Flower Show Concerns

I'm  a little worried.
No.... the goat has not escaped (oh by the way, I am planning to extend his paddock already as the old pig enclosure is far too small and he is obviously not pleased )
and No...... I have not had a result from my recent chest xray as yet!


I am in fact worried about this year's flower show.
The population of the village does not come to more than a few hundred souls and yet every year we have around three hundred entries for the flower, produce , arts and crafts and cookery ....we are usually wonderfully supported, especially by the elders of the village, but there comes a time when ill health and fatigue lays low even the most robust of Welsh Septuagenarians oh and the odd group of octogenarians!


Through illness and trauma two of our biggest contributors may not be taking part this year and at last night's Flower Show meeting we were all racking our brains to come up with a new strategy of enrolling an increasingly apathetic general public.


Bribery was discussed......Human interest stories were bandied around (after all, the press loves a Sue-Bo character like auntie Glad who has been on the committee for a staggering 60 years) and in the end we decided that a saturation bombing strategy of flyers, posters,press releases and general low level bullying may be the order of the day.

Mrs Parry sweeping the board with her baking entries last year

Sometimes the community needs to be reminded just how easy it can be to lose an event like the Flower Show, once a few key players it in disappear from view...so I will say right now
"Listen here any Trelawnyd readers.......get off your arses and think long and hard about entering as many soddin' categories in the village show that is humanly possible
See the schedule at http://trelawnydflowershow.blogspot.com/


You'll be making a old fart like me very happy
Hey Ho!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Poor Tom Stephenson 60 years old today and still moaning that I get more comments than he will ever get!... Bless.....my only advice on this subject to him would be:
.......Buy a goat
.......Book himself a relaxing massage....
.......Be  a nicer person.........................
Tee hee......pop over to his blog, and leave him a happy message why don't you? after all when he isn't banging on about bloody candlesticks he's kind of interesting, albeit it in a sort of schizophrenic way.....

Anyhow I am totally buggered here....I have been up early converting the new goat paddock from a kind of open prison to something resembling Stalag 17! Miles of barbed wire has been nailed into place onto wooden fence posts and all that I am missing is at least two sentry boxes and a machine gun post.

Thomas has watched all the activity with benign interest. When I left his paddock he followed me like a lapdog, only pausing once to head butt Bingley the stag turkey. He's a real sweetie

A strange thing happened today too.
Blanche the broody hen, who has sat fast on her 7 eggs for the past 11 days hatched out her first chick!
City slickers will comment that there is nothing weird in that.......but will need to be reminded that it takes 21 days for a hen to hatch......
I suspect that one egg out of the score I picked up for Blanche to hatch out had been incubated for ten days or so before I found it.....but it's difficult to work out just how.

Her remaining eggs , I have placed safely into the kitchen incubator., if I didnt she would continue to sit and would potentially neglect the new baby

Flower Show Meeting tonight!...........

Thomas

He's a big chap this Thomas!
After bribing him with half a loaf of cheap white bread, he sat in the back of the Berlingo like a seasoned traveller...and within ten minutes  he had his first taste of the great outdoors.
Thomas was a kid in some sort of petting zoo, so is well used to poultry of all kinds. He is also very needy (after a couple of minutes it wasn't hard to work that out as he followed me absolutely everywhere!)

Obviously we need to get him a companion......I am only hoping that I have constructed the perimeter fences high enough
Hey Ho

William facing off Thomas soon after the goat's arrival

Easily Pleased

For those that are anxiously waiting to hear about the arrival of Tom the goat, please be patient, I am not collecting him until tomorrow. A particularly busy night shift last night has meant that I couldn't quite face the potential trauma and excitement of trying to get an unknown goat into the back of a Citroen berlingo especially as all morning, I had to face the gauntlet of a sexually receptive and rather sluttish bulldog ( Oh yes...........dear Constance is in season YET again!)
..and it's all a bit too much to cope with when one is somewhat overtired

At every turn she can be seen stalking George and poor William ( despite both being castrated). Constantly she waves her considerable bottom provocatively in their uninterested faces whilst giving them, what can only be described as a "come hither" looking of longing.....
I am finding it all rather unsavory!
Its a bit like sharing a house with a nymphomaniac Peggy Mount .

Anyhow I digress.......
The excitement of the day has been the arrival of my first Quail egg

The first of my cash crop! eat your heart out Alan Sugar

I would wax more lyrically about  this potential cash crop but Constance is now rubbing her vulva onto my stocking foot and I am begining to feel rather nauseous about it all

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!