Going Gently

Lourdes

Lourdes (By the Austrian filmmaker Jesica Hausner) is a cracking find of a film as it challenges and provokes rather than simply presenting an interesting story.
The film opens with a shot of a utilitarian and empty hotel restaurant. Slowly the large cast enter to take their seats. Some are clearly disabled, some are in wheelchairs and their attendants are made up of nuns and volunteer nurses who wear almost fascist type uniforms.
This first shot is a pivotal one, as it underlines the tone of the entire film. Hausner, takes an unhurried view of the group of pilgrims and their carers on a trip to Lourdes and does so with some beautifully crafted wide group shots of ceremony and ritual. She explains very little, yet gives her motley group a complicated religious ambiguity that covers pious hope, depressive apathy, and more interestingly observes acts of petty jealously, bitchiness,bitterness and periods of cynicism amongst the group when one of them seemingly has a partial recovery from her disability.
The central character is a young French quadriplegic Christine ( Slyvie Testud) who has come on the pilgrimage as a way of getting to socialise. She observes everything with a benign interest and although physically passive to the whims of the inexperienced teenage carers she survives the experience with a resignation and stillness which is, at times amazingly powerful to watch.

The film does not sneer at faith, or hope or indeed pilgrimage...it observes everything with some wit, with care and with patience and like all good films it asks many more questions than it finally answers
9/10

Winnie and Jo

After yesterday's tirade and fat baby insults (I caught myself giggling guiltily about it all when half asleep in bed this morning)- I thought it prudent to concentrate my attentions on two perfectly formed and sweet looking babies for a change.
Now I have reared baby chicks (no personality-literally just balls of down), turkey poults (delightful but solemn) and runner ducklings (mad as a box of frogs) but compared to all of them, the two goslings are a real and affectionate delight!
Obviously my two have already imprinted on me, so when I go in to feed and water them, they scramble forward to nuzzle and play with my hands and fingers. When picked up both lie still and content within the warmth of my hand, and their blind attachment to me almost brings tears to my eyes! (can this be the same old queen that verbally berated a woman in a common halter top and her ugly two year old, only yesterday?)
Anyhow, I am reluctant to name the two babies as yet, it is still early days and they have not been sexed.. but I think I will give them a "unisex" name...so the little grey will be called Winston (or Winnie) and the white Joanna ( or Joe).......

Early evening I am meeting up with Hazel ( I have not seen her for an age!) and we are going to see the movie Lourdes, I still will be back to lock the animals up before 10pm, so it's not exactly a giddy night out, but it is a change!

I am not a very nice person

I was not going to go out this afternoon but I had a delivery of eggs to organise and I thought it prudent to drive to the pet feed wholesalers to buy a bag of goose starter crumbs for the babies in the shed.
So with the dogs all sat in the back seat, we drove to Prestatyn then on around eight miles to Abergele where the feed shop is. It has been blisteringly hot today, so after a quick stop to buy the feed I wanted to get the dogs home but realised that we needed a few things for tea. Abergele has a Tesco, so I drove there and nabbed the last parking space under the supermarket's canopy. Unfortunately the space was in a mother and baby parking area, but as it was the only shaded parking space in a shimmering car park I took the chance!

As I locked the car door, an irate young woman in an awful halter top came bounding up to me whist dragging a snotty and obese toddler. She said in an over loud voice ( so that everyone else could hear no doubt)
"That is a mother and baby parking spot"
I sighed as this has happened to me before! but I tried a smile and explained
"I wont be very long and I have three hot dogs in the car..this is the only shaded car parking space here"
The woman's face was a picture , she looked at me as though I was a Nazi in full SS uniform
"This is ridiculous" she spat "don't you know it it ILLEGAL to park here if you haven't got a Child!"
"No I didn't" I said simply and started to walk into the store.
Now this must have got her dander up, as she side stepped with me and said
"I am going to fucking tell the customer services on you!"
ON YOU!....I am going to tell ON YOU!!! where were we?....school?
I had had enough...I cannot be doing with women like her
I stopped and in a low growl I said (rather too gleefully I must say)
"You go and tell the fucking customer services rep see if I care " and I pointed to her child who was stood behind her " and don't forget to take your fat ugly child with you!"

It was worth it, but I did feel a tad guilty afterwards....you see I am not always a sweet fluffy bunny type of person!

Bloody Sunday

I listened with interest to David Cameron's perfectly pitched speech on the findings of the Saville Report.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/10320609.stm)

The events of Bloody Sunday,where 13 civilians were shot dead during a civil rights demonstration was a terrible, terrible mistake on behalf of the British Army, and it is with sadness that we realise that only after 38 years will the families and friends of those killed will get some closure on the events of January 1972.

