No News day

Worked until 8.15 am,
Three hours sleep,
three sets of dog walks,
Bleached the kitchen floor,
Made a casserole,
fed,watered let out and put back 29 foul,
cleaned toilet, cleaned fire...lit fire,
read paper,
made a large list,

average day!!!!!!!!!

Cloverfield

Another busy night last night, so got home this morning knackered! Made soup, walked the dogs then went to bed for a couple of hours. The wind is blowing a gale, so checked on the girls at midday, photographed a rather windswept churchyard and snowdrops near the field gate,then took the dogs (gratefully) to Carol's for a gallop in the garden before going to be for another hours sleep.
I am on nights again tonight and wish I could sleep longer, but it's 3pm and I am up and blogging!
Chris and the sore toe/sore neck/sore arm (delete as appropriate) is better after his convalescence yesterday



On my break last night I finally succumbed to the Cloverfield (2008) phenomenon (http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/) and watched the cleverly constructed trailers last night. Hype and manipulative marketing has always been used to sell\movies. flimflam techniques are nothing new!
Every decade comes another scam and 2008 it is Cloverfield.
Word of mouth and "one off" "home videos" leaked onto the net about the destruction of New York (oh not New York again!!!!) by something huge and unseen, have excited the movie going public hungry for excitement and spectacle! just like the films The BLOB did in the 1950's,EARTHQUAKE and (Sensurround) in the 1970's and THE BLAIR WITCH did in the 90's!

I am looking forward to Cloverfield and would have gone to see it despite all this secret advertising. Ok it is another monster destroys New York movie, ( and I hope the monster looks a little more exciting than the Internet drawings of it), but it looks bollocks and fun, and I know I will enjoy it

Nights again

Chris is driving me crazy! Crazy!!!!!!! He has spent the day bored and feeling unwell (aching neck) so has been lathering on the volterol gel and swigging paracetamol by the handful. Now I don't want to sound like a 1970's Northern comic by partner bashing too much, but someone lying around a very small cottage with a woolly hat and scarf on- groaning sporadically about how awful they feel DOES MY BLEEDING HEAD IN!

Now I love him dearly, but Michael Learned (Olivia Walton) I am not!!!!!

I am just about to sneak up to bed for an hours respite, where I can dream of my new incubator!(right) the impressive sounding Covatutto 12 Manual .

Coronation Street - Vera's death

Now I have not watched the soap for years, but I was sad to see that Vera, one of the last Northern lasses has shouted her last insult. With the Likes of Hilda "woman Stanley.....woman" Ogden, Ena Sharples and the magnificent Elsie Tanner, Vera was a throw back to the days of "pots in the sink" and "brown ale in straight tumblers"
End of an era

Ruthin

Spent the afternoon in the small but perfectly formed market town of Ruthin. Then went for lunch at Avonwen, a sort of nothing nice afternoon discussing new kitchens and dining tables and the like.
Took the dogs up the Marian in the rain (see pic below) and did what I have been meaning to for ages, I asked the owner of the top cottage if I could buy their old chicken coop which has been lurking in their garden for ages. I didn't get a yes and didn't get a no, but I was happy with the maybe.

Night of the Sunflowers

Noche de los girasoles, La (2006) English title -Night of the Sunflowers is a wonderful first film by Spanish writer/director Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo and will be in my top ten favourite films of this year. The plot is complicated yet very downbeat; the lives of two cops (one bent the other old fashioned and honest) a rural recluse,three city folk,and a serial rapist and murderer become embroiled in arbitrary accidents of fate around a deserted Spanish village.

The narrative is separated into six chapters that overlap each of the others in time and space making rather deep and serious comments on how crime often begets crime and how a simple small decision can affect ones life forever. The whole thing feels like a chess game and is incredibly tense and atmospheric.A cracking film

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.