A Welsh Terrier In a China Shop

Before

We have not bought anything at an antique auction for an absolute age, the last thing purchased was a grandfather clock that used to belong to a close family friend, and buying that was so fraught with excitement that I very nearly wet myself during the bidding!

Today I went to collect a dinner service that Chris had purchased using a commission on line bidding system, The whole lot was 50£..... not bad for a 176 piece "service"  made up of three or four different but very similar Mekin styles...but it has taken an absolute age to sort the bloody thing out from auction house to cottage carpet!

The mixture of styles is of no consequence to us, as a the eclectic collection of plates, tureens and bowls suits us just fine....I will make up one functioning dinner service and ebay the rest......

Now all we have to do is find enough people to have a dinner party with..

hey ho!!!

And after......

A message for Tom

with affection

Joan Cusack at 8.30 is my absolute fav!!!

Rehab Weather

  October is literally minutes away and it's still 70 degrees at 5pm in the afternoon. I have just had a walk around the Graveyard to gauge what kind of trees may need replanting..The Flower Show Committee has offered to replace some of the native saplings that have been lost to some over zealous strimming over the years.All I need to do now, is to locate some healthy specimens and price them up...
It's just another job to do on my growing list 


Mother-in-law , Sorrel has returned to Broadstairs on the 10.04, so the cottage is suddenly quiet and certainly "Downtown Abbey" free
The weather has brought the village to life. and has proved to be an excellent adjunct to the physical rehabilitation of some of the older , frail Trelawnyd folk . I spied Auntie Gladys striding away for the Rhyl bus this morning with her shopping bag perched casually over her arm., she now looks remarkably chipper for a 92 year old who fractured her pelvis only a few months ago and this afternoon, I caught octogenarians   Olwenna Banks- Hughes and Mrs Jones (Pen-y-cefn) laughing away in the street....I watched them for a while as they carefully negotiated Bron Haul with their matching sticks "clacking"musically on the pavement. and wished I had brought out my camera to photograph them....they looked wonderfully valiant .


They breed them tough in Trelawnyd

Jane Eyre

As a kid I remember thinking that Orson Welles' Rochester would never have fallen in love with the insipid, weepy Joan Fontaine in the 1943 version of Jane Eyre.....she was far too bloody wet!

Having said that, I couldn't also quite work out just why Fontaine would have swooned over Welles...
I always thought he looked just a little bug eyed and rather fat.

The latest version of Jane Eyre is a somber affair. It works, primarily because the characterisations of Rochester,Jane and the morally superior St John Rivers are faithful to the novel and the acting by Michael Fassbender,Mia Wasikowska and Jamie Bell is inteligent and carefully judged.

Fassbender is passionate yet not too cruel in his role of the lusty Squire and Wasikowska's plain Jane is just naive enough to be believable yet displays an innate  resilience....a realistic survivor of childhood abuse. she carries the movie effortlessly and is well worth watching..

Not a bag of laughs ( I felt just a little depressed by it all when I walked out of the cinema)..... but it is a worthy film

Mrs Hopkins' slippers

Sorrel is upstairs, deep in her morning ablutions. The spare room feels somewhat like a sauna, as she is too frightened to even open one of her windows, just in case Albert drags another small dead body up there for her delectation. 
Her nerves are shot to ribbons.
When she goes to bed, she is effectively "under siege" in her room, and I was sure that she pushed a towel into the crack under the door last night...just in case a dead mouse would manage to limbo through......


So like I said, Sorrel is upstairs and Chris is pottering around the cottage getting ready for the day's events . I have noticed that he has suddenly taken charge of my famous "Mrs Hopkins' slippers"...the very slippers he slagged off with some gusto when I was presented with them last year.
How comfort takes over from snobbery when it suits
We are off to see Jane Eyre today.....

A Good Cry

Dolly's video "slayed 'em in the aisles" didn't it?
.....and it was meant to....as sometimes the best way to get a message over whether it be in a documentary, film, tv programme or even a  piece of art, is to set the emotional juices going.
I take after my father in this respect,  I can cry at the drop of a hat.
Having said this, it is only today that I realise that I have never actually cried in front of my family...not since I was a boy , no I prefer crying in the safety and  anonymity of a darkened cinema or in my own front room...and the floodgates will often be opened full and wide when the subject of my "release" is a sad tale of an animal. especially if accompanied by some emotional music..


yeap cheap sentiment will get me every time


Now at work, I can reign  the emotions in behind a thin veil of professionalism This is  a vital skill for a nurse to possess..especially on Intensive Care, where at times the patients can be literally "dropping like flies" but just occasionally, I feel that the showing of emotion in the work area can be therapeutic to patients and their relatives alike, especially when there has been a bond between nurse and patient.


