St Michael's

We went out for lunch and had a nice walk along a near deserted beach today.Chris decided to do all of the cooking this evening so I took the welcome break from the kitchen sink and went to conscript more grey hairs for the village blog. I didn't have to look far; as when I had my head in the turkey coop affable despot Dorothy bellowed over the graveyard fence at me "When are you coming to see me?"

I dutifully booked her particular slot, then added octogenarian Hubert Evans and Daphne who lived in the village rectory in the 1940s.By next week I would have interviewed ten people.

Daphne gave me a key to the Church so that I could photograph the Easter lilies, and although I am in no way religious, I do find the silence and peace of the empty Church particularly soothing .

St Michael's has a country-like simplicity about it. It is, in essence just a plain rectangle with windows on three sides. It is dark but not gloomy. The atmosphere is still, but not musty and there is a warmth about the whole place which is strangely healing.Perhaps it will help my wheezy chest? I have been coughing like an old asthmatic for weeks now

Perhaps I have seen Black Narcissus too many times....

Bulldog kiss

Its 12.02 am and I was just about to to bed after finishing my sister blog update (Trelawnyd History-voices from the past) when  Albert opened the kitchen door and walked in to the cottage proper to go to bed.
Constance saw the open door, got up, and marched into the living room
I was watching some crap on tv...and she slowly walked up to me, then climbed up on the couch and gave me  a kiss!
She really did!
It's weird but she is the only dog we have ever had that demands a kiss...AND ON THE LIPS too!... Albert does, but then he's a cat so that does not count.... but Constance......she likes to touch base....have a kiss then back to the kitchen she went.............happy and content.......

I have made a monster! lol

hey ho

Live and Let live

 Again, it is gloriously hot and sunny.
The weather has brought out the village children who visit the field often with bags of cheap white bread clutched in their fists. They call around to the cottage to pick up tin bowls and then will eagerly scurry around the coops collecting eggs and the odd tame hen which is usually carried around like a handbag.
In this awful climate of health and safety...I always remind them loudly (in front of parents) to wash their hands when they get home!

I had forgotten it is Good Friday......so best laid plans had to be put on hold as Chris has a day off at home.
I took him to Church service in Dyserth this morning before popping down to Rhyl on a bit of a mercy dash.

Earlier I took a phone call from a nice couple who were distraught with their neighbour's threats to report them to the local council. The couple has five ornamental orpingtons which after laying the occasional egg , cluck a little too loudly for the neighbours to cope with, and so after a bit of a war of words, the couple had been presented with the fact that in the small print of their deeds there was a covenant forbidding the keeping of hens.

I called around to find the couple upset and very tearful. The hens' run was beautifully clean and well looked after and the quiet birds ( yes they were beautifully quiet) looked bright and very healthy to me, but of course the couple had to get rid of them......they had no other choice.............so of course I agreed to take them.
One by one I loaded the fat girls into the back of the berlingo as the wife sobbed into her hankie, and all I could do to help her was to promise to save their eggs for the family to use personally.
It was such a shame that two enthusiastic and caring people should be stripped of a pastime they had grown to love so much......and by a hatchet faced neighbour who couldn't quite cope with the odd cluck of a hen!

The new girls

Gran Fry

My Grandmother, mother and parrot in Gwaenysgor around 1941
Gwaenysgor is Trelawnyd's "sister" village

Thursdays I always come up to my brother's house to lend a hand when my sister-in-law goes out to complete "jobs". Motor neurone disease brings with it great lethargy, so Andrew will doze for most of the morning hours.
I spend the time being somewhat of a self righteous secretary, and will complete my blog, e mails, and most importantly today, will do Chris' work expenses and write out the latest "Voices from the past" recording from the animated and entertaining Pat Bagguley.


I think , spending so much time listening to the  older people from the village recalling past times has made me feel  rather nostalgic for my own grandmother, who died back in 1984.
" By Gum" ......She could tell a good story.....my goodness if she had lived in Trelawnyd rather than her native Liverpool, she could have taken up at least ten pages of blog with amusing tales of wartime daring do (her story of how she returned to her bomb damaged Everton house with the ARP man to retrieve her children's clothes and the cat when there was an unexploded bomb under the kitchen floor could have hushed the Albert Hall I can tell you!)


Even as a child and despite all of the humour and funny tales, I always realised just how the war traumatised my grandmother. I remember when we were children, thunderstorms would send her scurrying into the "safety" of the airing cupboard, where she would sit in the darkness until the storm had passed...and bonfire night was an evening to be endured with the curtains closed and the television volume well up!


And yet, despite all of her WW2 induced neuroses,my gran did manage to captivate her grandchildren's imagination time and time and time again with that "spirit that won us the war" and "let's get on with it" strength everyone seemed to possess at that time.


