Happy Days

Snowdrops in the Churchyard this morning 

Apologies for the thumb

I nearly got my head kicked in this morning.
Not something you expect in a lane above the village at 10.30 on a Sunday morning.
Mary and I had stopped to say hello to Mrs Trellis and her greyhound Blue when a large black car, tinted windows and a throaty exhaust roared past us without slowing down.
The dogs jumped as we did, so I gave one of those very British open palmed shoulder shrugs and the car reached the top of the hill in front of us, in order to say " thanks for slowing down"
The car stopped for a long moment
And as Mrs Trellis gulped a large gorilla-sized man got out to stare at us.
" what are you effing looking at? " the gorilla bellowed furiously
" You didn't slow down and your exhaust scared the dogs!" I countered not unreasonably
" You were in the middle of the fucking road!" the man shouted waving his arms
There was no point arguing as patiently were couldn't have been in the middle of the lane as he had passed us easily.
Mrs Trellis' bobble hat twitched nervously
There was a stand off silence for a few moments as the aggrieved gorilla thought about what to do, and eventually he got into his car to drive off, only then did I conceded to myself that we were lucky. Luckily a silly stare could have landed me into hospital.
When I was on ITU I remember having a conversation with a police officer who told me that cocaine use was rife in North Wales. Cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine and steroids all stimulate the user into violent rages and aggression and they are drugs of choice by more people that I could shake a stick at. " Normal people like yourself have no idea just how common drug taking is " I remember the policeman saying " would you think of cocaine at breakfast time with your sugar puffs? They would " He added cheerfully
We have a brave new world.
I'm not saying that the gorilla in the lane had taken drugs...perhaps he had...whose to know.....more likely he was just an angry person upset that a middle aged dog walker had looked at him "in the wrong sort of way" a look which he had caught in his rear view mirror .

The Post

Worthy but not riveting
Interesting but not compelling
Hanks was good, Streep was better
I wouldn't watch it again

1989

Yesterday I took in a print of Broadstairs to be reframed for the Prof's office.
Tucked away behind the print was a large photograph taken in the late 1980s
It was a photograph of a groom and his best man each with each other's hats on.
Laurel and Hardy comes to mind.
I am Stan Laurel.
It was the only fun thing in that wedding as I recall.
The photo holds a great deal of memories for me. Many good -a few bittersweet
Bittersweet, as the photographer who snapped it ( who was also a close friend) was killed in a plane crash only a few months later!
And slightly bittersweet that my friend, the groom more or less lost touch with me over the years as some friendships envairably do
I sent him a copy of the above photo yesterday on Facebook and he replied to my message with a " bloody hell look at us !" Kind of way. The photo I am sure was bittersweet for him as well ,as his marriage failed not long after as  we all knew it would.

All The Way Through

This is one of the most moving things I have seen recently

Please watch till the end to view the two soloists reaction 

High Colour

I'm a terrible blusher.
Always have been.
It's a curse which has followed me through all of my 55 years on this planet .
I either look embarrassed , pissed or hypertensive at the best of times given my ruddy complexion ( when I was a baby I looked like a fat tomato!!)
And unfortunately with my years advancing the sometimes crippling affection of " the blush from nowhere!" remains with me.

I tell you this secret because I blushed terribly at the land agents' office this morning. I have driven the twenty miles to a little market town up in the hills to drop off the field paperwork and tenancy  agreements as well as the rent payment and couldn't quite locate my wallet from my manbag!
The camp-as-Christmas clerk had already wrong footed me by complementing the bag only a minute or so before , so it was with much embarrassment that I had to empty most of the bag's flotsam in front of him in order to reach the rent cheque.
An almost empty bottle of aftershave, blackcurrant fisherman friends cough sweets, empty envelopes a note book with " weight watcher's recipes" written on the front and George's antibiotics were all hoisted out and as the clerk wryly commented that the bag indeed was " a regular tardis!" 
I blushed like a teenager after he had said it
Like I told you....it's a curse

Blushing often comes in waves , it's almost as though one " attack" sets another off. Only a half hour before the bagblush I had seriously coloured up at the vets when George (who had not been to the vets since he was a puppy) opened his bowels in a fit of nerves in the middle of the waiting room floor.
It was only made worse by William who being half blind stepped in the shitty puddle before I could stop him.

