I got to Liverpool just around 5 pm and got the phone call that Grayson Perry had cancelled his performance due to a bad throat soon after.
I thought fuck it , and met my friend Colin anyway at Mowgli for yogurt chat bombs and lamb chops. The night will be rescheduled and fingers crossed I will be off .
I’m sat at the kitchen table , setting up zoom
I have a lecture with city lit at 10.30 about Philip Marlow and Sherlock Holmes as they are portrayed in cinema. Then I can have a cheeky sleep before my fourth night ( and final one) of the week
We have a postman who is a bit of hunk and he’s just knocked with a package ( fannar fannar) He made a banal joke about bending over to get under my honeysuckle and I laughed like a drain.
I’m very embarrassing .
Note to self, stop making a dick out of yourself when postie calls
The package was a delightfully wrapped two books from Gemma’s Person
Humours of Village Life ( Tales from Yorkshire) by J.Fairfax- Blakeborough ( 1932)
and The Valley Of Animals by Elma M Williams ( 1963)
I will start reading them tonight
I am constantly reminded of how kind people are, emails, cards, gifts , books and best wishes regularly arrive from blog readers and I’m always grateful for them
I will leave you with this incredibly moving piece of physical art by Yoann Bourgeois depicting the journey of life
I think I will resurrect the International Novelty fruit& Veg Competition in next years Trelawnyd Flower Show.
What do you think?
Speaking of nipples
Anyhow, my favourite " nipple" story hails from 1986. I was a very new Registered Psychiatric staff nurse on a " mother and baby" unit in York and was attending one my very first staff meetings in the day room which led off the main entrance . The ward sister was a phenomenally calm and obese woman who never raised her voice even in the most fraught of situations and I remember that right in the middle of discussing a particularly knotty nursing problem , she stopped and raised her hand.
" now I don't want anyone to turn around, or to react in any way" she murmured quietly " but some unfortunate lady is trying to push her nipples under the sash window"
I used to ask it a lot of my mother and grandparents and always received a robust reply
Last night I was asked by a patient
How was your lockdown ?
I think she was referring to work and PPE and end of life care.
But a whole kaleidoscope of memories came flooding back, most funny a few poignant.
All I could think of were zooms with friends , and 80 ribald gay men each with their own window , of Lyndi’s Charlie and miming at Choir, of kind volunteers leaving shopping on the kitchen wall and of Winifred’s bravura death with her rubber chicken.
Lockdown was a lonely , awful black time much of it during winter where all I would experience at night working was death and those linked to it, but outside this I’m recognising the humour that lifted many of us singletons through, when we’re we’re home, alone.
Choir continued every week , which is impossible on zoom as you can’t effectively sing together properly.but sing we did, and the tradition of sitting at the laptop looking into each other’s homes grew more and more important than the singing itself. Pets started to infiltrate the cameras with tenor Lydi enjoying our pantomime calls of “ We can see your Charlie!!!!!” When her old lurcher wandered into view.
I still tear up everytime I hear I raise You Up , the song that we adopted as our LOCKDOWN anthem
We sang it every week at the end of choir , and waved merrily at each other afterwards in order to keep the spirits up.
The Big Gay Quiz was on zoom every Friday evening, and at its height had well over a hundred queens from all over the world logging in to groan and bicker and chatter and laugh over a pub quiz that was run on military lines by an leather queer with control issues.
This clip was from winter 2021
“ Face washed ( tick)
Hair brushed ( tick)
Clean shirt checked for food stains ( check) - there was only one small splash of pot noodle..no one would notice ...tee hee
Background looking interesting behind me ( double check )
I was ready.
I squirted myself with a blast of Clinique Happy as a gay moral booster, as if it mattered”
Lockdown meant painting and cooking alongside my old friend Nia in Sydney and clandestine meetings with Chic Eleanor in McDonald’s car park , where we sat, each in our own cars , chatting a distance chat over coffee
This morning I drove up to McDonald’s to meet Chic Eleanor in the carpark for coffee.
The weather was atrocious but she looked fresh faced and as smiley as ever
“ Darling John..it’s almost like a tryst “ she admitted almost guiltily, pulling a green cashmere scarf tighter around her neck. “ Chin chin “
We raised our coffee cups from our respective driver’s seats, our breaths steaming in the cold air
She reminds me of the actress Lee Remick.“
Velvet Voiced Linda galvanised the village volunteer group and things never felt as bad or as lonely in the Village after that
My family zoomed and Sheffield folk I “saw” every week but I do recall one moment that hurt more than anything else and which reminded me I was, very much alone
When Winnie died, chomping on a rubber chicken with all of the gusto of a Viking chewing a ham, I left her valiant body with Albert and said chicken for an age. She had collapsed behind the kitchen door and I couldn’t get though so had to go around the cottage to move her.
