Purgatory

The house in the centre lies on the site of Purgatory

I know I have been banging on about the collection of the villagers oral histories, but amongst the personal memories you sometimes come across little snippet of local "lore" which captures the imagination somewhat.
Purgatory is just one of those "snippets". Last week I bumped into an elderly lady. She had been off for a "walk" in her electric wheelchair and when I asked her where she had been she succinctly said "To purgatory and back"
I did a little digging.
After reviewing old 1950 maps of the village I located a small holding on the outskirts of the village with the rather odd name of Purgatory. Not purgatory farm or purgatory house...but just plain PURGATORY. Today it has been rebuilt into a plush new house called Cae Glas (Green Field or Blue field)

It intrigues me just why anyone would name a house with such a negative tag?. Ok there are several "bleak Houses" in the world, we all know that, but why on earth would anyone call their home, which is always deemed a place of safety and of warmth , such a punishing name......?

Answers on a postcard please?

Designer Village

Chris works exceptionally long hours in the week. So weekends remain very much chillout time for him. He spends long periods relaxing- horizontally watching Miss Marple-ish tv and the like...
Today he decided that midsommer murders didn't tick his box, so to speak, and he organised a walk and a picnic.
We took the Welsh out with us (George is too slow for a long walk and Constance is again in season , so her coquettish behaviour and lax moral code means that she also is confined to barracks) and braving the welcomed showers we set off.

We walked up over The Gop and down past the large Elizabethan House called "Golden Grove"
Then through the woods where blankets of wild garlic are now in flower

Like school kids on a day out, we ate our sandwiches early then walked into the picture perfect village of Llanasa. Now I have a soft spot for Llanasa , as a child I spent nearly every weekend there at the Howatson Farm playing and riding my sister's horse, an old brood mare called Rona.
The village back in the mid 1970s, was more a "working" village than it is today.
There was a shop, post office and a working farm either side of the village, although the school as I recall had already closed and the village was always pretty, in a kind of natural and relaxed way.

Today the Howatson farm with its slightly shopworn outbuildings has changed beyond recognition. Sure the beautiful old farmhouse with its set of uneven sash windows remains at the head of the courtyard, but it is now surrounded by a whole plethora of barn conversions and "sympathetic" new builds, a fact that literally breaks my heart..When I was a boy, those old barns , pig stys and stables was a playground to beat all playgrounds......it was a magical, dusty old place with charm and style.


The "old" Howatson farm house



The old farming sense of the village has all but gone, and in its place  there is a pretty film set that shrieks of money.There are designer ducks on the village pond, and probably designer bantams pecking around neatly manicured lawns and gravel drives.....and although the whole village retains much of its inherited beauty, I am glad I live in the slightly scruffier Trelawnyd which is populated by a less upwardly mobile population.

The pretty Norman Church in the centre of the village

We ate the rest of our "butties" in the grounds of the Church , then made our way past the Homes and Gardens village houses to amble back to Trelawnyd.as the sun came out

Guess who?

I was given a dog bed yesterday for all the dogs to use

guess who monopolised it?

she sat like this until well after dark!

Sharing Banality

Every Thursday I spend the day at my brother's house. The day has a pace and a rhythm all of its own as in between the few necessary jobs  I need to do, my brother dozes..a result of the debilitating fatigue Motor Neurone possesses.
The dogs spend their time in the garden in the desperate effort of capturing a grey plastic duck which floats irritatingly in the centre of the pond and by the time later afternoon arrives my brother and I have got into the habit of watching a bloody awful but nevertheless strangely entertaining game tv game show Deal or No Deal.
Now it took me a few weeks to work out the premise of the game....the problem I found with understanding it all, was in fact the game is so bloody simple!
-A member of the public ( who obviously loves performing in front of a camera) picks a series of boxes to open at random. Inside are cash amounts of money......the idea is to pick "red higher " cash amounts rather than "blue lower" .............however ( and it is a biog however) the strange fascination of the game lies with the somewhat false and overly "buddy" relationships the player has with the group of sycophants that open the boxes for him/her, who are all biding their time to play the game themselves...
Do you get it?
Well for an absolute age I didn't.....my brother explained the format to me via his talking IPAD, but the strange overly friendly behaviour between contestants still confused and infuriated me....so much so that every Thursday afternoon we can be found in front of the television....with me yelling like a banshee every time the players perform this strange buddy/buddy and false-as-a-pair of 1960s eyelashes, behaviour!

