Erddig

Erddig's back garden

Chris hates his photo being taken

One of the entrances to the Gardens

My mother-in-law has a slightly unhealthy obsession with Downton Abbey....so it was unsurprising that we took her to one of our local country Houses this morning for a fantasy visit to Upstairs Downstairs land.
Erddig (pronounced Er- thig) is a beautiful National Trust House situated a stones throw from the English Border.
The house was built in the late 1700s and remained in the Yorke family until 1973 when it was taken over by the National Trust, rain damaged, practically derelict and still without electricity.
Today, most of the house and grounds have been restored,ideal for a lady who harbors the fantasy of being Lady Mary!



My Favourite room in the house.. the Sweet White Bedroom with the Chippendale bed


The scullery and kitchens were more interesting to me than the main state rooms ...me thinks that in a previous life I was a housemaid........hummm things haven't changed much for me in this life

Run by a extensive volunteer staff, the house is a delight to visit.....

Pat's Charity Table Top Sale Saturday 24th

Calling all Trelawnyd Residents

I have been asked by Pat ( the affable and  hard working, warden for the village Sheltered Housing) to do a BIG UP for her table top sale, which takes place this Saturday at the Memorial Hall -between the times of 11am and 3pm.

Lunches are available to buy and there are many stalls to view at the sale

Proceeds for the day will be given to the Macmillian Cancer Nurses, a brilliant and well deserving cause.

So if you have a spare few minutes on Saturday why not pop along and support her event

You'll be a nice person if you do!
x

Animal Stalkers and Twin Coincidence

My mother-in-law Sorrel arrives this evening, so I have been up early washing windows and titivating vases of flowers before I go to my brother's for the day.
The weather has changed, but has done so for the better today, and the weak sunshine and warmth has really lifted my spirits, especially given the miserable wet and windy conditions we have endured for most of the past month.
I carried around my portable radio as I worked, and the piano version of "Sheep may safely Graze" was playing.......it seemed the perfect accompaniment to the morning's work...quite....quite beautiful
(play video below) 
As I pottered around, a ghostly little face watched my every move from the upstairs window. As I lifted Boris out of his house, a pair of worried little brown eyes  anxiously noted the position of my hands,, just in case I was showing him a little too much affection and as I turned back to the cottage carrying a bowl of raspberries , a little face lit up, hoping that I had returned home for good.

Meg has always had a fixation with me. She is only truly happy when crushed tightly by my side or sat triumphantly on my lap, yet even when she is there, (within a knat's crotchet of my beating heart), she never looks totally relaxed . It is almost as if she is in a state of constant fear that I or she will be somehow separated and  I always feel that this constant low level anxiety, she seems to possess' must be consistently and unendingly exhausting for her.

Indeed on the 35 minute drive up to my brother's house today, all she did was to lay on the passenger seat as I was driving, her eyes never leaving my face throughout the journey.....

I have my own female stalker...

The geese stalk me too, but they do in a slow, benign and rather pedestrian kind of way, which never fails to amuse me. Wherever I go or what ever I am doing, eventually all four will wander slowly into view, their eyes curious and interested, their heads up and proud.
If they cannot quite see the activity of choice, then inch by inch they will crowd forward in order to get a proper look and when satisfied with the result, will sit comfortably in the grass nearby.
It is a habit of theirs I always welcome.

My final stalker (apart from the constantly asthmatic Boris) is Bunty
Now Bunty is a two year old cochin,, who only loves me because I buy her constant adoration with a sneaky morsel of dry cat food everyday.
She is as cheap as that....all it takes is a a brief glimpse of a "go cat" fishy nibble (always held up between thumb and forefinger as I walk down the lane) and she goes completely weak at the knees.
Literally frothing at the beak in excitement, she will often gallop the length of the field ( not easy with heavily feather feet I can tell you) to clamber up into my lap in order to receive her personal titbit
It is a small moment of pleasure for her and a rather larger moment of pleasure for me....

Anyhow, enough of this "me me" adoration 

I will leave you with a little coincidence. (sparked by Cro's latest posting)

I bought this vintage water jug and glasses at Auntie Gladys bric a brac stall recently only to find out later on that it originally belonged to my twin sister!

