No Flower show,Nights and Nuovomondo

Days when I am working nights ( I think you understand what I mean) can be a little flat. Being up all day coupled with the fact that you know that you will be up all night, often leaves you with that Sunday night feeling you used to have before school when you were a child.
It has been raining all day, so after a 6 am walk,I have cleaned the house,changed the beds,scrubbed the kitchen clean, sorted the animals out then walked the dogs yet again, all before midday.
I phoned Sylvia the flower show secretary this morning after realising I had missed the last committee meeting in the week. As I suspected the show had been cancelled due to the prohibitive costs of staging the show at the school, which is a pity. If it was up to me, I would have given it a go, but I have to remember that costs are a consideration and most of the original committee members are more elderly and the upheaval of the show's relocation would have been a touch call for many of them.
The good news is that the memorial hall WILL be ready by November, so in principle it has been decided to stage a Christmas "show", with a craft section, cookery section and flowers. It will give the village a chance to get together and keep the impetus and sucess of last year's show going.
Settled down this afternoon to watch the Italian "epic" Nuovomondo (2006) (Golden Door-pic) but it was a dire story of Italian Immigrants fighting to get into the US at the turn of the Century. Hummmm not a bag of laughs....I don't often get the chance to watch a film in an afternoon, so seeing the great unwashed at Ellis Island was not the most restful of subjects. Turned on to sky and watched The African Queen (1951) instead.
Now that's proper matinee viewing

Radio 4 newsreader in giggle fit

I think this is lovely.......
made me smile all evening

Herbs , Sprouts and (Raining) Cats & Dogs

Torrential rain in Trelawnyd! And it has been like that off and on all day. It was so grotty that I went back to bed after early morning dog walks (6 am!) with a strong coffee and LBC on the radio. William sneaked onto the bed after Joan had already made herself comfortable and centimetre by centimetre he managed to crawl within touching distance of her. I am so glad that I always have the camera on hand, as I managed to snap him gently reaching out to touch her. Surprisingly the old gal let him and there they lay for several minutes, William with a hairy paw resting on hers.....

The weather cleared briefly in the afternoon, so I put in a long row of sprouts (you can just see their location under the closhes on the left of the photo)

I also planted out some French Parsley and Golden Thyme and Mint in my smallest plot (just out of frame on the far right of the photo), but the weather closed in so me and the dogs did a round robin and delivered a load of eggs before I set out a ton of Main crop spuds for chitting.Got a DVD for later-Goodbye Bafana (2007) starring Joseph Fiennes (whatever happened to him?????)

gay adverts

yeap it's pouring down with rain and I am surfing! very interesting how benign "gay" themes are helping to sell products albeit in a humourish way

Which one is me????

answers on a post card....

Average day

Chris is away in Broadstairs again to help Sorrel sort out her retirement, and is away for a week! So it is me, the dogs and the birds again. Been up since dawn this morning, as I have re positioned all the enclosures. Also after being fired up with Nigel's plans for a herb garden, I have dug a substantial square block (15 x 20 feet) in which to plant a selection of culinary herbs/ My shallots (right) are showing already, and (below) are my broad bean seedlings which are looking healthy and strong inside the cloches.

Meg looks the worst for wear this morning after a brief but hearty fight with Janet's Jess. I was to blame as I was playing with all the dogs and in their excitable state the two bitches became jealous of each other over my attentions. ( I have never had two females fight over me before!!!!!!!)

Usually dog fights remain a sort of Mexican standoff, with both animals performing but not actually hurting each other, and this altercation was no different until William ( excited and acting rather like the adolescent that he is) jumped onto the two girls and bit Jess on the smartly on the rump.

Galvanised into a rage ( and thinking that Meg had somehow done the biting) Jess relaunched her attack with gusto and it took a bit of hard work and some brute force separating the two of them. At one stage I was lifting Meg up by her harness and swinging her around in the air like a cheap fairground ride in order to separate them, with a victorious Jess in hot pursuit.

The whole thing settled down as quickly as it started , with Jess scratched but intact....Meg has two bloody bites one on her forehead (see pic ) and the other on her leg.....her first wounds in three years.......she has slept all afternoon!

Did all the other jobs this afternoon, such as house work and weeding the garden and have jusr spent an hour catching up with Nu on the phone, whcih was lovely. Early night tonight.....

Cornerhouse

Went over to Manchester last night to meet up with Nigel and to go to the cinema ( review below) The Cornerhouse on Oxford Road is a smaller version of Sheffield's Showroom, and the cinemas are interestingly situated underground in a bunker type auditorium. We caught an early showing of The Orphanage, then got back to Heaton Chapel for Pizza, wine and a chat.An enjoyable evening.

The Orphanage

The Orphanage (Orfanato, El (2007)) is a cracking horror film that delivers so, so much more than the average scary movie. Director Juan Antonio Bayona bravely uses every "big dark house" movie cliche in the book to leave the audience wrung out and nervously laughing as he delivers a stunningly visual and incredibly tense ghost tale of guilt,child abuse and murder. Producer Guillermo del Toro obviously has injected some of his(Laberinto del fauno, El ) brutality into two horrific key scenes (the trapping of a hand in a slamming door and the sudden mutilating of a malevolent old woman in a car accident),but Bayona himself does not let the visual horror overshadow a moving and emotional story. about people that you actually care about.

Belén Rueda gives great depth to the lead role of haunted mother Laura and it is lovely to see Geraldine Chaplin in a small but highly effective role as a medium called in to help her. Both women give the film a soul which is so evident in one of the most moving and bitter sweet climaxes I have ever seen in any horror film.Not a dry eye in the house.

A wonderful 9 out of 10