Constance Shows Her Metal

I dropped Chris off at the station this morning as he was off to Cardiff for a couple of days work. It was a grey start to the day, so I collected layers pellets from the farm shop and stopped in Rhuddlan to photograph the castle and the flooded river Clwyd on the way home. The Castle dates from an amazing  1248

After getting home and dodging the rain showers I walked the dogs on the hill behind the village and had my first opportunity to watch Constance in full..BULLDOG mode.
Up the hill there is a house that has a very large and powerful bitch. The dog is often let loose in the garden and the garden is not totally fenced in from the road. Several times when I have walked my dogs, this dog which is clearly motivated through fear, has ran barking out into the road to attack the terriers. So far, I have positioned myself between the waring parties and have kept them apart with a loud bellow and a swift kick out at this unsocialised animal but I do remember once when it was actually being walked with its male owner,it actually pulled him across a country path to barrel into William and Meg before it was dragged off..
Today Constance was with us, and as the aggressive dog bounded around the side of the house barking ferociously she raised her head and marched forward to face it. The terriers answered the dog's angry barks with a hissy fit of their own, so I pulled them back and on impulse I  let go of Constances' lead.
The bitch stopped dead as Constance gave her the dead eye stare and without a pause she adopted a strange stiff legged walk and deliberately took half a dozen steps forward with her head held high.

The dog barked loudly again and backed up a few steps. Constance followed with her little piggy eyes hard as flint. The dog circled on the spot and retreated behind the house gates still barking......Constance followed slowly, and for a few seconds there was a standoff before  the bulldog gave a little jump forward and bellowed one long,low  and very LOUD "woooooof".
The dog bolted and legged it around the corner of the house with Constance in pursuit......and there was a long silence.
I called out sharply and moments later Constance walked nonchalantly back out of the garden with a swagger Mae West would have been proud of. She walked directly into the middle of the now silent terriers who crowed around her like kids in a playground.........!  and the alsatian bitch didn't show her face again......



Constance asleep sat up in the car on the way home after her altercation



Shamed

Post night shift dog sleep

After a couple of hours sleep ( with Chris sarcastically taking the mickey stating that he thought  I always stated that I was "busy, busy, busy") I took all of the dogs around the Gop and the village.
There are a couple of nicely kept allotment plots situated right in the centre of Trelawnyd, and this morning both were being tended to and kicked back into pre planting shape by their owners The Camerons and The Smiths.........I stopped to chat and stated I felt dreadful that my own plots were so behind theirs!
I must admit I do envy not having an "on hand" neighbour with which to banter with. Allotment owners can be a strange breed. competition between plots can be subtle but is always there...so when one plot has a nice row of cloches...the other is sure to follow........it is not pettiness at all.....it is a healthy competitive drive and remains great fun!

Craig over at dykesedge allotments makes me smile, as his allotment is the perfect example of what I term is a UBER-ALLOTMENT! It is fantastically ordered and neat, and has the ultimate shed to die for ( complete with solar lighting , decking and no doubt an Ikea kitchenette and secret stash of whiskey next to an arm chair)

Beat that Alan Titmarsh!

So this week I am resolved to get going again....ok a shed which scales the same heights as Craig's may be a no no.. but I think I will try and get a small temporary poly tunnel as well as some proper fencing for the plots......the Flower Show and Open Allotment day countdown has begun

Saturday Smut

Ha! bet that grabbed your attention
Last night , before the musical, we had a chance to wander around Theatre Clwyd's art gallery. Some of the exhibits on show was by an artist called Anita Klein (http://www.anitaklein.com/) and it took a minute or so for me to remember that we had bought one of her original works a decade ago when we were in Sheffield.
Now we don't usually go in for humorous smut (Hey ho!)-most of our paintings are Miss Marple-ish watercolours- but there was something quite warm about this piece which now graces our spare bedroom.........
off to work

Guys And Dolls

You can tell when you are in for a real treat of a musical, when the entire cast of 22 walks onto the set and not only can sing, dance and act, they actually perform all of the music and do so with some gusto and talent.!

Guys and Dolls, I always think, is not an easy musical to perform. It is a fairly long piece,with shortish musical numbers so the actors need to be able to act with some talent as well as be able to belt out a show stopper or two.
Last night's performance at Theatre Clwyd was a stonker and real quality and I was surprised that two of the smallest roles stole the entire show from the four excellent leads .........Johnson Willis (playing Sister Sarah's grandfather Brother Arvide Abernathy) sang the haunting "More I cannot Give You" quite beautifully and brought the auditorium to a standstill and the rotund and impressive sounding Susannah Van Den Berg brought the house down playing a scene filling Cuban air hostess who actually says nothing!