I was still glowing a bit as I took a picture in to be framed at a local art shop.
" is it too warm for you in here?" The shop owner asked politely
" No I'm fine' I said " I've got a cold"

Hey ho

Rock 'n Roll

Rush hour Wrexham

In February I've been asked to take part in a weekend course for Samaritans
It means a multiple workshops and an overnight hotel stay,
One of these events took part in the picturesque city of Bath so I got quite excited at the prospect of a pub trip, a brief bit of local colour and maybe a nice meal out!
Suffice to say my weekend is in Wrexham ( Google Wrexham and you may get a feel for my disappointment )
I also had a message from a fellow Sam called Graham ( not his real name) who is a retired pensioner ...who is going on the same course and who wanted a lift
Hes a lovely person who added as a postscript " I'll bring my ukulele " 
Rock n fucking Roll! 

Lewd Behaviour

Much has been made of the dreadful conduct of the rich and famous at that charity night at The Dorchester last night.
The sight of a men only night out where 300 men slavered over a bevvy of mini skirted hostesses ( who happened to agree to go to the night in question with matching skirts and knickers) makes me feel rather sick but I think it is important to have some balance here so I wanted to tell you of the time in 1999 when I went to a nightclub in Sheffield with a friend.
In a function room of the club there was a "female only" charity night taking place.
Male "exotic" dancers were on show, the ladies had a  basket meal, much too much to drink, a comedian and a raffle and
their behaviour would have made Caligula blush believe me!
My friend and I were molested, groped and goosed several times by some of these women as they staggered back from the loo ( and we were in a corridor at the time on the way to another bar!)
A barman had his shirt removed ( well ripped off!)
and I am sure an "oral act" was actually performed on one of the dancers in full view of the wife of the head of the council!
lets get a bit of balance here
bad behaviour is bad behaviour ! whatever sex you are
plain and simple.........lets not make it into a man hating moment please!

I can Sure Move For A Fat Lad

George ambling

Like I said yesterday, George was attacked by a staffie.
He wasn't injured, but the reason for this was luck more by good judgement.
We were lucky.
I had taken the dogs to the Dyserth Walkway which is a country walk on the former track of a hillside railway line. The walkway is popular with walkers, bikers and dog owners and can be rather busy so the independent Welsh Terriers and George are always placed on a lead.
Winnie, who is too friendly (and too big to attack) ambles along behind at her own pace.
It was dusk and as we returned to the car park, I let off George to sniff at the grass verge whilst I placed the other dogs in the car and had just closed the car door on them when I heard a man's harsh shout of "Come here!"
George was perhaps thirty feet away happily sniffing at a clump of grass and perhaps a hundred yards beyond him, down the walkway came the staffie at full pelt.
It meant business.
Everything happened very fast, as behind the staffie two scruffy young men and a teenage girl came running and I jumped up like Fatima Whitbread, running from the opposite direction. The Staffie pounced on George a couple of seconds before I got there and the two had already started to fight.
I kicked the Staffie as hard as I could and surprisingly my aim was dead right and the dog bounced off snarling and as I picked George up it spun back to have another go.
I stamped on it again.

Like I said we were lucky.
Lucky that the staffie was a young and underweight specimen,
Lucky that I can move with the speed of a jungle cat when I need to,
Lucky that my boot connected
and lucky that one of the scruffy owners grabbed him and carried him away after the fact
If all of the dogs had been there Blind William or the slight Mary may have been attacked on their leads.
I found it strange that neither man complained that I had kicked their dog and even though the girl mumbled a "sorry mate" I let rip with a mouthful of expletives  a docker would be proud of.
I was still swearing as the group shambled away onto the main road.
"You Were lucky" I bellowed like Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky Balboa "If the bulldog was out she would have fucking killed it!"
Charming!

George Attacked

I've just been messaging my sister ( who is a dog owner and lover) about George being attacked by a staffie earlier today! Now don't worry he's fine ( thanks to my hard brown shoes which kicked the shit out of the attacking dog let loose by three trailer trash characters.)
But it was a rather upsetting experience
I'll tell you the story tomorrow , suffice to say as a treat I bought the old guy half a cooked chicken from Sainsbury's for his tea
I hate, HATE, HATE bad dog owners!

