BUGGER the rain

Sometimes I do hate the country.

This irritation only happens if it has been consistently wet for days and the ground gets so saturated that walking, even the few hundred yards around the field becomes a real chore (especially when there is a hole in your wellies.
Rain in the countryside means :-

• muddy paw prints on EVERYTHING including tablecloths,duvet,clothes and god forbid my best Laura Ashley floral print cushions
• slugs through the cat flap
• at least two or three embarrassing slips a week especially when cocking my leg over the Boris' fencing (doing the splits whilst holding a couple of buckets of water is no joke at nearly 50 
• Cleaning out the Ghost hens daily as their huge feet drag in the mud to their hen house like shovels and wet shavings mean only one thing......sore bottoms

Take no notice of those romantic photographs in Homes and Gardens, where the wet dogs are steaming nicely in front of the cottage fire and the muddy boots are all lined up neatly in the utility room......wet dogs mean only two things..........MUSTY DOG SMELL and A BLOODY FILTHY HOME!
After half an hour of scrubbing the kitchen floor YET AGAIN, its time to "fabrese" the cottage from top to bottom, then the dettol has to be dug out yet again so that the kitchen tops can be disinfected free of cat prints (one or two can even be seen on top of the oranges pilled up on the kitchen table) 


George steaming nicely in the living room

No! rain in the country is Bloody shitty!!!!!
Rainy days when we lived in the city always meant hiding away in the warmth and the dry. It meant a trip to  Weston Park Museum or the shiny Millennium Galleries.and if the weather was atrocious you could always lose yourself in the aseptic Meadowhall shopping centre or John Lewis' in town.(their cafe staff were always lovely)
Even when it was bucketing down....you could always keep dry and clean and cossetted away from the elements......whereas here........constant bad weather means trenchfoot, damp underpants and chilblains.

see everything in the county isn't always like watching Little House on the Prairie!
Blah!
Working nights again tonight so will miss my weekly fix of Mr Cardle on x factor............bugger!

Vets again

I didn't get much sleep last night. Some local teens organised a party in one of the fields way down the lane, which banged on until the wee small hours of the morning. I stayed up watching the TCM movie Separate Tables and caught a couple of drunken boys running about the front garden. Suffice to say they ran off with a flea well and truly rammed into their ears and I was left wide awake "harrrumping" angrily to myself.

This morning I took William to our new vets for a check up. He woke the house up a few days ago with a bit of a coughing fit, which has now disappeared, but I wanted to be sure if things were ok. I also wanted to give our new vet the once over, so the visit was also a bit of a test for him and an opportunity for me to start to trust him .
Since Maddie's death, I know I have become a bit of a "modern parent" where the animals are concerned. I have fretted over minor ailments and symptoms. I am aware of my insecurities ( I bumped into our old vet in the animal feed wholesalers and had to walk straight out!), so I made sure I told the vet pointedly that this was William's first check up since Maddie's death.
He picked up on my cue , smiled and said  "I guess you have a need to check me out a little" and carefully gave  William a physical from head to toe.
William obviously enjoyed the attention, he has always loved visiting the vets, and he closed his eyes in a kind of rapture when the vet checked his heart, breathing, mouth , teeth and bits. When I introduce William to people he doesn't know, even to vets that may well hurt or worry him, he will always remain good natured, polite and a credit to me....his sweetness is one of his biggest virtues.
 The consultation fee was 15£ and a relationship of sorts was forged, which was positive. The vet also stated he would be happy to supply me with some antibiotics If I felt I needed some for the poultry.( even though he admitted his expertise does not extend to bolshy turkeys)

A note of Support for Prestatyn Scala

BBC Wales has flagged up the local government's pre austerity cuts by covering the fact that my local "beacon of normality" (the newly revamped Scala Cinema) has had to pull in it's belt drastically and has to cut its expenditure  by a whopping 40 thousand pounds.
Local fans of the cinema got wind of something was afoot and worried that closure or  god forbid a change of function could be on the cards, they marshaled the troops and waved their placards in support of the only "cultural" venue the town has access to! (Top pic)
Although the local council has stated that they have no plans to close the cinema, (only a year or so after it opened) I have a sneaking worry that things are not looking too good for this flagship picture house!


To get more "bums of seats" I suspect the small "arthouse" films will be dropped for more populist mainstream movies which would be a shame ( for me and ex bookshop owner Victor Hallet- the two regular arthouse movie watchers along the coast)..but I will support any initiative that keeps a cinema going just a mile and a half from Trelawnyd!


Tonight, we made the effort to support the Scala in the only real effective way I can think of, we put our arses well and truly on their cinema seats and went to see the Brit Com Made in Dagenham.
The movie was ok...no big shakes but a pleasant enough "dramatization" of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant, where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination......Filled to the gunnell with a horde of nice Brit thesps (Geraldine James, Bob Hoskins,Rosamund Pike,) this film is worth seeing just for them AND the bravura performance by Miranda Richardson who plays a somewhat feisty Barbara Castle the Government Employment Minister
7/10

Janet's fund raising

My sister is running herself ragged with fund raising for Motor Neurone disease!

