The Glamour of real life

We are on the final leg of our holiday, namely the Arriva Trains Wales journey from Chester along the North Wales coast.
It's always a thankless Micky Mouse kind of trip with the great unwashed making the place look untidy.
The Prof is already bemoaning the lack of his daily Espresso Cocktail overlooking Grand Central Station's main concourse .
" Everything looks so dull and BORING" he sighed as he eyed the bedraggled and the forlorn
" Everything....Everything is so, sooo, soooo...unattractive!"
Well I feel somewhat unattractive, I can tell you!
No sleep on the plane and an hour snoring my head off on the London to Chester train where I dribbled crisp crumbs over my new hoodie top and got laughed at by two teenage boys, who thought that the sight of a near unconscious Welshman with a face the consistency of play doh hilarious!

Travelling is not glamorous !
You forget that in all the excitement of Espresso cocktails and foreign accents

The Last New York Post

Which one's which?

Today we had our final breakfast at Pershing Square then walked most of the way down to Battery Park to catch the Staten Island Ferry( a tradition when we go to New York) it blew away the cobwebs rather nicely before Chinatown and an amble through Little Italy.
 I'm writing this on the way to the airport....full of dim sum and the most glorious pork dumplings this side of the Atlantic. Lunch in Chinatown in what could only be described as a " basic cafe Knocked up in someone's garage" was a surprising treat. We found the dumpling house Mistress Maddie suggested going to, only to find it shut, so we ambled down a street which looked as though it had been bombed during WW2 , found the nearest eatery and was promptly sat on a large round table with a family of Chinese locals.
The food couldn't have been better! A wonderful end to a cracking city break!

Pershing Square

Final Thoughts

Our hotel in on Lexington and 45th. We are sandwiched between the US post office and the shadow of the Chrysler Building. Just opposite is the vibrant  food hall of Grand Central's market with it's magnificent upside down tree chandelier.
We like this part of town.
We are both tired today.
We have walked over sixty miles in three days ( fitbit)
The Texan Church shooting is on the news but so is much local news including the Mayor elections.
It would seem New York wants an independent voice and someone who would stand up against Trump for the benefit of the city.
Watching the crowds that unceasingly cheered on the Marathon runners yesterday, it is not hard to see just how proud New Yorkers are of their city.
Normality tomorrow.
Bulldog masturbation, old dog puddles, cat hairs on my trendy New York hoodie ( mutton dressed as lamb - who am I kidding?) and a countdown to a new kitchen !
Hey ho
Ps I managed to watch The Walking Dead last night!

MOMA

Yes...but IS it art?

Walnut & Raisin cream cheese bagels for breakfast!
Shopping for clothes
A lovely visit to Christina's World at MOMA
Hot dogs in the rain as we watched some of the 40,000 New York marathon runners enter the final stages at Central Park ( a wonderfully uplifting experience thanks to the exuberant New York crowds)
Espresso cocktails then dinner a little later
Chinatown tomorrow!

La Boheme

The end of the second act had to be seen to be believed

All Too Much

My feet have been worn away to stumps.
Today's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. The 9/11 museum at ground zero is a truly humbling and emotional experience and is a place given universal reverence by the people who go there.
I was near tears several times during our guided tour, as I was sitting outside at the dramatic waterfalls situated on the footprint of the towers.
We ate pizza in the street in Soho then walked up Manhattan from the meat packing district via the High Line before coming back to the hotel in Midtown .
In a few minutes we are off to the Oyster Bar at Grand Central then it's La Boheme at the Met! 
Hey ho

72 Degrees

Angel of The Waters Central Park

Dedication on a Central Park bench

He " almost" smiled

A moody and rather warm and humid Manhattan

2am

I promise no more selfies!
As usual I was pulled by American customs at Newark so we got into Manhattan 2am GMT
Just enough time to have a short walk

Funny Farm

i'm driving him to distraction

Hello

Caption please

Discuss

How does it make you feel!

I forgot it is Halloween

Light relief following The below Spacey debate

The Bitch In Charge

I was feeding the bachelors when I heard a commotion.
There was a large lorry with it's engine running in the lane and I could hear the dogs barking from the cottage so I hurried back to see what was going on.
This was 8.30 am this morning.
Two delivery men were standing stock still on the garden path with a heavy radiator between them. They looked worried
For standing between them and the back door was a very angry barking Mary.
" She's come through the cat flap right at us !" One of the men said and he jumped as Winnie ever so slowly forced her face through the flap behind , to see what was going on.
I hurried round and picked Mary up and immediately she quietened down and started tail wagging.
Her job of protecting her home now thankfully over.
The Smallest of all of the dogs, Mary now seems to possess the bravest of hearts.
With me out of the house, it would seem that it was up to her alone to protect the older dogs and Albert from the threat of the dreaded radiator men!

