A Little Tinker

Gary Oldman and John Hurt...men in beige

I was around 17 when the much Lauded tv series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was around., so was really too young to appreciate this complicated John le Carré tale of the sad and the obsolete in 1973 MI6.
The Tomas Alfredson remake is now obviously a period piece set against the beige filled early seventies, when everyone drank scotch out of their filing cabinets, hid their sexuality preferences and mourned the glory days of post war espionage.
It is a complicated, slow burn of a movie, which is well worth watching, a fact that surprised me, as I tend to hate similar drab "Ipcress File" type dramas.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy also has a cast to die for. Gary Oldman (remarkably good as the melancholy George Smiley) takes the lead role from the likes of Tom Hardy,Toby Jones,John Hurt,Mark Strong,Benedict Cumberbatch (also very good) and Colin Firth and even a rather lumpy Kathy Burke Shows her face as a retired agent who misses the camaraderie of the "old Cold
war days"(mind you if this was a Hollywood movie her role would have been played by Meryl Streep!)

It is a carefully paced and if you stick with it, a satisfying watch, especially if you are like me, a
a complete ignoramus on Le Carre novels.

8/10

LOL

Few Blog entries make me laugh out loud.
Most of the ones I follow give me a smile on a daily basis.
One or two others provoke me like a child prods a cat with a stick,
while others can occasionally move me to tears
But few give me a real belly laugh.


Take a look at Chris' latest over at Grow Fish Eat
Cracking! 

Micklegate Run Drunks

Micklegate Bar in York a historic Street lined with pubs
The "Micklegate Run" is an old York tradition for partygoers
Have a drink in each pub from Wall to River
I never managed it

On Friday I didn't go for a break until 4.30 am ( a long time to wait as I started work at 7.30pm the previous night) I was tired but couldn't prepare myself for a quick doze in the staff sitting room as I had been busy throughout the night with my patient who had died and undergone organ donation, a complicated proceedure which is a real challenge to be a part of.
Anyhow instead of gabbing a few zzzz s I found myself reading a medical magazine article on chronic alcoholism which had been  co authored by a nurse I had worked with in York decades ago!


I lived in the picturesque city of York for three years in the 1980s. and remember my salad days at Bootham Park , the flag ship psychiatric Hospital , with much affection. Not only did I gain invaluable experience working on an acute admission ward and "mother and baby" unit; I had the fantastic opportunity of working  on a placement with the city's community alcohol and drug dependency specialist nurse.


Her name was Lu and she was one of those impressively quiet professional nurses that spoke little, but said a great deal (if you see what I mean?) A small , almost frail woman, she possessed a steely strength which allowed her to deal with a phenomenal case load of patients from a city which was renowned for it's158 pubs!

York is a tiny city, so wherever we went, we would always bump into previous patients who had fallen off the wagon, so to speak....and I never forgot just how dignified Lu was, when she had to deal with these inebriated and often emotional characters.


An overly guilty drunk can be difficult to handle, running away can illicit some embarrassing shouting in the street, while stopping to indulge, is patently a terrible waste of time for a trained counsellor to embark on.....


Lu, as I remember, always kept her voice low, firm and calm at these times. She would often use a touch of the arm to capture the blurred gaze, or to hush a garrulous mouth then she would always say the same thing
"Call me when you are sober, I will be waiting for your call" 


If she was pushed into a confrontation, she would always smile a non patronising smile at the former patient and would say with conviction
"Forgive me, I always make it a rule, NEVER to discuss work with someone who has  had a drink" Her words, strangely enough, were seldom disregarded


She taught me a great deal about respect......respecting people that have often lost respect in themselves


.....and she taught me never to argue with a piss head

Friendly Persuasion and Otto

It's heading towards Christmas, and thoughts are drifting towards catching up with old friends...

I have a mixed bag to meet up with....including

-an extrovert nurse consultant (specializing in abnormalities of the genital tract)! beat that one

-a teaching assistant free spirit with a big heart,

-a blokey sci fi geek and his yummy mummy missus

-a straight PR executive who writes kindle gay porn,

-a serious academic who loves The Archers, Marc Almond and Kathy Kirby,

-a 40 something new mom in Manchester who hates party hats,

-a shiatzu masseuse and her psychologist sidekick,

-an artistic Audrey Tautou lookalike with a passion for old fabrics

yes It's time to catch up again

wonder how they describe me?

humm answers on a postcard!!

Otto (well a lookalike) who arrives to Bwthyn-y-llan very soon
We are taking in a friend's Affenpinscher for a while when they are having extensive building work done
should be fun!!!

Nothing New?

