Chicken sh*t and Swarovski-crystal and 76 bloody pounds

After waxing quite lyrically about the Met's swarovski chandeliers yesterday, I was happy after I googled a photograph of them ad actually found a picture! Mind you, there is no real sense of scale from this photo but it does give the viewer the idea of just how impressive 12 of these rising gracefully into the theatre ceiling would look!

I have spent a long day, clearing the field and cleaning and moving all the chicken houses. I know it is not that interesting a fact but I did fill a whole wheel barrow full of chicken shit!




The dogs have settled down with a typical post kennel lethargy. Meg is needy and clingy. Maddie is following me around like a shadow, William is sleeping most of the time, only George is bouncing around with a big smile on his face as usual.

Got a letter from the Nursing body UKCC today! registration fees per year will be 76 £!!!!! Can you soddin well believe it? I have to pay 76 quid to an impotent organisation for the privilege to actually work!!!!

Disgusting!!!

Fountain Sculptures..... a postscript

This detail is on the wall of the steps to the Central Park fountain,
Back home now, dogs all collapsed through barking for 6 days solid at the kennels!

New York

Well not quite at home in the bosom of my animal family, but almost. I am Sitting in an Internet cafe ( of sorts) at Heathrow waiting for our connecting plane to take us to Manchester. I have been to America many times, generally to the big cities of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, NY and Seattle but I have always got a soft spot for New York,even though that you do forget just how tiring the whole bloody business of travelling can be.

The trip didn't start that well! The terminal at JFK kept us on the plane for an hour after we touched down (too many people in the arrivals hall!) then as per usual I was carted off to sit in a grubby customs office whilst some beefcake customs Nazi checked and rechecked my paperwork silently!. (I am used to this happening EVERY TIME I go to the US, and never get a full explanation of just why it occurs), finally got out of the customs at 11.30pm only to find that BA had "forgotten" to put our bags on the flight! Hey ho! now 100 $ compensation for a lost bag and a promise that it would get over to our hotel a day or so late was not enough to placate a worried Chris who was dreaming of dressing up for the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night!, but we managed to get to the hotel on 42nd street without too many hysterics!

Chris went to bed after a gin and tonic and I downed three vodka martinis in Harry's Bar and felt a whole lot better about the day I can tell you!

Anyhow the bag DID finally show up, and we did have a lovely New York, gut busting, mile walking, sight seeing time, which my waist line and digestion system is generally paying for.

Highlights for me are always mixed and very varied. I absolutely love the view of Manhattan from the Top Of The Rock (The Rockefeller Center- see pic) ; the bench tributes along the leafy Avenues of Central Park; eating Clam Chowder at the Oyster Bar under Grand Central and chomping ( yes food does figure very much in all this!) breakfast at Pershing Square Cafe on 42nd street! Every time we have been to New York we manage to fit in all these "treats! which is very comforting, as they have become a tradition, but this year we did a few new things, which was lovely!

The Opera at Lincoln Centre's Metropolitan was a wonderful experience! Ok, the Opera itself (The Magic Flute) always feels an hour too long, but it was sung quite beautifully. For me the whole experience of the "Met" was more entertaining than the opera we had gone to see, as it was pure theatre! The audience was not allowed to enter the sweeping staircases and bar until half an hour before the performance and lined up in front of a line of smartly dressed ushers waiting to surge forward when they were told they could do so. The stage and auditorium is vast ( the golden ceiling must be 90 feet above the audience) and 12 huge glass 1950 style chandeliers are suspended just over the stalls. Just before the lights dimmed, and just like a reversal scene from Phantom Of the Opera, all the chandeliers were drawn up dramatically to the roof! Camp as Christmas but very dramatic to watch.

Anyhow I can bang on about it all till the cows come home, so will do so a tad longer! Other highlights was a lovely ( and bloody expensive) meal up in the Rainbow room at the top of the Rockerfeller centre, which was so art deco you were convinced you were on the Queen Mary;

big clothes shopping down 5th avenue to replace the ones we initially thought we had lost! and miles and miles of walking, especially across the Brooklyn Bridge on a sunny but cold Sunday afternoon.

We also managed to fit in The Museum of Photography (brill), The Museum of Modern Art ( not a patch on TATE MODERN ), saw the Christmas tree being erected in Rockerfeller Plaza, waved at the veterans parade down 5th Avenue as well as more shopping and sightseeing around midtown and the Upper East side. In MOMA I finally got to see my favourite American painting, Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth, I have always found it incredibly moving!

