A Winter Wedding in Sheffield



One of Sheffield's newer city centre Buildings

  Sometimes you just know that the warmth of catching up with old friends is well worth the effort,time and expense of a winter's journey.
Yesterday in a surprisingly easy trans Pennine rail trip, I descended into a somewhat snowbound Sheffield, to catch up with old bud Mike and to attend "Bel-Ami's" daughter's wedding "do".


The Christmas Tree in front of the Town Hall

  Despite my country wellies and woolly hat, it was  delightful to be back in my "home" city...and even nicer to have the briefest of vacations from animal husbandry and village claustrophobia!
I got to Sheffield at 3pm, checked into my hotel ( a treat from Chris), then had a mooch around the city centre as thousands of Sheffielders now free from the week's blizzard conditions, literally did the same.

The Christmas lights at Tudor Square

 I absolutely loved being "one in the crowd" and ambled around the Winter Gardens and the  Peace Gardens before stopping for a coffee in the  Millennium Galleries. I perused the books at Waterstones in Orchard Square, did a circuit of John Lewis and then, fully re urbanised went to meet up with Mike in All Bar One for wine, gossip and much chuckling

 At 8.30pm we caught a taxi to the Kenwood Hotel in Netheredge and arrived fashionably late for the wedding reception!
Weddings by definition are highly good natured affairs, and last night's "do" didn't disappoint . I caught up with more old friends , drank too much gin and woke up this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed and very happy after a rejuvenating "touching of bases"
It was lovely to see Mike, John (aka Bel), Bev and of course the bride...the gamine Elizabeth

Mike, Bel Ami,Filo, and fat bastard me

Part of the city centre this morning

The weather West of the Pennines was glorious this morning and the early rail journey home  was enhanced by a group of nine university students who embarked on a lively, intelligent and interesting debate on the merits of drone warfare in the seats behind me.
Polite, informed, opinionated and bright these young things  gave me an abject lesson in the positivism and optimism of youth......it was a welcomed change to listen to them talk----especially as the conversation was free of the usual vulgarities, celebrities and sex....subjects usually discussed by your average teen!
Who says a university education doesn't pay eh?

Anyhow now its back to normality.....to farting bulldogs, messy footprints in the kitchen and a field full of chattering beaks to feed............sigh!

Operation Wedding Reception

The  trains are getting through to Sheffield , so with trusty wellies on feet

Operation Wedding reception is on!!!

The Mist Revisited

The Walking Dead is Frank Darabont's tv remake of The Mist ( with Zombies taking the place of scary monsters) and with the series drawing to a close, I must say that I have really been caught up in this bleak journey into apocalypse.
The Mist is an interesting and underrated movie which took a cross section of  the American public and documented just how they fared when faced   with the deadly threat of supernatural monsters ( the monsters being an obvious metaphor for the terrorist threat post 9/11)

In a similar vein the few Atlanta survivors of the Zombie threat in The Walking Dead have to face their own demons, prejudices and sense of self as a result of disaster.(though the characters are not quite as defined as they were in the movie)
The survivor group  comprises of rednecks hunter and cop  Norman Reedus  and Jon Bernthal , moderate career girl Laurie Holden and liberal old guy Jeffrey DeMunn  as well as the usual mousy housewife, obligatory nice black couple and couple of cute kids and it is slightly unfortunate that we don't see quite enough of the psychological hoops the cross section of this American population has to jump through when faced with a terrible non homegrown threat.

I will watch with interest how this cracking and at times terribly tense tv series will turn out in the newly commissioned second series.................hummm if the same thing happened to me...I would be the soft as butter East Coast Liberal hiding behind the redneck holding a crossbow! 

The first casualty of Winter



The Ghost hen's borrowed time was finally up this afternoon

The Front Garden

 One of the ghost hens is looking a little worse for wear. The freezing weather, I am sure, has not helped at all.,but  with her comb now a deep congested red, it is obvious that something cardiac is going on with her.
I know the ghost hens have already out lived their allotted time; to be honest they should not have really survived into Autumn, but survive they have, and I am still hopeful that three of the girls out of the original six will live to see 2011.
The sick ghost is now holed up into a nesting box with water and feed. Her three sisters have refused to leave the warmth of the house and are presently eating a load of white bread which has been thoughtfully donated to me by neighbour Joanne
I am slightly saddened by the hen's deterioration.....I have so much affection for these fat old girls

Bingley feeling the cold

The rest of the birds with the exception of the Bourbon turkeys are coping well.
The old hens, who are old hands at this snow lark, migrate daily to one particular field border where they manage to stand in the weak sun for all of the daylight hours, but the turkeys being thick as mince have not learnt that trick as yet. Both females Lizzy and Jane are moulting too, which is unfortunate, as the poor girls have huge bald patches on their chests and necks. After a bit of bribing (with apple) I have encouraged them to shelter in the duck house for the morning

The weather here remains cold but at least we have no more snow. I  will hopefully  get over to Sheffield tomorrow by train, yet need to fill the water butts today, in readiness for Chris to look after the stock, tomorrow.....The exterior water tap is still frozen...so , I have the a mammoth job of bucket carrying from  kitchen tap to field!
hey ho

Black eyed piss head

If you have not read the previous post then this one won't make too much sense!

