagers grew up and started work and University.... but it was fun when it lasted