Number 12 and Number 21

The second ( and third) of my early Birthday gifts have been collected today
A Gloucestershire Old Spot gilt and a Saddleback Boar are now set up in the old pig pen at the bottom of the field. I am not allowed to name them. They are meat pigs...so it's no 12 and no 21 from now on!

The gilt is quite a madam already and has escaped the enclosure once already

The death of the Village Pub

The Crown Pub Today ( the extension on the left which is now the pub kitchens used to be the village Blacksmith's)

A rare old photo of the Crown which was given to me by the powerhouse local character Audrey Jones

It is no secret that in these troubled times, the local pub is going through a bit of a crisis. The credit crunch, a change to home drinking and arrival of the smoking ban have ll take their toll , and along with thousands of other historic pubs, it is with a heavy heart that I have heard that our sister village, Llanasa will be losing their historical old Red Lion at the end of next month.
Our only Pub, The Crown is hanging on......just.........of course the village had several pubs at one time....The politically incorrect Black Boy and The Mostyn Arms have long since gone , so I personally feel that all of the village has a kind of responsibility to keep the place going.
Now I am not really a Pub goer.......I love a pint, that much  is true (althoughI must admit that my alcohol intake in recent times has been drastically cut to boost weight loss!) but I have never really been one to prop up a bar so to speak.
The Crown used to have several small room with roaring fires and a somewhat old fashioned feel to it ( I remember it well as a teen when we used to come up in my austin 1300) but alas it went through an open plan conversion in the intervening years and has lost some of the original charm it once had,
The pub does have a restaurant though, and we have recently found that the new manager has updated the somewhat 1970s menu to a standard acceptable to two  fussy old queens that were used to city eating .
This weekend and last we made the effort and popped up to the Crown for an early dinner and glass of Shiraz and I must say that it was all very acceptable indeed.
My message for today, is therefore, "Keep your local alive!" go down to your pub! Buy a meal or treat yourself to a rum and black...........perhaps we can all help these historic British traditions going just a little bit longer?
I hope so

I am what I am from La Cage aux Folles -Roland Roberts

My best friend in the early 1980s was a guy called Roland Roberts.
He was a 6'4'' a  Giant of a man who had a big heart and who was always good at everything he did
This included singing!
This video has him belting out "I am what I am" from La Cage aux Folles
His video dedication states why he recorded it!
"My favourite musical, this is my version of the best known song from the show... Dedicated to my good friend John who came with me to see it for the first time at the London Palladium."
Good Memories!

"Plank" saves the day

"Plank" and her adopted baby

Yesterday I was going to drop the lone chick off to my friend Eirlys, who thought one of her broody bantams might take it over, but on reflection, I thought she had enough of her own problems to deal with as a fox had just broken into her barn and had massacred fifteen of her best laying hens.
The fox problem around the village seems to have heightened somewhat, and daily, villagers who have been walking their dogs have reported daylight sightings of foxes down the felin and Gypsy lane.
Hopefully some of these animals will be shot by local farmers, and I now realise that culling is necessary despite some of the bleatings from the liberal left who cry out that foxes are just doing what comes naturally.
Some locals rely on their animals to get by and big loses of stock are not only heart breaking, they can be financially crippling.
Anyhow enough already.
I still had the problem of the lonely chick to deal with, so after a bit of thinking I resorted to some basic psychology and hatched out an idea.
Like people, some animals are "thicker" than others, it's just a fact of life, and more often than not I have found that the denser the animal is, the more benign personality it possesses.So after scanning the stock I settled for a "thick as mince" buff orpington who I rather cruelly have nicknamed "plank"
Plank seems to understand just three things, ....food, water and bedtime and she is last to react in all three categories, I picked her up ( even this took a while to register) and sat her down in the shed next to the chick.
Nothing much happened at first.
Plank sat blinking  for a while , picked at a bit of corn on the floor then looked at the  jumping chick with a somewhat perplexed expression. The chick, (who had ten times the mental capacity) realised that all of her birthdays had come at once and dived headlong into plank's feathers like a mole burrowing underground,  and this is where  she has stayed for the duration.
A little victory...I am hoping!