That is, at ten pm that night
I couldn’t move her
She was just too big, too dead a weight for me to carry
So I knocked on next door and asked Sailor John if he could help
Lockdown meant he shouldn’t come into contact with me,
But it was something I couldn’t do alone and looking at my red blotchy face and snotty nose he smiled kindly and nodded……
I’m sat I’m my underpants eating baked beans out of the tin.
It’s just after 2 pm and I will be returning to bed shortly after the dogs have had a run and a wee.
It’s a lazy blog today,I’m sure you won’t mind, but( in my view) it’s an interesting one because it’s not all about me…lol
Mr Lu posts regularly on tiktok.
He’s a serious young Chinese man who lives in the sticks.
His simple videos are all about his life renovating an old Chinese farmhouse and a construction of a lagoon and traditional summerhouse in its grounds.
It’s an unhurried fascinating watch into a time sort of long gone and I’ve followed him for months now as the house has been transformed into a rustic, homemade piece of art.
Slept yesterday until 3pm then got up walked dogs and made pad Thai noodles with crispy chicken and ate them with chopsticks as each of the dogs had their own plate of noodles mixed with an egg.
Mary eats hers very delicately and oh so bloody slowly and has to be given her portion in the living room.
I met Gorgeous Dave in Prestatyn at 7pm and we went to the AI drama The Creator which is a romp of a movie ….think Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Aliens, District 9 ,Star Wars all mixed up with some of the most beautiful and impressive “ special effects” I’ve seen in recent years
It was interesting as it took a huge swipe at America’s Vietnam involvement even though it was set on Earth 40 years in the future .
Great to see the wonderful Alison Janney as a damaged, bitch of a GI Jane…how’s there’s a change in direction
I need a post-mortem about the movie and didn’t have time to pin Dave down last night
Some films just need being talked about and examined .
It’s 5.30am when I’m writing this , like I said my internal clock is fucked
I’ve made the Mexican based Huevos Rancheros for breakfast for a change
Egg and tortilla with lime, avocado, black beans and feta
I’ve bought a slightly milder Sriracha sauce to go with it from Marks and Spencer
Tasty but still phew!!!
I will be farting like an old lady after bran flakes during lectures
huevos Rancheros is the sort of breakfast you keep on standby if you want to impress a shag
Perhaps not
If only
Hey ho
Eating it in the dark didn’t make me feel remotely Mexican
Off to University for the whole day then back to walk the dogs from Trendy Carol’s at 4 pm then off to work on night shift smelling of sriracha
Facebook, as I’ve said before, reminds you of times, and memories long passed by.
This morning they reminded me of this photo
A sleeping ginger and white cat and a Welsh terrier reaching out his paw.
The memory was so very different.
This was Joan, my first cat.
One of two sisters ( her quieter and more reticent twin was called Betty) she ruled the roost in my homes in Sheffield after turning up as a kitten at my back door demanding to be let in during a rainstorm .
Loud, vocal and a typical Sheffield working class matriarch in so much she stood no messing from anything and anyone, Joan provided a backdrop of my salad days as a young nurse and when we moved to the country, whereas Betty faded and died, the old Gal Joan, found a new lease of life wandering my field and raising her face to the sun .
She was nearly twenty when the above photo was taken and only a few days later, she took herself off to bed where she died peacefully on a gloomy afternoon.
The first photo shows William watching her carefully before she died. Note the position of his paw, so typical of a Welsh terrier.
His paw lay on her for an age, just touching her tail, something she would never have allowed him do when she was well.x
And I’m working nights until Thursday morning this week
Serve me for having so much time off.
I’ve daydreamed the morning away. Thoughts and ideas interrupted by the thoughts and daydreams of others all hidden away on line. Sure I’ve walked the dogs and made the breakfast which is a much loved ritual of brewing coffee as long as it takes to poach eggs and make toast.
I have the toast dripped in tahini too.
It adds, special to a mundane meal.
Roger and his pubescent little bark, alerts me to passers by.
And I walk out “nonchalantly” , tea towel in hand prepared and quietly eager to say hello to someone I may know .
This morning is was designer North Faced Heulwen and Derek fresh from a London trip.
Then Eirlys with my dinner plate wrapped inside a bag. The chicken dinner was delivered on her, 50th wedding anniversary to be.
A fortuitous coincidence which was nice for both of us.
Roger showed off as we talked over the kitchen wall, and ran around the garden swinging a wet pair of underpants which had been left too hopefully on the garden chairs to dry
I stopped day dreaming and made a Thai green prawn curry with half fat coconut milk and syphoned the soup off for lunch, the curry I will eat at work
Nu texted me with a photo
Underneath simply read “table pour uno Juan Les Pins”
It was her way of encouraging my next trip, which was as sweet as it was subtle
Facebook has been sending me some memory photos one taken 2 years ago one taken 5. This is how I like to see myself . It was taken when I was trying to publicise the closing of the church. A posh anorak and a cap cover a multitude of sins .
