Do I shit In The Woods?

I’m pricing up skips ( dumpsters to you Americans) 

The smallest is 75£ which I think is an Ok price.

I need to ask Trefor if I can park it in his drive for when the Bathroom guy comes on Tuesday but that may not be a wise move . Unattended skips tend to be filled by all and sundry especially when they are located somewhere you can’t keep an eye on them.

I do enough for charity me thinks.

The one question I’ve not asked Bathroom Man yet, is how long am I going to be without a toilet.

Now unlike most dwellings nowadays I have only one functioning toilet. Now if this was the 1970s this would be a perfectly reasonable state of affairs but in the glorious 2020s , there is an expectation on many levels which expects that one will have at least one en suite in your property.

I haven’t ……

So I threw the quandary  out to my fellow night workers

“Shit in a bucket” Steve suggested

“ And how does someone my size even sit on a bucket let alone shit in one ?” I said 

“You could hover ?” Diane offered

I looked sceptical 

“ With my hips?”

“True” she agreed without laughing.

“ Borrow a commode from work? “ she added

“ I couldn’t get the legs in the car” I told her ( I had already measured them)

We bandied around various ideas from knocking on neighbours’ doors to squatting in my old field.

Suffice to say, I am very much a product of my time and the thought of not having a good sit down poo fills me with dread. 

I’ve even priced up a “ robust” camping toilet on Amazon. Which is a doable 28£ ! ( with toilet paper hanger) or the cheaper kamper Khazi which surprisingly doesn’t seem to have a weight limit

And one of the things on my bucket list is to go camping 

I must be mad 

Blognaling

Some people don’t get that Going Gently is a journal as well as being a blog.  

A Jourog or Blognal 

Call it what you wish.

As a journal I often share personal feelings and thoughts predominantly ( but not always) about my own life. Something that often elicits comments of support and sympathy but also of advice and criticism. 

This, is perhaps to be expected I guess, even if questions are seldom put out for the audience to give their thruppenny bits at.

What most people don’t get is that Blognals are cathartic  pieces really. They are there purely to process feelings and thoughts and events and are not really there to illicit comments

This is certainly true when it comes to sympathy

As it may seem to some that blogging is really about.

Attention seeking.

Now I’m going to shoot myself in the foot here , as of course blognaling is all about attention seeking. But it really is about attention seeking in the right way. 

I don’t want to hear that I’m a lovely person, or a saint or fucking Mother Theresa without the tea towel but I do like to hear that I’ve written something interesting , or well , or which has moved someone or made them laugh. 

I want one without the other 

And that isn’t how the internet works.

I get that.

I know of bloggers who are more economical with self disclosure for the very reasons I’ve outlined above.

Others have always been careful with what they post.

I am not. If I feel it, or I need to process it, I write it and obviously do from one perspective

Who knows if there is a right or wrong way of doing things.

The internet allows for people to react to the written word in a way that they would never do to anyone’s spoken ones face to face.

It also allows people to withhold sympathy (when it is perhaps needed) in the perception that you’ve had too much on line…..this is intriguing, as it would never happen in real life 

…..but that, as they say, is another story

Froth On Your Hot Chocolate

Velvet voiced Linda had told me there was a woodpecker present in the trees around the village pond last week but I only got to hear him hammer today. 

I think my early morning dawn chorus sojourn has turned me into everything birds 

I’m on nights until Monday morning. 

And so we all went to bed for an hour at 1pm and wasted the afternoon by sleeping in until 5.30. 

I cooked a prawn stir fry and walked the girls 

And I’m writing this , in my uniform , coffee in hand.

The nice bit of the day has been a trio of communications .

A friend’s carefully written and honest email; a message from a faraway friend suggesting lunch and a kind mega early birthday card with a gift of a crisp ten pound note in it.

Contacts from friends are always nice but when you are single they can be the real froth on your hot chocolate so to speak.

Flintshire county council sent me a 150 £ rebate too, to help with my fuel bills 

That was a nice gesture too

I can hear the woodpecker again, as I get ready to leave.

A Day In Two Halves

 It’s been a day of two halves . 

The dawn chorus 

Then The Play That Went Wrong at Theatr Clwyd.

Both enjoyable for completely different reasons .

I said to my sister Janet, on the way home tonight , that in this my 60th year 

I’m going to do all the things I’ve never done before as well as all of the things I like to do too

If that makes sense .

Still on my bucket list for this year

Go camping in a tent

Go to a European city  mini break with my old girlfriend Jane,

Driving through Ireland to Nu’s cottage,

A holiday break abroad totally alone,

Dance in public

Start my counselling course

Learn a totally new skill 

Walk up Snowdon 

I’ve booked five already…..

Hey ho

Birdsong

 I went on a dawn walk this morning. 

A first for me.

I saw it advertised in Holywell when I popped into Tesco

“ Dawn Walk With A Twitcher - birdsong explained”

The meeting place was in Caerwys before 5 am 

I was the last to arrive.

There was ten of us, all told, led by a quietly spoken man in his sixties called Eifion.

We were led down a bridle path by torch light and from time we’d stop to have a brief lecture 

It was an interesting and somewhat cold early morning

But an invigorating one

The robins and blackbirds and the more rare thrush, were the first on the performance with other birds such as wrens, wood pigeons  and warblers joining in.

The likes of the tits and the finches usually only start to sing when dawn has broken.

Apparently it is usually the male birds that call and at times the sound was amazingly loud

One woman in the group had a good cry at the experience and kept apologising for it.

I liked the feeling of being anonymous in the pre dawn gloom

And felt a little exposed when the day finally  lifted the dark to a translucent blue.

I’m off to meet a friend for lunch shortly.

