Wonderful service

This coffee was left for a rather bad tempered customer in a coffee shop in Ohio...priceless
Now I kind of like the waitress that was responsible..... we all have done something similar in our dim and distant paths have we not?
Years ago ( and I mean 1980) I worked as a bank clerk in the National Westminster Bank in sunny old Rhyl.
I hated it.
I was an awful clerk.
I never balanced my till,
and I especially despised organising the customer statements in the morning.
One customer had to have a hand typed envelope only because he had 15 ( yes 15) letters after his name......he was also an O.B.E.!
so every day for two soddin years I had to type out his name,status and address!
I always got it wrong somewhere..... perhaps I had put a comma where a full stop should have been and several times a month he would be on the phone , yelling at someone that the Bank had showed him no respect....yadda...yadda
On my last day at the bank ( just before I started my psychiatric nurse training) I gleefully typed out his statement and added a few choice letters of my own
Instead of Sir Peter -------- O.B.E. CB.E. etc
I typed Sir Peter--------- S.O.D. A.R.S.E. F.U.C.K. W.I.T. M.O.A.N.E.R.
a small but satisfying victory 

ah, I am a roll now
After I started my psychiatric nurse training I worked for a while on a male long stay ward... The surroundings were austere and at times rather bleak, but the staff ( many institutionalised as bad as the patients) were generally warm hearted and helpful.
The charge nurse was a big bluff Irishman who brewed his own beer in one of the patient bathrooms. He absolutely HATED the sister of the neighbouring female ward,(I never got to find out why the bad feeling was so marked but a patient told me the two had been engaged many years previously and that she had broken off the romance!)
Anyhow the ward sister had advertised all over the hospital  for donations towards a spectacular four and a half feet glass aquarium she had bought for her day room and these notices seemed to infuriate this charge nurse.
He called me in to the office on my second day and sent me and a patient to her ward with two buckets of water and a note!
the note said
" hope these donations for your fishtank will be useful"

Camp or Not Camp

Now it has got back to me this morning that a regular blog reader ( From the North West) has let it be known to a relative that I have been a bit too camp recently! This amused me greatly as generally I think I come over just that little bit butch (I can hear Nigel laughing from here at that one!) I may write a bit camp at times ( I will take that as a compliment girlfriend!) but I am far too mucky and dishevelled to be well and truly camp.......( I would be kicked out of any camp school for wearing my wellingtons in the supermarket )

However my humour is campish in nature....I adore waspish one liners ( Just read some of my friends Nigel's and Bel's blog comments) Thelma Ritter, "The bed looks like a dead animal act" and comics such as Joan Rivers "Is Elizabeth Taylor Fat? her favourite food is seconds"

I adore movies like Priscilla Queen of the Desert " That's just what this country needs: a cock in a frock on a rock"...... AND anyone who employs a shocked and hammy "YOU BITCH" halfway through an argument will always get a round of applause from me!

hummm perhaps, on reflection I am camper than I would care to admit......

Waves hand gaily "whatEVER!!!!!!"

Anyhow It has poured down all day. The dogs have got a bit stir crazy in their enforced inactivity but I have cleaned and scrubbed everything in preparation for Sorrel's visit. I have even baked a ginger cake....... how camp as that?

tee hee

End of the World ~ I Love Disaster Movies Launch Video!

well apart from Shelley Winters and her death defying underwater swim and Carol Lynley's inability to sing "The Morning After" dressed in impossible to wear hot pants... this is why I love disaster movies!

Maddie 2003-2010

Chris finally got to Prestatyn at 11am. I took him home and he promptly went to bed. With Sorrel coming tomorrow for a visit, I got on with sorting the cottage out and bought in a few items that she needed. I also picked up Maddie's headstone from the engravers and placed it carefully onto her grave, which is located next to my first allotment on the field.
Surrounded by the hens , geese and one of the serious looking turkey hens, I took a moment to sit next to the simple headstone and remember our loyal, grumpy old Scottie who was so much part of our lives since 2003.
With Winnie nibbling gently at my wellingtons, and with a light rain starting to fall, I shed a few all-too-late tears for a dog that had dug herself so gently into my heart

A night alone

I had to laugh at the pithy comment on show at the Pope's recent visit to the UK (above)I have been trolling the news websites this evening as Chris has been stranded up in Glasgow due to an unexpected cancellation of his flight but there is only so much you can flick through on a tiny netbook when your your eye sight is failing ( I need an eye test! another sign ( with my exercise intolerant flatulence)that I am getting older!)

Anyhow without Chris here, I have resorted to "single man" ish lifestyle evening! I have eaten fish finger sandwiches in my underpants, had a long gossipy telephone conversation with Nuala and am now just about to watch The Poseidon Adventure with the volume full blast

Bliss

Edith Marimbirie

I worked night shift last Saturday night.
A member of staff on his break was reading one of those cheapo, nasty newspaper comics and had noticed a somewhat excitable story of a woman who had fallen head first from a lap dancing pole and had broken her neck. The unfortunate woman had been paralysed and permanently ventilated and the staff nurse only showed me the clipping as he noticed that she had been admitted to my old unit in Sheffield.
Our conversation widened around my previous workplace and we ambled through discussions about routine differences, managerial styles and staff make up.
In Sheffield our staffing was generally more eclectic than it is in North Wales. There was ,as usual a smattering of local born and bred Yorkshire nurses (untrained support workers made up the largest number of Sheffield born staff) but as it is common with a large city teaching hospital, most of the other trained staff members hailed from all over the UK and from other countries such as a the Philippines and Southern Africa.
Apart from a knot of Filipino staff nurses here in Wales, most of the staff I work alongside of are locals and I must admit that I do miss that eclectic mix of ideas,perceptions and experiences that come from a multicultural staff mix.
And I do miss working alongside the African nurses in particular.
Formal, polite and unhurried, they gave to a sometimes exhausting and frenetic ward the sense of order and calm. Sometimes this very calmness of nature could by some be viewed as being somewhat laisser -faire, but I loved their unflappability and warmth .
Of all of my previous staff one nurse in particular sticks in my memory. Edith Marimbirie was a senior nurse midwife supervisor in Zimbabwe and left her country after the gorvernment had destroyed most of the healthcare, economy and educational infrastructure.
In the UK she accepted a job as a junior nurse on our Spinal Unit despite being grossly over qualified for the position and I remember well interviewing her for the job as she had a warmth and a dignity that was striking.
Edith was well loved and respected by her colleagues,had a sing-song voice that was always laughing and made a point of holding your hand when she spoke to you; she never raised her voice, had an ample motherly bosom and walked by swinging her arms from left to right and even five years down the line from working with her, I still wonder just what she is doing now. ( These blog thoughts have been prompted by Eric's post on losing a trusted member of staff from his cafe-
http://mountainrambler.blogspot.com/
funny where your mind leads you eh?

Update for Linda

Linda from Farm daze emailed me yesterday asking me for a video update on the ghosts....and what a difference a few months have made to these fat old girls. Apologies for the commentary....it was a little blustery last night but I think you will get a flavour of their benign characters

...One girl (against everything I have read about battery eating hens) laid her first egg this morning, so I do not feel that guilty at not eating these sweet birds.

Mind you I have kept the fact that I have not eaten the ghosts carefully from the Red Faced Welsh Farmer, you may remember that he obtained them for me many months ago now......he would see my sentimentality as rather cloying

Mad As A Box Of Frogs

The second video is an update for Dan....His ducklings are doing very well indeed...........buxom, healthy and bloody girly!