I have blogged before about the time of how  a diminutive Scottish sister and I were  once asked to wrap the arms of an old lady who had suddenly died around the shoulders of her grieving husband in a last close embrace and I know I have written about the time I shed a tear watching an Alzheimer patient waltzing delicately around the day room with her husband, oblivious to the reality of her situation .


But today, in view of that sad little "Dolly" Video, I was reminded of a "little" moment that occurred almost as an aside , on the busy ward I managed a few years ago now.


The ward was busy,but because the staff on duty were motivated and worked well as a team, there was, as I recall a kind of energy in the air as the late morning jobs were being completed before lunches were delivered. We had received the first emergency admission of two booked for that day and because a junior nurse was practicing being "in charge" of the ward, I had been allocated the admission.
It was not a hard case in so much that the emergency turned out to be an elderly man who had been found by his neighbour at the foot of his stairs. The man had sustained a devastating cervical injury which was ascending. He was unconscious and his breathing was compromised, so put quite bluntly..... he was dying.


My job was simple. I was to make him comfortable,  I was to locate the family and take care of them all before and after the patient's death.
As it turned out the man had no family, only the neighbour who had found him, and I was surprised to see a rough looking young woman in her 20s turn up to the ward asking to see him, after all  , I had envisioned the neighbour to be a vital kind of  spinsterish lady perhaps being in her 60s.It  even crossed my mind that this woman was perhaps this old man's drinking buddy of sorts, especially given the state of her


The young woman, who had, she informed me , three kids of her own back home, called on him daily with a meal, the paper and perhaps a wee "tot" of something and had done this for the past year or so since the death of his wife. She informed me in her thick Barnsley  accent that there was no living relatives that she knew of, for me to contact and asked if she could sit with him for a while which of course I agreed.


When she saw him, by the look on her face, I knew she understood the extent of his injuries and she started to cry, letting her tears splash onto his hand which she held up to her face.
As she did so,I noticed that she had a homemade tattoo stating "MOM" on her forearm
I removed his oxygen mask , so that she could see him properly and sat down next to them both as his breathing became more erratic


" I don' really know him very well at all" she explained after a while,"But I wanted to come in"


I remember looking at her cheap skirt and at the tattoos again and  I felt a little ashamed of myself at jumping to the more negative of conclusions.


"All of  us should have someone there with us at the end eh" she added sadly " someone to cry over us? "
She was nice, she was sincere and she was caring.....


And I had to bite my lip just a little more when I nodded my agreement


I have said this before.....funny what you remember isn't it?

Dolly the Pit Bull

my sister sent me this video this morning

....suffice to say................I am still sniffling

Sorrel and Country

I am a good host when visitors come to Bwthyn-y-Llan for I am more than capable of "making an effort" when I am in the mood. However.. I do take after my robust Liverpudlian Grandmother, when it comes to hospitality for like her, I am a bit of a "feeder" when it comes to visitors.
Anyone that arrives on the doorstep is always offered a cup of tea, whether they be the delivery man or the dog groomer lady....if I have notice then a homemade cake or pie ( pies are easier) is usually in the offering, and failing that, there is always an emergency visit to the spar, that can be initiated even though their selection of cakes is rather...well.........working class to say the least.
After filling Sorrel up with eggs, bacon and fried bread this morning, I have packed her and Chris off for a day's shopping in Chester (I cannot personally think of anything worse than trolling around designer shops even if they are hidden away inside the scenic "rows" of historic Chester)
With half the day free, I can prepare dinner for later, do a bit of baking and flex more of my hospitality muscles.
To be honest it is not hard work looking after my mother in law. She is undemanding, grateful and will eat all that is put in front of her.

However ( and I have blogged about this before as Dot elluded to in my previous post-see Sorell and the mouse) my mother in law just cannot "do" the countryside.

One brief trip on the field will send her into what can only be described as a "muted hysterical state of 65 year old Kentish womanhood"  and the mere "sideways look" from a turkey is enough to bring on a sudden bout of hyperventilation!! so..... you can only guess what she transforms into when surrounded by 49 birds, two pigs and a cat who enjoys disemboweling small fury animals.......

it's not a pretty sight.

Sorrel is still recovering from the unexpected view  of a rather flattened shrew, which was thoughtfully deposited outside her bedroom door yesterday evening.......thank god the baby rabbit incident had not occurred when she was around...for I couldn't quite face visiting her daily in the rubber room of the local psychiatric unit

Yes Chester was a safe bet today.....a couple of hours in Marks and Spencer , and she will be effectively cleansed of rodents, chickens and psychotic turkeys

hey ho

This morning's fruit pie