This is the third time I have purchased items which have been owned by Janet...a couple of years ago, I went into a local antique shop and  pulled out two separate items to buy. Both items, without my knowledge , had been owned by my sister who had sold them on to the shop only a few weeks before....

It should not surprise you that we have the same taste.
ps just found out c/o Janet that she had never owned the glass set....
sort of pisses on my story somewhat...but you get the gist!

School Daze

I am finding it hard to walk today, I certainly cannot get my wellingtons on over my bruised toe which now has taken on the colour of chapped liver! so I have walked the dogs around the Marian in crocs and have limped my way around the pigs enclosure with a bucket, like Quasimodo.
I also delivered some eggs to a cottage on London Road rather early and bumped into all of the village school children waiting patiently for their bus to arrive to take them down to Prestatyn High.a few miles away.
The kids all looked trendy and relaxed in their "lounge suit" uniforms and not one of them had the "look" of a miserable geek with no mates....... someone that didn't fit in with their peers.
I was such a kid.... for I really hated my school days.
Where as many of the more popular lads larked around with their mullets and kipper ties, I was walking home alone, with my blazer all buttoned up to the neck, my school bag slung tightly around my shoulders.
I had friends, I am not pretending that I didn't, but they were friends typical of teenage boys, for they were transient and fickle........and not loyal and needy, as the friends of a pubescent gay schoolboy probably needed..
And so like so many 70s lonely boys , I lived a life of fantasy and daydreams.


I wrote my own screenplay for a modern day Welsh Disaster movie.
I collected  stills from my favourite films which I ordered week by week from the British Film Institute library
I wrote long fan letters to various celebrities ( I obtained their addresses through extensive research through the Prestatyn library's whose who) 
and was cock-a-hoop when Olivia de Havilland sent me a signed poleroid of herself outside her Paris home! (not quite a typical high point in a normal 15 year old's existence)


Hummm on reflection
I haven't changed very much
.
*the photo has nothing to do with this post, but I kind of liked it

Stupid Sod

I think I have broken one of my toes on my right foot.
It was all quite simple....
It was an accident that anyone could have had
I was clearing up the dog snot from the front room ( In readiness for the mother-in-law's visit on Thursday)
When I heard the unmistakable screaming of a rabbit coming from the front garden
(For those that have been lucky enough not to have heard a rabbit in distress... believe me, you ARE lucky)


Through the window I caught a glimpse of Albert throttling a young rabbit and without much thought decided to climb out to rescue it ( what's with this bloody urge to save the world?)
In my stocking feet I climbed onto the window ledge opened it and with the grace of Shelley Winters sliding down the deck of the S.S Poseidon flung myself into the  garden.


It all went wrong after that.
My trouser leg caught on the window catch.
The top half of my body crashed onto a selection of potted plants,
slowly followed ( like some sort of "fat" avalanche) by my legs and feet.


It was raining, I had no shoes on and in the ungainly scrabble that followed I broke two planters, flattened a nice display of nicotiana flowers, ripped my pants and broke my toe.


The rabbit died

Spreading Your Wings

Last night felt just a little surreal
I spent the early evening in the formal surroundings of the Community Council meeting then got picked up by one of the women from work to shoot over to a caravan park social club in St Asaph for a colleague's leaving "do".
I am not a big work's night out person now. When I was a ward manager I went to every occasion...It was expected of me to show my face...but after years "smalltalk" and of invariably getting lumbered with someone you just didn't like (but had to put up with at work), I kind of got out of the habit of socialising when I returned to a junior nurse position.
Last night I was more than happy to go. The guy leaving ITU is a talented, psychologically astute nurse who was leaving the unit after working at the hospital for two decades. He had obtained a position in a prestigious London Hospital and was effectively leaving North Wales for the first time at the age of 47..a big step for anyone to embark on
Although I love living in Wales....leaving when I was 21 was the best thing that ever happened to me. After a three year of training in Chester I moved to York and had my "wild oat" time in the pubs,social clubs and nursing accommodation of the city....then moving on to the "grittier" Sheffield where my horizons were broadened by exposure to cultures and lifestyles a million miles away from those of suburban Prestatyn.