Like most women of her generation, she experienced the abject poverty of the 1920s recession without going under. She scrubbed floors to earn a living, she waited tables in Isle of Man Cafes when things were very bad ( leaving her babies in Liverpool to do so) and despite everything, she developed a warmth and generosity of spirit that was passed on without reservation to her grandchildren.


I missed her yesterday.....I was walking in the village with the dogs in the strong afternoon sunshine and as we  panted our way down High Street, I spied Auntie Gladys asleep in a deck chair by her front door.
Seeing that old lady with the same indomitable spirit made me grieve just a little for my gran from those happy 1970s days full of bright sunshine and warm conversations

Flight of the Bumblebee on 101 Bottles!

and who said University fees of 9,000£ a term is too high?

Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti) and Miss BA Jones

The Italian comedy/drama Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti) (at Theatre Clwyd this evening) is an amusing "coming out of the closet" film that would have probably been made by Richard Curtis in the 1980s or early 1990s if produced in the UK....and yes it does has that slightly dated feel which may or may not perfectly portray the attitudes and prejudices of conservative Southern Italian family life.
The main story is typical farce.......Thomasso,(Riccardo Scamarcio ) The youngest son of a wealthy and eccentric family arrives back home to inform his family that he is gay (so that he will be disowned and not expected to carry on with the family pasta business)..just before he has the opportunity to do so his elder brother(Alessandro Preziosi ) comes out to the family at dinner.....father has a heart attack, grandmother grieves past relationship mistakes and drunken aunt bemoans her fading youth...oh and the family pasta company director Alba (Nicole Grimaudo ) falls for Thomasso who feels unable to declare his gayness to his now shocked family!
.........yes and that's the simple synopsis!

add to the mix Thomasso's hunky boyfriend. his three camp -as-a-row-of-tents friends who have to try an butch it all up so that no one can guess the truth and a miserable ugly maid and you'll get the gist of the movie which amuses the audience in a kind of predictable and middle class kind of way.
I gave it an ok 7/10...but I do think that the totally beautiful and talented Nicole Grimaudo (left) is a real find..I will look out for her again. She is lovely


Anyhow, earlier today I "interviewed" Pat Bagguley and her  youthful daughter Joanne for Trelawnyd-Voices from the Past.
It was an entertaining and animated afternoon full of interesting anecdotes and cracking personal histories

Joanne and Pat

and I so enjoyed listening to their memories of the village from the 1950s onwards, it was an easy and fun afternoon.
In addition to their own fascinating stories, both Pat and Joanne described a local schoolteacher Miss BA Jones who literally ran the village community for over  half a century. Her story will be one I will concentrate upon in my sister blog as Miss Jones was awarded an M.B.E. in recognition of her passion and dedication to village affairs.
(which was no mean feat)
I will try and get some more of the blog written tomorrow night! its beginning to become a labour of love with me

Miss BA Jones is centre of the ladies on the from row (the one with the gloves) in this 1958 photo of the village welfare committee
Auntie Gladys, who was 92 yesterday is first on the left

Mr Magoo

Things didn't get off to an auspicious start this morning.....I have just rubbed  Chris' "Intensive foot softener" from Boots into my face instead of sun cream and Albert has left the tiny body of a baby rabbit on the kitchen floor which has now been disemboweled by the terriers............
By the time I had scrubbed most of the entrails stains out of the lino...the foot cream had started to "burn" just a little ( I have very sensitive skin) so I now resemble a rather fat matchstick.....complete with belisha beacon face..........
Russell has gone lame and has had to be confined to his goose house for some rest and some of my onion sets are just a little too damp to plant out today....and it's only 9am!

at least the sun has started to break through.....

Siambr Wen

I have felt jet lagged throughout the whole of today,
It has been the sort of day that doesn't feel quite real and I have bounced from chatting with  neighbours and villagers to wanting to curl up under a duvet and sleeping the day away.
Of course I have not slept...I have, however,  socialised with a score of field visitors, organised a very welcomed swap of home baked bread for eggs from Jason at Wynne House  sorted another four oral history interviews with more conscripted "greyhairs", delivered a load of eggs and hand posted a birthday card for Auntie Gladys, who is 92 today.......by mid afternoon I had a desperate need to be quiet so I took myself off alone, to photograph a ruin of one of the oldest of the village houses...the grandiose sounding SIAMBR WEN

Siambr Wen



Siambr Wen with the lovely Still House  behind. Well street and the village proper lies just beyond
It is reported that The Still house still has traces of of the old wattle and daub walls and was well known to have been an ancient distillery

 This old house dates from the early 1600s and several large houses of standing were called Siambr Wen  in the local area ( there are such houses in the nearby villages of Dyserth and Caerwys) as they could put aside a large room which could be used by the village as a courtroom! (Siambr means chamber in Welsh)
The house was the home of the Williams family. According to local historian Daphne...in her book Trelawnyd Past & Present ,John Williams who died in 1711 is buried in the South east corner of the Churchyard.