Message left on village Facebook page this morning, it amused me
“ Folks
There will be a drone flying over the school and possibly the hall on Saturday Morning. We are checking the condition of the roof. If you are sunbathing in the garden before 9:00 am please wear a rainbow towel to show support for the NHS
I have a four hour window, so the dogs have been walked early and with the cottage windows open to the sunny frost, I am sitting on vigil with homemade sourdough eggy bread and my bucket of coffee.
It’s Friday isn’t it?
Oh yes......I’ve got an uncharacteristically busy day.
Desk delivery this morning , then a car park coffee with Chic Eleanor at lunchtime “ Darling John I may even treat myself to a very naughty donut!” Eleanor texted excitedly.
This afternoon, it’s a team meeting at work c/o zoom which probably will be a bit of a bunfight .
My role at the hospice will change slightly soon as I will be covering our community Hospice @ Home initiative as well as some time in the in patients department.
The staff meeting was my idea.
Tonight is the The Big Gay Quiz .....if I can set up my desk, that’s where I will quiz from
Bluebells have featured often in the background of my life.
My garden has 6 bunches of Bluebells, one lovingly transferred from my previous home in Sheffield, a plant stolen from the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire over 18 years ago.
In my kitchen stands proud a large collection of Art Deco Burleigh Ware pottery of varying designs.
My favourite is, of course , Bluebell ...a few splashes of blue, black and green, beautifully simple and beautifully pleasing.
My car is called Bluebell and she stands for everything positive at a time in my life I had very little and as a child one of my favourite place to play was in Bluebell wood , a small copse of trees located on the hillside between Prestatyn and Gronant. .
My grandparents are buried near the same Bluebell Wood, their headstone facing their beloved Liverpool.
Every Early May I would often go to Bodnant Gardens as the Bluebells would be out and old readers of
Going Gently May remember The last Mabel Post with a visit to the wonderful Bluebell Wood
The first painting my husband and I bought together was a gentle Victorian watercolour of a Bluebell wood . I miss it so. I miss it because it is so beautiful and subtle and understated
He took it when he left and I miss looking at it
Last year I split a large garden knot of Bluebells from my garden and planted it in the corner of the old graveyard. This year I will check if it has been taken
And started a new colony of gentle blue just opposite to the cottage windows
I couldn’t quite believe the blue of the sky this afternoon. The temperature and feeling around the village was springlike and after a short sleep Mary and I went out to post letters.
Today is the first day of Bridget’s foodbank and the telephone box on Well Street was filled
The younger children are back in school and their squeals at playtime made Trelawnyd come alive ago
The chapel and Christine and Bryn’s old house is up for sale.
It doesn’t look as though it was originally built in 1700.
Once a corn and wheat market hall , then later a chapel, I wonder what it’s next resurrection will be
I’m sorry that many of you may not be able to access it, given where you are in the world. But for the ones that can....it is a little gem of a broadcast.
Start your listen at 18.43 minutes in.
You want to listen to the story of a single mom in 1980s mid America
It is the height of the aids pandemic and Ruth Corker Burks finds Jimmy a patient dying of AIDS in a local hospital.
He is fast approaching death and is shunned by his family and the nursing staff.
Only she in a wonderfully moving act of compassion enters his room and his last moments of life.
I listened to this podcast on the way to work last night and had to stop the car for a few moments to process the power of it..
In one way he was the son I never had and as my first dog he broke my heart more than any animal had a right to. I was sent the photograph this morning.
And I felt emotional at the kitchen table when I saw it, right in the middle of an entertaining and stimulating three hour zoom lecture titled “ Wind in Film”
I was so glad that during one discussion group no one seemed heard me fart very loudly as I forced out a cough..having said my box went green.......so they might have done....
A Freudian slip, perhaps given the lecture subject.
I very much enjoyed the analysis of the clips we watched together
I do so miss talking about film with people who see more than just basic entertainment
It sounds snobby
But I do.
Anyhow I’m doing an extra night shift tonight to cover sickness and as we are quiet I may get the opportunity to catch up with film studies homework.
Hattie has booked Mary in for a cuddle this afternoon.
I think I will have avocado and egg on toast for a late brunch
The mysterious “P” in my last post commentated thus
“ Just wondering if any Trelawnyd online meetings can be as entertaining ala Handforth Parish Council and Jackie Weaver. John?”
Well P, first let me explain the above video for those not aware of it. This video is part of a local council meeting in the North of England where old beefs and fall outs between the counsellors came to a head when a local council official , the placid and wonderfully patient Jackie Weaver was sent in to trouble shoot the Egos.
In Wales, we in the villages of Gwaenysgor & Trelawnyd have an officially elected Community Council which are responsible for generally local and small scale affairs. I was part of this council a few years ago now, when the village was “ run” predominantly by a phalanx of middle aged, white heterosexual men.
My appointment was a small step towards diversity back then and today I am glad to say that there are several women and younger men on the committee, but back then there was only one delightful troublemaker amid the serious old school members.
The troublemaker was a character I used to blog about a lot in the early days of Going Gently , and that was the Red Faced Welsh Farmer.
The RFWF could be described thus
“ Think of the classic actor Robert Newton in full pirate voice aka Long John Silver but dressed in an ancient tweed hat, grubby tweed jacket and cardigan and driving an old red Land Rover, with the driver’s window forever open”
He looked and sounded every inch a farmer pretending to be a pirate.
Now the RFWF was famous for his temper and his no nonsense approach to everything village based. If he liked you , he would bend over backward to help you in anything you asked of him and after a shaky start ( we had a row over a large blue water butt of all things) he proved a godsend when I needed an expert hand constructing my pig pens and eventually taking them to be slaughtered.
But if he didn’t like you,( and he would be first to say that there were several on the then community council committee he hated) he was a right old bugger and at every meeting amid the boring crap of building requests and road sign issues, he would challenge the group decision making with points of order, mischievous shenanigans, secret taping of discussions and challenges to the ineffective clerk who, I am sure had to take a Valium before each meeting in order to cope.
It was great fun watching him take the floor. Throw out his conspiracy theories and shout and bellow over his deafness which made things even more complicated and much more entertaining.
I now realise that I adored the old pirate’s chutzpah and his devilment and his cunning and when he died, I wasn’t surprised that the huge marble church at Bodelwyddan was filled to standing room by hundreds of Welsh farmer types in their black funeral coats standing shoulder to shoulder.