It has all become a bit of a tradition now, and of course it is something "fun" we can both share at a time when laughs are few and far between
It is strange what becomes therapeutic isn't it?
Anyhow .......Yesterday I missed the end of the game....when an overactive sports analyst from the Wirral consistently hugged and kissed his fellow players  calling them all" top man!" (my blood pressure must have been through the roof!!!)
when I got home my brother had texted me
"contestant lost 1.5 grand..............greedy bastard!"

I am now, just off  to the community hospital in Holywell for a chest xray...then I have a load of calbrase and cabbage to plant out.....which may be a foolish enterprise.......the goat arrives Monday!

Menopause Anger? I think not

I have a vague memory of having a small cornet ice cream being banged into my face on Prestatyn high street when I was a child. This rather odd recollection re surfaced only yesterday when I was reading someone else's blog and today I am gently pondering whether it actually happened in real life .
It's like standing in front of your house when you were a child, looking through the window and net curtains at the screen of a black and white television set.......nothing really seems clear or even real, but I do sort of remember having a stamping tantrum in front of my mother about having one of those old fashioned creamy ice creams ( you know the sort that had a square wafer cornet and an ice cream you had to unwrap before you could place the two together)
I think I was being a bit of a bastard (even then you have the realisation that you've pushed it a little too far) and the next thing I knew we were off to the sweet shop (the one with the steps)
My mother bought me the ice cream and I think bashed me in the gop with it.....
Gawd, that's an awful thing to do, isn't it? even if I was being a little sod and basically deserved it ( if I saw this today I would stand and applaud believe me!)

However on reflection I think the memory is a bit of a false one.....perhaps the real truth lies in a playful joust of sorts rather than a rather cruel lesson of manners I certainly would like to think it was.Perhaps it didn't actually happen at all?- (more likely)
 .... but the whole thing did get me to thinking of how easy it is to fool yourself and strip any objectivity you may possess, away from the truth of long distant situations and memories.


I am thinking a great deal about memories at the moment. My collection of personal reflections from the village elders has been intriguing as it is challenging. Many contraindications abound, with conflicting information surfacing on every taped interview. Sometimes it is not easy to work out the actual truth, especially as in some cases, 70 or even 80 years have passed by, but I have come to realise that if I cannot actually be sure my mother slapped me with an ice cream in 1969 or so,  why worry too much about details.....
as my mother used to say
"It'll all come out in the wash"
hey ho

Biutiful

Javier Bardem is a street hustler Uxbal, he is living a crummy life on the fringes of crime in the back streets of Barcelona....he also has an unstable bipolar ex wife , two small children that require a stable homelife  and the gift of second sight...facts that are all compounded and made more complicated with the sudden  diagnoses of an aggressive and fatal cancer.
Biutiful is an unsentimental story of redemption within a world where the poor, the immigrants and the dispossessed scrabble for an existence on the fringes of society. It is an impressive film ( the cinematography by  Rodrigo Prieto is suitably harsh and wonderfully atmospheric)  but boy is it a long slog and if it wasn't for Bardem, who gives the central character of Uxbel a kind of likability beneath his resignation, I think I would have walked out of the cinema before the final credits rolled.
7/10

Update for Mrs Fickle

Mrs Fickle ( who is the American Mid Western (Minnesota ) version of Mrs Trellis from North Wales!) has dropped me an email wanting an update on the field animals. She says I have been a little neglectful on animal stories of late ( blame the royal wedding and my sister blog!)....so suitably chastised I will rectify the fact with an update.

playing "down" for the camera

Constance has a lame back leg. Its nothing serious, I think she has just pulled it jumping out of the car, but a little pain has transformed her from a fairly normal Bulldog into the biggest drama Queen this side of the Welsh Border!
For most of the day I can find her lying pathetically on her own sofa ( we have moved one of our couches from the living room and into the kitchen) and when approached she will groan loudly and offer her painful leg up for inspection and in a vain hope that she will  receive some gentle physiotherapy and nursey attention.
I have not seen such a good death bed scene since Margaret O Brien gasped her last in Little Women!