This video is her way of thanking people for their donations and support ( look closely and you can see MND in the sand)

The characters filmed on Prestatyn beach are cousins Tina, Ian and Karen, Aunt Judy ( I am overdue inviting u to dinner!) sisters Ann, Janet and brother in law Tim ( oh and the dogs of course)

can everyone visit her blog and make a comment?

http://supportingandrew.blogspot.com/

Leaving (Partir) and Ducklings



Lopez-sigh



Hazel and I went to Theatre Clwyd tonight to see a kind of French/Spanish version of Lady Chatterley's Lover starring the wonderful Kristin Scott Thomas  as the posh totty and the very sexy Sergi López as the Spanish hired help.   Catherine Corsini's movie, entitled Leaving (Partir) not only tells the story of the florid love affair between bored housewife and sweaty builder but adds to the mix a husband's (

Yvan Attal ) obsession with getting his wife to return and chronicles the lengths he goes to, to financially cripple the new couple.( An interesting angle in revenge)

Scott Thomas, with her big bambi eyes is cracking in the role of Suzanne,  you can literally feel, her passion and pain for a man , she has suddenly realises that she is in love with and as an actress she is wonderfully magnetic and brave in her role (  and at 50 she gets her kit off better than Helen Mirren any day)

Lopez (remember him as the psychopathic soldier in Pans Labyrinth?) has the smaller and less satisfying role of Ivan, but has a winning smile and warmth that counteracts Thomas' glacial beauty, and I found him rather a dish ( not as much as my x factor muse Matt Cardle though!!)

7/10

Anyhow, earlier today I briefly videoed the new runners for Dan to witness their progress.

Below is the briefest of videos showing them free of their run for the first time.

Winnie and Jo, found them fascinating , and chased them half heartedly around the field ( but didn't hurt them)

If the weather is nice tomorrow I will let them out for a few hours

Don't Mess With This Teacher!

Don't Mess With This Teacher!

she is my hero( click on the above link)
It reminds me of my Chris when he was lecturing years ago. One student let their phone ring and answered it and Chris slowly folded up his books and papers and walked  quietly out of the lecture theatre

Just when you thought..........

......that you could not possibly think of something to blog about on this dark and dismal autumn day, you experience the surreal kind of of conversation that kind of lingers in the mind.

Beryl an elderly neighbour of ours, braved the blustery rain at teatime to pay me for some eggs that I had left for her yesterday. She is a little unsteady on her feet, so I offered her my arm and guided her back up the lane to her car and as we walked she said brightly
"  I had an xray the other day and the doctor told me I had a foreign body lodged inside my pelvis!"
"Really!" I said.... ever slightly at a loss of what to say
"I know what it is",she continued laughing to herself " I rolled onto a needle during the war"

classic

A lesson Learned

After agreeing with Tom Stephenson on the irritating nature of the character of the simpering Kathy Perks in  
The Archers....I got to thinking about things that really ( and I mean REALLY) irritate me.
Now despite my occasional grumpy demeanor, the list "of the hated" is not as extensive as I perhaps once realised. 
This morning as I was filling the animal water feeders I started to make a mental list to myself of all the things I don't like, and was busy chatting to myself as I was doing so ( a girl walking up the lane to catch the school bus obviously thought I was a bit of a lala)........

This was the start my original post for today, but on reflection I think it would be a little inappropriate to be bitching about the small things in life that piss me off. Yesterday when he was at Church, Chris volunteered me to help take the donated foodstuff from the Harvest Festival service to the homeless shelter down in Rhyl.
Although I am not in fact a Church goer, I am always more than happy to help out if the Church requires a hand with this or that, so I turned up promptly at 9.45 to help clear the Church windows of the scores of tinned goods,packets and fresh fruit and vegetables.
It's funny that as soon as we entered the Church , several pairs of helping hands suddenly turned up out of nowhere to help load up the cars and I was amazed that the small congregation in Trelawnyd had donated so much produce for charity .
People, especially in Britain can be rather sniffy towards "do gooding Church work".....I think I can understand this, as we all seem to have a  slightly "Dad's Army" view of old fashioned drafty village Hall Jumble sales and old lady arguments over who is doing the Church flowers, but the reality of something like today's car loads of food, to me, seemed rather valiant and rather nice.
The staff at the homeless shelter were genuinely touched and surprised with the amount of produce we delivered this morning.It was obvious that such gifts were not the norm, and it surprised me that I was indeed humbled by  the the whole brief experience   

This afternoon I took the dogs up the Gop were we sat  and watched the rabbits gambolling through the dark woods. Tonight I am working an extra shift on ITU, so will grab an hours sleep covered in dogs before I go