I’ve read for most of today 

I’m reading Bethan Robert’s novel MyPoliceman which is a study of an on going triangular relationship between grammar school girl Marion, her policeman husband Tom and gay museum curator Patrick.

It’s a cracking read. 

Do you have whole days, just enjoying the company of a book and its characters ? 

Following a hot shower, I found my grey tracksuit bottoms from the wardrobe and after putting them  on with my second best walking dead T shirts, I curled up on the trendy blue couch wrapped in a throw, and read in the warmth of the winter sun which cut through the rain around midday.

Every hour or so, I’d refresh my tea mug with tea sweetened slightly with algarve nectar and at two I shared my lunch of faggots and mushy peas, bought cheaply from Marks and Spencer early this morning,

with Mary who curled up with me for the duration.

I’m thinking of starting a village book club 

Old Trefor’s niece called around to tell me he’s having some tests in hospital and will be there a few days. I promised to help her clean his house tomorrow. 

I’ve texted a few friends, agreed to buy some tickets for the TCA village casino night next Friday and made a lasagne which is now bubbling gently in the oven. 

But for the most part I’ve read 

And as the fire has been lit early, the cottage is toasty warm, and smelling of garlic and it’s all oh so cozy .

Not Much

 Old Trev , his niece told me is in hospital, she knows not where. 

I hope they found him an appropriate bed, so many of the patients sit in their ambulances outside A&E nowadays, a place , to be honest, I’d prefer his to be rather than on a hospital trolley. 

At least he would be warmer, and supervised by two trained professionals in the ambulance.

She will keep me up to date with any updates.

It’s college day today and I’m off soon. 

We [ the students]have presentations to give tonight.

I’ve practiced it in front of the dogs but only Roger seemed interested.

I may go to the cinema tomorrow to see Living 

I suspect it’s been a bit overblown by the critics but we will see

I met a guy with a hole in his jumper yesterday, there wasn’t the time to have a chat 🙁

And thank you for follower Jane ,    Who kindly left me a small gift. 

After a long and somewhat taxing shift yesterday, it was most welcomed…..

Eyeball

 “ Whats up with your eye?” 

So asked a patient’s relative moments later after I started to talk to him in the ward office

The sclera of my eye had turned an unsightly red giving me the look of a fat friendly zombie, which is not the look you want to have when you are sharing support on a hospice inpatients department.

Roger had given me a right swipe last night 

I irrigated my eye with chlorampenicol eye drops nicked from the work fridge but when I got home my eye felt sticky and painful 

Sailor John was waiting for me when I walked to the cottage.

Old Trev had had a fall in his garage  and had just been carried to bed by a young passerby who had heard his calls after lying there for a few hours.

I was happy to help sort him out , 

His niece will be accompanying him for a check up in hospital in a few hours time.

Ambulance waits in wales are calculated in hours 

It’s a scandal 

Typical of Trev , after we had assessed his pain , and warmed him up with multiple duvets and after I got him to show me he hadn’t broken his hip 

He said in his sing song , welsh accent, his tiny face peeping from under the bed clothes

“John , do you know you’ve done something to your eye?”

Black Eyed Mog

 Got home late tonight after a busy shift 

Wanting to talk catch up with a friend and relax with beer in front of the fire but

Ended up with back ache watching episode three of The English a western with Emily Blunt 

Which featured a very odd female Welsh villain called Black Eyed Mog 

The whole evening feels a bit surreal 

Roger has given me a black eye

Sister Act

 Two long days at work now 

Roger is now sleeping on my bed with the others and did so without any accidents last night.

And non wanted to get up at 6 am this morning.

I will leave you with this bit of silliness from a mother and daughter 

Let The Right One in

 

It was a lovely talkie evening all told. 

We met in the city centre, found a pub where we could talk and 

then found a tapas place near the Royal exchange where we could relax and talk some more.

After the play we returned to the hotel and watched the apartments opposite as if we were James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window. And we drank Prosecco cooled in the sink in the bathroom and yacked a great deal more.

