After Elias

 In the end I couldn't change our Les Miserables tickets on line. so had to speak to a real human being at the Sondheim theatre box office called Toby

He was dreadfully sweet and told me that I was only one of hundreds of theatre goers who he will be talking to today. The strikes have reduced the audiences by half for some nights, he told me and my sob story was just one of many. 

" We were just getting back on our feet too" he chirped sadly

I've rebooked for October

I didn't get much sleep yesterday. The weather was lovely and everyone seemed out and about. Animal Helper Pat stopped for ages for a chat. she's off with family cruising around the Med soon, which sounds delightful. and has been busy with her WI and Church activities. I reminded her of the bring and by sale next Saturday but she already has a plant sale planned

she looked well.

Mrs Trellis stopped next sans bobble hat. she seemed more  preoccupied with her own thoughts than usual and didn't stop long. As didn't Islwyn who called the dogs in turn for a cuddle at the garden wall.

I fell asleep at the kitchen table with my forehead on my arms, only walking a  short while later feeling like the Wreck of the Hesperus

Tomorrow ( now today) I will sleep in after a dog walk then I will venture over to Chester to meet an old friend Nigel for a late lunch and a chat.

This week, at Gay Book Club  I had a small row with cis gay man I will call Martin

Like me he is a powerful character who knows his own mind.

he is young, perhaps 25 and is arch to the point of rudeness and often will argue a point for the sake of arguing. 

He owns his own clothing business.

 

we were reviewing the rather moving novel After Elias by Eddy Boudal Tan which is about a gay fiancé of a dead pilot who has to piece together a complicated aftermath of a plane crash which killed his husband to be and 300 passengers, when Martin dismissed one of the women's comments of how she was moved to tears by its opening chapter as sentimental and indulgent she bit back and a somewhat barbed argument ensued.

when I reminded Martin of the ground rules of respect set out in the groups' first meeting he called me a "Gay Old Social worker" with a laugh

which shut me up, amid the tut tuts of some of the others

At coffee and biscuit time the only older guy in the group came up and asked me why I hadn't bitten back and I told him I just couldn't be arsed, which was true

but a small part of me, 

a tiny little gay twat of me,

would have liked to slapped him so hard in the back of the head that his eyes popped out

The River Dee in Chester this afternoon

We sat and ate ice cream like two middle aged gays 

Strikes

 

I think I’ve generally been sympathetic to the rail strike, even though it has affected me several times during sojourns to the capital and beyond. 

Today I am more than just pissed off with the RNT union leader Mick Lynch for adding one more strike day to the days already earmarked at the end of May and early June for strike action .Now he has effectively cancelled our Les Miserables trip planned on June 1st.

Now I can claim back the rail tickets for nothing and move the theatre tickets for a small fee, but we’ve lost our booking for the hotel, which was a difficult book anyway as cheaper hotel rooms in the capital early June were just not to be had.

I’ve booked them via credit card so may be able to get my money back …..but that’s not the point.

I get to go to London a lot, my sister much less so. 

And the one time she gets to have a treat 

It’s bloody cancelled

Bishop’s Flower

 

The alliums are flowering in the garden and look lovely despite not fully open this morning. I cut Centaurea Montana ( Mountain Cornflower) for the kitchen and filled the gaps with Ammi Majus ( Bishop’s Flower) and blue aquilegia picked from the lane borders.

Cut flowers, like owning  a cat, make a house a real home I always think

I’ve always thought so and I wonder where I learnt that from?

I’m physically back to normal today but will listen to my body and will sleep most of the afternoon before shift. The day before night shift ,is a literal day of rest for me. Pottering and flower cutting, that’s my therapy, and dozing alongside the coconut smelling Dorothy 

I’ve made chicken noodles with a low fat satay sauce for supper and an egg mango salad for lunch, and have watered the planters and written a considered message to a friend whose relationship has sadly faltered .

I’ve nothing big to share today.

No belly laughs or sad stories.

Nothing interesting to report in a world of sad news

Just a quiet day in a Welsh village

With the sound of blackbirds softening the sound of the noisy neighbour sawing wood in his workshop

Best line of the night

Dinnerladies 1999

            "We've all got problems, I lost 8 tropical fish in a power cut last week “
 

A Coconut Smelling Bulldog

 My bladder is playing up today. It does this from time to time and as it was with Paul Edgecombe from The Green Mile I’ve been plagued by cramps and pain that arrives and leaves like lightening .

I’m not moving too far from home today. 

