Me....Me....ME......MEEEEEE!

If Constance was excited about my birthday
she didn't show it

Having a twin sister, I have never had a birthday all of my own.
I like it that way
If all else fails
You are always guaranteed at least one birthday card!

I am at an age where I dont really want a fuss on my birthday.....today I will be finishing off  the strimming of the field, the shed needs cleaning out and I need to dredge the pond.....so in one way I will be indulging myself in the things I enjoy the most.........but having said all this I will admit that I DO enjoy receiving birthday cards ( and the modern day equivalent of them....and that is the Birthday TEXT!)!

So before I troll outside with the hoe (no jokes Tom)
Thank you for your birthday good wishes
Happy Birthday to my sister Janet
and happy birthday to my good friend Nigel

No 21

She is bright as the proverbial button.
The photo tells it like it is!

Little Boys

I am grabbing a coffee before getting stuck in with strimming the field borders. The spring grass has run riot with the recent and much welcomed rain and I need to get on top of the tidying jobs before the allotment open in only 6 weeks time!
Last night we were watching some tv when there was a loud knock on the kitchen window.
Our window faces on to the lane and  customers often knock to collect a dozen eggs or so, but it was well after 9pm so we were a little surprised at the late call.
Chris went to the back door to hear running feet and the somewhat strange call of "gay boys!" echoing down the lane....
He was very mildly irritated when he returned and as he sat down he said " I haven't heard such rubbish since the 1980s who do you think was it?!"
I knew who it was
I had "told off" the boyfriend of a local teenage girl last week for trying to climb over our wall and in doing so used some rather cutting and colourful language and I suspected that he and  his cronies had been drinking down in one of the fields before they passed our cottage and it was them who decided to remind us of our sexual preferences....
Mindless idiocy of course
But I was made up that  I was called a "boy"!! dont they know that I'm 49 tomorrow?!!!!


I'll post more pig photos later!
I just realised that it is exactly a year since Maddie died

MNDA CARS



Now we have spent an interesting afternoon manning the "ride a classic car for Motor Neurone disease" tent.

Several participants of the Prestatyn Classic Car Show offered their cars to be used by willing car enthusiasts for a ride around the town......All the passengers had to do was make a donation to The Motor Neurone Disease association...and between 12 and 3.30pm It was my job to make the bookings!

Sister Janet (One of the MND oganisers)

Now I have not a clue what exactly is the difference between a 1967 Lanciar spider and Porche Carrera...so when questioned on the finer details of the horsepower capacity of say a Masarati Grandturismo , I did resort to a somewhat perplexed chuckle and the usual statement..." I am a guy that drives a Citroen Berlingo.....I have absolutely no idea but will find out for you!"



Cars are another world to me......now if the great Welsh public asked me the  colour of Shelley Winters' dress in the Poseidon Adventure.....I would have shouted " Now we're bloody well talking talking!!" But car talk?...........I might as well be living on the moon!

Anyhow I got by...just about and we raised a fair bit for the cause... see my my sister's blog for details of the day

It was an entertaining afternoon!

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!