Jack Thorne’s stage adaptation of the Swedish horror/ drama was excellent.

Essentially a study of bullying and loneliness it follows shy adolescent Oskar’s life , from sad school time to his quiet existence in a snowbound apartment with his alcoholic mother.

As gruesome murders affect his community , Oskar meets up with Eli, his new and equally lonely next door neighbour, and a somewhat sweet, mutually support relationship blossoms between the two despite Oskar’s growing awareness that Eli may be a vampire.

The performances in this production are top notch. Rhian Blundell ( who has the look and energy  of fellow actress Jessie Buckley ) brings an alien type physicality to her role as the ambiguous Eli and Pete Machale, ( who is probably in his mid twenties in reality) looks and acts every inch like a gauche thirteen year old boy from a damaged home and a sad school life. 

The horror moments are well handled with flashes and hints at gore which certainly makes you jump ,rather than a explicit blood fest  seen in the movie. 

I’ve been to the Royal Exchange before but had forgotten just how beautiful the impressive the building and design is.

This morning we walked up to Manchester’s northern quarter for a fab breakfast at the North Cafe before catching the train homeward 

Larks

 Aviva Trains Wales are notoriously a bad ride.

I’m on the 12.18 straight through to Manchester and already it feels that I’m on something out of the Wild West. 

I messaged a friend so, as the usual rough looking yobs that often frequent the coast trains got off in Flint.

The refreshment trolley man was a breath of fresh air though.

Small and wiry and used to being ignored I suspect, he ambled down the aisle muttering a low chant of a list of his refreshments like a Monk chanting a prayer.

“ Tea, coffees, hot chocolate……..soft drinks…hard drinks……very hard drinks, snacks, crisps, sandwiches, all manner of things to stuff your faces with……complementary napkin….with every purchase.”  

Can anyone suggest a nice place for breakfast in central Manchester…I haven’t got a clue.

Off for drinks and a meal later and the well reviewed horror play Let The Right One In at the Royal Exchange

What Larks Pip

Pee Stains On The Landing

 

Old Albert has been having accidents fairly regularly now

I think his “ thinking” has changed a little…some organic changes perhaps 

He’s clingy and reluctant to go outside. 

He paces the house and is awake on the bed at night when he used to patrol the garden.

I’ve tested his wee stains no sign of infection.

I’ll buy a litter tray on Saturday 

In the meantime I’ve got a carpet cleaner.

I looked at the old boy this morning before leaving for work.

And my heart ached for him just a little 

He was sitting on the window sill , his deformed leg bent painfully to one side. 

Waiting for his breakfast .

He’s been a constant here for fourteen years

A best supporting actor to the leading dog actresses 

They break your heart don’t they?

Objects Of My Affection

 

The Anonymous Arsehole Commentator will be shaking themselves into a apoplectic fit of the vapours with today’s post for sure as I’m talking money. 

Ok I’ve got a few theatre trips booked, ok I’m off to London with my nephew, but like everyone else in the country, I have and increased amount in bills per month now so have a need to save a bit of money where I can.

I’m going to have clear out.

Only yesterday I looked at a wood cut print of two geese, I have hanging on my stairs .

I looked at it as if I had never seen it before.

It’s pretty enough, I thought, but over twenty years it has been ignored and not enjoyed and so I moved it where I could see it more clearly.

This one thought and action has prompted me to sell some of the unseen, unwanted and not needed items I have around the house. 

I feel a car boot on the way

With a few smaller items earmarked for eBay 

Within three minutes I had the starters collected

A bespoke early Victorian corner cupboard from a Northumbrian farmhouse.( above)

A broken Art Deco mantle clock

Some silver pieces, tarnished and isolated on a bookshelf 

A pretty Staffordshire sheep

A tea caddy without its liner

Old dvds and books , flamingo containers, bits of treen, plant pots , an Art Deco bedside cabinet, 

Oh and some antique Italian marble fruit bought from an antique shop ran by my sister’s mother in law in the 1980s.

