No more Soddin' cake



My brother in law Tim, Sister Janet , Aunt Judy and me before the cake hungrey hordes from Prestatyn decended on the open  day



I won't wax too lyrically about the second of the family open days organised to raise money for the Motor Neurone Association, I will leave that up to Janet on her blog site....suffice to say  that well over a hundred people turned up in the sunshine to see Ann and Tim's garden and to stuff themselves with dozens of home made cakes.....

After a few hours of slicing victoria sponges and dropping scones onto plates...I quite happily could have not spied another piece of confectionary for a couple of years...... but the slog has been worth it....

I am knackered now......have just dropped some left over fairy cakes and quiche to the pigs ( who sucked up the egg and cheese filling with their eyes shut in blissful excitement!) and am now going to try to catch half an hours sleep before going to work on nights



"Cakes" as far as the eye could see



A Protocol for death

In hospital we now have a whole variety of "pathways" which outline a whole set of good practice steps which need to be followed to ensure the best medical and nursing care is given to our patients.
Today I had to implement the somewhat frightening sounding " end of life" pathway for the patient under my care, and I found it interesting to have to "tick a box" in a  set of protocol statements to ensure ( or prove) that I was providing the appropriate care to a dying patient.
Now don't get me wrong, these pathways are excellent tools for ensuring standardised quality care, but a little piece of me balked ever so slightly as I made sure the small pamphlet boxes were ticked after every hour passed by on my 13 hour shift..

Dealing with the dying patient is a skill a nurse should learn to develop very early in their careers. It is often a challenging and sometimes very upsetting experience that can be hugely satisfying when it has been done well and with thought and care and I am passionate that junior staff are supported and mentored in a supportive but no nonsense way in order to be able to deal sensitively with this the ultimate aspect of good nursing care.

"Pathway literature" , like I said, can be useful but they are, in my mind, just a guide to good practice. Excellent practice is only given when the nurse uses, those subtle personal skills of warmth , intuition and appropriate psychological skills  which make the difference. This is where feedback is vital. It is up to the senior nurse to reflect good practice and not only praise it but celebrate it when they see it in the clinical areas.
Unfortunately that doesn't always happen as much as I would like.....

Many years ago when I was a 21 year old nurse, I remember looking after a dying patient who had suffered from dementia for many years. He had no relatives, he had no friends, and I remember thinking that him dying alone, even though he had no idea of "self", was the most awful thing for anyone to go through.
As he was dying I remember taking my drink from the staff room on my break  and I sat with him as he passed away in the corner of a large asylum dormitory. I was not making a point or showing off...I did so as it just felt right to me....and I remember to this day the words of a gruff charge nurse called Johnny Crimes as I left duty for the day.  He said without any fuss " that was a good job today John!"
His acknowledgement of my work meant more to me than anything else...it taught me to accept and to follow my instincts...
that sort of comment is worth more than any protocol
It gives one a sense of validation

"Save The Pig....Name The Pig"

CJ is a real sweetheart. He/she needs a daily dose of garden time, when I take him out for a graze, a walk and a bit of "daddy" time.
Badger cannot quite deal with this daily separation and will chirp and cluck like a adolescent boyfriend who has just split up with his first girlfriend until peace is restored and the gosling is returned to the safety of the shed.
It is a cold miserable day today, so after outside jobs have been completed I am about to sit down to plan my Open Allotment Day which takes place on the 17th of July.
There is a great deal to do, and many lists to be made.
Volunteers for the day have been provisionally booked:- My Elder Sister Ann will be on the gate and raffle with Chris. twin sister Janet, friend Nigel and aunt Judy and her sister Bridget will be manning the tea tent

Last years cakes

Flower Show committee members Sylvia and Irene will be selling cakes , jams and homemade bread whilst publicizing the Flower Show in their own tent and friends Chris and daughter Helen will be running the bric-a-brac stall as well as overseeing the "Save the Pig and name the pig" competition.....

"Save the pig and name the pig"...will be a sort of raffle, where the general public will be asked to offer names for no 21 (for a small fee).....The best name will be given a prize and a certificate stating that by naming number 21 officially, they have saved her from being eaten!
How's that for emotional blackmail?

I have a chap who is running a flower and vegetable stall and hopefully one of the neighbours will be selling her own ice cream on the day (let's hope it's a nice day!)

I have printed up most of my Trelawnyd History blog so that we can set up a small exhibition of all of the stories and I am inviting local people to advertise their own businesses and initiatives on another stall (such as the new shop which is being set up in The Crown) and Hefin's quality hen enterprise (he's the chap I got some of my wonderful buffs from)........I thought it was a good idea

So all I need to do is to make a load of lists,organise all the housekeeping issues, flyer the whole village, collect the gazebos,tables and chairs and conscript a whole army of people into baking me cakes or donating a raffle prize....
so if there are any locals reading this....beware I shall be asking for some help very soon

Blog Boosts

Yesterday I caught up with Iola Endres. 

Her father had owned the village shop (siop Ganol) from 1929 to 1969, after which she and her husband ran it until the mid 1980s and interviewing her, I knew would be a real boost to My Trelawnyd History blog.

