Is That Your Cat?

" Is that your cat?"It's the second most popular statement question I am asked when I go out for a walk.
The first being the now irritating " You have your hands full there" when anyone spies four dogs being walking from one hand.
Unfortunately, the "cat" comment is becoming more frequent.
I say unfortunately, as Albert is much bolder for some strange reason and is now trying to accompany us on nearly every walk around the village a fact complicated by the sometimes busy A road which bisects Trelawnyd into two.
Cats possess little to no road sense in my experience.
Yesterday a woman out with a Jack Russel spied Albert as he gently limped his way after us down the lane. As her dog went hysterical at the sight of him and after she had pointed at him, saying to me " Is that your cat?" , Albert quicken his pace and confused the woman and her dog into silence by slinking into the pack next to William and Winnie. It is a ploy he often uses to pull a fast one on a potential enemy but when say, a farm lorry or car appears on the lane often Albert will then panic bolting for the nearest gap in the hedge or driveway as I am forced to wave down the car with friendly " watch my cat is in the road" comment.
On the main road, with often speeding cars wizzing past , a madman with four dogs mouthing " watch my cat" at the incoming traffic is unsurprisingly ineffective, if not purely dangerous !
Of course all Albert wants is to be one of the gang.
But joining gangs can be fraught with danger!

I locked him in the Prof's office this morning before we all trouped off for a walk

Man In An Orange Shirt

Steve and Adam/ Thomas and Michael

The second and final episode of Patrick Gale's Man in an Orange Shirt aired last night and the narrative was brought up to date with the story of Adam Berryman the gay grandson of Michael Berryman whose tragic love affair with painter Thomas March featured in episode one.
Adam ( Julian Morris) leads an unfulfilled and secret sex addicted life until he meets the more grounded and confident Steve ( David Gyasi), and as the two men renovate the family country cottage, the ghosts of the March/ Berryman relationship come to light with help from Flora, Adams' bitter grandmother.
This updated version of the first film is a gentle and at times incredibly moving reflection of a modern day relationship. The threat of  prosecution and shame faced by the wartime lovers do echo in the modern storyline but  have been changed into problems of anonymity, shame and the overuse of sex addiction phone apps. Essentially and not surprisingly the final conclusion underlines that most people, whatever sexuality they possess just want the everyday things in life , a conclusion that isn't really rocket science.
The reading of a wartime love letter was a lovely moment with Steve and Adam feeling the words which described how important the mundane things in life were to the closseted gays men of sixty years ago...the sweeping up of leaves together, the making of tea, the washing up of the dishes...........


I was reminded of a similar moment recently when after a very minor row  I placed a plate of avocado on toast  by the side of a silent  Prof. Twenty minutes later all was well ........... the plate was empty....

Adam ( Julian Morris) and Grandmother Flora ( the glorious Vanessa Redgrave)

I

Fantasy

When I officially retired , last Monday, I indulged myself in the briefest of fantasies which featured an occasional lie in, under a warm duvet.
Fat chance.
It was warm in our bedroom this morning around dawn and so I slipped a thigh from under the covers in order to fall back to sleep. Moments later I awoke to the not unpleasant but certainly rather surprising sensation of a feline tongue energetically licking my left buttock.
No lie in today then I thought
I've already walked the dogs, collected bread. Taken The Prof to the station and am in the process of hand writing thank you cards to the Flower Show Committee before I make the bed and take the car to the garage.
It's not even 7.30 am

Slightly Surreal Flower Moments

" One of the judges wants a cup of tea with a STRAW! " Hissed a slightly fraught Ann
" Have we any straws ?"
We were in the kitchen of the memorial hall and Ann was serving the Flower Show Judges tea and fancies!
Puzzled at the request, I looked out at the tea tables, each one covered with an antique embroidered tablecloth and sat with the cookery judges was a sternfaced lady whom I didn't recognise.
"Who is that?" I hissed back
" She told me that she is a judge" Ann whispered still searching for the straw " I can do without all this! I've got barabrith to butter!" 
The cookery judges seemed a little bemused by their silent companion but sat politely giving her an occasional smile and it was then that I recognised her.
She was the wife of an exhibitor who was laying out his carrots.
" She's had a stroke " I told Ann " Thats why she looks so stern"
Ann found a straw and as she took the " judge" her drink giggled " I hope she can swallow alright! - I don't want to kill a customer!" 