I’ve completed the jobs I mentioned yesterday including a somewhat colourful wrestling match with Dorothy in the shower.

She now smells of coconut.

My final job was to measure and mark my front gate.

Village Leader Ian, who has lived down the lane for years admitted that he has been bugged by my gate for most of that time. 

It used to be the gate to my pig pen and before that was a gate to one of the 1920’s  Council houses in Erw Wen and it’s never properly fitted my narrow path and it’s bother Ian’s neat mind so much he’s offered to have his own blacksmith to reduce its size.

How kind is that? 

It’s a warm day , and I’ve hung washing on the back garden wall and bushes for the sun to dry and I’ve dozed on the couch with the lounge windows wide whilst cuddling a cushion. 

Albert has walked down the stairs like an old man and yowled loudly for something to eat.  

Garlic

 Does anyone else feel as though they are on catch up all of the time?

At times I can be almost overwhelmed by the size my to do list

And my life is nothing special 

Today I’ve taken the dogs out for a long walk, picked wild garlic flowers which resemble little fireworks of white and ordered logs and shopped. 

I’ve also called around to  Meirion Jones’ neat little bungalow to sweet talk him into being our flower Judge this year. He has the best garden in the village.

The flower show returns to Trelawnyd on August 5 th 

So back to today

It’s just past 10 am and I have a workbook for university to finish and share with my tutor on line. That has to be completed this afternoon.

I have certificates to sort for the Hall window sponsorship, they need printing out, hand finishing and posting

There are Carpets to clean after Albert’s nocturnal bladder emptying 

Dorothy to shower ( gawd don’t ask why all I will say that it rhymes with Manny) and it’s bugging me that my new outside solar lights haven’t had their little paper lanterns slipped over their cages.

The floor needs mopping, the chimney sweep needs re booking and I need to sort my repeat prescription for antibiotics out with the pharmacy. 

Oh and I got to sort out more vendors and posters for the vintage table stop sale a week on Saturday .

My to do list is written and I think I need another bucket of coffee

Thought For The Day and The Blue Caftan

I’m in the Storyhouse library/ cafe with my paper bucket of coffee. I’m completing my final entries for my college workbook and journal. In an hour and a half I will go and watch a movie here before heading home. The movie is Moroccan and is titled The Blue Caftan .

I will review it later

I have just written 1000 words or so on the art of Demonstrating acceptance

The following video says it way better than I could ever do

His dry honesty is incredibly moving

 

The Blue Caftan is a gem of a film.

It’s a precise, gently unfolding drama set in the claustrophobic back streets of a Moroccan town where tailor Halim ( Salah Bakri) and his wife Mina ( Lubna Azabel ) forge a difficult existence producing beautifully crafted items of women’s clothing mainly for weddings . The couple are devoted and loving but exist with the unspoken truth that Halim is gay and occasionally visits a local hamman to meet his sexual needs. 

When a young apprentice Yosef. (Ayouboui Massi)  joins the shop, Mina’s unspoken fears are unearthed as she realises her husbands attraction to the younger man.

All this is done at such a gentle pace in just three claustrophobic and dimly lit places, the couple’s flat, shop and the hamman and as deftly as Halim’s beautiful sewing the threads of the three characters come together as Mina’s health fails her and she comes to face her own mortality and the potentially happy future her husband may have with Yousef

In one slow and beautiful scene the dying Mina apologies to Yousef for being so hard on him and with a few gentle glances she effectively weaves the young man into the couple’s life with an acceptance and love which is heartbreaking to watch .

The Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani has crafted a nuanced, brave and important film in The Blue Caftan.

A film bursting with hope and love and the goodness of people.

Beautiful 

Hungover and Hangover gone

 Ooooooh, I’ve got a bit of a sore head this morning

A case of too many peroni beers last night.

I felt rough as a bears arse.

Ruth and I took the dogs for a long walk and stopped at Y Shed for a restorative coffee and bacon baguette

Then it was back to the hall to clean up which didn’t take long as 8 volunteers turned up to help.

I’m drinking Diet Coke and am having a mooch on the couch covered in dogs

I’m too old for hangovers.

As it happened I took myself off to bed at midday. 

I got up at 5.45 pm with Dorothy gently occluding my airway with her chin ( she does this most mornings when she wants her first pee of the day) 

I drank a litre of Diet Coke and ate three bananas and now feel human 

   

Albert has not been around  and has been under the spare bed all day 😒

I only know that because Roger has been standing guard over him

Eurovision

I’m Fairly indifferent to the music 

But with my old friend Ruth in tow, we manned the door and counted in seventy odd souls from Trelawnyd to enjoy the night. 

