Trelawnyd Flower Show Disaster!!!!!!!!!

so says the village paper headline (if we had a newspaper that is)

Work on the only venue that can house the village show seems to be at a standstill as more serious structural problems have been uncovered by the recent renovations. Therefore work will not be finished by August and the flower show may have to be cancelled.

The flower show committee are having an emergency meeting next Wednesday, to see if a way around this disaster can be organised , but to be honest things are looking a bit glum.

The village school is rather too small (right pic) but it could be a possibility, and there is always the village hall at nearby Llanasa, but I am not sure if either possibility would be acceptable to the other members of the committee.

Whose line is it anyway?

Watching the early 1990 quiz show Whose line is it anyway? (re runs on Sky Dave Channel) With benefit of hindsight has been an interesting experience. My favourite improvisation comedian on the show was always the doe-eyed Tony Slattery. The former Cambridge Footlights performer seemed to be the most daring, the most anarchic and ever so “dangerous” contestant in the show. He always seemed to be slightly surprised that sometimes dirty, always witty but certainly razor sharp ideas and phrases shot from his mouth time and time again during the show.
Knowing what we do now about his nervous breakdown in 1996, when he descended into bipolar psychosis after binging on alcohol and cocaine, it is easy to recognise the dangerous undercurrent in his erratic television performances. The hilarious flight of ideas, pressure of speech and bizarre thinking made the audience love him, and it was that audience that wanted and expected that level of lunacy every time he appeared.
In 2003 when interviewed by Miranda Sawyer, Slattery said of his breakdown:-

“'I have,' he says, 'very strong recollections of behavioural disinhibition, ungovernable, compulsive, socially unacceptable behaviour, irrationality... but then that would suddenly flip and negative symptoms would replace, like utter social withdrawal, isolationism, mutinous... my symptoms were florid and uncontrollable and profoundly disordered"

I have always loved Slattery's bizarre and near-the-knuckle genius. Watching re runs of him at the peak of his career make me wish him well.

A kick up the arse

Bloody, bloody bloody!!!!! hell! The rain has been torrential and It's DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!!

I tried to get out into the allotment this morning to commence digging the new potato patch, but the earth is far too heavy for any effective work to be done. Took the dogs, Janet and Ruby to the beach in the downpour and I had to laugh at Ruby's "bad behaviour". Janet is desperate for the lercher to do as she is told, so keeps a doggy bad full to treats in her pocket to get her to come when called. As you can see from the photo the terriers have all realised that food could be had by following Janet like shadows, only Ruby is galloping around like a mad Alec.

Sold more eggs this afternoon to villagers and a few passing walkers, so I ambled up to the market garden to buy all of my seed potatoes, in between showers I checked the electric fencing and was quite proud of myself as I found the fence repair kit and fixed it myself. I had almost finished my work, when Mildred tottered over and climbed up on my lap to see if I had a titbit or two on me when suddenly Duncan came clucking over and promptly kicked me several times up the arse!!! as if to say "get off my bitch!!!" .He stalked off muttering to himself when I chased him off leaving me with the seat of my pants all muddy.

ps

an old colleague sent me this memory of Marinko by E-mail........

It made me smile

"I also recall that when he was first admitted he spoke no English, but spoke a little German (he'd dated a German prior to his injury), and I remember this was used during his early days on the unit. I rotated 'with' him when he moved to South 4 (?) for rehab, and he also taught me a little Croatian, a phrase that I can still recall: "dobar jutro moj pijetao", which (literally) meant something like "good morning my cock", perhaps (in retrospect) a rather funny and ironic piece of word-play that was lost on me at the time. Hope you're OK,"

Control

Melancholy Music never really featured in my teenage years. I was moody at times for sure, but had non of the deep teenage angst that afflicts most young people. In fact the saying "There is less to him that meets the eye", could have been written about me!, as when my peers were aggressively enjoying the likes of The Sex pistols and and Buzzcocks, I was dreaming of the luxury Liner the S.S.Poseidon, and enjoying Mario Puzo's Godfather II!
Friend Hazel on the other hand, spent hours lying in darkened rooms listening to Joy Division, so she was so excited at the biog film Control (2007) which had a special showing at Llandudno tonight. The film is a sombre and rather thin profile of Ian Curtis, the "enigmatic" singer of Joy Division whose personal, professional, and romantic troubles led him to commit suicide at the age of 23. Now the director Anton Corbijn, must have been a big fan of the group, as you could almost taste his recreation of 1978, but as for exploring the singer's real personality and motivations, the film lacked any real depth of characterization. Mind you, Sam Riley was fairly impressive as the immature and complicated Curtis and Samantha Morton as his mousy wife, is always worth the price of a cinema ticket.
Shot impressively in black and white by Martin Ruhe, the whole thing was depressingly quite beautiful.