Rosie Jenkins as Miss Adelaide and Ben Fox as Nathan Detroit

Having said this, I loved the set and staging too (Libby Watson)..... without any breaks in the production the action and music flowed at a joyful and cracking pace.......and the standing ovation from the Welsh audience at the end was pretty impressive to say the least!
Anyhow enough of this back slapping, tonight I am off to work....bummer!

Mother Love and Community Council

Badger activity has increased on the field. I know there is a set in the rented grazing fields somewhere nearby and a single boar seems to be living under the old shed on an unused plot of land just behind our cottage.
They are, I will admit beautiful animals, but they are also hefty and destructive predators that will damage flower beds and hedges as well as killing any single hen that can be cornered on their nocturnal exploits.

This morning , I found that Cora's small broody hutch had been rolled over by powerful claws sometime during the night. The hutch was intact and luckily had been knocked onto its front,protecting Cora inside. so I gently righted it and opened the door.
Cora growled gently at me but sat firm on her six eggs and as I checked each one gently for cracks I could only marvel at the plucky mothering instinct these little scraps of birds exhibit when they go broody.
Every spring a handful of my hens have chicks.and with their little brains no larger than an average peanut, they seem to possess all of those enviable mothering emotions , such as concern, pride and affection for chicks no bigger than a cotton reel.
It is a little miracle of evolution and it never fails to move me every time I see it.
Cora's eggs were all intact, and she looked absolutely fine when I checked her over. She fed and drank briefly then settled herself down onto her eggs with a low cluck as I weighted her hutch down with some heavy rocks.

Next week I attend my first Community Council meeting.
I applied to fill a vacancy on the committee before Christmas and was very happy to be accepted   Way back in 2005 I promised myself that when we moved from city to village, that I would make an effort to join in with community  activities. Now, I  am not a particularly committee orientated person, in fact the bread and butter meetings that were the stuff of management within the NHS used to drive me insane, but the older I get, the more interested I have become in what goes on  on my own doorstep and I would like the opportunity to learn more about what community decisions can be made at a grass roots level...

My friend Nigel, suspects that the meetings will be something akin to those seen in  .The Vicar of Dibley......he may be right....but I will keep my thoughts on this one, strangely to myself!

Camilla the actress

. Over the years The Archers' cast has been joined by various famous celebrities, who have popped up in cameo roles in the middle England village . Judi Dench,Ewan Mc Gregor and Terry Wogan, amongst others have chirped up with the odd few words as have Princess Margaret and The Duke Of Westminster, who appeared in the early 1980s in support of the NSPCC.
Last night Camilla the Duchess of Cormwall arrived at Grey Gables (.BBC Camilla story)..she had a "nice chat-et" with the velvet voiced Caroline and waxed lyrically over the too-good-to-be-true Ian, and his shortbread........before popping off to another engagement....but short as it was, her appearance in the 60 year old soap was indeed a bit of a coup for the BBC and I think another small coup for her personally. (Although Camilla, it must be said that you should not give up your "day job"!)
I like Camilla. She is what she is!  a lady of some privilege with a warm personality and a slightly gung ho attitude who doesn't push herself or her thoughts too much down the publics' throat.
She is, in fact a typical upper middle class lady, who could roll her sleeves up with the best of them to help clean the horses out or chop logs or run the local Flower Show......you recognise the sort don't you?.........a lady who may be full of flu that still walks the dogs in the rain cos it "bloody well just needs doing!" 

I look forward to see Queen Camilla in a few years time....with her wellies and headscarf on, driving the 4 x 4 back from Waitrose!
Now I am off to my brother's house. I am going up to help him with his tracheal suction and the like whilst my sister in law gets some jobs done in town....it' will be nice to be useful

The Big Sky,Spring Jobs and Kit Hopkins' slippers!