Terry (A  Flower Show Committee Member) whilst looking at a charcoal study of a fairly large nude man ( one of the entries in the art section) was overheard talking to fellow committee member Derek
" Is that our John do you think? " 
Derek thought for a moment " I thought it was a woman"
Cheeky bastards

Mrs Trellis looking worried at the domestic class showing table
" My boiled egg entry is a disaster! I've cooked half a dozen and not one has turned out right...I'll be 
eating egg mayonnaise for weeks!"
For those that don't know we have a " boiled egg" class where a peeled boiled egg has to be presented for judging on a bed of lettuce placed in a saucer   

Photo taken by fellow blogger Sue Hall

And my favourite overheard comment by one visitor to another at the monster marrow table
" Denise!.......Denise! ....That would make your eyes water!" 

Sweet

There are many reasons why we enjoy the Flower Show
But this is the biggest reason!
The genuine tears of joy when someone unexpectedly wins a prize, or a cup or a sweet comment on an entry given

Showtime 2017

All done for another year.

An amateur vegetable grower cried when she won best exhibit in show for her onion set. 

Another new competitor in the floral art, who only entered as it gave her something to concentrate on after a stroke won a cup which made her shed a tear and Anthea D was cock-a-hoop to get a special rosette for her Victoria sponge Cake!

It was worth all of the effort just to see that!

As usual the Show ran itself, with the dozen committee members making it all look very easy.

Thanks to them, and to the competitors who support the show. 

It was fun

 

Eve Of the Show

456 entries taken a quarter of which have already been placed on the hall tables
Auntie Glad's Stall is stocked and ready.
The kitchen is full of homemade cakes to sell
The village schoolchildren's artwork has been hung and the bunting unravelled
I'm buggered

Friday's Blog

I won't have time to blog tomorrow so here is Friday's post!
A few people have asked why I was in London on Tuesday...well the best reason ( but not the only one) was that I managed to get tickets to the Royal Ballet for The Prof, who adores anything classic! ( he is working in London all week)
The Russian Marinsky Ballet was performing Swan Lake and although the tickets were very  expensive, the experience was absolutely sublime .
Viktoria Tereshkina as the White Swan was glorious but it was the precision of Corps de ballet that really brought a tear to the eye!
I had to  thank My Sister and Eirlys who looked after  William, Mary and George at the last minute and Greta who took in Winnie!
I feel sorry for Greta's dogs who normally share a lovely comfy bed in their classy kitchen....the big girl ousted them for the duration

Ps it was lovely to meet the village lady with frothy labrador today! As we said hello , she told me that she loved going gently.....

Apologies

I have to apologise to the residents of Rhodfa Arthur for the big creamy stain on the road by the Church. I've been ferrying flower show stuff to the village hall and left one of the raffle prizes ( a bottle of Irish liqueur) on the roof of the car.
One less Raffle prize....hey ho!
When I got back this little fella was sitting on the garden wall. No note, entry form ...nothing..so if anyone wants to claim him, please give me a ring