They are going into hospital soon and are in need of a bit of calm

It’s sunny but still cool and I can see Islwyn pottering around the pony field fixing the gates

He’s like me. 

He likes to be needed.

Gay Wizards

 I disliked the Harry Potter film franchise finding it all somewhat tiresome  but I liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie , which is a prequel of sorts.

I didn’t enjoy or understand the second film in the Beast trilogy but sort of got to grips with the third-  tonight’s movie fantastic Beasts The Secrets Of Dumbledore 

I say sort of ……

The action bits were exciting , I like the Queenie and Jacob characters too but over all it is 

Jude Law who made it for me as he makes for a rather tasty gay bear dad wizard, what with his lovely beard and wide selection of hand knitted tank tops. 

“ John Gray!!!!”

I bought a nice fish dish yesterday. I’ve put my smaller money plants and cactus in it

Albert has recently amused himself by knocking the plants onto the floor

I think it’s a case of transference because Mary is chasing him a little more over mistaken jealousy over the rubber chicken

I photographed the dish 

Preempting my post of today, 

yes it’s been a slow week

 I’ve been sat in a waiting room for 28 minutes.

I’m precise because there is one of those digital clocks on the receptionist’s desk

And this is the third waiting room I’ve been in this morning and it’s only 11.23

The hospital has WiFi thank god , but not enough to stream The Walking Dead

That’s probably a godsend as zombies can be noisy when you’ve forgotten your headphones.

I’ve not seen a doctor yet, just a series of technicians . 

The ultrasound woman was a bit of a pig, so much so, I asked her if she was having a bad day

“ Staffing is dire “ she moaned behind her mask.

The phlebotomist was more sanguine she told me she was off at one and was going to Sainsbury’s to buy her daughter a birthday gift. 

Tu’s range of girls dresses are lovely and very reasonable apparently 

It took her four goes and two arms to get a sample.

I don’t want to be here

Heartstopper

A friend’s daughter told me I should be watching Heartstopper on Netflix. 

“ You’ll love it” she told me

I looked it up. 

Based on a graphic novels by Alice Oseman, it is a coming of age tv series about the lives to two teen age boys Nick and Charlie and it has a wholesome, innocent but very modern look on teenage first love.

I joined Netflix in order to watch it and I must admit it is incredibly sweet , and angst and all consuming the way love always is when you are fifteen.

Oh how I wish we had Heartstopper when I was a boy.

I’ve had a paperwork morning. I’ve sorted out travel insurance, logs, vets appointments, urology appointments , banking, theatre tickets and my counselling course, and now I’m just organising some batch cooing.

My new food bible is Slimming Eats by Siogban Wightman who is a blogger favourite of mine.

I’ve decided to get my eating under control by always cooking something flavoursome and in quantities that can be frozen as well as eaten. Therefore anything I’m tempted to eat in the house will always be homemade, slimming, tasty and easy to get hold of. 

Tonight it’s lamp balti curry with cauliflower special rice.

Old Trefor is ok today btw.

Little Bathroom man has just messaged , he hopes to start work next week.

Lamb balti and cauliflower rice

CODA

CODA (child of deaf parents) is a nice movie 

It’s not a great one, but it’s a sentimentally sweet one, the kind you enjoy of a Sunday afternoon when you have nothing to do. 

The story is a simple one. 

Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing person in her hard working fishing family. When the family business is threatened she is torn between supporting them or going to college to study singing.

It’s an appealing coming-of-age story with a lovely performance by the doe eyed Jones,and if you want a blub, just enjoy Ruby’s audition into Berklee where she signs and sings a version of Both Sides Now quite beautifully .

I was sobbing like a real man when there was a knock at the kitchen window. It was Mrs Trellis with Blue She had met up with old Trefor down the lane who had taken a bit of a turn . 

“can you come?” She looked worried 

We all piled into Bluebell 

In his late nineties , it had seemed that Trefor had walked a little too far on his daily sabbatical and was a little shaky stood at Graham’s field when we got to him and it didn’t take long to get him back home with a beef dinner on hand .

I checked him again at tea time and will do so again tomorrow morning

When I was pottering later Lywenna stopped briefly. She is the widow of Gentleman Farmer Ralph. She told me she was in the process of picking out her husband’s headstone and our eyes met briefly, in a silent acknowledgment of just how hard a job it was for her.

Lywenna has a quietness and wonderful  dignity about her, 

I’ve always envied that 

It’s been a nice day

Spring Garden

My sister arrived early on and licked the front garden into shape.

I videoed the result and have mooched around it for most of the morning. If my new neighbours are out in their back garden I try not to be around in mine, for all I seem to hear is an elderly Yorkshire terrier’s incessantly yapping followed with their incessant bellows of “ Shut up Charlie” 

It’s all a bit common.

Speaking of common I’ve just braved Tescos in Prestatyn 

Which can be a trial in itself if you aren’t in the mood for badly behaved kids and their sports wearing parents.

I soothed my nerves with a mooch around the home department of TK Max and bought a rug, and some accessories for the new bathroom.

Charlie was at full hysterical yapping stretch when I got home so I closed up the back of the cottage and opened up the front to the sun.

Hopefully he’ll have a Stroke soon 

( I only mean that a little )

The sea pinks

It’s still glorious here.

The honeysuckle which Janet so fervently cut back last year has formed the front door in dark green healthy leaves in which the hedge sparrows from the lane are presently chattering.

The sea pinks in the basket by the door have finally bloomed and are thriving in their mid air beach.

I’m going to make butter and bread and a seafood paella later.

I’ve watered the houseplants using the garden toucan and the front room now feels a little humid in the direct sunshine