Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir - Highland Cathedral (Teyrngar a Ffyddlon)

The" latest" Village Choir Video with local scenes! 0.02 to 0.50 filmed in Trelawnyd!

School Boy

Well I must apologise for my outburst of gay schoolboy humour last night when referring to Gerard Butler's  wonderful arse!

I fear it was just a reaction to all of the seriousness of the Ralph Fiennes' Shakespeare fest last night......

It was a case of to much

"Nature teaches beasts to know their friends."

Today I am facing the mind numbing reality of a Health and Safety moving and Handling study day.

I used to teach and assess all of my ward staff in this thrilling subject matter every year, so 7.5 hours of it today has filled me with dread

so can you blame me of thinking about......

Have a nice day

and Happy St David's Day.... I am wearing my daffodil!

It is a Marie Curie Nurse daffodil......they looked after my brother very well before he died

There's not enough of them!

I'll Give You Anus

On reflection I think the sucess of the enjoyment of seeing the live performance of As You Like It at Theatre Clwyd went to my head...so much so, that I actually thought that the heavyweight tragedy Coriolanus 

would be a good idea for a night out 

Hummm..... WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shakespeare's comedies have a lightness that for "dunces" like me makes the somewhat difficult prose understandable 

The more serious plays, are just too heavy for me..I should know that by now.....for I get lost within the language and lose track of what was said by whom and why....

Obviously I am more low brow that I think I am!

Vanessa Redgrave's Volumnia  was well worth watching  and so was Gerard Butler......however I spent most of his screen time drooling over his Paisley accent and pretty face rather than listen to his earnest Aufidius' soliloquies

Faced again with the prospect of 2 hours of Shakespeare drama......I think I will prefer to see Gerard Butler's Coriol ANUS...........

Hair Cutting

 

The dogs have just been groomed .

They line up on the kitchen sofa with that sad air of resignation of men awaiting a firing squad, and stand with  a certain amount of shame on the fold-a-way table as Jackie, the ever cheerful groomer does her thing.

Welsh terriers should ideally be hand stripped, but it is a procedure that can irritate dogs with sensitive skin. It is also a bit of a dying art and is more expensive than clipping, especially when there is more than one dog involved.

The large bag of unwanted dog hair , I recycle on the field.

A while back one of the farmers told me to place it in gaps in the hedges where foxes might venture through, so if you look carefully at the field borders, you can make out vague clumps of ginger fur dotted here and there amongst the hawthorn.

I don't know if it actually deters foxes.

But it can't hurt

When I walked the dogs down the lane this morning ,I noticed several members of a troupe of field sparrows  sitting on the barbed wire fencing with ginger hair in their beaks.....recycling again, I thought,......it's almost nesting time.

Americans In The Village!

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Bette Davies,Tom Cruise,Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Bob Hope and Susan Sarandon all have documented and verified Welsh roots?

Well neither did I until this morning,

I had just dispatched poor Beatrice ( her previous stroke had noticeably extended overnight so it was best that I put her out of her misery) ( see previous blog entry) and I was carrying her body out of the field when a middle aged man with a stunning pair of sky blue slacks called down a hello from on top of the Churchyard wall.

In an American Accent he introduced himself as Howard Jones  from Jackson County in Ohio and he was searching the Churchyard for the grave of his great great great great grandmother who lived in Trelawnyd in the early 19th Century.

Apparantly Her son had emigrated to the US, and had settled in Jackson, which interestingly had become known as ""Little Cardiganshire"" because such a large number of Welsh that settled there.

I found it all rather interesting as I already knew that a significant number of Mormon emigrants led by

John Parry left the village in 1949 to set up new lives in the state of Utah, and when I visited the Spinal Injury Units In Pittsburgh I remember that many streets and landmarks possessed Welsh Names, underlining their Welsh roots but I had no idea that such a historically famous Welsh area was situated in the American Mid West.

Howard apparently was a member of his local "Welsh History group" and had been researching his family tree for a while. The stop in Trelawnyd and another in the nearby village of Ysceifiog were the final places for his investigations.

I wished him well, for I knew that in the 1980s many of the "unwanted" gravestones had been removed from the graveyard, but he seemed to know more than I did about where to find the information that he needed to know.

"I want to get a sense of the village" he said and I suggested he took himself up the Gop so he could view the village as a whole so to speak. He said that he and his wife, who I noted was scanning the gravestones nearby, would give it a go.

It was then he told me of the numerous famous Americans that were descended from Welsh stock.....He asked me where Flint was , as Tom Cruise's grandfather apparently hailed from there.....

I told him that it was around ten miles or so away and was a bit of a "bog hole"

The term "Bog Hole" intrigued him somewhat......"what a quaint phrase" he said....

I did invite him over for a cup of tea, but he declined saying that he had promised his wife a nice tea in Bodysgallen Hall where they were staying.....

