Bingley returns

Bingley and the Sorrel the buff

To make room for the short lived Thomas, Bingley the American turkey was shipped over to my friend Eirlys' farm for the duration and because the high jumping goat had returned to his long suffering owner, Bingley has now been returned to me.
The short holiday has brought around a drastic change in the young turkey stag .
Before he was a somewhat aloof and dismissive character who was incredibly bland and notably unfriendly towards me, the person he always saw on a daily basis. Now after a time with the big hearted Eirlys, he has returned acting like a big fat brown budgie!!!
I offered him some corn from my hand (Eirlys said he liked to be "hand fed") and bingo.....he took the offering like a puppy.....a thing that gobsmacked me as he had never allowed himself to be hand fed before.
If I didn't recognise him I would have said that the poor turkey had died and Eirlys had brought into play a doppelganger to  placate me .                                                
Everyday I usually share my breakfast bagel with Boris...today Bingley had half.......
perhaps it was just a case of :- absence makes the turkey heart grow fonder!

Matt Alber "End of the World"

Very Sweet. Who needs Matt Cardle

More Motor Neurone Disease fund raising and Baby News

One of the donated cakes for Janet's Garden Open

I won't steal any thunder by writing too much about my sister's Garden open day, suffice to say that another impressive amount of money was raised for Motor Neurone Disease research.

see Janet's blog to read the story.........I don't want to lay eyes on another cake


ps congratulations to my friend Hazel and partner Alan on the birth of their son Dylan today!
great news!!!....mother and baby are doing very well indeed which is lovely! Just got off the phone with her and was just thankful that she didn't go into any details regarding "toilet parts"
(too much infomation)
xxxx

a "cute" and totally unrelated baby pic

Gargoyle

Apologies for the "snatched" photo.it's a brief post this morning
I just had to photograph my Birthday gift from Chris which he bought from a reclamation yard yesterday
I have always wanted a gargoyle for the garden...and officially on the first of June I will receive it
Busy this morning making cakes for Janet's open day

"Oh F*ck...it's that Mr Gray again!"

After several months of searching, the threat of being "outed" on my blog site, and several "colourful" encounters with "service "staff, Boots the Chemist has finally found the slides and photographs they lost.
It has been an irritating, "jobs worth"  experience all round , and one that has not helped the monitoring of my blood pressure, which I am doing four or five times a day ( I have a clinic appointment on Monday!)

Having said this, there is a wicked part of me ( yeap you have to remember that I am NOT Rebecca of SunnyBrook Farm all of the time) that kind of enjoys torturing those responsible for bad service. I cannot abide it, and boy to do I get on my high horse when I know I am in the right.
So every week I either phoned or (god forbid) personally popped in to the Prestatyn branch to see whether or not my lost photos had been found.
I pointedly refused to deal with one shop assistant who could not curb her tendency to babble, and when the manager informed me that my photos had been sent to their branch in the internal post three weeks  previously, I took some solace by loudly stating that if they had been sent by passenger pigeon they would have reached me earlier.
Of course my bad humour remains somewhat of a game......but bad service is endemic in this country and I have to say that this unnecessary stress is NOT good for my elevated blood pressure (which I suspect is a legacy from my father and grandfather)
Yesterday the manager of Boots rang me and left a somewhat disappointed  message on our answerphone
I say disappointed ,as I am sure she wanted to speak to me personally to give me the victorious news that the photos had been located (originally they had been sent to Oldham of all places)...
God knows where they ended up this time probably some poor old duffer from Bath was surprised to find a few old photos of a knackered Trelawnyd cottage among his holiday snaps ....
tee hee

Postscript

That post was written around 8am
It is now 11.31am
Boots have just called
They have my photos but have mislaid the original slides....
I told them I would be down to " see" them today
They are all shitting themselves

P.A.

Today I have been playing at being Melanie Griffith in Working Girl
Ok I don't have the big hair, the whispering voice and I have never said breathlessly
" I have a head for business and a bod for sin. "
But I have been putting digit to netbook in an effort to act a little like a personal assistant

In order to publicize the village Flower Show, which is under a bit of a threat from dwindling entry numbers, we have brought the big guns into play
Our Big Gun is Auntie Gladys
Single handed she sells over 300 hundred raffle tickets every year and when every household in the village has been cajoled into buying a one pound book, she just pulls up her stockings and marches around the neighbouring villages of Llanasa and Gwaenysgor..
For over 60 years she has worked consistently hard to provide support for the Trelawnyd Welfare committee and then for the Flower Show,,
The simple fact is that she ticks every news worthy/cinematic box:-

ie
she's a sweet old lady
who has bags of chutzpah
she sports a string of pearls 
and some Woody Allen spectacles

Think of Helen Hayes from Airport with a Welsh accent!