Three Billboards ( Spoilers)

I first became a fan of Frances McDormand after I saw her play wily old police officer Marge Gundersun in the Cohen Brothers' black comedy Fargo back in the mid nineties. In that movie and in most thereafter she has dominated the screen with a quiet authority so it won't surprise anyone that  she brings that raw acting power to her performance of a grieving mother in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. 
She is simply wonderful.
Like Fargo, Billboards is a dark and at times violent black comedy that walks the fine line from potentially being rather a bleak movie to being a surprising uplifting and hopeful one. I say surprising  because it is essentially the study how the rape and murder of a teenage girl affects a small family and most importantly her feisty battling mother who cannot cope with the fact that her daughter's killers have escaped detection by the local small town police department.
McDormand plays Mildred, the boiler suited, bandana wearing mother who takes it on herself to rent three local billboards in order to highlight what she thinks is the lack of action of the local Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). 
This drastic action has a knock on effect within the Small Town of Ebbing, as with tensions running high because of the open secret that the much loved Willoughby is in fact dying, Mildred has to fight the unstable and stupid deputy Dixon ( the excellent Sam Rockwell) an un supportive ex husband and the sympathetic yet powerless Willoughby in her crusade to find the truth.

The film plays fast and loose with reality at times, in a very similar way that old fashioned Westerns do to modern eyes and I think this is a conscious decision by Brit director/ writer Martin McDonough  who obviously has something to say about blue collar America where institutionalised racism, homophobia and small thinking can often rule the day.
Wisely McDonough chooses the main thrust of the story to be that of grief and redemption rather than focus on a social commentary and this is where McDormand comes into her own .
Reminding me of that wartime poster of the all-American factory worker , she takes on all comers with a potty mouth and the fierceness of a cornered lioness . Rarely smiling but possessing a wry humour McDormand's character wavers between being sympathetic one minute and truly monstrous the next and it is this ambiguity that makes the film so interesting.
9/10

Writing A Film Review

The Prof is in Ireland today
I went to the cinema to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing , Missouri as a treat
It was a cracking movie
I'll post the review tomorrow as I'm having a little difficulty dealing with my new laptop
However I shall leave you with a photo of me and my co-pilot reviewing my review with the computer on my knee..
She likes to see what I see

Baked Beans on A Friday

when I was little...say around ten years old Friday afternoons were happy times.
It was when my sister and I went to my grandparents' house after school. The house was full.
With people talking , eating homemade cake and drinking tea as we, my mother and her friend and my elder sister and her children crowded in to a bungalow the size of a large chicken coop.
Eventually only my twin sister and sister were left and tea was served on a coffee table in front of the tv. Baked beans on cheap white bread toast and tinned fruit cocktail and evaporated milk.
Bloody lovely.
It was a happy house, and we children, who were used to a rather less favourable environment at home , sucked up the pleasure and warmth in it all, like hens do in an early evening sun.

On tv every Friday was an American soap opera...I was reminded of it this morning after I had read of the death of Dorothy Malone ...She of the shiny blonde hair and breathless voice

Funny What You Remember

The Pebble That Does What it's told !

It's sleeting today. Cold wet sleet in biting wind.

I cleaned the church early and slipped down the steps of the boiler house putting the Christmas tree away. 

The Tree cushioned my fall so no real harm done.

I made sure I sprayed every radiator in the church with polish before I left so as they switched on the smell of clean shiny wood filled the space.

I learnt that trick from a friend of mine who was a cleaning lady.

Mind you she got caught by one of her clients on his CCTV one day after spraying fabreeze around his flat and doing little else!

I've walked the dogs, fed the Prof his breakfast in bed, lit the fire, sorted the field animals and cleaned the Church.
All before 9 am

Now it's coffee time with some music.

The Prof's brother and sister law bought us a strange little object at Christmas.

It looked like a large pebble connected to an electric plug.
It's a" google plus" I was informed " you ask it things"

Well initially the google plus was a real let down as it got all flustered with some of my questioning
The " Hey Google will Carol Snog Daryl in season 8 of The Walking Dead?" question fell on deaf ears and it took an age before the bloody thing found me a recipe for low fat macaroni cheese  but after a bit of practice now it's sort of come into its own as just now, after I sit down with my bucket of coffee I call over ( still somewhat self consciously I must say)
" Hey Google play A selection of movie soundtracks by John Williams!" 
And after a polite acknowledgement by a posh sounding lady the kitchen is suddenly filled with stirring music!
What strange magic!
Apparently you can get different voices to answer your hey google questions?
I wonder if they do Russell Crowe?
Ohhh errrr

Hey

Ok....it's a lazy post but a lovely song

Result

Life In The Fast Lane

My husband is working late.
He let me know so at least I didn't feel as though I wanted to put his dinner in the dogs.
I had a bath then took the dogs out for their final walk before settling down next to the fire

On the main road, by the village green one passing car slowed down and several young women shrieked at me from inside, one was drinking Prosecco
One other , I recognised as a nurse from Intensive care. She and her friends were dolled up and on the way to the Chester bars
And she cackled with the others
" ooooohhhh Jonney Gray in his pyjamas ! "
It was only 8pm!

