....as I wait......

I am sat at the kitchen table waiting for a delivery man to drop off some vital computer equipment for Chris....of course no time can be specified, given the Christmas deadlines....so I have to be around, and available all day....

There is an upside to all this....for as  I  wait here...I have been making lists for the "Christmas dinner" shop we are embarking on this evening......In between the planning of the sherry trifle and the reviewing of a recipe for Braised Red Cabbage ( thanks Pat), I have had time to notice

those grubby little marks around the kitchen that have always been previous neglected.....namely the dog snot on the back door ,the dribbles of kittikat down the side of the fridge and that lump of something unmentionable under the sofa.....

Not being content just to look at these little badges of pet ownership, I have got off my arse and scrubbed the offending areas clean.......so much so....that the kitchen is actually starting to look......er.....well....... habitable......

A first for me, I can tell you.

 

Most of the dogs have stalked off for a sleep, all that is except Mabel who feigning slumbers is now keeping one eye open to see what  I would start scrubbing next......she closed both eyes firmly when I found myself muttering in true Joan Crawford style 

"Its not you I'm mad at...I'm mad at the dirt"

Being a typical bulldog, she cannot cope with any bad feeling!

Anyway, it's 1.10pm and still there is no sign of Mr Delivery Man.....all visible signs of dog snot have now been removed from the kitchen and I have completed at least three " to do" lists on the back of three envelopes.........I am confident that most Christmas day boxes have now been ticked...

My two sisters and their husbands are all coming for Christmas dinner here.....Non of us really feel like celebrating but the effort has to be made to mark the day .....tomorrow I am going down to B& Q to buy some cheap as chips Christmas lights....with the aim of transforming something like this

into something like THIS

This being......Nigella's twinkling Kitchen....

Hopefully the effect with raise a few , well needed smiles!!!!!!

Hello?

Message Left on the Answerphone this afternoon

This is a transcription in it's entirety

"I have a little something ready for you!" rasped the breathless voice.......".I will be in alllllllll day!...pop round if you're free!!!!"

That was it!

A secret admirer...organising a bit of rural extramarital rumpy pumpy perhaps?

Naw....... Auntie Glad has just baked me a load of mince pies!

Sherlock Holmes- A Game Of Shadows

A tough, sexy Watson and a vulnerable Holmes

Now first let me say that I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes.....Basil Rathbone....Benedick Cumberbatch.....Jeremy Brett........I have enjoyed every one of the sleuth's reincarnations both on the big screen and on tv....and even though Guy Richie's first foray into the genre (The slightly zany

Sherlock Holmes 2009) was somewhat superhero-ish, I must admit, it was a most enjoyable romp of a movie.

Richie's sequel is very much more of the same.........overly stylised , and cinematically complicated...the movie uses GCI and slow motion visual tricks to highlight Holmes' lightning intellect....so much so, that the audience is whisked away from the "normality" of Baker Street and Victorian London literally within seconds of the opening credits being rolled......

This film is a totally different take on the Conan Doyle's hero...

Robert Downey Jr. makes for a charismatic and rather dangerous Holmes...He is not the asburger loner portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch (my personal favourite Holmes) nor is he a calculating Jeremy Brett, posh toff......he is, in fact, a drug addled,brittle, hyperactive child genius...who relies more on his cool as a cucumber best friend Dr Watson (Jude Law) than ever he did in the original novels

Both actors make the characters their own.... Downey is likable and just vulnerable enough to be always sympathetic....and Law oozes a smart sexiness and toughness which keeps him on level pegging status with Downey on screen.....

Their partnership works beautifully.....

Having said all this, both lead performances are almost eclipsed by Jarred Harris's menacing performance as Professor Moriarty....he makes for a cracking baddie........a necessary foil for Holme's seemingly invincible hero..

Stephen Fry does a nice comic turn as Sherlock's brother Mycroft and Noomi Replace ( the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) even turns up as a Gypsy fortune teller...... it's all very silly, it's all very showy.... and it's all great fun.....

A new Sherlock Holmes franchise continues

Stephen Fry as Mycroft

War Horse

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes film this evening....and a cracking romp it was too!
I shall give a review of it tomorrow...but I will leave you with this trailer for the forthcoming Spielberg weep fest WAR HORSE, which proceeded the main feature this evening.
I can honestly say that this is the only trailer that has actually brought me to tears (I lasted until the 53rd second when the look on that horse's face literally finished me off)......Bugger alone knows what will happen when I eventually see the film.........
Watch and weep....... Spielberg is a master

"Oh, I wish I was Good With me hands"

Oh I wish I was good with me hands......
(No it's not the start of a Pam Ayres poem by the way)

I  really envy people which have such talents...