Local County Councils do come in for a bit of ear bashing from time to time, but I must admit that out own   (Flintshire Council) is pretty good when something needs sorting out. We have two street lights in our lane,and both are attached to telephone poles. Recently both have not been working, and over the past few weeks, (before they were unfortunately fixed this morning), I have absolutely LOVED walking the dogs down the lane in the darkness. Without that harsh, yellow neon glow, suddenly the vague night sky had been transformed from a blank backdrop into something out of a sci fi movie and every evening I have stopped quietly by the sheep field gates soaking in the cold black beautiful big sky of the night.


If I had  my way, I would switch off the village street lights after 11pm......

William and Meg

The day has been sunny and springlike and for the first time this year, the dogs have joined me on the field from 8am as I worked away cleaning the coops and tidying the carnage caused by the awful winter weather.Meg and William still cannot be left to free range with the poultry, their pure terrier instincts are too ingrained and strong to prevent a massacre, but George and Constance can be left to their own devices. George remains a terrible egg stealer and potters away checking each coop in turn for any spare eggs to eat whereas Constance remains rather non plussed with the whole chicken thing
There was once minor "stand off" when the Geese stood their ground between me and her ( below) but apart from that, peace reigned for the most part.

Bulldog versus  geese

As I tidied up the compost bins,cleared dead wood, fixed fencing and disinfected coops, Constance ambled around the field very slowly checking on each pen and enclosure in turn.
For a city dog, she remained very calm and composed as she did her rounds, peering intently inside each hen house with her little piggy eyes before plonking herself in the centre of the field, where she watched the morning pass her by in the warmth of the sun.

Constance in thoughtful mode

By a late lunchtime, I had all but finished, so took the opportunity to deliver eggs . On my rounds I was stopped by Mrs Hopkins ( you my recall she was the lady that knitted my winter mittens), she called me into her bungalow to try on a pair of hand kitted slippers she had made for me, and like Cinderella they fitted perfectly!

Now don't be fooled by the slightly "pixie" and schizophrenic look of these individualised pieces of footwear ( I especially love the little pom poms) they ARE totally the most comfortable house slippers I have EVER owned......I wonder what's next? knitted underpants?

True Grit

Anyone over say 35, will ( or should) remember the  much tv shown 1969 western True Grit. What usually sticks in the memory about the Henry Hathaway movie is the warm no holds barred performance by John Wayne as the fat one eyed old Marshall who is softened by, Kim Darby's, spunky Mattie Ross, a teenager looking to avenge her father's death. The sight of him attacking the Ned Pepper gang to the strains of Elmer Bernstein, reins gripped in his teeth and with all guns a blazing, lingers long in my movie soaked mind, so it was great interest that I went to see the Coen Brother's remake this afternoon.

True Grit ( the remake) is a much darker and a totally different movie than its predecessor.The Coens have all but eliminated the sentimental touches that Wayne and Darby generated. Instead, the affection that crusty old drunk Rooster Cogburn ( Jeff Bridges ) has for the precocious Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld ) is all but hidden away until the very final moments of action, and in its place  a powerful unsaid respect between man and girl can be seen in the odd phrase or telling glance ( watch the uplifting crossing of the river scene and you'll get my drift)
Bridges' Cogburn is a gruff, growling man who spits out his words like an old bear. Unlike in the 1969 movie, he is not Mattie's replacement father, however he does "blossom" under her forcefully, clever and slightly bullying ways.and the interplay between Rooster, Mattie and the self indulgent but emotionally warm Ranger, La Boeuf (Matt Damon) makes for a more interesting movie, a movie which is more a three headed love story than a  Western action piece.

Wisely the Coen brothers mirror the pace of the movie with the atmospheric use of the  hymn " Leaning on the Everlasting Arms  " ( Funnily enough it was the hymn that the psychotic preacher Robert Mitchum sang constantly in Night Of The Hunter) The music soundtrack is not uplifting, it is tough and a little harsh, a thing that is reflected again in the impressive cinematography of the austere countryside,and in the narrative of the film itself, which underlines the "life is cheap" mentality of Indian territory of the 1880s.
Surprisingly there is very little action in this atmospheric movie, but when the action does surface, it does so with power and some shocking violence
Jeff Bridges gives Rooster a hard edge that was perhaps missing from Wayne's  shouting performance, and Hailee Steinfield is absolutely amazing as the tough, wisecracking and emotionally hardened Mattie, who only shows her softness in one short telling scene with the rather good Damon.
I enjoyed this movie and give it a cracking 8.5 out of 10
But you know what?. for a couple of minutes, I did miss fat old John Wayne riding out and yelling "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch! "