My New Co-pilot

I'm not known for my sartorial elegance .
Nowadays my somewhat eclectic attire is complemented by a large pair of Princess Leia headphones through which I listen to London's talk radio station when Mary and I take our daily power walk.
I know I look a knob, but I don't care.
They also keep my ears warm in cold weather.

This morning as Mary and I stopped at the top field above the village to take in the view,
farmer Basil stopped his van briefly on his way to feed his ewes
We chatted for a short time and Mary climbed into my lap
" That little bitch loves you!" He remarked.

For Lee

Mary licked Winnie's earwax for most of the late afternoon

The Sins Of Youth

Mr Bradly is on the far right

I was thinking today that this internet thingamajig should come with a health warning.
I am sure the MP Ben Bradly is thinking the same this morning as his blog comments, written when he was 21 years old came back to bite him in the arse.
Mr Bradly was promoted in Theresa May's recent minister "shuffle" and at 28 he has taken on the mantle of "Conservative Vice Chair for Youth". Unfortunately a comment about the sterilization of men on welfare, a nasty and ill advised comment no doubt thrown into a rant about the sponging poor, has been unearthed from blogland and it now threatens to cost him a job that he may well be very suited to.
The internet is unforgiving when it comes to quotes. If it is there in black and white it's there...plain and simple, even if it was written when God was a boy.
I have no thoughts on Ben Bradly one way or another. He may well still hold his youthful views for all I know but I would like to think that he does not.
My thinking, views and prejudices are very different now than they were when I was 21 that's for sure. My saving grace is that my gauche thoughts on the universe were never published on line for the universe to reread forever.
Inspector Javert never forgave Jean Valjean for stealing a loaf of bread despite all the good deeds the poor man did later in his life. Javert was like our modern media.....he never let anything go.

*****************************************************************************

In a rather different vein, the subject of disappointment has been somewhat on my mind. It was raised by an old friend who is clearly disappointed just how their life  has panned out over the years. and was shared not in a self pitying kind of way but in a matter of fact that's how it is kind of way.
I was asked if I had ever been disappointed with my lot and I changed the subject. Not to disguise that fact that I had in any way been disappointed by life's fickle ways but it was to hide the fact that I hadn't .
I didn't want to sound smug.
On the morning dog walk I got to thinking of just when I was last disappointed ?
ok I was miffed that the Mathew Bourne ballet was cancelled on my last visit to London ...oh and I remember feeling hurt and disappointed when a friend I once held very dear gave me a cheap bunch of petrol station flowers for a birthday but that was over a decade ago, and I was being Queeny.
One thought did come to mind when I put some more effort into the question
and it was a moment in New York.
I wanted to somehow reinact this wonderful scene at Grand Central Station

little did I realise that the New Skyscrapers that surround 42nd street now block out all of the light.

I am easily pleased

Lonely Tsar

I heard today we have a new minister for loneliness
Tracey Crouch has been given the job.....strange that seeing that she voted numerous times against increasing benefits for the long term chronically unwell and the unemployed.
But I won't be disingenuous just yet. Just having a loneliness advocate is a positive move I am sure.

I've posted this before but it is worth repeating here, that a few years ago I found myself washing an elderly lady on intensive care. She had survived a bout of sepsis and after I had successfully extubated her from the ventilator that had kept her alive for a week or so , I removed many of the invasive lines from her body and needed to "freshen her up" before allowing her to sleep.
I remember her watching me through her oxygen mask as I dabbed and dried here and there, and after I had finished combing her hair and wrapping her snugly into a blanket she croaked a brief thank you.
" That's the first time anyone has touched me in over nine years" she told me.
The phrase hit home as if I had been struck with a baseball bat

Nine years!

Waiting

I can't compete with yesterday's post.so I won't try

I am standing at the kitchen sink, looking out for the next workman to arrive.
My days recently have been filled with such waits.
This time its a roofer and he lives in the village, so I know he will turn up
I don't mind these moments as the wait facilitates the completion of those jobs that are often left.
This morning I have cleaned the oven and I am just about to make carrot and tarragon soup

Having a new kitchen means that home waits are  now a pleasure .

 The roofer arrived on time! I have time to make red pepper and lentil soup too