I would like the thank the Academy.......

I have to write a belated "Thank you" to Jacqueline for giving me a "stylish blogger award".....me and style ( especially style relating to clothing) don't exactly go together... but I am duly flattered nevertheless.

The Chimney sweep is working away clearing our flues out ( like you do) he is a garrulous Welshman who could sell sand to Arabs, so I am "pretending" to do some "work" on the laptop in the kitchen...if I engage him too much he will probably charge me twice for staying too long and will sell me a new chimney pot

Now according to Jac's award...I need to share with you good people seven hitherto unknown facts about myself......so here goes:-

1. Many of you will not be aware that I am one of twins! My mother had us later on in her life, a shock that she never quite got over from. According to family gossip we were named by my ten year old elder brother Andrew, and were duly given the rather amusing names of Janet and John (people of a certain age will remember the reading books)
Janet lives a couple of miles away.

2. I have a morbid fear of heights and cannot even climb a ladder without feeling uneasy ( yes just like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo)....However, at the age of 22( in a fit of bravado) , I took part in a parachute jump for charity...and actually threw myself out of a small plane at 1,500 feet above Cumbria!
To this day I can NEVER understand just how I did it!
I remember too that I had to be helped from the outer Promenade Walkway of Seattle's Space Needle by a concerned Japanese tourist ( oh the shame)

3. I am colour blind

4. My first job was as a Bank Clerk at the Nat West Bank way back in 1980. I never ONCE balanced my till in the two years I was there and when I left the bank to start my nurse training my reference from the manager included the statement " As a bank clerk John Makes a very good psychiatric nurse"

5. I am a terrible driver, I am not an aggressive motorist or overly fast...I am just, well, basically crap! (just ask Chris if you don't believe me)
Having said this I have only ever had one small bump in the car (that is involving another motorist!)......and I was stopped once by the police in a traffic jam for letting our dog Finlay steer the car

6  I nearly drowned in a very common trailer trash pool in Loret Del Mar when I was 10 and never set foot into a pool until the age of 40 when my best friend Mike and I had private swimming lessons at a private pool ( oh I remember the shame of walking out of the pool with our 20 year old teacher in front of 40 chattering 4 year olds)

7. Although I bang on about "arthouse" movies all of the time...my favourite tv shows include Judge Judy, Road Wars,Harry Hill and Mock the Week

Sigh........Just paid the chatty sweep......70£ ....bloody hell 

For my choices I will nominate Rich over at uglydogsfarm ( he has the neatest barn I have ever seen)Diane at  Heart Shaped and Dia's perfectly formed The Odd and Unmentionable........well done

Sod the duvet day

Chris is working in Edinburgh today,and disappeared early leaving me with his heavy cold. I could have easily hidden under the duvet all day long with a box of tissues and my Empire Magazine but alas that was not to be.and by 9.30am most of the hen houses had been cleaned , the dogs had been walked.and the bullying turkeys have had their beaks snipped after what I can only be described as a" bit of a bunfight"

The top soil being flattened by the hens

Village elder Islwyn has been re building a neighbour's gateway on the lane, and had very kindly shifted around 3 tons of top soil from his building work and has topped up two of my largest vegetable beds.He has been dry stone walling too with his brother and another workman and the activity on the lane has pricked the interest of the new St Trinian hens, who all have started to squeeze through the pig fencing ( they remain slightly skinny hens after their bad previous care and so can escape quite easily) and have crossed the road to see what the workers are doing.
These hens are incredibly tame and sociable. They seem to love human company, and seeing that I was absent, the best next thing for them seemed to be the company of strangers.

Several times Islwyn and his mates downed tools to round up the escapees and even a couple of farmers' wives stopped their trucks to scoop up the little brown hens from the lane borders. This game of "collect the hen" has worn just a little thin over the day

The quicker the gate repairs are done, me thinks the better.

  By mid afternoon my cold had really hit home.So I resigned myself to a night in rather than to risk passing on my germs to my brother who is still in hospital.