Laughter and Tears around a table

The train was packed.
I was on the 9.10am from Euston and was due back in Wales by midday, which was good as I still had a ton of work to do for the Flower Show and I am on a six hour Sams shift this evening to boot! So much for retirement.
A large Jewish family of five took up most of the seats around me leaving me and another middle aged couple opposite me, the only strangers in our part of the train. Next to me was teenage son of the family who looked perhaps fourteen. He was busy on his ipad
The mother of the children spent most of her time fussing away. She handed out food, constantly asked the children and her husband questions and organised the journey within an inch of its life.
In between all this she engaged me and the other couple in polite conversation.
Where we were going?  how awful it was to have only one toilet in our part of the train working ( yeah thanks Virgin Trains) would we like a polo mint?
All very nice stuff I must say, but dovetailing all this she kept on at her teenage son about what he was doing?
Was he on facebook? Was he emailing his brother in France?
What was he doing on his ipad?
It's terribly antisocial you know......!
Finally the boy snapped but did so in such a delightful way the couple opposite to me and I all burst into fits of laughter!
After the mother had asked him for the twentieth time what he was doing on his ipad.
The boy slowly put the ipad down, and said in a very loud and serious voice
" I 'm watching gay porn on it mother!" 

Anyhow, this afternoon I have been making traybakes at the kitchen table and as I did so, watched Mark Gatiss' recent Talking Heads tv show QUEERS. One monologue where Ben Whishaw plays a World War One soldier  in love with his commanding officer was incredibly moving, and I must admit I shed a small tear as I
Folded in the self raising flour.
Try and watch it, if you can get BBC IPLAYER
Hey ho

Ben Whishaw

Gay Britannia

Gale's parents on their wedding day

The novelist Patrick Gale talked about his father in a recent interview. His father, a prison Governor always slept in a separate bedroom from his mother and when he was in his early twenties Gale found out the reason for this was the fact his mother found out that her husband had embarked on a love affair with another man before her marriage.
The secret was never talked about, and two lives were shattered because of it. A wife bitter and lonely and  feeling second best to her husband's best man who lived a lie as most gay men did in the middle years of the twentieth century!
A tv drama based on the story of Gale's parents, Man in an Orange Shirt airs tonight as part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season

I came out when I was in a relationship with a closseted man.
It was a terribly conflicted time for me as I was torn between kind of respecting his " need" to be hidden and private with the overwhelming feeling of not wanting to be some way ashamed ( albeit by proxy) by being publicly gay.

The relationship was shit anyway, so it wasn't hard for me to eventually walk away from it, but I still look back with incredible sadness on the fact that my boyfriend then found it necessary to wear a wedding ring at work in order to look straight in front of a  boss who was a virtual stranger when I wanted to hold my head up and look at everyone in the eye

When I eventually came out, I did so to everyone I knew with the only exception of my mother. I spared myself that experience, not because I was in anyway ashamed or worried;  I just could not be bothered going through the drama , guilt trips and subsequent angst that would have ensued from an elderly lady with massive psychological problems all of her own.

With everyone else, I simply shared the truth.
And although, it was, at times, somewhat stressful.

I never had a problem with any of them.

LITTLE Bits Of News

The bachelors are getting somewhat pugnacious with strangers and ambushed several elderly hikers this morning who had to fend them off with their ski poles!
It's a case of little men syndrome
Well little cock syndrome actually!
At least the hikers took the assault with good humour- unlike the meter reading man a week or so ago, who was decidedly muffed at being chased down the path by three six inch birds with feathery feet.
I think we all know someone with little cock syndrome!
I'm behind with things with the Flower Show today and feel it.
I've still got 200 raffle tickets to sell, all of the hand embroidered tablecloths to wash and iron and still have a mound of baking to do and that's before all the admin bits to sort, people to bully, oh and notice boards to pick up.
There are not enough minutes in the day
The Prof is feeling neglected as is the norm this time of year, so I did make him " cock-eyed egg" for breakfast in bed! this morning as a treat! ( cock eyed egg is in fact egg in a basket!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_in_the_basket
Oh And I cleaned the crap out of the fridge in way of saying that I hadn't forgotten the housework, but the cottage still looks like a jumble sale venue with cakes, knitted items of all descriptions and brick a brac piled high in every corner.