Today Jackie our ever-cheerful dog groomer Transformed this

Into THIS!

and did so effortlessly and with some considerable skill!

As she worked, I pottered around the cottage like some reject presenter from Blue Peter

I made a simple Christmas wreath for the doorway

and spent a somewhat irritating hour or so making paper chains for the living room .......
(Occupational therapy for the mentally bewildered!)

The red faced farmer made me laugh when I told him what I had been doing.....

"Not a job for a man!" he bellowed cheerfully as he drove off down the lane!!!!!

so Ronery?

I am having a moment to dry myself off.......

I don't know exactly where is wetter..... INside the cottage or OUTside in the rain?

All I do know, it that I needed to employ the "spirit that won the war" kind of mentality and stop bellyaching and start cleaning and drying.

Apart from the now post industrial looking concrete floor, the kitchen now looks almost human again. A neighbour Arfon, hearing about our misfortune brought around a dehumidifier this morning, and with the help of a few mobile heaters, the place is habitable once again.

Pat B, my unofficial animal helper called around too, with a festive cake (complete with bow) and Carys, who is one of my egg customers also battled the rain to deliver a small Christmas gift.... it is these little tokens of kindness that really lifts the spirits..........Even Mrs "Pen-y-cefn" Jones, who is well into her eighties and who always insists on referring to me as "Mr Gray" sent a generous donation for the Motor Neurone Disease association after she heard about my brother.......

Anyhow I need to go and get changed......I may even make an effort and go and have a bath.....

I need to make sure that I make more of an effort with my personal grooming....

Especially given the fact that the only person I know with worse dress sense and a more unforgiving haircut died today!

Kim Jong il

John looking ill

"Ho Ho, Bleeding Ho"

I was reminded of this old joke today

"Well, it was during the famous Johnstown flood. The dam broke and when the water hit our house it knocked it right off the foundation. Grandma got on the dining room table and floated out safely."
"How about you?"
"Me? I accompanied her on the piano!"

 

Boom Boom!

I flooded the kitchen today.

It was a case of too much on my mind and lots of jobs to do.

I started to wash up the dishes. Collected the dogs and put them into the car. Made sure I had found some Christmas Cards to deliver and went off blissfully unaware I had left the kitchen sink tap running full pelt.

I returned home an hour later, to find an apoplectic Chris standing in two inches of water amid the wreckage of the kitchen...he was late for Church and was surrounded by a collection of sodden towels and the strangely odd spectacle of the lino floating gently on top of a small lake...like a low . flat water bed.

I had promised to go with Chris to the Church Christmas Lunch, after the morning service, so had to  work like a Trojan  to rip up the lino and remove 26 loads of water with the carpet cleaner!.Luckily the water had only infiltrated 2 to 3 inches into the lounge (originally Chris had bellowed that the flood had covered half of the living room!!!)..so apart from the kitchen looking remarkably like the floor of the pig hut.....we were fairly lucky.......

Oh I could have done without all this today.

As it turned out, the Christmas lunch at the village pub was rather a jolly affair...A couple of large Pinot's, a nice meal and the rector and organist being  on "good form" helped a great deal...... and for the first time since my brother died, I actually found myself  enjoying our one and only Christmas "do".

Having said that........the kitchen still looked like a cess pit when we returned home

The Ghost Of Christmas Past

I think I have only ever had one naff Christmas

It was in 1990 when I was a student nurse working on an acute medical ward.

I completed the early shift on Christmas day with a miserable hangover ( and with a menopausal Dutch staff nurse in charge).......then went home, fed my cats...piled up all of the family gifts into my car and set off from Sheffield to drive the two hours back to wales.....full of Happy Christmas feelings and good will to most men!

Only my car wouldn't start!

It was cold

It was miserable

It was dark

I was alone...

and to cap it all..... I had no food in the house

Christmas dinner, as it turned out, was two individual pork pies and a mars bar bought from the 24 hour garage

and when I turned on my battered old portable tv (in my luxurious student pad living room complete with deckchair seating)........fuck all happened.........

I remember crying  in my deckchair , whilst drinking the dregs from a bottle of gin and listening to radio 4

Thank goodness things before and after 1990 have been generally more festive, even though I have often worked!!

So come on everyone.... give me your best (WORST) Christmas Stories...........

Share it with the group!