Apparently I should have been wearing specs when I was a child!
Or so said the nice, Father Christmas -ish ophthalmologist who tested my eyes this afternoon.
He was so sweet and full of positive reinforcement statements (every time I read out the correct letters from a line he murmured a reassuring and heartfelt " well done!!" I found myself rather enjoying the whole experience...and so eager I was to please I actually forgot about the invasive lurking with the eye torch and the peppermint breath on my cheek.

When I lived in Sheffield ( yes THE Sheffield which is now under a two foot blanket of snow) I used to wear glasses for reading..they were awful Harry Potter monstrosities which were almost destroyed by an over indulgence of fine white wine at All Bar One ( as I was reminded in the last post by the elephantine memory abilities of Mr Bel-Ami)

The toilets of All Bar One are thoughtfully situated in the basement...and to get to them Joe Public has to negotiate a wooden ( YES wooden) staircase which resembles a ladder!

 Many MANY moons ago Bel and I were putting the world to rights over several bottles of white and Red!
I vaguely remember being urbane and witty (with a big fat red face) and Bel was being all mysterious and Diva-ish when flirting with (what we later realised) was a psychopathic bar man!

Towards the end of the evening I tried to answer the call of nature and literally took flight halfway down the staircase!
My specs went for a burton (the barman found them later and mysteriously kept them!!!!) and all I remember was that I headbutted the door at the bottom of the staircase with my left eye! before bouncing back to my feet ( like drunks do)  as if nothing had happened......

I must have looked a right lush when I returned to the table as though I had slipped out for a brief chat .........for I sported  a HUGE black and rapidly closing eye!!!!........ and I can't believe that we continued our evening like two old ladies enjoyed a cream tea!
oh the silliness of youth

Personal Space

This afternoon I am going to have an eye test!
It is about time.
The Laptop screen has been blurring on occasion, reading drug labels at work is suddenly rather hard work  and driving at night has become a little bit of a nightmare!
So I will give myself a good wash, brush my teeth three times and give myself a couple of small squirts of "clinique Happy" in readiness for the invasive eye exam....
Is it me? But does anyone else feel that eye tests are totally embarrassing and a challenge to one's  personal boundaries?

The last time I had such a test, I burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles when the examiner peered so closely into my eyes I  could see the sweat stain on the inside of his shirt collar and smell that he had been sucking on "tunes" cough sweets before meeting me.

As a nurse I am constantly touching patients in an intimate yet perfectly acceptable and consensual way. This physical closeness is of course extended to relatives and visitors that often are stressed and traumatised and are in need of comfort and human contact, yet in everyday life, I have  realised that there are very few moments that physical intimacy with a stranger actually occurs!
Having an eye test is perhaps one....... having a haircut or even a massage are others......But we as a race ( and a Northern European repressed race at that) live so much in our little bubbles of isolation that even the old fashioned contact customs such as hand shaking seems to have all but disappeared.
I have blogged about this before, but we Brits could all take a lesson from the peoples from  more demonstrative climates...............and break this non touch "keep off me" taboo.
Bring back hand shaking as the norm that's what I say..... Yes that's it....break the ice with a firm grab and shake, that will solve the Nation's woes!
.....mind you...having said this......I still will be giggling with embarrassment when that eye examiner approaches me with his ophthalmoscope  poised!!!!!!

Hey Ho

Bored, Bored , Bored

The valiant little group of hen houses face the snow

I am getting bored of this snow lark now. I am still effectively snowed in as the Berlingo still is having problems negotiating the lane up into the village (right)
The farm tractors have compacted the snow into sheet ice and this coupled with  incline of the lane has meant that only 4 x4 s and farm traffic have managed to get through!
Having said this  I was gob smacked yesterday when Della from pen-y-cefn-isa shot right up the lane in her tiny nissan Micra, without stopping once!!!
That certainly knocked my masculinity!

So armed with a spade and my fisherman's socks, I am just about to try another lane run to escape the village for an hour or so.Earlier the dogs followed Constance's example and all peed on the back patio (she looked at me sternly this morning as if to say "you've got to be f*cking kidding") when I took them all for a walk at 7.30...and then promptly opened her bladder like a horse two inches outside the back door!
Yellow snow is not a pretty sight.

I am due to go to Sheffield on Saturday to attend a wedding do! ( the daughter of the famous Bel Ami!!!) I just hope I can get there!!! I need to shed my wellies for an evening in the city at least once this year!!!

English Bulldog watching TV

No , not Constance...but I think you get the gist of the breed!