Cack Handed

I have always been cack handed, ever since I was a little boy.

If something was to be dropped and broken, something was to be tripped over and something was to be spilt..I was the one that would invariably do it all....and do it in a style befitting a circus clown with major co ordination problems.

It is a curse I have had to deal with all my life.

Well, this morning, as I was trolling through the local auction house web sites ( in search of a small Christmas gift for him indoors) I came across a photo of a late 18th Century Georgian bookcase....and I was reminded of a time.......(many moons ago) when I was responsible for the destruction of a VERY expensive piece of furniture which I did not own.....

Even today...my blood runs cold at the very memory of that day......

Before I was happily ensconced in my relationship with Chris I did have a relationship with a guy in Sheffield who collected antiques ( and very expensive antiques I may add) He had a penthouse flat in Sheffield and owned a country property in the Lake district...so lived a very different lifestyle to my nurse existence in a two up two down in a slightly down-at-heel suburb of the city..Anyhow I digress.

One afternoon he asked me if I could help in load several choice pieces of furniture into a van, so that he could take them to auction. As I recall there was a French chiffonier, an early Victorian farmhouse grandfather clock and a rather handsome George III glass fronted bookcase, which dated from 1780. All beautiful pieces of furniture.
We carried each item down 4 flights of stairs without incident and loaded the clock and chiffonier. I held onto the bookcase as my boyfriend cleared some room in the van, and for some totally unknown reason left the thing standing in the road as I walked up  to see what was going on.
Sheffield streets are steep, and in what could only be described as slow motion we both turned to see one of the bookcase doors open ever-so-gently.....unbalancing the whole piece.

As I screamed ( and I did scream)..the bookcase started to topple...like a tree and with the biggest of crashes it fell onto the road.......glass doors downward.
I couldn't move. My boyfriend (who was crying silently) did however and without a word he lifted the bookcase off the road.
There couldn't have been more damage to it if Hattie Jacques herself had jumped on it from the top of a wardrobe, and even to my unsophisticated eye, I just knew that I had inflicted damage a nurse's pay could not quite cater for.
Still in silence, the bookcase (or the pile of wood and glass that it now resembled) was loaded up and driven away, leaving me to ponder my fate.
On impulse I drove immediately to one of the less attractive parts of Sheffield ( Think The Wire) and offered my old beat up peugeot 105 up to a scrap merchant to buy......The scrap merchant was a big hairy arsed bloke who seemed rather sceptical of my motives... but seeing that I looked rather distressed, he offered me a cup of tea and seemed ever-so-faintly amused that I was selling my car because I knackered the front off a priceless antique and wanted to "pay" for the damages

As I recall he gave me 150£ for my car....
I never knew what happened to the bookcase....
The relationship never lasted either...................

The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn

I just didn't "get it"
Not wacky enough to be a cartoon
Not realistic to be a filmed drama
Beautifully crafted, full of Spielberg touches
and for me...........despite all the protracted action...........dreadfully dull
4/10

Mabel's Donny Osmond Teeth and Golden Angels

Cro had the right idea.....a wintry wet day and sat in front of the fire with a wine.....

It is bloody wintry here too, but I will content myself with a log burner, antiques road/whatever on the tv...no wine I'm afraid......on weight watchers and going to the cinema a little later to see Tintin

Mabel showing her Donny Osmond (ish) teeth----- she remains very nervous of anything and everything but is slowly getting better

I am feeling just a little guilty about being so  dismissive about Sir Jimmy in my last post, so I will tell you about our day in way of diversion. Chris took the day off and in between  my jobs (Bulldog toileting and bulldog car desensitisation trips) we ventured out into weekday quietness and had lunch out.

Lunch ended up in a rather sweet place in the nearby town of St Asaph...and afterwards we had a serene amble around St Asaph Cathedral..a place I had never been before.

The cathedral it is claimed to be the smallest Anglican cathedral in Britain and dates from the 13th Century.

The place was totally deserted when we entered and even the small shop situated by the entrance had a sort of "honesty box" left out for any shoppers to use rather than the obligatory "lady on a till" that we are used to in most popular places to visit!

I was also amused by the free tea and coffee left out for visitors on a table by the shop.......a nice touch..I thought.

A golden archangel standing tall over the aisle  caught my eye........it was beautiful

I have a thing for angel statues

Apart from the angel..one other thing moved me greatly inside the cathedral

It was something that was written in a prayer book inside one of the chapels

A lady had written

" Say a prayer for me.... I want to be a better mother"

Hummmmmm!

Is it me, or does anyone else find Jimmy Savile's organisation for his own funeral just a little bit odd? The lying in state (in a Leeds hotel), the gold coffin, the three days of "mourning" and the burial of the coffin at a 45 degree angle in Scarborough ( so that he could "see" the sea), smacks to me  less about of a sense of humour and more about a degree of pomposity.

It screams Showbiz without much of the show and now, not much of the Biz

Perhaps I am being somewhat unfair.

I actually met Mr Savile many years ago now (God I sound a little like Tom here), it was at Stoke Mandeville Hospital during one of the inter Unit Spinal Injury Games. He was larger than life, that was certainly true, but I did find him a slightly odd character who was somewhat full of himself.......perhaps it would be more charitable to say that I didn't warm to him...despite the fact he seemed such a benevolent character on screen and on the radio.