Kevin Spacey How Dare You

Kevin Spacey..how dare you
How dare you attempt to hide the drunken molestation of a child
behind officially outing yourself  out as a gay man!
How dare you!

The Sins Of The Past

Towards the early days of Going Gently I wrote a blog about a childhood bully.
It was a short piece about a slight from another "country" in time. A once painful but then muted memory that seemed more anecdotal than cathartic, was shared on the blog inappropriately for I named the bully.
Months later I received an email from the former bully. Through osmosis and across oceans the blog entry had reached him and as it is common with memories of past sadder times, the individual had no recollection of the events I wrote about.
We corresponded for a short while, with the hindsight of adults, and, I thought that they were positive emails between two men who had perhaps had rather unhappy schooldays.
We left things wishing each other well.

Months later I received a very different email, informing me of the death by suicide of this man. I had no idea of the motivations for this terrible event and even though I immediately pulled the old post, the cached memory of it reverberated for a while afterwards and must have caused considerable heartache for this man's friends and family.

This is not a blog for debating his motivation, so please don't. It's just a warning to everyone to be very careful of what you write about even though memories from the far distant past seem that they come from a land so very far away.

Moments Of Pure Drama

The Prof's guilty pleasure on a weekend is breakfast in bed with Netflix
This morning he's been watching The Crown and although this romp-through-the -Palace drama is probably as historically correct as Mel Gibson's BRAVEHEART , I did notice some fine set pieces, noticeably the wonderfully bravura moment where the grieving Queen Mary ( Eileen Atkins) glides into Sandringham in full mourning attire like a spectre at the feast, to curtsy ever so slowly in front of the the new Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) 
It's a fantastic piece of television

So, on this fairly drab Sunday I'm asking for your Biggest Moments of a drama ! This seems a sensible request from an ageing drama queen! But you'll get my gist.....
I can think of one moment in my life when after my paternal grandmother died in our home after a short illness, my father, in a Moment of what could only be described as grief fuelled hysteria actually accused my mother of killing her!
Now this scene was a scene worthy of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to baby Jane?and although as a teen , even though I understood, where the screaming fit actually came from, the drama of the event is still hard and fast in my memory.

Share one of your most dramatic Of moments.
I'd be interested to hear them

Mrs Trellis

Mrs Trellis doing the raffle at one of my allotment open days

I caught up with Mrs Trellis this morning in both meanings of the word as Mary and I came across her on the Marian road trying to pull her Greyhound, Blue off a dead rabbit.
She's had new kitchen tops, and has been to the Cotswolds with Voel coaches.
Blue went for Mary as he thought she was after his rabbit, but Mary wasn't bothered. She's too quick for even a greyhound to catch.
Mrs Trellis was bounced around the lane in her effort to keep him under control.
Her long white hair was blowing untidily in the wind.
I told her we were off to New York soon, but she didn't seem very interested and seemed more preoccupied with a long story about Church business than the Oyster bar under Grand Central.
We walked past the footpath on the side of Gop Hill and talked some more about this and that

" It's very hard being on your own" she mused " People think that they can take advantage"
I didn't explore it any further , I didn't have the time.

Audit

" What have you done today darling?" 
So asked The Prof over a very passable low fat lasagne
" Not much" I told him
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Fucking kitchen tiles! That's what I've been sorting out today....fucking kitchen tiles

Project managing!
I've made an audit of" tile-gate" that's how Effin sad I am
65 minutes on line, (the line has been discontinued after I bought half the tiles!
14 phone calls ( yes 14!) - approx 1 hour 20 minutes of my time
One 20 minute visit and quote from the lovely old tiler who fell in love with Winnie and who promised her ( and not me) that she could watch him lay every tile!
Oh and  one 40 minute journey to B&Q to buy that last box which some fucker had removed three tiles!
All for 5 square metres of ceramic

It was bloody less stressful looking after a ventilated patient on ITU

" Dangerous Jonney"

I've never had a car accident...caused hundreds.....never had one!
So goes the old joke.
I'm not one of the most confident of drivers it must be said
This drives the Prof to apoplectic distraction .
Surprise surprise he is a very confident motorist.
He calls me " Dangerous Jonney"
I passed my driving test first time and my driving instructor eyebrows left his forehead when I told him.
"I'm a better teacher than I thought" he quipped as we shook hands before I drove off in my Austin 1300.
I was too happy to notice the irony .

Date Night

The Prof and I went to Liverpool tonight to see the Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra perform Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave.
The music was lovely! The audience was geriatric, the ginger ice cream at the interval was refreshing, my haphazard negotiation of the traffic including the Wallasey tunnel afterwards was questionable
And the subsequent argument on the journey home-was......... inevitable