Squeezing A Rubber Chicken and Other Stories

For Lunch Chris and I went to a local antique centre's cafe/restaurant. The food was nice ( the antiques incidentally were grossly over priced) and most of the diners resembled Daily Mail readers, as they sat there over their two soups quietly ignoring each other!
I always have an over whelming urge to swear, belch or fart extremely loudly when I sit in a place like this. The terrible "English-ness " of it all, is excruciatingly difficult for me to cope with, and silliness seems the ideal panacea to po faced stiff upper lips!
Serious shoppers have the same effect on me...ask Chris
Every week he has to put up with me noisily squeezing the pet aisle's squeaky rubber chickens in the futile effort to inject some humour in the "death by shopping" experience .......
It's a small rebellion, I know.....
I'm not big on grand gestures

Welshman Luke Evans with John Cusack

The weather has turned back to a slightly chilly Welsh Springtime, so we went to the pictures to see the slightly odd British horror/thriller The Raven (2012) which mixed the life and loves of a real Edgar Allen Poe (played by a sad looking John Cusack) with a Gothic story of an 1840 Baltimore serial killer!

For Benny!

Phyllis and Rooster 

Well this post should warm the very cockles of fellow blogger Benny's heart!
I do so hope that he enjoys it!
Anyhow!
Above is a somewhat "interesting" photo which illustrates a previous post about some animals' abilities to "team up" when they are in need of the warmth and companionship perfectly!.
Last week the blind Cockerel Rooster Cogburn lost his coop mate Vinegar Tits.
Mz Tits had recovered well from a bout of dropsy and needed to return to her own troupe of "crackhead whores" all of whom had missed the presence of their alpha female.So that left me with the rather knotty problem of who could fill Vinegar Tits' overly assertive sling-backs in providing company for the old cockerel!.
The answer came in the diminutive and neurotic shape of Phyllis Diller, the frizzle cross bantam, and I must admit from her perspective, their meeting seemed like a match made in heaven.from the get-go, as she fussed about him like Charles Hawtrey in a feather outfit.
Cogburn seems delighted with his new coop mate, his daily crowing quota seems to have increased somewhat anyway, and this morning when I opened up his sleeping quarters, the two of them were tightly cuddled up together in one nesting box, like two peas in a pod!

A Corner Turned

Today I was due to book Albert for a new assessment with a new Vet,
It was the day I had agreed to do something more proactive after his 2 weeks of fasting and lethargy


But as usual, animals have that unwavering ability to surprise you at the ninth hour, and true to form Albert has just  surprised me thirty minutes before I was due to pick up the phone to book him an appointment.
I had just sat down at the kitchen table after night shift this morning when Albert strode past the queue of dogs on the kitchen sofa with noticeable purpose and determination.
He climbed up onto the window ledge, pointed his skinny little bottom at a fairly astonished Mabel and let out a long and rather musical fart.
Satisfied with the noise, he then sniffed at the pile of untouched food in his food bowl, licked his lips and bolted down five or six huge mouthfuls with some gusto.


There's Panic buying at petrol stations all over the UK?
But the tiny Trelawnyd crisis of Albert the cat and his mystery illness
seems to be at an end

Two score years and ten

Student days- 21 years old....it's another life away

In a few weeks time I will be fifty.
Fifty!
Where has the time gone?
When I think about what has happened to me in my adult life, I honestly find it rather hard to remember what happened when and what happened to whom !
I lived and worked in York for several years
I hardly recall doing so now
I invested 5 years in a somewhat disastrous and abusive relationship
Apart from the occasional snippet, I remember little about that too!
When I try and look backwards it seems like long periods of my life are now almost unreal...
It's as though I am looking back at a movie through gauze or something.
Its a funny feeling.


People that figured so importantly in my life have long since gone. 
It is almost 30 years since I last saw my grandmother
It's 23 years since my father died.
I have not seen an old friend from Cambridge in 10 years.
She's bloody 70 years old now!
Where does the time go?


My brother in law came to help me the other day, when the exhaust fell off the berlingo
He helped me as he has always done, and I all I saw was the young happy-go-lucky chap, that I have always known.
Funny that I didn't really notice that he is almost a pensioner now, with arthritic shoulders and greying hair.
I suspect that he still sees me as the slightly awkward teenager with high colour and bad dress sense 


Now don't get me wrong, I am not sad when I think about all this..
I am just mildly surprised.
I am nearly 50

Aldi Hot Cross Buns Advert 2

gay friendly AND funny!
cracking

Exhaust Blues

There is a serious thought in this somewhat general blog moan, but I will leave that to the final sentence!
You will have to wade through another waddle through John's mundane life to get to it though!