Down points have only been one row ( both of us very tired on Monday lunchtime!) Chris' new Russian hat! (see the pic for yourself) and me getting crammed next to an obese black lady in a leopard skin trouser suit on the flight home- she was in the leopard skin suit not I!!!!

Anyhow will have to come to a close as I only have a few minutes left. Another plane to catch, which sounds all very cosmopolitan, but I am ready to get back to my dogs and chickens.........Trelawnyd is a long, long way from 42nd Street.....................hey ho!!!

Photos from Top to Bottom( all my own work except for Christina's World)

1. Chris's new hat proudly o show at the Woolman Rink, Central Park

2. Pershing square cafe ( a wonderful eggs Benedict!)

3Art Deco Panel Rockerfeller Centre

4. Elm Trees in Central Park

5.The Empire State Building as seen from The Top of the Rock

6Chris,the hat and the Brooklyn Bridge

7. Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth

8. Woolman Rink

The nice things about blogging!

This will be my last blog until next week! Not that you dear reader will miss very much- the odd film review perhaps, the usual ramble about dog life, hen news and pragmatic village existence. banal chatter really!

Even though we are off to New York with all its excess, I will miss sitting down with a filter coffee, and writing a few lines of blog a day. It has become such a part of my daily routine.

At the moment having a quick coffee as the dogs are demolishing breakfast. Lots to do today before we fly tomorrow.Vet visit (worms again!) bills to pay, etc etc it's nice busy as I get to make lists and tick off the things I have done

Heard some sad news yesterday. A much respected colleague from Sheffield has a serious illness. It all sounds incredibly bleak, and I have just taken an age to write a letter to them. just what do you write to someone under such circumstances? How do you put into words what you are thinking and actually make it sound appropriate, supportive and not crass . In the end I just wrote what I thought I would like to hear and hope in some small way it would be of help. Who knows!

Nell ( in front of "husband" Walter) actually took some bread out of my hand this morning, which was a first, Carole will be taking a crash course in poultry care this evening as she will be caring for the girls when we are away. She is also watching Joan AND taking in Maddie ( who hates the kennels) and George, so she is a bit of a star in my mind.

Anyhow readers hope to be back on my blog next week.. bye for now

Strictly Come Dancing - GETHIN JONES - 3rd NOVEMBER 2007

He is just so cute! I want to spit on a hankie and wipe his mouth!

only 2 days until New York!!
thanks you to those who wish us Bon Voyage!

Richard's egg bound

Feigning interest in my newly painted replacement sign ( a lorry lobbed off the last one!) Richard is probably trying to keep his digestive system under control! I also suspect that his cholesterol is probably way off the chart! seeing that he has been fed a massive 6 scrambled eggs for breakfast and has another 4 in door step egg butties for the journey home. I have also lumbered him with the rest of Auntie Glad's scones so at least he will be well fed before getting home to Sandwich.

Bleak day today and rain has lashed down ( good!!! me thinks as the trailer trash people that own a field adjacent to the chickens hope to have a huge bonfire and fireworks tonight)

Off to work tonight then 11 days off- 4 of them in the big apple!

Jenny Eclair

Jenny Eclair at the Royal Court Liverpool tonight was a lovely change. I knew I was going to enjoy her highly polished, observational look on life,middle age problems, motherhood and angst, and she had me in stitches! for over an hour and a half.
I am envious of such a talent! ok she has had 20 years performing to polish her skills, but the raw natural intelligent humour obviously has always present, and Jenny makes the whole conversational "off the cuff" thing seem so damn easy.

I could have listened to her all night

8am

There ARE things I miss from Sheffield. Friends,my old 1930's dining room, theatre, the Sheffield accent! but there is one thing that I don't miss and that is the view of a brick wall from our old bedroom window.
I love having a short lie in on a Sunday morning in our stereotype/country cottage bedroom! no noise! a few chirping birds, dogs snoring, view of the chickens bouncing around the field........cup of tea, vintage eiderdown and idle thoughts are the order of the day. Chris has dragged his dad to see the dreaded Pippa first thing, so I am on breakfast duties later this morning. Richard sounds rather more breathless and creaking than of late ( They had a long walk to see the brass band concert yesterday) so I think he should rest today.He won't complain too much as he is always eager to please.
Anyhow only 4 days to New York!