The Awakening

Post number two of the day!

A talented Rebecca Hall and a smouldering West

Remember me slagging off the dreadful The Woman In Black recently? Well there was another "period" ghost story that was doing the rounds at roughly the same time that kind of disappeared under the radar so to speak.
This was a bit of a shame as the other movie, a film called The Awakening is a cracking little horror!
Set in 1921 this story has emancipated academic and emotionally closed Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) acting as a sort of bright-young thing ghostbuster amid the flurry of post Great War fake spiritialists.

She is asked by war survivor teacher (Dominic West) to travel to his isolated school in Cumbria to look into the ghostly sightings of a young boy which occurred at the same time as a pupil died in mysterious circumstances , and during her investigations,Cathcart has her eyes opened to a potentially real ghost story of some complexity.

Footsteps in the attic

Nick Murphy's first film is a genuinely creepy and atmospheric twist of the Gothic horror tale and it is made all the better with a subtle and rather interesting central character, the emotionally distant but educationally bright Florence Cathcart. She is a woman with a past, one of the millions that lost someone in the war; so the "awakenings" reference of the title not only refers to Florence's realisation that ghosts may well exist but also eludes to her own sexual awakenings after meeting the strong silent and very sexy Mr West.

Staunton: a class act

As Cathcart  has her beliefs challenged, the ghost story cranks up a gear, and Murphy delivers some incredibly tense and frightening set pieces as her "reality" is made increasingly unclear .The performances by Hall, West and Imelda Staunton as the school's frightened matron, are particularly strong, and capture perfectly the film's central themes of grief, loss and loneliness in the austerity years after the armistice.
A very Good film
9/10

Looking Forward

It's nearlytwelve months since I ventured over the Pennines for a South Yorkshire catch up.
It's been Far, Far too long .
Last year our lives here seemed somewhat preoccupied with my brother's deteriorating health, and only recently I have  realised that the effort to visit others hase not been made and time has marched away with things...as it has a want to do.
I have missed my old friends


So I have organised to go over on the 9th of May. Old friends have been "booked" for a boozy night, others contacted for coffee and cake or for breakfast and the visit has galvanised me to lose that final and stubborn 4 lbs (I have plateaued at 14 stone 4lbs- a total loss of 24 lbs), so when I totter into All Bar One clutching the obligatory glass of "pinot", I will do so, looking more svelte and "buttock firm" than any my friends are really used to.
The waddling, and bloated "Roseanne Bar" look of last year, is hopefully, now a thing of the past..


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Today, the rain has set in for the day.

The village looks bleak and cold

I was going to plant out onions, potatoes, swede and cauliflowers 
I think I will wait for a day

The "new" cockerel is doing well.

I have called him Buster

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Thought I would post this in an effort to brighten up everyone's rainy day

Do you think that these lumberjacks could possibly be gay?
answers on a postcard please! 

...a face, only a mother could love.....

Another day

another abandoned animal.

Last night, when I was locking up, I came across this little character hiding away in the goose house. I suspected, quite rightly that he had just had the shit kicked out of him by the resident cockerels as both Stanley and Eric had been "performing" with extra gusto at dusk.

Not nine inches high himself and just skin and bone, the tiny bantam looked as though he was on his last legs, but after some dabbing with witch hazel and a bit of a cuddle, he seemed to perk up enough to eat a few mouthfuls of cat food and half a gallon of water.

It's a throwaway world is it not?

We discard tons of rubbish a year without a second thought, and the people who didn't want this little scrap of poultry anymore threw him away with the same scant disregard, for anyone that understands birds would know that he would stand no chance against the field's two, metre-high cockerels and the bantam, Eric, who has more chutzpah than Maureen Lipman.

But as luck would have it, he survived the day,

and of course he will survive the next.....

I will start the process of finding him a home tomorrow....

.....Manyana

"Hey You!"

The young men from Flintshire County Council have been cutting the grass in the Churchyard all day

I have spent the 4 hours  preparing all of the vegetable beds prior to planting out

One of the workmen called over to me as I was digging

"Is your name Stan?" he asked cheerfully

"No it bloody well isn't!" I called back

Apparently he thought I looked like a pub landlord  he used to know

I felt like shit

according to this guy

 I now look old enough to be a STAN

oh BOLLOCKS!

The Memoirs of a Country Rector

Rector Robert at Chris' Confirmation

Today, was the date that the church congregation meal took place,
As Chris' partner and fourth in line Church cleaner, I always get an invite to the lunch, which is usually held at the Crown Pub, and , as usual it was rather an interesting bun fight of a gathering.


Chris and I are always the youngest at the table of twenty or so. Auntie Glad is always the eldest. This time I was sat next to the Rector, Gaynor the jovial Organist and the infamously delightful  Mrs Trellis ( yes she of the extremely over active sheepdog) and over a very passable roast and several large white wines, I enjoyed some gentle memories of  parish life past!


