If It Ain't Broke...........

I have been listening to the meandering and pedestrian radio soap opera The Archers for over twenty years now.
The storyline depicting Kenton's gentle romance with The Bull's Landlady Jolene plods quite nicely alongside Elizabeth's grief and Eddie Grundy's lent hardships fill perhaps seven minutes of a fifteen minute drama slot which has always been aired at 7pm each night.

So why (oh why) have the prepubescent wizz kids from radio four ddesigned a "new" and " exciting" new "concept in radio drama" namely the crackingly original  Ambridge Extra.
This new pacy and "innovative" spin off series will develop the existing characterisations (why?), will  introduce us to the previously silent characters like Rhys the Bull's barman ( again why?) and will allow the audience to follow the lives of non Ambridge based residents , like the mind numbing Alice Carter who is working away in a Southampton University. ( whoopie shit)

The Archers has ticked  middle England sensibilities since 1950.......it has bumbled quite nicely thank you without any gimmick, or wizz kid intervention for years......so I have a message for the twittering Keri Davies....the script writer who is developing this new initiative..........
"leave well alone"

"Let's kick some alien ass"

 Picture Independence Day......add a slice of Black Hawk Down......throw in the obligatory  tough Hispanic female marine (Michelle Rodriguez playing .....well......Michelle Rodriguez) and sprinkle the whole lot of CGI with a liberal amount of shite dialogue...and bingo...you have ....Battle: Los Angeles.

Now I sort of enjoyed the action sequences.....I sort of think that most of the movie resembled one of those computer games that I know nothing about...but boy when the movie slows down to let beefcake Sergeant Aaron Eckhart  build his bromance relationship with his multicultural and mistrusting marine group....Chris was reaching for his sick bag!....and I was cringing in disappointment
John Wayne.....where were you when we needed you?
6/10 (visually 8/10)
(ps best line of any action movie......as the marines crowd around a dying alien in an effort to find its weaknesses..... the lone civilian woman in the group pipes up "Maybe I can help. I'm a veterinarian"
........beat that

Joe/Joanne

The dogs have had a different brand of food than normal last night and so the kitchen looked as though an elephant had been given an overdose of soapy enema this morning....hey bloody ho!
Luckily I was too tired to weep
So I just cleaned it up in front of four pairs of guilty eyes and took the culprits out for their dawn walk. I am too old for incontinence in the early morning
Sundays are a treat for me...I walk the dogs, sort the animals out, make Chris his breakfast ( In bed good readers!!!!) and then I sneak back under the duvet for a snooze.....
However before I disappear...I will just pass on that Jo, my second goose is  not a gander as I once hoped..... This morning Joanne, tottered out of her house....took a huge drink and  ambled off to sit herself in a large slightly unkempt nest by the pond.....
She is a woman!

Striking When The Iron Is Hot

My plan to document the older villagers' memories on my new blog "Trelawnyd: Voices of the Past"  sort of got off the ground this morning. As I lazily gazed into the new neat Graveyard , I was reminded of that old phrase The road to hell is paved with good intentions ,so galvanised by my London break and the lovely spring morning, I went knocking on doors.
An hour later and two dozen eggs lighter I had booked 5 interviews for next week, agreed two more in the pipeline and had arranged for a request for more volunteers to be read out at the next "friendship group meeting" at the memorial Hall.
All I need now is batteries for a little tape recorder, a blank pad of paper and a lot of patience!

The rest of the morning I have been on catch up. Chris has looked after the animals very well, and all of them were present, healthy and accounted for on muster this morning.

The only casualty however was my polytunnel, which was ripped from its moorings on Thursday morning by gale force winds. I found what was left of it in the lane and have only just had to opportunity to repair it.
These are the trials and tribulations of an allotment holder!
Mind you I haven't killed myself with hard work today!
Couldn't quite resist a lie down with a bulldog "pillow"

a BIT SCARY: the same expression!

Nuala

Nuala

  I worked out that we were almost four hours in Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant in Covent Garden...
I met Nu around 1pm and we left for Sadler's Wells at Angel at 5pm.
Lovely food, a few glasses of white (served by a somewhat delightful teenage actress) and a proper catch up was the order of the day.....simple pleasures within an ancient friendship.I don't think I have talked so much and for so long for an absolute age

Almost (but not quite) chatted out , we caught in the tube to Sadler's Wells to watch an amazing display of modern dance. The Talent by the small Balletboyz dance company ( nine young male dancers with bodies like ironing boards) proved to be an exhilarating and for me, genuinely original experience of modern dance.