Well wont be alone tonight! No...for I shall be sharing my evening with Gloria Swanson and William Holden ! This morning I invested a couple of quid and bought a dvd of Sunset Boulevard. In my first year of University Film Studies I remember writing a 2,500 word assignment on just one still of this movie ( The famous final staircase shot), but I have never actually watched the movie itself!
So tonight its pizza (fuck the diet) and coke in front of the fire with Mz Swanson...even if its crap, it only cost me £1.50

The one thing I am certain of, is that when Mz Swanson will be uttering those unforgettable lines "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces! " The two bitches of the house will be battling quietly for my attention on the couch.
Constance is now alpha bitch. Sheer size and a deadpan attitude to die for has triumphed over Meg's needy neuroticism and adrenaline filled speed,, so poor Meg has  been well and truly ousted from her usual position of power, and she knows it.
Mind you I do insist that Meg always sits in her usual position on my knee every night as I could not bear to see a grown welsh terrier cry  Its a bit of squeeze on the couch, what with Constance shoehorned next to me, giving it large with her big goo goo eyes.

At least the dogs think I am a bit of dish to be fought over

Non nobis domine

Not quite up to blogging tonight..enjoy anyway
x

Police and Raptors

George, Constance,William and Meg (reinacting Ben Hur)

I was cruised by a police van in the village this morning when out with the dogs.
It stopped after I crossed the zebra crossing and an unsmiling 16 year old police support officer approached me with a kind of bored look on his face. He asked me if I carried a poop bag and I said I did ( but wasn't going to get it out of my pocket) and then proceeded to tell me about a Flintshire Council initiative where he and his colleagues were giving out a poop bag carrier ( in the shape of a bone!) to every dog owner they could find.
I curbed the impulse to point out that he would be better employed chasing ragamuffins in Rhyl (I also wanted to mention that his partner had parked illegally on the zebra crossing) but kept silent and listened politely for him to give me his spiel before I was presented with several "bones" ( which I gushed enthusiastically about).....
Plastic policemen ! what a job!

Gloria with the trusty antibacterial spray covering her wounds

Of all of my animals there are just two that possess any sort of dark side about them. The two female turkeys Lizzy and  Jane both have an aggressive streak a mile long and regularly  pick on  quieter or sickly animals and will, (unless stopped by chance or myself) endeavor to kill it.
Last summer a runner duck got herself wrapped up in some netting and within seconds they were on her and effectively scalped her before I could intervene.
Today they picked on the benign Gloria, (they had cornered her inside the turkey house) and centred their attack , as usual on the back of her neck. Luckily I heard Gloria's plaintive cries and rescued her before any major damage was done. Not before giving Jane and Lizzy a Sharpe couple of kicks up the arse

The aggressors (butter wouldn't melt)

Tudor : a final word

A quick message.to HB



I understand what you said... through my initial correspondence with Tudor, I would have certainly pulled my original post and subsequent ones if he had asked me to or if he was upset at me using his name. But on reflection I think you are right , perhaps I should have used a pseudonym especially given the power of google, which can reach even the more boring parts of rural North Wales


I do not want to cause any further upset to to family and friends so I have deleted all of my posts relating to him. All I will say is that I valued his first e mail in reply to my blog entry discussing my childhood memories of him, he was very sweet, generous and thoughtful  and that was much appreciated by me, as readers of this blog have testified to.

My thoughts are with his family at this time

Mushy Peas in the car

My brother was tired when I visited him this evening. He was also rather weary and fed up with the tracheostomy which is to be expected.
Unable to speak , interaction can be a little difficult for him and for us, and when visiting , being in the hospital. I was reminded of when I used to take my mother out from her nursing home room, and I was glad that the story I recalled got my brother, sister in law and visiting nephew Peter smiling.