Jo the policewoman caught me yesterday with my Bluetooth earphones on when we were out with our respective dogs, I could see she was impressed with my leap into 21st century technology.
" listening to anything nice ?" She asked me
I didn't have the heart to tell her that the Bluetooth headphones had not been charged properly and were only there to keep my ears warm.

There's a big gig in the church this morning, I waved at Gaynor - the- mad- organist as she drove in early to get a parking space .....seeing her reminded me that I 'm thinking of organising a village fete again next year to raise funds for the Church and Samaritans ......what Am I thinking of? ...it's a case of
if you want a job doing...ask a busy man

Butterfly Bushes

William searching for butterflies

Saturdays are most suited to a bit of relaxation .
Lunch out, some shopping.....a snooze on the couch for The Prof.......it's all mundane but nicely so.
William, with his failing eyesight, can no longer focus of the small honeybees as they potter around the garden, but with the three buddleia in the garden, the cottage garden is now filled with butterflies.
William can see butterflies .
He has just spent a free spirited half hour chasing several red admirals and a bunch of delicate cabbage whites as they flutter inbetween the shrubbery

F..K OFF!

Now I am not all Julie Andrews when it comes down to a good swear, but I do think that there is a time and a place for expletives to be unleashed!
The odd " fucker" is acceptable , especially at times of high emotion but I hate any thought of swearing in front of children, and in public generally especially if you don't know if your chosen words of expression could insult or upset.
Donald Trump's new communication man, Anthony Scaramucci's foul mouthed attack on his predecessors underlines a predictable and worrying step by the Trump administration back into street behaviour. It isn't, as Scaramucci would insist, just colourful language. It is a way to bully and to intimidate, very much like a mean dog barking at the wind.....and in my mind it shows just how unstatesmanlike TRUMP is to pick a foul mouthed thug as his communications  man! ( communications man for Christsake! )

Having said all this I remember I once worked with a Hospital Chaplain who was the most irritating , patronising and thoroughly pious individual one would ever have the misfortune to meet. One day I saw him stop a entire Church service to theatrically remove a box of smokes from the hands of a long term psychiatric patient, and with his nose in the air as he slipped the tin under his surplus, another patient, a woman in her sixties , chirped up very loudly in a home counties crystal cut accent
" You are a real first class cunt !"
Like I said there is a time and a place

No Winner!

My novelty veg for the Prestatyn Flower Show look more like friggin wombles than penguins !
I've only just realised however, that the class is not novelty vegetable but MONSTER vegetable! 
Hey ho
I had to laugh, as after I had placed my two entries into the " herbs in a container" carefully onto the exhibition table, three men marched in carrying a two tier herb container festooned with sprigs of rosemary and crammed to the nippleline with glorious, luscious herbs of all kinds......
The steward looked at my efforts and quipped " do you want to take yours home now?" 
Hey ho x 

The Prestatyn Flower Show takes place tomorrow and Saturday at the old vicarage gardens High Street

Bad Habits

I'm late blogging today.
It's my sister's Flower Show tomorrow ( she holds a rather large and grander fete-like show in Prestatyn over two days) and I have been preparing my exhibits as well as cooking turkey meatballs for supper and a large ginger cake to enter in my show!
A delivery lorry got stuck on the hind-leg corner briefly at lunchtime and it's driver came over to pat Winnie who was making frantic kissing noises at him from behind the kitchen wall as well as to reassure me that his truck had not done any damage to the wall.
As he chatted he absent mindedly itched his arse with his hand down the back of his jeans.
I wondered afterwards if he was having sandwiches for lunch.
Funny what you think about when you are waiting for a ginger cake to bake.

Bad habits, we all have em!
Once a previous boyfriend, who was not known to be particulary humorous ( or even nice for that matter) once sent me a photograph of a pair of my underpants that I had once discarded on his bathroom floor. He sent it me as a postcard through the post and addressed it to my place of work!
The underpants had a skid mark on them!
Luckily for him, I found this all rather amusing and not at all embarrassing.......having said this the photo came to my office directly and was not circulated on the shop floor....even though it had passed through the Royal Mail!

