John "the dogs"

Yesterday a neighbour asked me if I would like to go with her to the Methodist chapel for a "frugal" lunch. Now not being much of a Church goer, I have little knowledge of the traditions of lent, but as I am a fan of The Archers, I now feel pretty more informed of the state of frugal lunches as experienced by Clarrie Grundy  at Ambridge over the past few weeks or so!
There was around 20 villagers at the lunch, which consisted of hot pot ( is hot pot frugal?) cheese and bread. I knew most of the people there but there was a few faces I did not recognise, so I seized the opportunity to "conscript" a couple more of the older villagers for my oral history blog.
As I introduced myself to one older lady she preempted me by saying with a smile "I know you, you're John the dogs",

This kind of "title" pleases me, it is also a typical Welsh description of a personlike myself. as I can always be seen twice a day walking around the village and local countryside with the four dogs walking cleanly at heel.
This kind of Welsh nickname remains commonplace in communities like ours.

Now I know recently I have been waxing rather too lyrically on the virtues of a deadpan flatulent bulldog with an over abundance of saliva and in answer to the prolific e mailer Mrs Fickle, I agree I have not perhaps shown William, Meg and underdog George in a similar positive light.......so today I will endeavour to rectify my mistake.

William is a delightful five year old Welsh terrier. Of all of our dogs he is the one with the best manners and the sweetest personality.
William possesses a gentleness about him which I always think is a rare trait is such a young dog. He is slow to rile and quick to welcome other dogs and people.
He also allows himself to be bullied by the physically more dominant Constance

Meg is the baby of our pack even though she is the oldest dog at six. Neurotic, needy, clingy,and constantly jealous of anyone and everyone, she is not happy unless she is within a gnat's crotchet of me at any given moment of the day.

If Meg was the female version of Woody Allen in the household and William a canine version of Matt Cardle (?) George is a bit of the Elliot character from ET.
George has always been and will always be the underdog in the house...even the hens understand his low status and will bully him without a thought when he checks each of the hen houses for spare eggs.

However, despite his low standing, George remains the comic of the group. Resolutely cheerful, he remains  a constant wall flower in the daily cottage routine......and therefore  secretly dominates everyones affection by his undemanding behaviour. He is just a real sweetie

If we had a bigger house and garden, we would have a huge pack of  dogs, of that I am sure.....but then I guess my nickname would not then be "John -the dogs".......it would probably be "John the  "f*"king" nutcase

Julie Zenatti - Notre Dame de Paris

The French can sing out the ingredients and flavourings from the back of a cornflake packet, and make them all sound good. This is a Moody little piece from Notre Dame de Paris...."Zingara" by Julie Zenatti..I have been playing it a lot in the car at the moment....I love it.

"Interviewing" Gladys Jones for the sister blog this afternoon which should be lively, this documentation of memories will be a bigger job than I expected......last night I listened to the 2 hours I recorded from Trevor and Gwyneth.....a lot of it will make a cracking read I hope....however after most of the evening of analysis I had only managed to write a couple of paragraphs! Once more into the breach
postscript
....Today's first entries went a little easier! see http://trelawnydhistory.blogspot.com/

Interviews-Round One

I met up with my first interviewees today
Sat around a kitchen table with a plethora of old photographs  two village octogenarians recalled village life from the 1930s with halting affection, amazing precision and just a bit of ribald laughter
After two and a half hours, I was fading with a concentration headache....but they, I was sure, would have carried on Merrily until dusk.......I now have reams of information to sort through
Thanks  to my first Voices from The Past.....namely

Mr Trevor Evans

and Mrs Gwyneth Jones

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