My mother in the months before her death was a terribly difficult character. A chronic bronchitic and un diagnosed COPD sufferer she was confined to her room on an oxygen concentrator which she found dreadfully frustrating seeing that she was a 60 cigarette a day lady!). To take her out, she needed bottled oxygen, so on my weekly visit from Sheffield ( a 200 mile round trip) I used to "borrow" one of the huge oxygen cylinders from work! which I used to smuggle out of the spinal unit ( by using one of the patient's wheelchairs as a trolley)
When I finally reached Prestatyn, I would have to toilet my mother (not the most pleasant of jobs) , then trundle her down into Chris' nissan micra for her afternoon out!
 I had learnt early on that she would have to be sat on a selection of incontinence pads ( or if these ran short a subtly sculptured plastic carrier bag) and after getting her sitting comfortably and connected up to the massive oxygen cylinder, we set off for the outing of her choice.
Now she was a bit of a cheap date!
Her favourite trips included :
*A fish and chip supper in the car park at Prestatyn Beach ( the car would always be fully of mushy peas afterwards much to Chris' amusement)
*A drive up to Gwaenysgor Hillside
* or ( and most importantly) a trip to Sainsbury's car park! ( which is a supermarket for those that don't know)

At Sainsbury's I would set her up with a cigarette and a crossword (praying that a spark would not ignite the flammable Oxygen- now don't worry too much I WOULD always turn the O2 off when she lit up) and I would go into the store to purchase her weekly "treats" as she would sit quite happily in the passenger seat
These treats would always be the same

2 strawberry tarts ( with cream)
2-3 miniature bottles of gin
1 crossword book with pen
A selection of sweets ( to bribe the Nursing home staff so that they would take her for more fags during the day!)
A box of tissues
20 fags,

She was a crafty old cuss too, for every week after she  accepted her booty, she would suddenly "remember" some other item she had supposedly forgotten!
I went along with this ruse....and would dutifully go and get her another miniature gin " for tomorrow night" she would say.........and as I did, she would enjoy one of her sneaky 50ml bottles of Gordons, before jamming the plastic bottle in the ash tray or down the air con vent flap!

It was nice to see my brother smiling at my memory....mind you, he would have told the story better...he was always a better storyteller than I would ever be

Courtship in the dark



The strange fog decended after dark

 January is the month that foxes mate.
They are noisy about it too and the vixen will yowl , yap and scream at the dog for what seems like an eternity during their, shall we say....courtship!
Last night the guinea fowl started their high pitched screaming around nine pm, so I darted over to the field in a strange , heavy fog to check if everything was ok.
In the odd glow of the moon I could make out two foxes. The vixen was yapping away at the dog and both animals darted back and forth through the hen houses in a desperate courting race.
They obviously didn't notice  me, or indeed the little knots of birds hiding away within the hen houses, they just had eyes for each other, and I must admit that even though I hate the buggers, I thought that the ghostly spectacle of these two graceful animals galloping in the moonlight was rather moving.


At one point the vixen leaped on top of the runner duck house roof with a clatter causing a sudden burst of frightened quacking from the occupants, but the foxes weren't interested in a ducky meal and just carried on their playtime game of chase me.
Finally I had enough of their over familiarity and shouted out loudly whilst clapping my hands.
They stopped for a brief second , both turning in my direction,  then they were gone, slipping through the hedge into the dark like thieves in the night.
The field population let out a collective sigh of relief I am sure and even Albert padded over from his hiding place on top of the church wall to rub himself anxiously against my legs as I walked back to the cottage in the cold

A Furniture Whore

I feel a little like a furniture whore!
Showing my wears on the Internet
But here is a much requested photo of my Grandfather Clock, that Maura  requested in the previous post. Hope she likes it!

It is not an official family piece, but I feel in some ways that it is! The clock is early Victorian and was owned by the parents of two old friends Rol and Nia (Nia still reads this blog from her home over in Australia!) As a very young man I always remembered the clock being in their hallway and I frequently joked with Mrs Roberts that I wanted to own it.
A few years ago, Mrs Roberts sadly died and some of the family antiques were sold at auction. I attended the auction and made sure I bought the clock which used to sit in the hallway of the family farm.
You can tell that the clock used to stand on a stone floor as years of mopping of the flags have worn away the very bottom of the casing.
I love it dearly
I called in to see my brother this afternoon. He looked very tired , so I didn't stay too long!.Before I went I stopped at the hospital shop and bought him some guy mags ( no not porn......but you know the sort! Jokey "man" rubbish)
One of the girls from ITU caught me paying for them and quipped
"John...buying secret hetero magazines eh!..........wait till the staff here about this!"