Today, we had a mooch around Syon House, bought some plants for Nu's garden ( she is a dunce and a real city girl when it comes to greenery) then caught the tube to Westfield where we had a more big chats , a Mexican lunch at .wahaca and then a trip to the cinema (I know it sounds weird going all that way to sit in a cinema-but we both love the shared experience of cinema going)
We saw the worthy but not quite compelling Oranges and Sunshine with Emily Watson and an ancient looking David Wenham (the buff one eyed spartan with huge boobs in  300) The movie told the story of how 1980s social worker Margaret Humphreys (Watson) unearthed the fact that thousands of Children had been shipped over to Australia from British care homes in the 1950s and 1960s . Many of these childrens' families had no idea this government initiative was carried out and although the intention of the exodus was indeed good many of these children were set up not with loving Australian families but faced lives of abuse in backward farming and religious institutions.
Like I said it was a worthy movie and Watson and the talented Hugo Weaving (who played one of the displaced "children") are always worth a trip to the movies. 7/10

At 5pm my brief visit to the big smoke was over. Nuala and I have touched base and both feel the benefit form doing so that is the restorative power of old friends!....she has jetted off for a fiend's dinner party....me I am on the train typing this rather pretentiously next to all the business men who are worrying over their emails and statistics.........
Lovely day

"....The Sky's Turned Black"

Last night I had a nice long fantasy type chat with my friend Nige
We are both film fans and both enjoy very different aspects of film genre Our conversation concerned the making of our own movie............me an action alien movie set in a Welsh Village.....his a meandering narrative new wave study of country visuals.... yeap geeks of the world unite! I found this strange little movie on youtube yesterday....I suspect that Nige would love the visuals ( an odd chilling little video I think you would agree) whereas I prefer the rather melancholy music ( The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky´s Turned Black by Johann Johannsson ) The Music has been used in the trailer of the movie Battle: Los Angeles....which I hope to see at the weekend! Off to London later.......a city break will be wonderful....it will remind me that I can do......urban!
xxx

Voices from the Past

The old plaque on the Edenezer Chapel on Chapel Street that was built in the early 1700s

I am up at my brother's house for the day. My usual "Thursday" has been moved to today as tomorrow I am off to London for a catch up with best friend Nuala. 
It will be lovely to be frivolous in body and soul for 48 hours....we will take in a show, do some cinema, eat, drink a little and talk a lot.....I have missed her
So today whilst Andrew is napping, I will get started on my next project, and that is the "design" and planning of a "sister" blog to Going Gently  and The Trelawnyd Flower Show
I am hoping that the new blog will be a sort of Village based project, as I would like to chronicle the much and varied history of Trelawnyd, as remembered by the older people of the community. Since my post of a day or so ago, I have already received a whole folder full of old slides, photographs and articles which depict Trelawnyd's past as well as being promised  books,letters and personal information on some of the more interesting aspects of the villagers' lives . 
Shifting through all this and collating it will be a challenge, especially as there has already been a popular local book written on the subject a few years ago, but I would like to capture the experiences and memories of the rapidly disappearing aged population and document their words and their snapshots of the village in a more definitive collection.
Local Dog Walker and mine of village information Pippa B, has already offered me some sterling advice of who to see and who to ask, so next week I will start knocking on doors to galvanise some local support on the project...in the meantime if any local blog readers have and relevant information, photographs ( which will be returned after they are scanned) and bits of interest....you know where to find me!


The New Blog can be found at http://trelawnydhistory.blogspot.com/

Shame and a possible case of dog napping?

Sorrel has returned to Kent this morning.
She takes with her a chest infection,a reinforced hatred of rodents and  a healthy disregard for Bulldog bitches....but at least she seemed to have enjoyed her visit.

This afternoon I have togged myself up like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters and have jet sprayed the inside of the coops with neat dettol......It is the start of red mite season and as every poultry keeper will testify to..having red mite in your hen house is as shameful and as disgusting as having a particularly itchy dose of pubic lice!
Dettol is a miracle bug killer, so after a hour and a half spraying, I returned to the cottage smelling like the inside of a public urinal (or perhaps like the inside of one of those plastic buckets the ones that your mum used to place next to the bed when you were sick as a kid) .I left the dogs enjoying the sun on the patio outside the back door and went inside to change and as I was in the bathroom I heard George and Constance barking.

Now this is nothing new as the dogs bark at numerous people walking past the cottage. Indeed they had only just given octogenarian Trevor a loud "doggy greeting" when he popped down to give me a load of historical photos of Trelawnyd for my rapidly growing collection, but there was something a little "sharp" in the Scottie's bark that made me think that he didn't know who was around, so I stood on tip toe, looked out of the window and caught a glimpse of a rough looking middle aged stranger  leaning right over the garden wall.
The man had hold of William around his front legs and looked as though he was lifting him up over the wall....
"Put him down right now!" I bellowed out of the window and the surprised man jumped a mile and stopped what he was doing "I'm only stroking him" he said smiling yet unsure of where I actually was, but I must admit that the whole thing felt suddenly wrong and I was having none of it.
I galloped down stairs to find the apologetic man still standing there rubbing the ever friendly William behind the ears and although the guy's behaviour could have just been that of a friendly dog lover,I felt uneasy and suddenly ready for a bit of a confrontation.

"He's lovely" the man said
"Yes he is" I replied shortly and picked the big hearted William by the scruff of his neck and holding him like a handbag I walked into the house followed by the rest of the dogs.
"There's no need to be like that" the man said, but still the whole thing seemed rather contrived to me
"fuck off!" I called over my shoulder
Hell has no fury as a dog owner potentially scorned

William sleeping on the couch after his afternoon walk

Perhaps it was a total over reaction on my part......but do I feel guilty? do I heck as like!
Anyhow tonight I aim to relax a little,   .......it will be nice to catch up with my favourite blogs in front of the fire