• Yesterday's storm has almost petered out, and the village still seems deserted and rather quiet
• Mrs Jones had two duck eggs today. She's a little worried about having a pacemaker fitted
• Ian from the old mill enjoyed The Kitchen last night, but found himself looking at the set too much
• Bob's son has got rid of the last of his fancy chickens, he just has not got time to look after them 
• Beatrice, the hen with the stroke still isn't moving, but looks bright enough in her rabbit hutch
• The old lady from the corner pensioner bungalow has gone into a home, her 1920's bed frame has not been collected as yet and lies propped up against the stone wall
• Basil and his sister Mona wave at me and the dogs as they drive down High Street
• Apparently Sylvia left me a message on our answerphone informing me that the next Flower Show Meeting is on next Wednesday at 7pm..but did in fact leave it on someone else's phone
• Gentleman farmer Ralph will ask around to see if someone will cut my field hedges
• Pippa's long legged dog Meg is still galloping around the graveyard in search of rabbits
• Auntie Gladys was seen polishing the glasssware on her window ledge
• A lady on Maes Offa wants a dozen eggs, but "there's no hurry"
• and I've agreed to work tonight instead of tomorrow ...there is sickness again on itu

a pretty normal Friday...........................

The Kitchen

I wasn't expecting to go out tonight, but my sister had a spare ticket for the live cinematic production of the National Theatre's  play The Kitchen.


Written in 1959 and set in 1950's London, the play is set in a horrendously busy restaurant kitchen populated with a whole melting pot of chefs, cooks,kitchen porters,bottle washers, waitresses and support staff from a dozen countries .( including two staff members from Germany)
Of course proximity to "peace in Europe", and a collective hope by the population for a better life, has a big part to play within the snippets of life we glimpse from the 31 strong cast.who weave their individual kitchen roles, relationships and stresses like dancers in a ballet.which is, at times, exhausting to watch.
The play has a great deal to say about the dehumanizing and dream destroying  nature of repetitive and  soul destroying work., and does so with an energy which is impressive, even if most of the actors are seen to be cooking "pretend" dishes for most of the play.


I enjoyed it..It was a real treat

"Hellloooooooo Trelawnyd!"

Poster and venue.......who needs the O2 Arena?

I have noted with some interest that Trelawnyd's Memorial Hall has been rapidly becoming a sort of alternative venue for National and indeed international folk performers over the past 24 months or so
This week Heidi Talbot arrives, and the publicity machine posters have proudly proclaimed that the New York Times viewed her as having a "voice that's both awestruck and tender!"
Impressive stuff eh?!


When I was in London visiting Nuala earlier in the year I noticed a poster advertising tour dates for a folk singer ( sorry I forget her name) which Included Trelawnyd in the line up!!! LONDON, LIVERPOOL,  HULL NOTTINGHAM and Trelawnyd!
How cool is that...
Anyhow after a bit of digging I have found that a village based Record Journal has been responsible for this folk "explosion" at The Memorial Hall, and although folk music isn't quite my cup of tea..I will make an effort and go to at least one concert

There is even a mega "day concert" planned for 2012.......

  

The Saga of Beatrice...the hen with a stroke

One of the last hens, walking homeward

Dusk tonight.

With the nights drawing in and the weather deteriorating , "locking up" the animals for the night can be a bit of a chore. With the turkeys, ducks and geese all safely bedded down and the pigs fed and watered, all I have to do at dusk is to wait for the hens to totter back to their houses in the Ukrainian village before locking the doors for the night.

You cannot hurry hens, if you do they will invariably run in exactly the opposite direction that you want them to go, so I have got into the habit of sitting under the Churchyard trees with the guinea fowl chattering gently above my head listening to Radio 4 Extra as in groups of two and three, the hens head homeward.

Stanley

Just as I switched over to The Archers,  I noticed that Stanley the cockerel was still outside his hen house. It was getting dark,and instead of roosting, he was stamping outside the coop door clucking loudly with concern into the wind..

As I walked down towards him to see what was up, he suddenly lifted himself up and galloped across the field some fifty yards into the long grass, where he danced around for a bit before racing back to the coop door.

He did this three times before I reached him and he was still clucking loudly when I found out just why he was so excited, for lying in the grass was one of his hens, a Rhode island red called Beatrice.

She was alive, and was manfully trying to hop her way back to her roosting coop before dark,  However her left leg and wing were dragging uselessly on the ground for she had suffered the common affliction that chickens often suffer from, she had experienced a stroke.

Generally when hens stroke out, the best thing to do is to put them out of their misery, they can never be left with other hens as their fluttering and odd behaviour always illicit bullying. Left in the open with the more aggressive turkeys,  a disabled hen will be pecked to death within minutes, so generally it is kinder to "do the right thing"

But  with, her heroic effort to return to her coop and the concern of her rooster, to save her, I decided to give the old hen a chance and set her up in an old rabbit hutch for the night....

I have just checked on her,  she is still paralysed , but ate a  load of corn well and looked bright enough even though she couldn't walk........another lame duck (hen) to care for me thinks.....

I'll never make a proper farmer will I?