Leo

Chris ' nephew Leo is seven this month....This photo of him and Chris was taken recently in Broadstairs

Dressed To Kill (1980) trailer

I think this movie was one of Miss Dickenson's best movies..... a cracking "slasher" thriller!....it will going on my Christmas list.........

7 weeks to go

It has been a bit of a Christmas orientated kind of day.
At work the off duty has finally been released ( and I bet the sister responsible dropped it on the nurses station and fled the scene!)....of course I am working Christmas night shift! even though I requested to work New Year's eve night, but hey..that's the way the cookie has crumbled. Chris is livid..... but sees the situation rather to simplistically , ie by saying
"tell 'em you're not doing it"

As the manager who had to be responsible for the Christmas rotas, I know only too well the hoops you have to jump through to cover all of the shifts with the right skill mix.....and I used to dread the constant knocks on my office door as tearful staff queued up to ask for "necessary" changes because "Little Nellie needs me at home Christmas morning!!!".
Strangely enough, although I would have loved Christmas night off, I am resigned to completing the one off shift and won't complain about it. We will, I am sure, plan lots of nice things to do with my many other days off!
As if she knew my elder sister rang tonight inviting all the family to her house for Christmas dinner which will be lovely! This year above all others I think it is important , if not vital that we share some time over the Yuletide period
Christmas Eve I think I will accompany Chris to the service in Trelawnyd Church (full of Christmas sherry Egg Nog no doubt!) and Boxing day (after a small sleep) I do hope we will drive up to Denbigh to watch the Flint & Denbigh Hunt.

Christmas is always a happy time for us; the cottage with its fire and Homes and Country decorations (there is always a bit of a bun fight between me and my sisters, to see who will come up with the most classy decs!- ) lends itself so well to the season...
Mind you, I just wish that Chris' family were nearer to visit, so we can see EVERYONE at this time.

Chris is working late tonight, so I am sat feeling slightly Christmasy in front of a roaring fire. Albert is stretched out quite bizarrely on the hearth rug (above) but has now started to limp more of his poorly leg, obviously the steroid injection he had recieved into his arthritic knee is wearing off somewhat.

Monday Animal Update

With winter looming,the day is over almost as soon as it has begun.
Inside, the cottage is feeling somewhat like a very strange hospital ward; What with Albert and his deformed leg and William with his steroid induced frequency of micturition (forget a regular toileting and huge puddles suddenly appear on the kitchen floor!)
Last night Maddie had suffered from a fairly unfortunate stomach complaint,,, and had deposited a mound of waste the size of a human head on the landing carpet......suffice to say on my usual 3am journey to the loo (at 47 one needs to pee at least 6 hourly!!), I plonked a naked foot right into the centre of it!
Early mornings are not a good time for me, so I surprised myself with a tight lipped silence rather than a totally hysterical and more satisfying 10 minute swearing tirade of anti faecal abuse!
Oh the joys of animal care....
The summer chicks I have kept hold of are now all full grown and have just started to produce their first, tiny, delicate looking eggs. As I was feeding the flock this afternoon I realised that I had not named any of the new girls as yet.
Keeping with the usual cinematic theme the three hens above have been christened Halle (Berry),Michelle (Pfiffer), and Gina (Lollobrigida)...Bill (as in Kill Bill) is busy just behind them!

The last hen chick to survive this year's hatching is Blanche's single amber rock hybrid. She is a plucky little character and despite her size, she has so far survived unscathed with the usual bullying that can occur when adult hens meet youngsters for the first time.....I have called her Ripley
Meanwhile the hysterical guinea fowl chicks are magically looking less like normal chicks and are starting to resemble the bizarre looking adult birds........their heads seem to be shrinking , while beaks and bodies are growing .and at times they exhibit the shrill, machine gun type chatter of the fully grown birds.

The final update comes from the turkey pouts who are now just over 6 weeks old. Apologies for the poor photo but I think you get the sense of how these graceful little birds have developed from baby fluff balls to little versions of your Christmas dinner.

The five poults will be braking the elements hopefully by the end of next week...all I need now is another poultry house!

The sad death of Christmas Cards, Strictly Night and Albert update

I am catching up with blog time rather late today as I have worked the whole day away on intensive care. Chris has ferreted away with home chores all day and is now laying down on the couch like a wan Blanche DuBois, exhausted and somewhat jaded.
I got to thinking on the way home, just how sad it would be if the Royal Mail was finally pushed and dragged into the 21st Century and oblivion. The post worker strikes planned for the next few weeks, I think will tip the

balance against the traditional "Snail Mail's" monopoly in the frenetic Christmas Card market and in the not-so-distant future, other forms of Yuletide greetings (oh God save us from the dreaded e-xmas message!!!) may become the norm.
I love sending Christmas cards!. The ritual of making the card (above is Finlay in

one of his typical couch postures on one of my first cards), the effort of writing it, adding the stamp and physically making the effort to post it, is more thoughtful than quickly bashing out an email on your laptop when watching x factor on tv. I for one will continue my tradition of sending paper cards.....even if I do write them all on the 1st of December!