I hate my photo being taken, but I do condone this one with my faraway look into middle distance
The next photo just makes me laugh. It was taken almost 5 years ago now when fellow villager Ann and I were doing the zipwire .it was taken on a hairaising journey up the side of the Bethesda slate quarry in what only can be described as an army truck straight out of Tenko.
It was terrifying , and more more scary than the zip wire itself.
I’m pottering today. I’ve sorted all of my paperwork yesterday and have piles of home paperwork, university stuff, work stuff and Community Association stuff.
I cooked a full roast chicken dinner yesterday and because I always make too much, I plated up a portion for Eirlys and took it round
She looks well but told me to slow down
I said I will and today I am
It’s Judgement at Nuremberg on dvd, a long video chat with Nigel and some homemade duck spring rolls by a lit fire as outside its gloomy and wet and a little chilly
No we are snippets of things to people some of the time.
I was Marilla Cuthbert to Dorothy’s Anne ( with an E) overnight when she endeavoured to slip under the duvet at the coolest part of the night ( Mathew would have given in) I as Marilla did not, but I did give her a tap on the head for trying.
I love the way television and cinema allows the audience to subtlety empathise with its characters.
In the remake of Anne Of Green Gables ,crabby Spinster Marilla has to face a garrulous and hysterical Anne who has just experienced her first period. After the expected conversation the camera silently observes Marilla’s hand centremitres away from Anne’s shoulders, hesitant before alighting .
I’m not a Harry Potter fan but this audience reaction to Dumbledore’s death ( Michael Gambon only passed away yesterday) in a special anniversary showing is quite beautiful to watch.
There will be a few wands lit up at his funeral no doubt.
I’ve also been watching the mini series Five Days At Memorial an account of how the staff of an isolated inner city hospital coped after hurricane Katrina made for an emotional and thoughtful watch.
I will leave you with another minute scene which takes the audience anywhere they want to
Film is so useful when we realise it’s power to unleash empathy
And without, empathy, true empathy
We have nothing
The other day I was talking to a neighbour over the garden wall and a small white feather landed between us, at my feet.
The chinks in the local pharmacy service have been evident, well they have to me over the past few weeks. My broad spectrum antibiotics have been out of stock prior to “ Rome” necessitating a search for appropriate pharmacies which may have it. Subsequently ( and there’s nothing like being in sync) my bladder is playing up as it has a want to do.
So much so I went to bed this afternoon with Dorothy, who lay against my back with her head on the pillow.
I got up at 16.46 and went to the pharmacy again. My drugs still hadn’t arrived .
I didn’t get irate at all. I just went very quiet, which threw the staff even more.
The pharmacist will deliver the drugs himself a bit later which was sweet of him and I did say it wasn’t his job to do that and that I was grateful but I was perfecting my grandmother’s thin lip approach at the time.
Her lips, when vexed could be reduced to absolutely nothing
Not even a line in folded cardboard.
I’ll make some frozen cranberry, ginger and yogurt shake later, though I suspect the sleep did me more good.
Last night on the way too The Crown I dropped my phone. It was found by one of the village schoolboys who recognised me from my ID card I keep with it, so he and his three sisters and his mum all tracked me down to the pub and presented me with it as I stood by the bar.
The kids were excited at the bearhunt so I gave them a 20£ reward to be shared out .it tickled me that the youngest, a girl of perhaps five , piped up very quickly That’s a fiver each !!!
At least they were honest.
The dogs have been smelling doggy, so we have all been in the shower with a bottle of baby shampoo
The pharmacist knocked just as we all got out so there was a flurry of barking and wet paws against the kitchen wall and me looking soaked in a t shirt and shorts
“Sorry we were all in the shower” I explained and he nodded slowly as if to say “ of course you have”
I dug out my new linen trousers and green shirt bought especially for Rome ( and never bloody worn) and had a shave and a good hair brush and met the twenty five or so members of the village TCA and volunteers at The Crown for a meal. The food was lovely and the company chatty, and as the gin and tonics were downed we thought of more outlandish ideas for the association to support in addition to the following hall based activities.
Between now and Christmas we have organised
A Casino night
A concert night by the Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir
An Apple Festival day
A Christmas Fayre
And It’s a Wonderful Life Christmas film night as well as the usual Saturday coffee mornings
Our Chairperson Bridget making her thank you speech
My suggestion of a ancient Welsh tomato festival where we villagers throw ripe tomatoes at each other in the street after copious amounts of Cymraeggin is drunk was met with mixed but chuckling results
I always found the slightly sanitised Russell Brand vaguely amusing. His overly pompous way of challenging pomposity tickled me in its irony and could see why the BBC Thought he was a little bit of a darling and a trendy challenge to they grey suits and grey hairs that fill the organisation .
