Gethin

OK,

I am begining to become a bit of a fan!

This picture made me smile when sitting down for the first time after a fraught few hours on ITU

Heaven

Heaven (2002) was a strange little film that I caught on my break last night. Unfortunately I only watched the odd half hour of it but I suspect I will try and watch the entire film on DVD if I can as the performances of the actors Cate Blanchett and the odd looking Giovanni Ribisi were quite compelling. I was particularly impressed with Ribisi who had a odd stillness about his performance as a shy Italian policeman who falls for a suspected terrorist, that was incredibly moving.

Been asleep all day, so Chris has been on chicken,duck,dog,and dinner duties which he has completed with a martyr type gusto! just on the way to work now!

Ruby

No we have not got another dog! Janet and Ned have been bitten by the canine bug and have bought a lercher cross called Ruby. Though not my cup of tea, (I prefer the stocky cocky terrier types rather than the aristocratic gracefulness of the "running" worker dogs) she is a lovely natured and impressive animal.
I look forward to watching her run circles around my four!
Working all weekend on nights so will miss Strictly Come Dancing this evening, which is a bummer! We have not done much today; walked the dogs on the beach ( The tiny figure of George and Chris makes the photo look posed)
Caught up with Ruby, then caught the end of Now Voyager on BBC2

Post Holiday Blues

The weather has been wet and cold since we got back from New York, subsequently the ground is unfit to plant my early spring shallots,onions, garlic and broad beans.
I have felt rather blue today, the euphoria of the holiday long forgotten. The dogs have all had the shits which is lovely, so Meg (pic) and William have had to have a long hot bath. Finlay used to love a bath, and always stood in the warm water quite still with his eyes closed, and strangely enough William reacted exactly the same way today!
To combat feeling sorry for myself, I have kept busy, doing being-in-control type things. So I have made lists,cleaned the house like a good un, had coffee with Hazel and took a phone call from a friend who had a few personal demons to talk about!
On another positive note British Airways has called ( from the States) to let me know that they are still searching for my filofax (which went missing en route to New York) and the council has been out to mark up the lane outside the cottage wall, so that the bollards can be erected. Non to soon as I caught another large lorry trying to scape around the corner yesterday ( sat nav had told them to come!) Luckily I managed to drag a policemen from main road traffic monitoring duties, to force the trailer trash driver to reverse the mile or so back to the A55!
The other pic is of the pretty cyclamen I planted near the back door

The art of manipulation

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is a strange affair . The format is simple;- deserving all America family (Mom, Dad and at least three "little ones"), are in dire need of a new home. One of the kids is disabled, mom has multiple sclerosis, the trailer is leaking, etc etc, so our motley group of designers ( one which shouts alot, another is a southern lisping queen, another is a blond cheerleader type , flattens the family's previous home and re builds a mansion for the near hysterical family to fawn all over with suitable gratitude. In the mean time a constantly cheering local population turn up trumps by pitching in and paying the family's mortgage off , baking pies and initiating group hugs by the score in the background.

Sounds dreadful eh? yeah too right, it is bloody awful! The house usually looks completely over the top, over designed and bloated with money; the presenters fake tanned to the hilt, and brimming with "sincerity", that makes you sick and the excesses of it presentation is all a bit too much. However, I am not ashamed to say that I do enjoy the blatant manipulation of the emotions when the family finally "see" their new house. Floods of tears, mum and dad on their knees thanking God with sobbing Children, locals and builders prostrate with hysteria and me lying on the couch, weeping away with the best of them!. It is a wonderful romp! and just like the ones we used to have watching the likes of "Little House on the Prairie" , Lassie Come Home or 'Animal Hospital' and is therapeutic as it is banal! I have watched it every night for three days and bawled every night

....................enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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