I think he might have thought that the Trelawnyd locals were just that little bit strange

After all I was still holding the dead hen by its feet, and had been doing so throughout our long conversation

a friend

Yesterday I was given a new small chicken coop with its own run.. it was a kind of providence!

Today two Hens were "cornered " by a particularly aggressive guinea fowl and battered within an inch of their lives

I found my only Rhode island red ( Shirley) somewhat bruised and bloody behind the feed bins..so I placed her in her own run with the continually bullied Phyllis! ( below) and they sat there together like two old pals that had met through friends reunited, content, happy and "un stressed"

Phylis (right) has never been liked by the bog standard welsh hens

 Everyone needs a friend......don't  they?

Monday Morning

Jean Dujardin...lovely news that he won the Oscar

Violent patients on intensive care are rare. In Accident and Emergency staff are assaulted on a daily basis, an unfortunate and...oh so common reflection of the drug and alcohol saturated life in modern Britain.

Last night we had to deal with a patient that was hypoxic ( low Oxygen levels) and violent.

The aggression we saw was unavoidable and uncontrollable( from the patient's perspective), so I suppose it was slightly easier to deal with than the pissed up yob who has an abundance of testosterone on a Saturday night but in the fracas that occurred before that patent was safely sedated and oxygenated one nurse was injured and another left bruised and a "little ragged around the edges"

I am lucky, as I have never really been fazed when faced with physically aggressive patients. My psychiatric training, I am sure is responsible for this ability to cope as very early on in my career, I was taught to work effectively in a team in the control and physical handing of unpredictable people.

Being calm is vital in these situations. Having a sense of humour often helps too....... But what I realised last night was the fact that general nurses often have not had the experiential training in dealing with the increasing problem of violence in general hospitals, that psychiatric nurses  have in abundance.
Nowadays... I think that just has to change.......

 

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Weight watchers weigh in 14 stone 8 lbs

Weight Loss Last week 2 lbs

Total weight loss since Jan 2nd 1 stone 6 lbs

I can't believe that.. after all I had a lovely tussle with a whole box of jaffa cakes on Saturday night!!!

On a lighter note... good news about Streep and Dujardin winning at the Oscars

The Banking Of Good Deeds

I am working tonight.

I should have been working last night too, what with this bloody awful computerised off duty that quite stupidly thinks that Sunday is in fact the first day of the week.... who would have heard of it? Sunday not being part of the "week -END"..... Its just a crafty way of getting part timers to work all weekend.
As it turned out I managed to swap last night's shift to one a little more conducive to good marital relations, and it is the kindness of people like the nurse who swapped this shift, that I shall discuss today children!

I know Chris as a regular church goer would say, that we should all do kind deeds without any expectation of getting repaid in any way. Now while I agree that we should all try to be better people, I do pragmatically believe in that good old fashioned phrase "one good deed deserves another".

Now does that make me unchristian?
Perhaps?, but I do think it makes me a realist.
The nurse that swapped my shift, was the nurse who I did a favour for last month. I kept her happy by swapping my holiday rota around so she could go to her daughter's graduation and in turn she felt happy at doing me a little kindness this month.

"Kindness oils the cogs of the real world"

The RFWF helped me take the pigs to slaughter and has given me a load of sawdust for the poultry coops, I give him eggs and pork for his freezer.
Auntie Gladys was left a bloody pigs liver last month and again a reciprocal bag of scones was carefully placed on the cottage doorknob.
Spare bantam eggs are left with a certain slipper maker in the village and hey presto an extra pair of handcrafted slippers appeared, all shiny and new.

The important thing to remember about favours is not to expect one to be returned.
The law of averages will mean that in all probability that they will, but this is not always the case but at least, if they are not,  you can bask in the warm glow that deep down, you are a lovely person.
.. yeah right.....
If you are on the receiving end of an unsolicited  kindness, then  it is prudent that something thoughtful is done in return.....a kind note, a few eggs, a token of politeness is sometimes the order of the day. It takes little to organise and is vital lubrication for "smooth living"

A few minutes ago a couple from nearby Prestatyn called around. They had been bitten by the "chicken bug" a while back and have attended our "open allotment days" for the past two years with some enthusiasm.
Their reason for visiting? well they had a chicken coop and run spare and thought I could use it.
It was a kind gesture, for the whole thing was almost brand new and could have been sold off privately, but they rather sweetly thought that I ( and more importantly the blind Rooster Cogburn) could benefit more from it...
I shall think of a way to repay the ladies in the spring. I thought a couple of robust chicks may be gratefully received or even a turkey poult.........they have a thing for turkeys!

A good deed is nothing really special. It is  really just a show of good manners.
Didn't your mother ever teach you that?

Oh I am about to hitch up my wimple to run amok over the Welsh Hills...........