I must admit that a proud little Staffordshire Greyhound who was sat unloved in the duck egg blue bookcase I fell in love with all over again and I moved him to a new spot in the limelight in my bathroom but the cull will be extensive yet compassionate me thinks 

Sentiment is a big emotion with me and the pieces that I love will be kept and dusted and looked at with affection. 

I will leave you with this video. 

An audience made into a choir

Rather stunning

I have sung in a choir that seemingly out of nowhere made something equally as emotional and as beautiful as that video and it’s a magical place to be 

Bra

 I forgot to blog this tiny moment of surreal joy today, what with the family news and all that

Zoe Ball was shouting a lot on radio 2 this morning as she has a want to do 

But this sentence did make me laugh out loud in the dog walking car park early doors

“ Ooooh I’m all out of sorts today” she moaned  ……”I’ve put the wrong bra on!”

Ps Leslie Thomas never said “ Goodbye”

Sadly until now x

Family News

 It’s a day for celebration, family celebration. 

Nephew Pete, My sister Ann, Brother in law Tim and nephew Chris

My sister Ann’s husband Tim is in Windsor Castle with the family  as I type this. Princess Anne will be awarding him his MBE today for services to the local business community. 

Several years ago Ann was awarded a British Empire Medal for her services to the community 

It’s lovely to have some good news 

Shouting Into The Wind

 Trendy Carol and husband Ewan took the dogs this morning so I could spend 5 hours in the library and at work .

I have a college presentation to prepare for and Google slides baffle me to the point of extinction.

I was surrounded by 20 year olds, most with headphones and ear buds in . 

Kids making their way forward in an uncertain world. 

I got stuck inserting photos on my last slide 

It was a slide that was suggesting what moral quality I thought I possessed which could be linked to the BACP ( British Association for Counselling and psychotherapy ) ethical framework. 

For better or worse I chose wisdom and I attempted to illustrate with various photos…of me looking old ( and therefore wise?) a photo of Winnie looking thoughtful, me in PPE looking like a pig in a condom

And a photo of a little Mongolian girl yelling joyously into the wind 

( I was going to use it as a metaphor for not peeing into the wind …hence wise….but ok I know the link was weak) 

Like I said I got stuck using the software so looked around for someone to help me. 

The librarian had already pissed me off for telling me it was bottled beverages ONLY and her halitosis was striking even a yard away, so I asked the young chap in a beanie hat on the next computer if he could help.

Bless him

He was gauche and shy but soon sorted my slides out with his long white fingers , and was kind enough to centre the text up too

He loved the photo of the Mongolian girl and of Winnie too and asked me what I was studying 

“Ahhh counselling ! “ he repeated, “ Ive had that at school… I was very depressed when I was eleven”

He looked like a child now, I thought , so bugger only knows what he looked like when he was eleven .

“ It helped” he said cheerfully before moving back to his desk with a wave

Suddenly I felt happy that it did.

I’m bit Bored

Omaha Cat Lady has brightened up today. She’s a bright spark for sure. 

I enjoy listening to her talk through online recipes 

I forgot to help out with other volunteers to clear the garden of the a memorial Hall 😥

I made chilli con carne, with sticky white rice  as my mother used to do, and in a nostalgic rush organised the rice into a ring to encircle the meat.

I ate it with chopsticks in front of the fire watching the British Social Realism film Woman in a Dressing gown in longjohns and my third best Walking Dead T shirt  but the film depressed me so I turned on a recorded Only Connect instead after listening to The Archers

I’m bored today . 

I feel as though everything feels rather anticlimactic, which is strange. 

As little of note happened in the week.

I showered the Welsh terriers and cleaned their ears properly . I do this as I have a shower with them , which sounds odd but it works .

Dorothy watched the action with her face pressed against the shower door 

She’s recovered from yesterday’s Bonfire night fireworks, where she spent the evening trembling behind the Trendy Blue Sofa covered in a blanket . 

Lots of italics today …..lovely
 

Something Quite Beautiful

 I hung the fairy lights behind her bed and looped them around the tracking hoist.