But then we didn’t then see his stand up. A stand up that revealed his leopard spots, his crude way of viewing some women and his misogyny.
Glinting eyes and a persona reminiscent of a cartoon wolf he underlined in the most crudest of ways what he thought of rough oral sex, and he lost me in that second, as I suspect he did of many of his audience members.
He crossed the line and the level headed and fair BBC documentary Dispatches illustrated its point perfectly with that one vile clip that was shown.
Masks, we all wear.
They protect others from seeing the real us
They sanitize and provide a screen on which we project the more acceptable and socially polite self
But masks can slip
Sometimes they do just for a second
And when they do, I will always stick to my gut feeling , to that inner voice
I’ve added the same scene this evening, which looks nicer
Rearranging the furniture is always therapy
The living room is now cosier with the sofa facing the log burner and the radiator now free to do it’s job.
I’m sorting through piles of stuff for university tomorrow
That’s a big job in itself.
I almost bought a replica New York snow globe to replace the one broken by the dogs and I actually found one on line but stopped short of buying it.
Do I really need another? I asked myself
Nostalgia? Sentiment? A clinging onto the past all wrapped up in a romanticised New York scene, covered with snowy water
I dried the bits of the globe that remained , the plastic New York skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty only millimetres high, and the squat little Brooklyn Bridge and I set them up to the paper Sagrada Familia on my desk.
I made a late lunch of salmon covered in dill yogurt with roasted new potatoes spiced with home made harissa.
I will treat myself to a McFlurry later, it only takes a few minutes to get one.
I’m in my pjs and have been all day.
I noticed that all of the 20 mph signs in the village have been defaced.
The village website is filled with keyboard warriors shouting the odds about it all.
My twin sister called around with more flowers. Like my elder sister did yesterday, she also bought me some Italian food . A selection of antipasto! ( my family loves ironic humour)
I had run out of vases so used my kimchi jar to house the sunflowers
The velvet voiced Linda left me some soup on the kitchen wall,which was kind and I’ve had many messages of commiseration which is sweet, some of me feels I should feel sick
But of course I don’t
Lywenna sent me some jam ,,perched by the front door.
I rearranged the living room furniture ( a favourite pastime of middle aged gay men), shampooed the carpet free of the contents of my beloved New York snow globe which had been broken when I was in London 😢 and have drunk several buckets of tea
Yesterday’s shenanigans have left me thoughtful and a little upset.
Upset, because I was already nervous about travelling alone and this incident has unnerved me greatly and has zapped my confidence. Ok I know all of the platitudes, and at least it was in London and not Rome, but that’s not the point.
I spoke to Nu and I feel better because of it.
She forwent the platitudes and just listened.
Having an emergency alone isn’t very much fun
Thank you all for your comments ,
I’m grateful for your concern.
Yesterday was horrid, but all of the people involved were kind. From the woman who cleaned my bloody face with a towel to the Muslim woman and her husband who accompanied me to the ambulance, I saw nothing but concern yesterday. The airport staff were second to none and today located my hand baggage which had been handed in and will have it sent to be here and the Registrar who dealt with me yesterday had to be pushed to discharge me only because she was being kind keeping me, knowing that I lived in Wales and not London.
My sister has just popped up too, ironically with a pasta supper, and although concerned found that my losing a shoe at the point of collapse very funny…..funnily enough so did I
I’ve done a few nice things this afternoon to compensate . I made stew and dumplings, cut roses from the rebloomig rose Bush in the front garden and bought a string of light up dinosaurs from Tesco which I hung over the fireplace
I joked with my sister that I wouldn’t get to Rome , given the fiasco of the post lockdown flight cancellations , and what do you know, I fucking didn’t
In the line for security, I collapsed ( fainted ) onto the man and his wife and their luggage in front of me.
I remember nothing of this but a sudden hot feeling and then faraway voices , concerned and shouting.
I bit my tongue which bled all over, banged my head and I wet myself ( my bladder was playing up)
It was awful.
Awful.
Awful.
Medics on bikes arrived and a woman wiped my face with a cold wet towel
One of my shoes had come off.
I felt better when the ambulance men arrived but I was taken to Ashford A&E anyway just after 9 am
I knew the routine but it was still all rather scary, X-rays, blood and urine tests , blood sugars, ECG the works. There was mention of a seizure but that reporting seemed vague.
I talked to the registrar forcibly and was discharged
A support worker had my trousers washed which was kind
My small suitcase is missing,
I thought it was with the ambulance men as the woman with the towel told me that my bags were safe.
Someone at the airport will text me when it’s found, and it will be couriered to me