So I emailed every local paper, newsroom and even the BBC website, to inform them of Auntie Glad's  66 years of village work and today the first of the reporters (a businesslike young lady with a cracking shorthand) turned up to document Gladys' contribution to Trelawnyd and publicize our Flower Show.

Gladys was an old pro at all the fuss....while I farted around like a flunky, she enjoyed the chance to chat about her days "in service" before coming to the village just before the war...

I could listen to her stories all day....after half an hour I forgot the reporter was there........

The "official" photographer turns up on Tuesday.........already we have been discussing "outfits"

The Last Ghost Hen

Some of the village children come down to the field to collect eggs. Today they came late which was lucky as I had failed to check the coops because I had been up to my brother's house for most of the day.
I dished out the obligatory enamel bowls and ten minutes later the kids darted back to the cottage to inform me that one of the hens was ill.
"I think you have a hen with asthma" the little boy informed me seriously
and he took me over to the pond to show me the breathless hen.

It was Ruth, the final ghost hen , who was gasping for breath.
The children squatted down on their haunches with interest and asked a whole load of questions as I sat down next to the hen.
"Why was she gasping? ....why was her head a dark colour?......why was her eyes shut?"
Initially I was not sure of just what to say to a couple of seven year olds, but I guessed that it was pretty much ok to tell them the truth gently and without any fuss.
So carefully I explained that the hen's heart was giving out and that she was not in any pain but she was dying, and that was why she was a strange colour and she was making an odd noise.
I also told them that she was an old hen and had lived over a year past the date. she was expected to die
The children nodded somberly and we watched the hen together for a while before they informed me that they were off home.
"will you bury her when she dies?" the boy asked before he went
"Yes I said" (I didn't have the heart to tell them that I would leave the body by the badger set in the next field)
"That's good!" he said.standing up.
By the time the kids had gone. I sat down next to Ruth and let her rest her straining head on my foot .
I didn't quite have the heart to pull her neck, and I am glad I didn't as moments later she died.

The ghost hens taught me a great deal about doing the right thing.
They taught me just how six genetically buggered up broiler hens with a life expectancy of just 10 weeks, can enjoy a semblance of a normal life for months with a bit of ingenuity and a daily dose of TLC.

This photo made me feel just a little proud at my soft decision not to kill these runt hens for eating, and you know what?..... they repaid my decision with the odd gifted egg and a great deal of vicarious pleasure.
For months they enjoyed a field full of grass and many days bathing in the sun
Not a bad life really.......... eh?

Bring Back British Rail

One of the down sides in living in rural North Wales is the crappy local rail service we have along the coast.
Arriva trains always seem to have old rail stock and dirty carrages which always seem to over filled to the gunnells and I generally keep my train going experiences to the occassional virgin long haul services that provide excellent service and rather nice coffee.
A certain proportion of passengers that  frequent the arriva service are what I call ( and I won't apologise for this) the "great unwashed" They seem to be the lager swilling, track suit wearing, baseball cap wearing dispossessed that criss cross the coast between the inner city areas of the North West and the deprived ex holiday towns in Wales.
There always seems a kind of lawlessness about them, a kind of anger and lack of respect which can be rather intimidating, and I wonder why I notice their presence as much as I do, given the fact I once lived within a great Northern city that had it's own share of the "anti social" (which strangely I never really felt intimidated by)
I do not think I am wrong in my assessment...my friend Nigel who lives in Manchester and who is as objective as King Solomon always comments just how the coast trains resemble a scene out of a cheap Western.......if you don't believe me readers...just catch the 11.05 between Shotton and Rhyl.....you'll see!

Anyhow I digress....... before I pop up to my brother's for the day I will leave you with a Welsh  train story!

Yes it is a guy trying to take his pony on the coastal train!
Now I know I have been banging on about the yobbish underclass that frequent the system......many of which seem to hop on and hop off the trains without paying..... but at least this guy bought the bloody pony a ticket from the vending machine!!!