Planning a murder!!

I am lucky I have siblings I am close to and it always surprises me that many people, just, well don't experience that closeness! Many friends of mine certainly love their own brothers and sisters, several of them are certainly not close and a few actively dislike their closest relatives, so I do feel (with a risk of sounding like one of the soddin Waltons) pretty lucky.

Watching the play last night, I realised that one of the reasons why there is a bond between us all, was the fact we all received a "shared", sometimes dysfunctional upbringing. David Benson in his play, explained that his family would plot to kill his destructive and aggressive mentally ill mother, but was very quick to reinforce that this "plotting" was only a supportive,fantasy which enabled them all to deal with the oppression and hurt of every day life.

When Benson joked that "even the dog hated her", I caught my sister laughing heartily at the line, and I remembered how we as a family mirrored the play's theme.

My mother was often bitter with her lot , and towards the end of her life could become rather "difficult" to say the least.( In actual fact she could be bloody dreadful) and coping with this erratic and constant drip-drip misery was hard. Like Benson's family, I remember us all sat with wine and nibbles one night, plotting how to get rid of her. Trip wires at the top of the stairs was one unimaginative idea (as was slippy pet toys strategically placed mid step), and although it sounds dreadful when the words are actually written down remembering it , the guilty laughter and silly fantasy of it all was such a vital and important cathartic release at the time.

Sharing such silliness (even if the root of the problem was VERY real) is the cement that binds a family. Those painful times collectively coped with by humour and irritation mean that there are several members frequenting the same club not one person shouldering the burden quite alone. I guess it is a case of swings and roundabouts.....if we as siblings had not had experienced family lows then our strength as brothers and sisters perhaps would not be as close and as supportive as it now is........who knows.

(pic) Agatha Christie circa 1956

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Think No Evil Of Us, & Spuds

I have always liked Kenneth Williams. Well I suppose "like" is the perhaps the wrong word to use when describing my feelings towards the waspish comic. I always "enjoyed" his one man show. Flaring nostrils,bitchy comments and a flair for wicked and self indulgent speeches, I always suspected he was a better performer than a stable friend(or even an enjoyable dinner guest) .The Kenneth Williams Diaries and The Kenneth Williams Letters supported this insight and tonight we were entertained with similar themed one man show Think No Evil Of Us – My Life with Kenneth Williams by writer and performer David Benson. The likable Benson linked his own dysfunctional family life,( with a mentally ill mother ), with stories of William's rather unlikable self loathing personality, and in doing so humanised both characters.I thought the whole production was rather clever and at times very, very funny.


We rather enjoyed the evening.

This morning I planted six large rows of early spuds, I remember reading last year that to gauge when it is right to plant potatos, old country folk used to "dip" their bums into the dirt.....if it wasn't too cold for them to do so, apparantly it was the right time to plant out....... think I will skip that........

Ebay finds

The incubator is crying out for a bit more usage, so I have actually bought some buff orphington eggs ( the fat hen on the left) and some black Indian runner duck eggs on ( of all places) E BAY!! The eggs are all set up with my two originals, so we will give it 4 weeks and will see if chicks and ducklings are the order of the day.

Worked last night, slept an hour then took the dogs AND Jess to the beach..very tired today....planting potatos tomorrow

David Shilling

Me,me,me,me! I guess that's what blogging is all about, being somewhat self indulgent,Got to thinking about my hat wearing today,Before coming to Wales I was never known to wear one! Ok perhaps I would don a woolly hat at snowy times but generally I would never think of wearing one let alone buying one.