I faded around eleven after night shift, but left enough dancing away

It was lovely to have the 2 village Ukrainian Families cater for us all with real Ukrainian finger food 

They were our special guests 

My star of Eurovision ? Amazing Hannah Waddingham

Ruth and Mary who has just been diagnosed as deaf 

Stars

In the mid 1980s I went to see Les Miserables on my own in London.

I was twenty three or so

A very gauche and young twenty three.

I saw the production with the original cast.  Colm Wilkinson, Patti LuPone, Michael Ball, Frances Ruffelle but non affected me more than the chocolate voiced Roger Allam as the policeman Javert.

His performance and voice was captivating.

In a couple of weeks time I’m taking Janet to see the Les Mis revival at the Sondheim. 

It’s for our birthday

We’ve hopefully squeezed it in between rail strikes and fuck me I managed to get us two rooms at the lovely Mimi Hotel in Soho. 

I had cocktails there with Nu a while ago

A Stuart Clarke is apparently playing Javert at the moment

He looks about 12

Vigils

 

I’ve seen hundreds of vigils in my time

Perhaps even a thousand .

One sticks in my mind more than any other and it was in Sheffield in the 1990s 

It was with a young man in his twenties. 

A slight, Bonny lad with pink cheeks and brown hair. 

He was unconscious and sadly brain dead and he had a mother and many brothers who were sitting with him in shifts.

I was working nights and it was very dark and very cold  as Sheffield winters often are,

And he was in a dark side room with his mother who was sat in a chair and a younger brother who was asleep on a mattress on the floor. 

Now, because the mother hadn’t slept, one of the sons had fashioned a paper shade cover over each lens of her spare glasses, so by slipping them on she could effectively shut out the light of my inquiring pen torch when I came to assess her son in the middle of the night.

What we hadn’t factored in however was the youngest son’s sense of humour ,as unbeknownst to all, he had drawn two massive staring eyes on the paper with a felt pen. So when I shone my pen torch over at the woman in the chair, two massive bloodshot eyes were staring out at me in the dark!!!

My scream and subsequent swearing woke mother and son, and most of the ward up 

Thursday Morning

 

Night shifts have come around awfully quickly this week. 

Back tonight.

I finish Saturday morning which will mean I can watch Eurovision in the Hall Saturday night.

Bluebell needs more work this morning, but that’s the only big job of the day to sort.

I’ve already given the dogs their big walk and mown the lawn. 

My sister is due to do the garden but is snowed under by bookings

The garden will be transformed in a week or so when the alliums bloom. At the moment the aquilegia and forget me nots are. Filling the borders with their gentle colour

And the cheerful Welsh poppies are poking their yellow heads in the few gaps left

Sushi

 I am consistently amazed that such in innocuous blog such as Going Gently can rile some readers into such apoplexy and anger. 

It baffles me, as does a comment from last night which admitted that my blog is bad for a certain reader’s mental health. 

Gawd help us, if that’s the case, I hope that reader contacts MIND immediately before never reading Going Gently again.

There’s a lot to be said for self help.

Anyhow I went shopping today.

I’m not a big shopper, but I heard that a new sushi bar had opened up in the town of Mold which is located around 17 miles east of Trelawnyd, so I thought I’d treat myself.

Mold’s Welsh name is Yr Wyddgrug ( Mound in English) and it is a pretty market town overlooked by Theatre Clwyd which situated a mile or so out of town.

I was impressed with the bespoke shops as well as the sushi and as well as buying myself some Japanese tea, I bought some French bacon twists from a bone fide French baker, some books at in independent bookshop and some bespoke birthday cards from an art shop

Looking At Yourself

 

It’s not a pretty sight. 

I’m writing my last assignment for Uni and I am in the process of analysing my own counselling skills on film. 

I’m finding it all rather harrowing .

Seeing yourself on the screen , warts and all isn’t nice.

No wonder I’m single.

I look a mess

So I have been trying to concentrate more on my non verbals, my ability to paraphrase, recap and challenge. My use of Egan’s three stage model, my use of  advanced empathy, my voice,  my phrasing and my abilities to make the interaction flow. 

Now that feels a bit better. 