Marinko Kapetanovic

In Spinal Injury Nursing, you will always have your favourite patients;the admission to a spinal rehab centre lasts for up to and in many cases well beyond 6 months, so there is plenty of opportunity to really get to know your patient and their families so very well.
In general our unit in Sheffield had on average 100 "new" admissions yearly so in my time there I must have seen around 1600 people coming through the doors and into our lives .
I can think of ten or so patients that will always linger in my mind. Eve, an affable despot and serial socializer from Nottingham, Richard, a difficult but ever so likable teenage quadraplegic that I used to use many unprofessional type nursing methods on to just to get him to eat; Neil , the charismatic army guy with a big heart and courage to match his many injuries; Hatim the 13 year old boy injured in the Iraq war who finally adopted a Yorkshire accent when he left us and who loved Finlay with a passion; Sue, a brittle and hilarious salt-of-the-earth fitness fanatic from Manchester--The list could go on and on and on. Many of these characters I still keep in touch with, and their life stories after spinal cord injury have been many and indeed varied .
Marinko was one of these people. I first met him when he was admitted to us in the early 1990s after a fall from a ship in Great Yarmouth when he sustained a lower back fracture and total paraplegia.
A non English speaker from Croatia, he was a challenge on so many levels to nurse. We had to get students from Sheffield University to act as interpreters ( as I remember,one was not as good as the others and confused the Croatian for pillow with the word for chicken- which in its own way caused much hilarity)
Marinko also had problems with, shall we say , assertive Sheffield women, and had quite an "old fashioned" Eastern European attitude to gender roles, which was a challenge to him and us, as most of his carers were opinionated Yorkshire women.
But he was charming and funny and "blossomed" under the intimate and at times unrealistic environment a rehabilitation centre provides and I considered him to be a friend when he left us to be with his family in a tiny village outside the city of Split
Over the past 16 years or so, we have always communicated infrequently by letter. His correspondence was always charming and on the surface optimistic, but they did hint at the huge adaptation problem Marinko had with his disability.
This last Christmas, I was surprised not to have seen a card from him, and I was saddened to receive a letter from Marinko's brother today.
In a note that sounded very much like Marinko his brother states simply:-

Dear Mr Gray,
I am using this opportunity to inform you that my dear brother and your friend Marinko Kapetanovic has lost a long battle with his disease and passed away on the 29th of December 2007. The funeral was held in the local cemetery on 31st December 2007
I wish also to extend my honest gratitude for all your support,true and sincere friendship you have been providing to Marinko through all these years.
Sincerely

Maiodrag Kapetanovic

There is not much else I can add.

Finally, this year's work starts in ernest!

With only a brief jaunt to the beach with the mutts I have spent 5 hours solid sorting out the allotment. The weather has been glorious (i.e. dry) so lots have been done, which has been so good for me as I had been getting rather frustrated with the weather.

Today I have marked out the second vegetable patch, on the site of the huge bonfire of last year, and have cleared all the rocks,loose wood and weeds from the area.(right picture below)

Then I dug over the entire main patch,manured it and started my hardy broad beans off under the closhes.

I even managed to clear some of the rubbish from the hedges and cleaned out the coops, so the whole field now looks ready for action and neat and tidy.

Last night I made clear working "blueprints" of crop rotation and ordered more cheap seeds.

Ann's allotment group is meeting this week and I am sure I will be able to do "swaps"- eggs for seeds and sets from March onwards.

Duncan is truly a magnificent animal and has spent the day watching me carefully as I seem to be a bit of a threat to his "girls". Getting the cockerels seem to have been a good idea as this morning a stoat ran across the field near the hens. I suspect a stoat could if push came to shove fell a smaller hen, but with the roosters there I doubt that it would ever get the chance.!!! When he shot into view both Duncan and Stanley immediately ran forward to protect the others. I have read of this protection ability the males show but this is the first time I have actually witnessed it.

Kids! and Seraphim Falls

With Chris away in Oxford and London, I only have the dogs and a good DVD for company. Although you cannot really tell from the top photo, all four dogs have surreptitiously crawled onto the couch,each one desperate to be the one that lies closest to me. Is it only a year since George was a tiny puppy (below) I have always liked this picture of George and Meg, the two of them look more like soft toys rather than puppies.

Seraphim Falls (2006) On DVD this evening, was a good old fashioned western the likes of Jimmy Stewart and Van Heflin would have been proud to have appeared in. The story is the age old and well worn tale of vengeance, a vengeance which destroys humanity and reason and we have seen similar tales throughout literature and film. from the likes of Ahab in Moby Dick to Inspector Javert in Les Miserables.

In this film the man of vengeance is a sombre Liam Neeson who doggedly follows a windswept and rather aging Pierce Brosnan through a picturesque Rocky Mountains . The reason for the men's feud should have been left a mystery, as by revealing it in a heavy handed way and hour or so into the movie, the director David Von Ancken flattens the whole pace and tension of the piece.

However the film was an enjoyable DVD on a wet and windy night,and Pierce Brosnan;s performance was quite impressive.