On a basic practical way, working outside often means that something like my Russian fur hat is a godsend (even though I do look like a tit in it) but generally I prefer wearing Nu's striped wool hat as I often forget it is actually on my head.My chav deer stalker is I know a case of mutton dressed as lamb, perhaps the whole "hat" thing is a middle age man's effort to feel young? ................memo to self.......it's not working......tee hee

Feed The Birds Sing

god knows why I was thinking of this on my way home, but it was Jane Darwell's last film ( she's the bird lady)
very moving

I spoke too soon

I have never known the weather so windy. Last night both of us were wide awake at 3am listening to the wind shriek around the cottage walls. I was convinced that the slates would be whipped away in the storm and kept getting up to check on the village of hen houses in the field. The boulders I had placed on each coop seemed to have worked wall as when I went out at 7am, everything seemed intact., The cottage is over three hundred years old,, so I had to remind myself that it has probably survived alot worse

Once

The trouble with musicals is that they live or die on the quality of their musical numbers. The naturistically shot modern musical Once is a case in point, it has just won an academy award for best song ("Falling Slowly"), and has had rave reviews for its musical score, but for me personally, I just didn't enjoy the style of songs sung, and that I guess is pretty important when you are trying so very hard to enjoy a musical.
The film itself reminds me of a sweet version of Lost in Translation (2003) Heart Broken Busker Glen Hansard meets a young Czech big issue seller Markéta Irglová in a Dublin street. The two of them write,rehearse and record several songs together before returning to their original partners but not before they embark on a gentle and platonic love affair.
The leads are likable, the narrative quirky and innovative but the music, for me was not the icing on the cake.
A nice 7/10

Raspberries,gooseberries,roadrunners and a funeral

My routine has been thrown around somewhat today, for I went to Deganwy near Llandudno to attend a patient's funeral. I am always early for any appointment, so It was a little strange to find myself sitting in the cold and rather austere Seaside church listening to (of all people) Neil Diamond.
Anyhow, this "quiet" time, got me to thinking about all the funerals I have sat through in my 45 years.
All funerals are by nature sad, but I do remember just one being a rather happy sort of affair!
A colleague, Janet, from Sheffield had planned her humanist funeral down to the last detail, and the reader that led the service did so with humour,talent and with an actor's flair for the spotlight. The congregation clapped and smiled along with the stories he told, and the much bandied around word of celebration fitted the occasion perfectly.
I spoke at my mother's funeral, and gained great solace in doing so. The very act of performing an eulogy gave me something to focus on which was separate from the occasion itself, and that diversion helped me through a difficult day. My grandfather's funeral on the other hand, was made into a comical farce by the fact that our car was side swiped by a lorry (no one was hurt!) on the way to the church, and Ann, Janet and I had to leg it quick sticks up the aisle seconds before the coffin arrived.Conversely,the same funeral was later made almost unbearable by my grandmother's crys of "my boy, my poor boy" as she followed my grandfather's coffin from the Church.
I have been in congregations of a handful and have been squashed on pews amongst crowds of people. Some hymns could hardly be heard when sung, where as in the case of Nia's Father Charles, a hundred or so Welsh voices lifted the roof with quality and passion.
I have stifled a giggle when nerves got the best of me and have become angry at a vicar's insensitive handling of the facts, but it is strange that during the dozens of funerals I have attended I have never cried in any of them.
That, to me is a private thing. Something you do when safely alone. In actual fact the last death I cried at was Fin's nearly a year ago, and that too, was done alone, in the car, with his little wrapped body on the passenger seat next to me.

I was happy that I had made the effort to go today. The eulogies performed by my patient's sons were moving and heartfelt,the minister (with her thick Brummie accent) was warm and appropriate with her words, and the family I had

got to know so well over nearly three months, seemed to have received some comfort with me being there to share something so personal.

I got home later than I had hoped and after dog duties I made the most of the weak sun and planted a row of raspberry canes (bottom pic) I even had time to put in one gooseberry bush ( for Chris) before packing up for the day.


The new girls are quite interesting characters. They differ quite a lot from the bog standard chickens of the main coop, and look a little like tv roadrunner when banging around the run.(above is Scarlett making a dash for the hen house)

I also have enrolled again in the local Bee keepers course at the University of Bangor's agricultural research station near Abergwyngregyn. I put Chris' name down too, should be fun seeing him in a bee keepers outfit.

Off to the pics later to see Once (2006)