17.00 yesterday: 
I take Albert to the vets. Vet patronises me, talks over me when I try to give him a history and states that although Albert does have a low grade pyrexia he is perfectly healthy, happy  and despite being nervous -- NERVOUS?!!!! (Albert has coped with four bottom licking dogs for the past 4 years with some good humour and confidence that would put Liza Minelli to shame!)
he didn't see anything wrong with him...
I am still not convinced, even though the little bastard did indeed look perfectly well when liberated from the cat carrier.
I will give it until Thursday, re assess Albert's lack of eating then and will change our vet practice


17.20
As I was driving to the beach to wait for Chris to arrive in Prestatyn by train. The bloody exhaust falls off the Berlingo


17.30
Covered with oil, my brother in law and I wire up the exhaust


17.40
scattering sheep in panic the berlingo ROARS back to Trelawnyd


0800 am this morning
The Berlingo ROARS out of Trelawnyd heading for QUIK FIT in Rhyl 5 miles towards the coast


0815
The wired exhaust partly falls off as we go round Rhuddlan roundabout. Sparks on road!


08.20
Covered in dirt and oil and risking life and limb I reattach exhaust with a dog lead and a rolled up sock


0823
Exhaust falls off again outside Dewi Sant School, Rhyl much to the hilarity of 5 scruffy children on bikes
I "fix" it again


08.24
Stopped by a police car
13 year old policeman is very polite but is not moved by a 50 year old gay scruff bag flirting with him, allows me to proceed on to garage


08.30
Arrive at Quick Fit....lots of sucking of teeth ( by foreman) Exhaust will cost 360£ but they will have it ready by 12 noon!


08.45
Walk into Rhyl. Buy Coffee. Watch awful common people wandering aimlessly around like The Walking Dead. Read Paper....


09.30
Phone call from Quickfit Part has been damaged in transit. Work will not be done until 3pm
I start crying


10.00
I walk back to Quick Fit, collect house keys. Get a 10 quid Taxi back to Trelawnyd, clean up Bulldog shit in kitchen.


And thank goodness I am not in full time employment...how do people cope with the bollocks of everyday life like this when they are?
Anyhow back to the serious part of the post....as a "county" dweller, today's fiasco has underlined to me just how reliant we are on the bloody car and to bloody fuel!
Without both, we are effective "trapped" in a location that has no shop, no food and very few services that can be accessed immediately! and with the fuel tanker drivers going on strike very soon, the sight of panic buyer queues already forming at the  Sainsbury's petrol station today is somewhat sobering to say the least....


A generation or so ago, Trelawnyd had a thriving grocery shop which sold EVERYTHING... now, we all drive the 10 mile round trip to the supermarket just in order to keep going.........what will happen to us all if, ( God Forbid) the fuel stops dead.....
answers on a postcard eh?

Pants And T Shirt!

I was only posting a comment this morning about being caught  in my underpants in the kitchen by a lady looking through our kitchen window from her overly large 4 x 4 and BINGO a couple of hours later what happened?

Yes I was caught parading around in my underpants by a lady who was this time, riding her horse in the lane!

The kitchen window that used to be a door

The reason for me showing off my budgie smugglers was the fact that Bingley had flexed his testosterone muscles as I was lifting the Blind Rooster Cogburn out of his pen and kararte kicked me from behind!

Within a second he had clawed through the fabric of my combat trousers and as I tried to kung fu him back , he managed to give me a sideward peck and actually RIPPED my Walking Dead T shirt RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE!

Pants!

T shirt!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was livid!......After putting Rooster C ( who was crowing lustily with the drama of it all) back into his run, I ran after the rapidly retreating Bingley and gave him a quick boot up the arse before retiring to the kitchen to check my injuries!

This is when I was caught by a lady rider standing in my undies in front of the kitchen window!

Cheap Thrills for her!

Irritation and resignation for me!

hey ho

********************************************************************************

Weight Watchers weigh in this morning 14 stone 5 lbs

Weight Loss last week 2lbs

Total weight Loss since Jan 1st 1 stone 9 lbs

"It's the end of the world as we know it"

Extras?........ or Rhyl on a Saturday night?

Well The Walking Dead series 2 came to an end with an appropriate amount of zombies munching their way through the more minor characters of the cast as the Farm burned and the small group of survivors (a cross section of American society) realise that they are indeed just grown up versions of the boys out of The Lord Of The Flies. 

And then there were 10?

The series has become a dark, dark exploration of how quickly humanity and the psychological norms of our  society can be de-constructed into their more basic of components when faced with an apocalypse, and it is these aspects of the series that I have found so interesting..... the zombies are almost incidental
All of us would like to think that we would never lose the more compassionate and intellectual sides of ourselves when disaster rears it's ugly head....

Norman Reedus is a bit of a draw too!!

I can't believe I turned down a night's overtime to watch the finale..... how geeky am I?