We turned off the main lights and the support worker helped the patient into a pretty blouse.

I twisted the bottles of Prosecco into an improvised ice bucket made from a sharps bin and

We left the friends to enjoy their Chinese takeaway and drinks.

Sometimes nursing is dire, sometimes unforgiving,  mostly it’s a challenge , but often …it’s a pure joy.

I witnessed someing quite beautiful tonight, just before I left for home.

I knocked on the patient’s door to say goodbye

And saw four old friends sitting on a bed together like sisters do

They were all holding hands .

And very quietly , almost in a whisper they were singing as one

I recognised the chorus 

All I needed was the love you gave,

          all I needed for another day

          And all I ever knew, 

          Only you….. 

 

 

Sex Bomb

 

My sister Janet arrived yesterday and did a cracking job on the front garden . In the afternoon, well  after she’d left Mr Poznan knocked on the lane window specifically to tell me now nice the garden looked. 

He came in for tea.

Janet has bought me a ticket to ABBA voyage for Christmas 

We go in February which means another lovely trip to London. 

The last time we went to a concert together, we went to see Tom Jones at the Sheffield Arena . 

I smuggled in a bottle of gin , divided into two water bottles and not knowing it was neat, Janet decked hers a little too quickly 

I remember when we’re on the tram home to Hillsborough she gave a drunken, spirited and rather variable version of Tom’s hit of Sex Bomb to a rather stunned 100 or so fellow passengers as she slid up and down a nearby handrail like a somewhat shaken poledancer 

I think I need to get her a ticket to the Royal Ballet for her Christmas pressie she  needs to experience the Opera House as she’s never been.
Nu and I are going to see The English National Opera’s version It’s a wonderful Life in December, it’s our pre Christmas treat and my nephew Leo and I are off to see Six in London in a few weeks time. 

I’ve booked us a meal in Dishoom Convent Garden as a treat. 

Add to that the fact that old Sheffield friend Jane and I are meeting in Manchester for Jack Thorne’s theatrical adaptation of John Ajvide Lindgvust’s horror piece Let The Right One In next week, and I’m pretty lucky theatre wise 

I think we will have a boogie in the gay village too…hey ho

Last night was a real Hugge night. 

At 6 pm I had a glass of port ( a miniature given to me last Christmas by Mrs Trellis alongside a mars bar wrapped in a red napkin ! )   With some cheese and crackers. I turned the lights low and stoked up the fire and watched the dvd  I Remember Mama with Irene Dunne with a handkerchief  

It was just after 8pm when I got ready for bed mindful of another busy day and I stopped to watch Roger

He was asleep on the yellow arm chair , his tail whirling like a helicopter  as he dreamt happy doggy dreams 

So sweet.

Girly Lights

“ Have you any spare fairy lights? “  

The question came from the hospice social worker, a straight talking Irish woman with a ribald sense of humour

You look the sort” she added 

I was taken aback, somewhat as my day had not stopped and had revolved around constant visits to the drug room for the double checking of large amounts of morphine, and sedation and controlled drugs of all types.

Fairy lights was a new one on me.

“I may have some at home “ I told her

“ Girly ones?” the social worker asked hopefully 

“Well I think they may be Girly enough!” I said “ will pink flamingos do?” 

“Perfect “ she purred.

The social worker had been talking to one of my patients who wanted her best friends to come in to the hospice for a girly night “ in” 

The girly night is planned for tomorrow when I am on duty and the social worker wanted to set the scene well.

“Fairy lights mean girly night to me” the social worker explained 

“ what about the Prosecco ? “ I asked 

A support worker overheard the conversation and chipped in

“Several bottles already brought in by relatives, they are in the kitchen all labelled” she said 

Hospices do these sort of appeals well.

We are especially good at organising last minute weddings too, thanks mainly to a local registrars office that will pull the stops out for such requests.

This morning I couldn’t find any flamingoes at home.

Indeed there wasn’t a set of fairly lights to be seen anywhere. 

I must have had a Scrooge moment and had thrown them all out a year or two ago

Not even a beak left. 

