24 hour Rejuvenation

Manchester City Hall

Manchester was a good idea.
I got there at midday and immediately met up with Hazel who now lives ten minutes from the city centre.
We caught up with things, drank good coffee and ate nice cakes.

In lovely sunshine we ambled around the city art Gallery on Mosley Street and over a pint at her student watering hole she listened all about my shitty week and Constance with uncomplaining eyes.

Manchester council has recently adopted the New York tagline of I "Heart" MCR (I love Manchester)...from every window and in every shop the poster is being displayed and this clever marketing ploy seems to be hijacked by the city population in response to the recent riots.

I said my goodbyes to Hazel then crossed the city to meet Nigel over at the Cornerhouse arthouse Cinema
We went to see In a Better World . A Danish fairytale of a movie about grief, growing up and vengeance (The Danish title Hævnen actually means vengeance)
A impressive film with some great performances from the two boys in the movie as well as the rather sexy Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt go and see it! 8/10...It gets you thinking way after the credits have rolled

We dissected the film afterwards, drank a few glasses of wine, ate dinner and chilled out all very normal and all very therapeutic ......and after a coffee in Town this morning and only 24 hours from leaving Trelawnyd I was back home feeling more positive and a little more human.
A neighbour called over when they saw me, and asked if I had "got over that horrible business of the weekend" as if that losing a dog was equivalent to say having an altercation with the milkman! I felt ok enough to smile gently at their remark. People that have not owned dogs have no idea of just how painful the death of one can be......a fact reinforced by the next comment I received
"at least you have three others!"
Two days ago I would have flew at the remark..today I just smiled thinly.

Without meaning to sound pretensious, I think Rudyard Kipling's poem perhaps sums up the way a dog keeper feels when a pet dies...it's worth repeating I think..as it says so much more than I could

The Power Of The Dog
by Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But...you've given your heart for a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!);
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart for the dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

yeap I feel a bit better

City Break

The Cornerhouse in Manchester (left)

 Today I am letting Chris take charge of the animals,and I am off to Manchester for an overnight break with friend Nigel over in Manchester.
I have already told him I am need of a break, so the order of the day is a trip to the art house cinema "The Cornerhouse", a few wines, a fair amount of  fattening food and a great deal of frivolous chatter..
I need to re group just a little and laugh a lot......my tolerance  is low at the moment

For Judith

take care

x

1983 revisited

The Main 1829 Building which had changed very little when I started my training
(On my very first shift I remember walking through the main entrance which led into the dormitory of a long stay ward called Acton.....)

I completed my Psychiatric Nurse Training way back in 1986 when I was just 24.
The times then were changing....the asylum was more or less a thing of the past and the huge, self contained Hospitals , such as the Deva Hospital on the outskirts of Chester already had started to shed its populations of institutionalized patients and staff back into the community.
Our nursing group (Known as Sep 83) was a small one. It comprised of only 7 students, all of us overseen by an inspirational tutor, the fey,camp and greatly respected Leslie Brint.

The class of '83.  From left to right Me, Sandra, Steven, Mr Brint, Paula, Noirin and Mike
Judith was in the Isle Of Man when this photo was taken

 During our training, not only did I became close to the scousers of the group ( the warm and laid back Sandra, foul mouthed comic Paula and heart throb Mike) but to the group's "baby", a country girl from the Isle of Man called Judith, who was still in  her teens.


Big hearted and a  little naive ,Judith blossomed in nursing residence life, and after we all qualified and went our separate ways, we always kept in touch, in that sporadic, erratic way, old friends sometimes have a tendency to do.


Its been nearly ten years since we met up. A  brief comment on my blog the other day rekindled our friendship, as Judith said she was staying over on the  Wirral. for a few weeks and could I meet up with her at some stage.
The message and subsequent email was chatty and bouncy enough, but being a nurse, I suspected rightly as it turned out that Judith was over from the Isle of Man to attend treatment over at Clatterbridge's Oncology Hospital., one of the leading cancer centres in the UK
I know it sounds a little selfish, but with losing Constance on Sunday and looking after my brother all day Tuesday, the prospect of meeting up with Judith today filled me with some ambivalence, but as it turned out,our meeting was filled with gossip, laughter and 25 years of catch ups

I picked her up from Clatterbridge Hospital and we drove to the picturesque  Parkgate village on the Dee Estuary.,a place that we used to take patients out for the day, when we were student nurses.
We ate ice cream, walked the length of the Promenade , talked and laughed and talked some more.
I am a year off being 50 and I felt as though I was 21 again!