I grew up in the seventies and even as a child the fear of what was effectively a civil war in Ireland was, to me, very real. The IRA brought their struggle and fight to the mainland with an indiscriminate and murderous bombing campaign and even though the killings on Bloody Sunday cannot be excused in any way, I think they must be viewed within the context of what was essentially a war (I always, even as a child thought the term "the troubles" as the conflict in Ireland was always referred to, was an awfully impotent phrase),

It has been reported that the IRA alone killed 1,110 British security forces and over 630 civilians during the "troubles", and while we should mourn and apologise for the awful killings on Bloody Sunday, the thousands of "other" innocent dead should also be remembered.

(pic Paul Greengrass' movie Bloody Sunday 2001)

Turkey Lurve

I have spent 6 hours clearing weeds and strimming the whole of the untidy bits of the field, which has been an exhausting but satisfying job. If I can keep on top of the now rapidly growing grass, then I won't have to work too hard when it comes to the last minute preparations before the allotment open.
At 2pm, knackered and hot I had a break to eat my lunch with Boris (above) and shared my bagel with him. I could have quite happily fallen asleep with my head resting on his back!

The goslings have hatched ! So far, out of the six eggs two ungainly clumsy babies have flopped untidily out of their shells. I will bob the other remaining eggs tomorrow to see if I will have any latecomers, but as I cannot hear any further piping, I suspect the other eggs are duds.
The goslings are huge and incredibly sweet. I hope they do ok.

I took a few minutes off this afternoon, to deliver some posters to the lady that oversees the village notice board. The Trelawnyd conservation group seem to have been busy as the empty flower beds have all been planted up outside of the pensioner bungalows.
They have done a good job of it all

Open allotment day, pig and gosling news

Some of the friends and helpers at my First Allotment open 2008

Open Allotment day
At the Trelawnyd Church Glebe at
Bwythyn-y-Llan, Cwm Road
1pm onwards on August 1st
Admission £1.50

(proceeds to Trelawnyd Church funds)
(tea and homemade cake included)
Vegetable produce
hens,turkeys,ducks,
Stalls, allotment tours

The above is the rough template for my poster for this year's open allotment day. We have held an open day for the past two years and each time it has been well supported by villagers and friends and family alike. The money raised goes to the Church, but more importantly the whole day fosters good relationships and it, I am reliably informed, an old fashioned and enjoyable afternoon out.

This year I am already conscripting family and friends as volunteers for the day. Chris and my sister will be manning the most popular cake and tea stall (admission gets each person a cuppa and a home made cake). My aunt Judy and her sister Bridget have been "bullied" into helping them whilst my elder sister ( and hopefully my sister in law and Brother) will be manning the gate and produce stall.

Friend Geoff hopefully will be all practical and helping me set up the tents, tables chairs and bunting and already I have had kind offers of cake and scone making from some of the ladies of the village.This week I will ask for a few more cake making volunteers and already neighbours Arfon and Della have kindly potted up plants to be sold on the produce stall. People are very kind

When I called down to my aunt's to ask her to help she had some good news for me. Recently she had visited her sister Bridget who lives near Peterbrough and Bridget took her for a day out at Hammerton Animal park , where they visited my old pigs Gladys and Nora! I was made up to hear that the two girls are doing very well indeed....it's a very small world sometimes isnt it?

I am feeling rather spaced today...no sleep after night shift....off now for another cup of coffee, and another surreptitious peek into the incubator. The goslings are starting their pipping, and a few days early the eggs are starting to crack!

Jet lag and thin sausages

Chris tried not to succumb to jet lag but gave up the ghost yesterday evening and has slept heavily throughout the night. I gave him a lie in, walked the dogs then made him breakfast in bed.
When he has travelled, Chris has a tendency to obsess slightly about food he has enjoyed in the country has just left. Apparently he loved breakfast sausages, eggs and fried potatoes in Canada ( Canadian readers please let me know if this is a "national" dish)..so left instructions for us to recreate this feast today.
I could be arsed sorting out potatoes, and Chris was too tired to worry about it, he shovelled down his breakfast and with a happy George curled up next to him has returned to a jet lagged sleep.
It's nice to be back to normal

Yesterday I constructed two magpie-proof chick enclosures. Kate Winslett and Chick Constance is installed in one and Lilly and her three chicks now have the other (above). I always marvel at the robust nature of these little scraps of fluff . I always think that they look like dandelion seed balls balanced on the top of a couple of pipe cleaners and their ability to leap on top of their mothers never fails to impress me.

The goose eggs are due for hatching in 3 or 4 days time, and the shed is all ready for them if I am lucky enough to have some goslings. I have no experience of hatching out geese but I suspect that they will be as tough as ducklings are when very young. Only baby turkeys are delicate and often sickly after hatching.

I am working nights tonight,so both of us will be mooching around doing nothing special- it sounds like a normal Sunday to me.