Rector Robert has always said that when he retires he would love to write his memoirs.....it would make for a cracking read, I suspect, although, I am sure it would be a heavily censored version that would be the one that finally reached the printing presses....a sort of James Herriot-esque whimsy with dog collars perhaps!......where the sweeter parts of a vicar's life are remembered...whilst the occasional painful and difficult memories are laid low and put to bed.
Anyhow, whatever the result, stories such as the one where a pair of buxom bridesmaids were attacked by a swarm of bees before they went up the aisle, would make for an interesting read in anyone's book .
Mind you, The Rector may have some competition when it comes to a popular work-based autobiography. Mrs Trellis' 38 years as a community midwife could give him a run for his money!
A nice afternoon!

The size of a Rabbit's lungs

Baby Rabbits have the lung capacity of an average Opera Singer
It is one of those stupid facts that I have come to know, ever since Albert has found out that they make grand hunting material out on the field.
Once grabbed.
Their only defence is to open their mouths , take a desperate deep breath and blast out a top c worthy of anything Joan Sutherland could belt out whist dressed as a Viking in blond plaits and holding a trident and all in the hopeful result that the noise would rupture the predator's ear drums, letting the baby escape.
I was running late this morning, so a screaming bunny was the last thing I wanted to cope with.
Chris was laid up with a cold   man flu so I got up extra early, fed and watered the animals, let them all out to forage and walked the dogs. I then made said invalid a cup of tea, grabbed myself a bagel and coffee and after tucking my uniform under my arm I raced out to the car a few minutes late for work.
I had just left the kitchen door when Albert bounded over the garden wall with a baby rabbit in his mouth. Spying the dogs all lined up behind me, he crashed to a stop like a cartoon and without a pause and with some gusto, spat the baby rabbit out at my feet.
For a split second nothing happened.
Then the rabbit screamed like a banshee
And as usual all hell let loose.
Mabel surged forward like a bullet, knocking me over and sending my uniform and lunch box flying.
In the resulting hysteria,  the rabbit led the dogs a merry dance in and behind the patio planters as Albert watched the fun through slitty little feline eyes. It took me an age to capture the little bastard and let him free in the graveyard and when I finally got to work the senior sister had something interesting to say about infection control when she pointed to two large bulldog paw prints on the front of my uniform.....
Working with the acutely ill was a doddle after all that

Bananarama Venus

Forget the previous rant about THE Titanic.., I want to think of nice things before bed...
so in lieu of tomorrows post ( I am working 7.00 am to 8.15pm)
I will leave you with a bit of my 80's clap machine froth!
 enjoy!

A Hero: Margaret Dryburgh

I have a lot of heroes.
I think we all do.
Grandparents, friends, colleagues, actors.......Auntie Gladys!...there are always some charismatic characters that spark the interest and tweak the admiration.
On the surface, one of my heroes,  looks a little........ unlikely.
She was a lumpy,somewhat austere looking   lady in her mid fifties.by the name of Margaret Dryburgh
and she died in 1945 

I first "got to know" Margaret after reading two accounts of the internment of European and other national civilians after the Fall of Singapore by the advancing Japanese.
The first book White Coolies by Betty Jeffrey,gave a somewhat harrowing account of the occupation from the Australian Nurses perspective while the more comprehensive Women Beyond The Wire by Lavinia Warner and John Stanilands chronicled the plight of all of the internees in Sumatra during the war.
(John D will, I am sure have more information on this subject)

A somewhat lurid 1950's paperback illustration of an extraordinary story

Both books sang the praises of Margaret Dryburgh.
The daughter of a Sunderland minister, Margaret trained as a teacher and then a nurse before embarking on Presbyterian missionary work in the far east by the early 1920s.
She was captured by the Japanese as she joined the Singapore exodus of civilians by sea and was interned in a series of prisoner of war camps for the duration of the war.


Very quickly, and with a quiet determination Dryburgh was instrumental in providing a morale boosting influence on her fellow camp mates. She organised camp reviews, poetry readings, adult and child education, hymn singing, and designed and wrote a weekly camp newspaper which she illustrated herself with cartoons and drawings.
She also teamed up with professional musician Norah Chambers to organise a camp choir, where she was responsible for writing all of the music down from memory. The choir effectively "sang" as instruments..and would tackle complicated orchestral pieces ranging from Handle, Bach and Beethoven which impressive skill.
In 1996, Paradise Road, a film which tells the story of the Women's Choir was released with Glen Close playing the Norah Chambers character and with Pauline Collins playing Margaret Dryburgh.

Dryburgh almost survived the war. She died of Dysentery in April 1945 after her camp was relocated . By that time well over half of the choir had died of illness and malnutrition, yet at Margaret's funeral, a hymn entitled The Captive's Hymn, was sung by the remaining singers, a hymn that Margaret had written herself.

Margaret's story, for me was inspirational,
She is a shining example how the skills one can develop can be channelled into a force for good when backed up by some Bulldog spirit and a good heart.