When I returned to North Wales after nearly 20 years in Yorkshire, I was struck by the amount of subtle (and NOT so subtle) racism I observed. This surprised and shocked me as for some strange reason I did not expect small town thinking to still rife in our modern, more cosmopolitan lives...how wrong I was...
Small town thinking .....there is nothing worse.....

Rob  and his karaoke evening 

 Anyhow, despite not being a work's do guru, I kind of enjoyed the karaoke evening  (which was a first for me).
Mind you, I DID politely refuse the slightly stereotypical  group offer of performing YMCA for the waiting staff, preferring to prop the bar up  to chat and gossip.


Slightly squiffy! I got home  just after midnight., I must have looked like a right dick as I trundled out of the car with four carrier bags full of party food ( a present for the pigs!) whist singing a selection of "hits from the shows"...
Thank goodness the neighbours are away visiting family.


This morning all is back to normal.......save for for number 12, who I have just spied sucking the centre out of a mushroom  vol-au-vont!

Shame (Home and Away)

Apart from a few moments of silliness, I think I have never really done anything for which I was ever really ashamed of.
Ok , when I was eight I poured a whole bottle of peppermint essence into our garden pond and killed all of the rather expensive goldfish and when I was ten I was caught throwing mud and stone at bungalow windows, but apart from the occasional drunken escapade and these two distant childhood memories, I have never really done anything wrong enough to warrant being truly ashamed of myself .
I have thought about all this this morning, when I was feeding the pigs.....The story about the Stockport thief who was killed with his own knife whilst in the process of robbing a householder, came to mind , especially as a number of floral tributes have now been left at the burgled address by friends and family of the dead man.
It is though that the "accepted" notion of shame (of their loved on being a thief) has been effectively sidestepped and ignored by people that knew him in this modern day need to grieve in public.
Do people live in such tight little bubbles of isolation nowadays, that the public notion of shame no longer figures anymore? I am so depressed if this is really the case.


I nodded  to myself this morning in a kind of benign accepting kind of way when I remembered something I have never really properly thought about before.


I never ever officially "came out " to my mother......... and the reason for this was shame.....not my shame......no!!!... not at all, but it was in reference to her shame.
Having someone you love being ashamed of you  is something you cope with only if there is a valid reason for the emotion to be there.......it is an emotion that you both can share and get over together..... with time, effort and contrition and a certain amount of grovelling
.
I am never ashamed at being gay....... even back then when it was all new, slightly worrying and shiny...I really wasn't.  I just "could not be arsed" in trying to deal with someone else's emotion of shame, an emotion I could not validate in any shape or form.
When I came out, I absolutely refused to fight against my mother's shame, it would have hurt both of us   and would have sabotaged the family dynamics far too much.....I preferred to share the real me with people that could deal with it ...........and for me it worked like a charm.
They all were told and accepted it......she was kept in the dark...and I accepted it 


Shame is the most powerful controller......

Why We All Need Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is back in Sunday tv's prime time spot this evening amid much flag waving from middle England and readers of the Daily Mail.
Now, I was rather harsh about the last series (I couldn't quite forgive script writer Julian Fellows stealing great chunks from my favourites films Mrs Miniver and Gosford Park) but I did concede that I enjoyed the ensemble acting abilities of the likes of Hugh Bonneville,Elizabeth McGovern,Penelope Wilton,Jim Carter and Maggie Smith , all beautifully turned out in their Edwardian Best.
Downton Abbey is tosh...... but, it is polished, impressive-to-look-at tosh, and at a time when all the news is of recession, the general public,( like they did with the Royal Wedding), have taken this Upstairs/Downstairs saga to their hearts.
It's a lazy obsession to be sure.
A few minutes of Lady Mary ( Michelle Dockery) quivering her lips, followed by the will-they-wont-they? love affair between crippled Valet (Brendan Coyle) and the spunky Maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) and we are all ready to watch Dowager Maggie Smith sucking on a lemon in the drawing room and playing , well....., Maggie Smith sucking on a lemon.......It's escapism pure and simple.

So forget the Historical inaccuracies everyone......and forgive the flabby plot.....just sit back and let the credit crunch worries disappear for a couple of hours tonight amid "yessss mill-ady" curtsies .

We all need a little time away from normality sometimes...and Downton Abbey is as good as anywhere to go to forget your troubles...........well that's what ITV is hoping for anyhow!