Anyhow last night the family all went round to Janet and Ned's for supper, wine

and two hours of yelling at the performances and judging on Strictly Come Dancing! Now I am a snob when it comes to Pantomimes, but give me a wine, a ballroom dance competition on the television and I can boo and Hiss with the best of them...

anyway we had a nice, family night out,

..As for Albert....he is still looking rather stiff but remains as good natured as usual dispite his discomforts...... Tonight chris cooked a chicken and Albert stuffed his little fat face full of the leftovers.......as I type this he is curled up on the lounge carpet,,,,burping chicken breath all around

How I survived 1970 Sundays

I have blogged several times about how I like Sundays.

The quiet pace of the day, the Church Bell, The Archers omnibus......the day has evolved into a bit of a pleasure.

Mind you, it was never always so!

As a child I hated Sundays (and specifically Sunday afternoons!)......and only recently (as a result of a bit of family reflection) I have come to the conclusion just why it was so!.

My twin sister and I grew up in a time when the extended family played a large part in our day to day lives. Weekdays had a pace and and a routine governed of course by school, but weekends possessed their own, bipolar life of their own and provided times of great warmth coupled with the double edged experience of a slightly depressive dysfunctional set of parents

Friday afternoons were joyous. My Grand parents held open house, and their tiny one bedroom bungalow was filled with grandchildren and great grand children all talking at once. Everything was loud , chatty and animated. Copious amounts of tea was drunk, large wedges of jam sponge and nice biscuits eaten and even my Mother and her shopping friend Auntie Greta would turn up for a cuppa after their Friday afternoon "shampoo and set" at Jean's Hair Salon.

Janet and I would always stay for tea, which would always be laid out on a blue and white checked tablecloth in front of the tv in the lounge.

Being pensioners, "tea" was basic and never changing..but to us as children the food was a real treat! Cheap white bread, lightly buttered was smothered in baked beans (and eaten with 1940s bone handled cutlery) was for mains and tinned fruit cocktail with evaporated milk was served up in small floral dishes for "pud"

Saturdays were always spent at my sister's house by the beach. We played in the sandy garden with a risk filled nephew in tow for hours. Swinging incessantly on an old metal garden swing (the size of an average sofa) our aimless day was punctuated by chatty lunches, craft projects (usually involving glue and copious amounts of glitter), races around the house in a whole set of prams and trolleys and of course World of Sport tv wrestling (at 4pm).

The sun always shone and Nasturtiums always filled the garden,

Sundays on the other hand were "home days". My parents would have their "lie in" then my mother would prepare a full roast dinner for most of the morning which would have to be ready for 2pm for when my father would return all warmed from his lunchtime visit to the Conservative club.

Afternoons would be quiet and boring. Dad would be asleep in his chair, mother would knit on the couch. The tv was always on, and we would be left to ourselves until a semi formal tea would be set up in the cold dining room with the hateful Mike Samms singers on radio 2 belting out ".............Sing something simple........"

My parents didn't do anything drastically wrong with us kids...they just didn't do ANYTHING with us which was, I think, fairly typical for many 1970 families...... Sundays always became synonymous with an feeling of indifference and a slightly depressive routine which felt so cold and sad after the warmth and vitality of our Fridays and Saturdays.

I have said this before on the blog........funny what you remember isn't it?

Tywysog

With the housebound Albert being ever-so-slightly frazzled by four terriers, I loaded them into the car and spent most of the day catching up with non Trelawnyd based jobs
We collected cheap sacks of chick crumbs from the wholesaler, called down to Prestatyn to deliver eggs and collected the now neatly completed curtains for the back bedroom (Thanks to my Aunt Judy for her sterling work).
I then drove to the DIY store in Rhyl for curtain runners before jetting up to deepest Conwy to borrow my brother's industrial strength strimmer. My brother lives near the village of Henllan and the area where they live is totally rural, pretty and untouched. (above pic)
Our great grandmother Fry (nee Jones) lived in a large farm called Tywysog, which is literally only a stones throw from where Andrew lives now.....the name Tywysog means leader or Prince,in Welsh.
The dogs had a hysterical gallop around the garden when I had a cup of tea with Andrew, then it was back home for some curtain construction time (for those that don't know me...DIY is as rare an event for me as playing rugby is to Graham Norton)...but I finally managed to construct something moderately usefull, even though there was not as many screws in the curtain pole pack as advertised..............

The weather has finally turned this evening with a cold wind roaring in with some driving rain. The village looks braced for winter

Night of the Hunter

This evening Chris and I went to Theatre Clwyd (twice in one week!) to see the classic The Night of the Hunter (1955) Now I have not seen this creepy little tale for years, so it was a real treat to watch it in the cinema rather than just catch it on TCM in the wee small hours of the morning! and I had forgotten just how chilling some scenes actually were.
Night of the Hunter is a weird child's nightmare of a film journey....with menacing shadows at windows, a childs difficulty in keeping secrets, a fantasy flight to safety and a truly terrifying baddie (The Preacher serial killer Robert Mitchum). Other complex elements such as heaven and earth (or under-the-earth), male and female, light and dark, good and evil, knowingness and innocence, and other polarizations including equating the Preacher with the devil are all viewed from a child's perspective, and are presented in a stylized,inventive and unsettling cinematic style.
It is an ambitious film that doesn't always "work" but certain sequences (the childrens' flight to safety down the river and the final climatic duel between bogus Preacher and the God fearing widow Lillian Gish linger long in your mind......
I wanted to discuss all this with Chris as we left.... but all he said was that he enjoyed it!
when I asked why.... He said simply "it was short"