Is it bad form pointing out others bad habits?

Dunkirk

If you said to me what  cinematic memory I have of the depiction of the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk, I would tell you the shock machine gunning of Bernard Lee through the back of his dufflecoat on a French Beach would feature high on my list. So it is with some interest that I went to see Christopher Nolan's version of Dunkirk with The Prof this evening.

Nolan's film is an intimate epic. It follows the intersecting stories of just a handful of servicemen juggling time jumps within the narrative  as it does so and with a sparse and incredibly tense style we follow the increasingly desperate  plight of the survivors as they await rescue.
Nolan shows the forces on the beaches but pulls away from the massive " crowd" shots of previous films keeping the action more intimate with close scenes of the claustrophobic sinkings of the navy ships, and the tight dogfights above the grey channel.

This is not a " talkie" film. The overwhelming noises of war, the screams of the bombs, and of the men IS the dialogue of the movie ( supported by a stunning musical score)  and I must say that the movie is at times an uncomfortable, exhilarating  and incredibly tense rollercoaster ride.

Kenneth Brannagh almost steals the show in one brief scene as the commanding officer of the British forces. To the strains of Nimrod he stands fast on the one functioning jetty and weeps a tear as the flotilla of little boats proudly sail into view from the channel ports.
It's a wonderfully uplifting moment in an otherwise very dark movie.
Mark Rylance and Tom Glynn Carney play father and son civilians who pilot their boat to help with the evacuation. An oxygen masked Tom Hardy turns up as a heroic Spitfire pilot and Fionn Whitehead is especially good in his role of a lone soldier desperate to get home at any cost.

You don't quite feel the scale of Dunkirk as a sweeping military event in this movie, but boy do you get the feeling of what those poor trapped souls went through nearly eighty years ago!
9/10

One Of My Flip-Flops Is Missing!

lt's been a showery morning so I left my wet flip flops by the front door and busied myself with making boiled fruit cakes, a coffee cake and a low cal tikka masala curry from scratch!
Terence from the Flower Show Committee and I have gone head to head with our boiled fruit cakes over the years, with me winning the cup twice and thrashing his arse in the judging year after year.
I intend to beat him again next week!
Anyhow as usual I digress.
Well, at midday I went out to feed The Bachelors, ( who had already chased the postman down neighbour Mandy's drive btw)  and I suddenly realised that one of my flip flops was missing !
I hopped around for a bit, but it was nowhere to be seen in the garden
Who would take a fucking flip flop I wondered.
Anyhow In between waiting for my boiled fruit to cool a friend called round for a chat about some upsetting health news they had received . The older we all get the more common are such conversations. While we were talking over the garden wall, Mary managed to get onto the kitchen table and ate 3 ounces of glace cherries....but I am digressing again.
Below is the Flower Show's generic recipe for the Boiled fruit cake class for your information

This must be made in a round 7 inch tin

4oz Marg
6 oz soft brown sugar
12 oz mixed dry fruit
2oz chopped cherries
8oz self raising flour
Half level teaspoon of mixed spice
Small tin of crushed pineapples 8oz
2 eggs

Heat oven 180c
Grease and line tin

Put marg,sugar, fruit and juice into pan and bring to the boil, stirring

Cool mixture by placing saucepan into cold water add flour, spice and mix well.
Add eggs and mix, note it will be a wet mix

Pour into tin and bake 1.5 hours turn oven down if browning

I ran out of marge and went up to the garage to buy some. Unfortunately they dont sell marge but the trip wasn't wasted as the sales assistant who knows me informed me that I had my third Best Walking Dead T shirt on inside out and back to front! 

When I got home I also found my flip flop in the middle of the road! 

Hey ho

Sunset

We took the dogs ( minus Winnie ) up the Gop at sunset.
Not much to report so I shall leave you with this summer happy song