Concrete mixers

Eirlys with my buff cockerel

My friend Eirlys did me a lot of good today.

She asked me about Constance , but did so in a matter-of-fact way which didnt upset me

She diverted me from my poor mood 

And offered me her concrete mixer to mix my poultry wormer and layers pellets in.(believe it or not she has worked out a formula that coats every pellet with the correct amount of medication!)
As Delia would say....

Start One clean concrete mixer

Add 25 kilos of food

Drizzle in 2 litres of oil from the hot fat fryer

add a splash of 20 quids worth of wormer

mix well

laugh a little while you are doing it

and serve...........
enjoy!

Lady Bracknell

The old kitchen sofa looks very empty this morning and the house is strangely quiet..
The pecking order between the dogs has been subtly changed yet again, and this morning they are subdued and quiet as they lie together on the lounge sofa. Their stillness is more a product of my mood than a show of theirs

Thanks to all that left a comment on Sunday's post, I have not read them all, but I will do ......
People are very kind, they say very nice things , but at times like these, as Chris would testify to, I hate fussing of any kind and am best left alone, to be busy..
Businesslike is good......
This may surprise some...after all old queens who blog are supposed to need sycophantic comments daily don't they?...No,not always they do....
So please no more "you're a nice person".....comments...I am no nicer , sweeter or angelic than anyone else on this planet.....believe me! and today I could quite easily strangle the first person who offers up a platitude or a wrong word...


We have now lost three dogs over 6 years. This seems a ridiculous number when you think about it......and this morning I am reminded of Lady Bracknell's comment in The Importance of Being Ernest

"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Finlay died from a fast growing Brain Tumour, Maddie from Vet incompetence and now Constance from cardiac failure.....all on paper have been unforeseen and unavoidable events (for us as owners that is ) but some small part of me feels as though we have done something wrong in all this.....and that feels shitty

Don't tell me that thought is wrong...please dont, I dont need the reasurrance.....I just feel what I am feeling this morning..and that's guilt

You Give Your Heart to a dog to tear

I have blogged before about fate, and how it throws you a curved ball out from left field when you are least expecting it.
This morning I was banging on  comically about Constance's flatulence....blissfully unaware that I would be attempting to resuscitate her in the road outside the Church gates only an hour or so later.
We were returning from our usual morning walk when Constance stopped short pulling all of the other dogs to a standstill. She looked up at me briefly with an expression of mild surprise, coughed  and then collapsed.


I went into nurse mode.
She had stopped breathing and I couldn't hear or feel a heartbeat.
Somehow I blew into her mouth and compressed her chest, and after a minute or so she coughed again, waving her big paws weakly.
I felt her heart beat briefly , but moments later it stopped again.
A woman stopped her car to help.
I gave her the other dogs to hold, and tried to shake Constance back to life once more.
But she didn't move again. She had been with us just 10 months


One minute she was here, the next she had gone. It was as simple and as  final as that.


We buried her in a quiet corner of  the allotment, with all of those platitudes of "she had a good life when she was with us" going around and around in my head.
But when I later went to feed the pigs, I pictured her "smiling" with that stupid one tooth sticking out of her fat wide mouth  and I sat down in the long grass and bawled like a baby.

Sunday Morning

The dogs love Sunday Mornings.
After walks and while I am cooking breakfast, three of the four bounce upstairs to clamber into bed with Chris like children do with their parents on Christmas day. Constance, with his great weight (too much for our Marks and Spencer bed) and rather lax bladder control , always remains in the kitchen, a fact which she is not troubled by. 
The effort of climbing the steep cottage staircase remains just that little bit daunting for a 25 kilo bulldog with a flatulence problem........every step a fart, as it were!


The gossip around the village at the moment is the "changing of hands" of the pub. Suddenly Lee, the acting manager has up-sticks and left and in his place a new young family with children have arrived.to fly the "Crown" flag in these troubled economic times

We were told that the food served was excellent pub grub, and so like many of the other villagers we have made the effort and booked a table for last night.
The restaurant was full when we arrived ( a very good sign), the young wife , who does "front of house" duties was charming and professional and there was something quite valiant in the way she she outlined just how much she and her husband wanted to "make a go" out of the business in this climate where breweries are draining the very lifeblood out of their landlords.
We had a nice meal
and wished them well for the future.
Local readers... try the Crown out for yourselves...and be a good citizen