I bought a set of lights this morning to take in to work tomorrow.

Operation Girly night is go! 

I’ve seen it all

Fucking hard shift today, I’m off to bed 

I want this for Christmas , it’s from https://jonxifon.com/

Early Morning

 A frost, the first of the year this morning.

I’m sat at the kitchen table with the bucket of coffee at 5,45 am

And I’m shivering in my uniform 

It’s on mornings like these ( all too few in these global warming days I must admit) that I adore my new bathroom.

A boiling hot shower sets you up for the day

And chases away bad dreams, old memories and everyday worries

Winter is well and truly here

Early dark nights 

Comfort food ( a tin of chip shop curry with mini roast potatoes last night ) 

I’ve had to change Albert’s feeding place as I caught Roger standing on tip toe on the arm of the reading chair  carefully licking his bowl on the window ledge.

Now I know why he has the shits! 

Hey ho

Apps

 

Grinder is an app that tells you how close another gay man is to you. If you travel somewhere new, it is likely that you get a few “ likes” from men who are attracted to your photo, or what you say on it.

In my experience not many will read your profile.

I was sat in the Storyhouse yesterday when when my phone pinged several times.

Peter was in his 50’s married and “ a practicing bisexual for the last 20 years” 

My question of “ Haven’t you got the hang of things yet? ” fell on stoney ground. 

A faceless 18 year old wanted “ a daddy and sex”  even though my profile clearly said friends only and Phil from Chester Central told me he liked my photo and did I have any M O R E  ( body) pics?

I sent him one of Canterbury Cathedral 

He didn’t reply

A pleasant looking chap of similar age called Cynical Sam wanted to know what I was doing , and we embarked on a normal conversation about the Storyhouse and art house films . 

I’d written a short pithy paragraph about the Korean film The Host when he removed his profile and page, effectively blocking any further conversation 

another success john, I thought.

And there they all were on an app page , the faceless, the confused, the predatory, the lonely and the lost.

Cynical Sam was perhaps overly cynical in his quest for looking for a “ normal SINGLE and SORTED bloke sort…..I thought my précis on The Host was informative and funny…..

You can’t please everyone I guess.

I looked through the app page again, lots of men without shirts looking for sex. Lots of blank profiles looking at men without shirts who are looking for sex. 

A few men looking for Mr Right ,but who will happily end up with a few Mr bj in a lay-by by the Grovensor Garden centre.

Most normal looking ones proclaiming their wonderful Open Relationship status.

I chatted to a polite Polish guy who seemed nice enough. 

He liked fat guys with nice smiles

I told him he needed to practice his English.

I ordered another coffee and texted a friend who gossiped about this and that and the other.

Nu messaged me too and I told her what film I was going to watch.

She said it had great reviews 😊

The coffee came and I opened my phone again

Another “ like” this time from “Hung in Saltney🌈”

What am I doing ? I said to myself 

And I deleted the app on my phone for good before sipping my coffee

Decision To Leave

 

The director Park Chan-Wook must have loved Hitchcock’s Vertigo for he has used the old master’s basic idea of a Policeman idolising a Femme fatale and has turned it into a classy, character led mystery film noir which is part elegant romance part psychological whodunnit.

It’s a class act.

Here the murder detective Hay-joon  (Park Hae-il), a somber, insomniac of a character investigates the seemingly obvious suicide of a man who keeps the photos of his beaten wife on his phone. 

The wife, Saoare ( a stunning Tang Wei) is interviewed by Joon who is instantly captivated by her enigmatic personality and efforts to understand the  Korean language ( she is Chinese) and the film through a succession of complicated twists and turns follows their relationship, subsequent other murders and Joon’s relationship with his bemused wife

I’ve over simplified things here for the director and actors have crafted a real work of art in this movie that I can’t quite articulate adequately. Both Hae-il and Wei have a strength and an amazing presence in front of the camera and their relationship dances in front of the audience with all of the subtlety and delicacy of the beautiful and expensive sushi the pair share quietly in one pivotal scene.

It’s a cracking movie