The Ghost Of Christmas Past

I think I have only ever had one naff Christmas

It was in 1990 when I was a student nurse working on an acute medical ward.

I completed the early shift on Christmas day with a miserable hangover ( and with a menopausal Dutch staff nurse in charge).......then went home, fed my cats...piled up all of the family gifts into my car and set off from Sheffield to drive the two hours back to wales.....full of Happy Christmas feelings and good will to most men!

Only my car wouldn't start!

It was cold

It was miserable

It was dark

I was alone...

and to cap it all..... I had no food in the house

Christmas dinner, as it turned out, was two individual pork pies and a mars bar bought from the 24 hour garage

and when I turned on my battered old portable tv (in my luxurious student pad living room complete with deckchair seating)........fuck all happened.........

I remember crying  in my deckchair , whilst drinking the dregs from a bottle of gin and listening to radio 4

Thank goodness things before and after 1990 have been generally more festive, even though I have often worked!!

So come on everyone.... give me your best (WORST) Christmas Stories...........

Share it with the group!

I Think It's Going To Rain Today

Shit!

Well it had to come.

The first blizzard of the winter caught the field totally unawares this morning, and in just a few minutes has deposited ( and is depositing) tons of wet, cold,unwelcome snow.

The old hens, led by veteran Stanley all disappeared undercover leaving the new girls and the crackhead whores forlornly hunched at the field borders......already I have endeavoured to bring in the stragglers, especially the bald hens who have no reserves when it comes to being cold AND wet....but faced with this sudden downpour of cold stuff...some of them seem transfixed to the spot

....hens can be so stupid sometimes.

Already I have given the pigs extra feed.......and now I am off to check on the turkeys.....being more dense than a block of concrete, god knows where they will end up in this weather!

Sleeping Beauty

With Chris working away..I thought a night out would be in order.

I managed to get a couple of tickets for Sleeping Beauty ( the live performance from the Royal Opera House) and Janet said that she would like to go, so we both thought that a bit of culture was just the thing to lighten the week a little.

WRONG

I didn't really get into this revival of the 1946 production and was almost relieved when

Janet was taken ill just as the second act started, and we had to go home...

I

Andrew's Eulogy

Ann and Janet's floral tribute ( a drum kit)

Eulogy at http://supportingandrew.blogspot.com/

Postie Big Up

Don't you just love the Post Office sometimes..

Today I received a lovely Christmas Card from a person who reads the blog. I am sure they won't mind me sharing the rather original way they addressed the envelope

It said

Mr John Gray (John-the-dogs-Gray)

Organiser, Trelawnyd Flower Show + allotment day

Caretaker of pigs,fowl,dogs and Albert the cat

Trelawnyd

Flintshire

It made my day!

Little Dramas

Thank goodness Chris is away until Friday.....for some reason Albert has increased his rodent collecting abilities and since the infamous "rat incident" he has brought into the house no less than 6 field mice in 24 hours!.

Mabel, the only dog not to be swayed by Albert's rodent obsession

Of course the terriers have enjoyed these little gifts immensely, mouthing and crunching them like Nigella's Christmas titbits at a cocktail party.......only Mabel, from her position of comfort on the kitchen sofa, has refused to join in any of the fun.

Yesterday I posted the Christmas Cards, and delivered the ones in the village. It was a dry, cold day, which was perfect for walking around with a load of paper and as I ambled from one house to another, I saw an elderly lady, I only know very vaguely, standing in her front garden.

As I stopped to say a brief hello, she came to the gate to make a fuss of William, who I had brought out with me, and although she was pleasant enough, there was something in her affect that pricked my attention.

As I exchanged chit chat, the lady's husband came out of their house and joined her. I know him a little better, and as we made small talk , out of the corner of my eye I noticed that his wife had moved quietly away to the garden hedge where she pottered around the privet.

Only after I had started to walk off, did I realise that she had in fact started to water the hedge with a tiny indoor watering can..and finally the penny dropped.... the lady obviously was suffering from some sort of dementia.

As I looked back, I saw the man gently guiding his wife back to the house. He waved brightly as she took her slightly shaky tiptoe steps...and I couldn't help thinking, that behind every little neat garden, and inside every curtained window in the village, little dramas are being played out every hour of every day.

Only ours have more mice in them than most

Please, Please, Please,

Hijacked by the sickly sweet John Lewis Advert... this sad little song has nothing to do with Christmas
It is perhaps the saddest song I have heard in a long time