She proved to be a mine of information and resources and gave me a whole file of information to sift through, which included old photographs of the village and an ancient newspaper article out of the The Welsh Coast Pioneer (which proclaimed itself as being the "best paper in North Wales") The article showed a hitherto unseen photograph of the chapel on Chapel street before its refurbishment and the newspaper clipping itself was dated around 1908

My favourite photograph must be however a small snapshot of a biplane which came down in the Gop fields around 1938. Iola is the baby who is being carried by Megan Lewis

At last a good Welsh film!!!

Think of Susan Townsend's Adrian Mole.....add to his character a bit of the wisecracking Ellen Page from Juno and sprinkle with the seriousness of say a young Donnie Darko and you will have the slightly depressive,fifteen year old character of  Oliver Tate. (Craig Roberts), a self obsessed Welsh teen living an ordinary life in the 1986 South Wales based film Submarine
.
Oliver has two worries in his young life....the first is his wish to sleep with his emotionally distant girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin Paige ) a girl who likes to watch occasional bullying of the school saddos and the odd bout of setting fire to his leg hair and the second is the potential affair his repressed mother (Sally Hawkins ) may be embarking on with new age, spiritualist Graham (Paddy Considine).

Director and writer Richard Ayoade (From tv's Mighty Boosh) has playfully used every trick in the film genre cookbook  ( French New Wave visuals/ wisecracking voice overs/ and even the red coat from Don't look Now) and has crafted a hugely funny ( I guffawed several times in the near empty cinema which is a rare, rare event I can tell you) and refreshingly entertaining coming of age movie which has people of my age bouncing down the bittersweet nostalgia route as it recalls the secretive painful times of puberty.

Craig Roberts is a real find, he plays the self pitying Oliver with a dead pan sadness of say Bud Cort in Harold and Maud....and carries the film with a huge amount of confidence for someone so young.
I absolutely loved it


 

Morning Update for Beatrice Fickle

Ok Mid Western Beatrice Fickle has been emailing again, I have been remiss and have not given her an update on the field population..so while I wait for the dog groomer to turn up here is a quick snapshot of this mornings going on......
I am being a giddy kipper later....I am off to the cinema for a matinee performance of the indi movie  Submarine

No 21 being a bit challenging this morning

No 12, who is now a weighty weaner!

The bantam cockerel Eric facing off old Stanley as peanut looks on

Albert stalking the quail

CJ and Badger now an inseparable couple

Winnie Jo and Russel, who is resting a swollen knee, which is probably an arthritic problem..he is being treated with cod liver oil soaked bread



For the Weaver of Grass

The View of my field from the Graveyard wall
One villager said that the collection of hen coops looked like a small Ukrainian hamlet

Weaver of Grass left a somewhat horrified message on this morning's post about the proximity of a graveyard so close to the field and seemed terrified at the prospect of me sitting out at night so close to a load of graves!
I have never felt worried about St Michael's Graveyard, it has never frightened me , even in the pitch black when the footsteps of a rabbit can be amplified by the imagination to sound like the thump thump of some unseen monster!
I find the whole place peaceful and rather welcoming ( ok now I am sounding just a little weird) so if you ever passing Weaver, come a sit with me for a while, I'll make you a coffee and you can watch the chickens go to bed in the shadow of a cemetery

Badger Watch

I am buggered!!!
I stayed up last night to see if I could catch a glimpse of the badgers that have been threatening the hens over the past few weeks, and seeing that they don't usually appear until the witching hour I kept myself busy with the blog and an old Humphrey Bogart Movie on TCM until 1am and then sneaked out into the moonlight to see what was going on.
I took Constance with me as she has the muscle and we sat quietly together in the shadow of the Church wall waiting to see if the badgers would appear.
After an age and from the bottom of the field near to the pig pen they arrived and for wild animals I thought they were extraordinary loud and heavy footed.
Not two or three animals lumbered out of the gloom, but four; and grumbling like old men on the way back from the pub, they bickered and snorted their way up the field, rooting through the grass and sniffing at the coops as they did so.
Badgers are indeed impressive animals to watch in the wild and it didn't take me long to realise just how powerful they are as not seventy feet from where we sat, I watched one aggressively butt his companion with his head with a loud "twack"
Leading the troupe was a huge badger  and I was convinced it was the one that I had kicked the other night when Jesus had copped it and it was him ( or her) that checked the remaining coops with several loud sniffs as the group made their way through the field.
Despite the trouble I have experienced with them, I could not help to admire the sheer beauty of these strange piggy animals very much in a similar way than I did with the pair of foxes that visited the field last year.
The badger group walked up to the broody box and would come no further. I think they sensed that Constance and I was there  but could not quite work out just where we where.( Constance hardly battered an eyelid at ttheir activity by the way!)
Two of them had a good sniff at the box which now housed the bantams but then ambled away after deciding that attacking it was a fruitless endeavour ( the box is now housed inside an impregnable dog crate!)

A photo of a badger taken at my friend Geoff's house in the village way back in 2008

We watched them bumbling around until well after 2.30am and by that time they had left the field and were galloping around our neighbours' garden before trotting off into the sheep fields.
I am paying for lack of sleep now.... I need to bright eyed this morning as I am "interviewing" local powerhouse Audrey Jones ( who at 85 is still a formidable farmer's wife) for the sister blog....and I need to be on my toes
so I think I will try and have 40 winks......fat chance!