I see past looking at a fat old man and now , at least,  I see a friendly fat old man

With crinkling eyes and a gentle voice

Hey ho

Mary

B

She rolled in the body of a dead badger on our last walk of the day 

After nights I am in despair 

It’s ok I have gin in 

 

Tea and Cake

I was in bed for most of the day yesterday. We’d had an incredibly hard and busy shift Saturday night and so I slept heavily and long, despite being woken by the dogs baying at someone at the door in the afternoon. My visitor was Nick from the TCA who dropped off some of the Coronation cake made by bouncy Bridget . I missed his knock but soon spied a parcel of cake wrapped in silver paper plonked on top of my wall basket.

It was bloody lovely too with a hot cup of tea.

But I was soon snoring away the rest of the afternoon so missed any post-mortem from the Coronation afternoon tea which looked impressive on line and which probably  tasted even better in the flesh

The Eurovision night next Saturday will be a much bawdier affair me thinks.

Me hopes so.

So, Trelawnyd life plods along at its own pace. King Charles has his crown and I suspect he shouts and  laughs with Camilla loudly and long.

Eurovision is the next altar to pray at. Then it’s summer 

 

Goats At Work

These two were sat by our back door when I got to work yesterday evening. 

It’s strange to think that a small seaside town in Wales has a thriving and popular population of Kashmir Goats but here they still are, the descendants  of a few individuals who were a coronation gift from the Shah of Persia to the young Queen Victoria in 1837

During lockdown they received much worldwide publicity after running amok around town like hoards of StTrinian schoolgirls  and here on West Shore at the base of The Great Orme , they often visit the hospice daily with their benign faces and exotic hornes….

 

The C Word

 

I won’t bang on about it

I’m not a huge fan of Charles

But I was rather moved by his expression when he walked into the Abby

Finally centre stage 

A hint of a smile on his face.

Bryn Terfels Kyrie Eleison sung in Welsh was incredibly beautiful 

Loved this bit too, see Kate beaming at them at the end 

The king sighed with a smile as his army, navy and airforce personnel cheered him from the gardens of Buckingham palace.

I’ve been incredibly moved by today’s coverage.

Seeing the king kneeling in the Abby in just a simple shirt reenforced his sense of duty, and the professionalism of the armed forces pitched things just right

Well done

Well done

Worth

 Tonight Gorgeous Dave and I went to see the darkly comic play Worth at the Storyhouse in Chester .

It turned out to be a rather brutal and harsh essay on a Uk/ Chinese family dynamic at a matriarch’s funeral and although not faultless it sparked a robust conversation about grief and families  on our way home 

Neighbours

I have a set of neighbours who are not particularly neighbourly

They are noisy and in my mind inconsiderate of others , so we don’t speak anymore….well ever since I complained to them by note that their five dogs had yapped continuously for a couple of hours in the garden one afternoon without supervision or let up

Today is blissful. 

There is no noise from next door. No constant sawing of wood. No barking. No yelling at the darling CHARLIE!!!  for barking so much. 

It’s silent and my back door is open wide , sucking in the peace and quiet into the cottage.

And it’s bliss

Am I turning into one of those strange neighbours that yell at people in the street? 

You know the ones you used to poke fun of when you were a kid. 

The old fart who lives alone and who spoils your fun on sunny afternoons when kicking a ball in the street feels like the ideal pastime?

Perhaps I am.I know my aforementioned neighbours think I’m unreasonable but I have been a neighbour to many over the years and even if I do say so myself , I’ve been a good one. 

Ok I once frightened my old lady neighbour half to death in Walkley Sheffield after I caught a black cat in my kitchen and threw it into her pond after it had terrorised my two kittens for weeks.

It wasn’t the fact that I three the cat into her pond that was the problem I think, it was more that I was just wearing a pair a rather shabby boxer shorts at the time that upset her.

I made it up to her years later when I found her in the garden unconscious after a fall and I went to hospital with her in the ambulance.

I sold that tiny terraced house to a very small postman person who wasn’t a patch on me….I was told after he had moved in.

My neighbour John in Hillsborough Sheffield, is still one of my best friends now and I still miss sitting in my neat tidy garden sharing a bottle of wine with him on a summers’ evening. 

Funny that the builder who has just bought that house for his son, has recently left me a comment on Going Gently .saying it is now in safe hands. 

Funny how small the world feels sometimes.

Back to today, it’s the blackbird calls that fill the air as they challenge each other over a mate. Then it’s the sound of rain on leaves, the faraway roar of a plane heading for Liverpool airport and the sound of Dorothy snoring 

And Im happy at that