The Pleasure of Pleasure

I should have had a lie in this morning...after all I was in Sheffield and had no early morning jobs to do......but by force of habit , I was awake around 6am, so wide awake I crept out of my friends' house and drove back to Wales..
I had a lovely night last night with too many wines, and lots of  good conversation. I talked geeky shit with my friend Mike, gossipped with the big hearted Jane while the arch John ( who always seemed to be doing an impersonation of Tallulah Bankhead) looked on.
Sometimes it is necessary to make the effort and touch base with the people that mean the most to you...
The visit was a pleasure.

Talking of pleasure.....Has anyone seen the recent  EDF Olympic Advert on tv? For those that haven't here it is....Pause the video at around 19 seconds and look at the second chap from the left- the guy with the big moustache

His beaming expression of pleasure and pride never fails to make me smile, it is a candid , genuine and rather touching moment , like many that we see each day in others. but all for the most part we have the tendency to overlook.
These little moments of pure pleasure are what really makes us human.

When I got back to Trelawnyd this morning, I stopped to buy a few copies of the Flintshire Chronicle . They ran a sympathetic story about  my personal history blogsite (see article) and an even more impressive piece on Auntie Gladys and the Flower Show (Gladys' story) so I called to give Gladys, Trevor Evans and Gwyneth Jones a copy of the paper as a small thank you for allowing themselves to be photographed for the newspaper article.
Gladys was delighted to have her story and photograph over two pages of the paper and her genuine almost childlike pleasure over something so simple reminded me of that guy in the EDF advert.
Her joy  in turn, literally made my day

Blanche

Well, It's just past midnight and the whole house is wide awake!

Tonight it was a fox , it burrowed under the one broody box and despite being reinforced, it broke through the floor and ripped Blanche through the smallest of holes.

The dogs and I heard the commotion as she was dragged away and even heard the plaintive cries of her single white chick, and although I was quick to run over to the field, all was silent when I got to the box.
I couldn't find my torch but luckily dug out a neurological testing pen torch in one of my uniforms...so was able to locate the traumatised chick hiding in the grass. I popped it into the incubator in the kitchen........and covered the whole thing with a tea towel as all of the dogs watched with interest.
sigh.........Blanche was my best broody hen.....she had raised chicks successfully for nearly five years .....and even brought Halleh the duck into the world........the circle of life continues eh..........

Many thanks to the neighbours too by the way....they were woken by the commotion too and banged on their windows in an effort to scare away the fox
x

Sheffield Text

Tonight I have been texting friends in sheffield  as follows:-

"c u tom nite All Bar one---- 8pm"

meeting up with old friends John H, Mike and Jane

all are coming!

Lesson learned

I am always banging on about just how bad customer service is in this country.
But I have to say that yesterday I was on the receiving end of some very good service which was made more surprising, given the fact it was actually hidden away in one of the most deprived blue collar areas here in North Wales....a fact that made me shut my ever-so-snobby mouth with a crocodile snap!

Rhyl, a town way past it's best

I took myself off to Rhyl to buy a "cheap as chips" laminater from the discount store Argos ( I needed one to prepare a display of the voices of the past blog).....God, the place is a dump.......it's a dead seaside town with very little hope visible amid the charity shops, cheap novelty stores and fast food outlets, so in my true snooty form, my idea was just to shoot in to argos, brave the great unwashed then shoot out.

I was very surprised
The woman on the tills was polite, friendly and courteous.
She took the time to find out if the laminater came with plastic sheets,  and she passed the time of day with me with a semi amusing story of how she likes to chat to the customers when it was quiet
The smiling manager who retrieved my items from the "back" called me "sir" when he gave me my bag
and as I left the girl manning the discount jewelry counter gave me another smile and a "goodbye"

Message to self.......

"Eat a small slice of humble pie"

ps Rhyl is still a sh*t hole!