His funeral, to me, didn't feel quite right...it shrieked of "look at me, I am loved".....however, as I am writing this all I can think is "what the hell"...... if it gave the old guy pleasure , planning it all...what does it matter eh?

Perhaps it is me that is not being very charitable

The Dyserth 5

Last Night I experienced a rather amusing evening giving the infamous "Dyserth 5" a run for their money.

The Crown holds a pub quiz on a Monday and although I not really a "pub" person, I accepted an invitation from Jason ( he who bakes) to try it out for a change.

Now I got to the pub, just before nine and as I sat down with a pint of Fosters I spied a somewhat eclectic group preparing for some serious quiz questioning.

One older lady in a felt hat had varying amounts of writing equipment, a large pad and paper and one of those illuminating magnifying glasses (I was informed later that this was for" in depth" photograph assessments") another man , younger than I, looked dreadfully earnest and all looked as though they were ready to run a marathon.

These people, I was told, were the "Dyserth5"...a tough, well informed group of eggheads who had won the pub quiz every week since the beginning of time.

These were the people to beat.

Now I am no slouch when it comes to pub quiz questions, I may not be a true academic, but my memory for "shitty facts" is pretty darn good, even if I do say so myself; but even my somewhat useless knowledge base was not a patch on my fellow team member's computer like recall.
In short Jason knows a little about almost Everything!

Between us, we sailed through the first round of questions like a knife through butter, and when the landlord called out that the village "Chicken Pluckers" had taken up an early poll position, the lady with the felt hat looked visibly shaken!

We had a bit of a set back on the picture round (mistaking Pippa Middleton for Natalie Portman) but retained our small lead for the last round. (One wag from the bar whispered "they're sweating a bit now!" at me when I had a break for the loo)

By the time we finished , and the final results were in, a deathly quiet had descended over the pub....In typical Strictly Come Dancing style, there was a pause just before the results were in.....and to the horror of the Dyserth 5, we had ended their vice like hold of the quiz winners title.

It was all great fun.

A few  neighbours and members of the flower show committee, joined in our celebrations  and the Red faced welsh farmer's son over at the bar gave us the thumbs up....and I had to smile when two of the Dyserth 5 ambled over to congratulate us and asked if we were going to turn up next week...

"too right" I chirped as their smiles stiffened "wouldn't miss it for the world"

We won 11£, which we donated to Jason Wife's cancer charity night.

We had a couple of pints and chatted about the merits of Robert Shaw's somewhat alcohol fuelled performance in Jaws (I love rubbishy bloke talk that this).

But when the conversation drifted over to the rather surreal subject of Mexican Wrestling Midget funerals... I thought it was time to go 
Have a look at Jason's blog when you have a chance (link here)

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The Big Society in a little Village

Forgive the extra blog today. I have come in to get warm, 

The frost of this morning has given way to a damp muggy and cold afternoon, and my bones are feeling their age.

When I was mucking out the hens earlier, I noticed village elder Islwyn and his brother beavering away in the Churchyard, so I ambled over to take a look at what he was up to.

Without payment or instruction, he had procured some quality turf and had given the old Churchyard wall a bit of a well needed makeover and I must admit that the end result looks wonderful.

These "let's get it done" blokes are a bit of dying breed I am am afraid to say.They see a job that needs doing for the benefit of the community; they get off their arses and they jolly well sort it.....for them, there's very little use in just talking about a project. For them the proof of the pudding is simply in the eating

I just wanted to big Islwyn up just a little today.

Its a job well done

Winter Arrives

A Sharp Frost welcomed us this morning

Tom, Elizabeth and "dinner" a little upset by the cold

Some of the "CWs" face the day

No 12 and 21 searching for nuts

Summer and Autumn are over, the slog of winter has just about started

Sorry lost this blog entry twice now!

The Pink Pound

Photogenic and in lurve

Today we had an afternoon off . Chris had a break from academia......I had a break from chicken shit and bulldog toileting!
The sun was shining and it was a slightly cold but lovely day so we went to the National Trust Gardens at Bodnant Hall. As you can see we had not quite worked out just how to take a photo with Chris' latest gadget, his Iphone.
we had an amble around the gardens

The terraced Lily Pond

The Woodland Walk

The newly painted rose Terrace

One of the Statues on the Canal Terrace

It was a lovely walk. We sat in the sun for a while , like two old ladies then had a look at a few of the new shops that had sprung up in the outbuildings of the old house.
I had to smile to myself when we entered "ye olde antique Shoppe" for the woman behind the counter literally leapt to attention when we appeared!......
It has happened to us a million times before!
The sight of two middle aged homos signal just one thing to some antique dealers!
"The PINK POUND!!!"
Now , we had no intention in buying anything.....(an antique shop on National Trust Property says just one thing to us.....overly expensive stock!) but I for one quite enjoys being " schmoozed" by a lady in tweed hopeful of a big sale....It's all  hugely entertaining as suddenly you feel as though you are someone's best mate........suffice to say the friendship was well and truly over after 30 minutes of soft sell....., we ambled off with a smile!

I'll leave you with a hastily snatched photo of fellow poultry keeper Eirlys, which I took this evening, just as she was locking up her girls up for the night...
Yes that is a lunging whip in her hand......Her hens must be much harder than my lot....even the infamous Vinegar tits doesn't need a lunging whip to encourage her to bed
She is very sweet... but mad as a box of frogs!