As for the field.....well in true Orwellian style, the power base out on the field has changed drastically since the selling of  Lizzy ( you may recall that she was the aggressive Bourbon turkey) Since she left for pastures new the three geese have taken over as the field bosses so to speak. The village children who come to collect eggs regularly do so a little more warily as Russell will be a touch more vociferous in his "defence" of Jo and Winnie....but so far the only extent of his aggression has been some over exuberant hissing.

The geese "patrolling" the field borders

The New Orpingtons

The New Orpingtons have settled in nicely, although I find it  strange that they are all singled out by Angostura the white Guinea Fowl for some consistent low level bullying. I now have a nice flock of 11 assorted buffs.

Ruth, the last ghost hen, spends the longer sunny days sunbathing  and resting. I watched her for a while this morning as she happily tucked in to bowl of corn and strange that it may sound, I did have a sudden rush of affection for this , the last survivor of the broiler runts that were delivered a year ago.
Perhaps it is a sign of the "small life" I now live, that a knackered old obese bird can have such an effect on me,, but affect me, she does. Ruth remains a kind of mascot for all of the thick-as-mince underdogs in this world.

Anyhow Mrs Fickle...there's a brief update for you.......I guess there is more to tell you,( William is on steroids for a skin allergy; Bunny the disabled hen died in her sleep the other night and Boris has been shagging the other turkeys like there is no tomorrow)...... but I need to get off to the doctors and have a million of one jobs to do in a "make hay-when-the-sun-shines" kind of way.........
It's a pity you live in St James ......we have an allotment open day on July 17th..with field tours, lashings of tea and homemade cakes.....you'd love it

A service Industry?

I thought I would add a brief "ps" to Chris' Birthday pic (see below)

This morning I have been on the receiving end of the Great British service industry
The first was excellent

I went into a doctor's surgery at the neighbouring village
Big smiles of welcome
And a  bright "hello" was the order of the day
Can I change my doctor and register here?" I asked
"certainly" came the reply "Just fill in this form for me and I will do the rest"
"Lovely " said I...."could I also make an appointment to see the doctor?"
The receptionist smiled broadly again flashing me a genuine smile
"when would you like to come?" she asked
Me, rather hesitantly "Tomorrow?"
"wonderful" she said " pick a time"
After my experience with the great unwashed "bunfight for an appointment"  at the nearby town's health centre
I could have kissed her....

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Recently I took several slides into a nearby town's chemist for printing.
After several weeks I went into the shop to collect them (I did this twice)
Finally I received a phone message stating that they had finally been located in Lancashire
The next day another message stated that they had indeed been found

So today I went in to collect them
Me " I have come to collect my photos I recieved an answer phone message saying you had found them , they had been delivered to the wrong branch, my name is Gray"
Customer service operator: (very loudly) "Oh I know, I spoke to your wife"
Me: "No you didn't, I am not married"
CSO: "was it your partner?" (even louder this time)
Me: No, my partner is 6 foot 1 and called Christopher"
CSO: " OH! i've been on holiday, I haven't been here! .... who did you speak to?"
Me: " there was two different messages from two different women I dont remember who they were...they said they had located the prints and I presumed that they were here"
CSO: rummaging through drawers" They are not here....I think the message meant that we had found them in Oldham not that they were here"
Me signing..... "ring me when they arrive"
CSO: " ok"
Is it me?

Iwill leave you with a photo of  Jo and Russell enjoying the warm sunshine this morning..hi lameness has inproved ( thank you for asking Mrs Fickle) but Constance has now taken over his limp!