The Trelawnyd Intensive Care Unit

Mabel has a pneumonia

I had suspected as much.

She has a rip roaring temperature and looks dreadful

Being an over bred Bulldog means that you have an extra short trachea

and therefore the route between mouth and lungs can be dangerously concise

Bacteria and foreign bodies love the shorter  route into lung tissue

Kennel club take note!

The vet was happy that I take Mabel home with antibiotics and anti inflammatories .

Because of some intensive" water-sprayer-in-the-mouth" therapy at least she is not too dehydrated at present.. if she were, he would have admitted her.

Mabel was happy that I took her home too 

The strangeness of the vets frightened her terribly and with great difficulty she took herself off to the surgery exit as I paid the bill, where she stared sadly at the Berlingo in the car park, waiting to get home.

Her need to get back to her "safe" little Trelawnyd world broke my heart

She looked s a poorly.dog when she returned to the kitchen sofa.

But has accepted hourly fluids squirted directly into her mouth

Hey Ho

Mabel Sick

My weekend has been somewhat dominated by caring for a sick bulldog

The vet seemed more relaxed than I have been.

He seems to think that Mabel has a stomach bug

I was almost convinced she had somehow found some rat poison

When it comes to bulldogs, losing Constance so theatrically outside the Church gates has left me, I know, with  an unhealthy neurosis when unwell dogs are concerned.

Despite eating some chicken and rice,

The big lump of bulldog remains listless, uncomfortable and obviously sick.

I don't worry about any of my patients as much as I do about her.

F*ck You!

Not as funny as yesterday's  blog featuring the wisecracking Jason
but it sorts of underlines just how much old bods can be funny
working tonight! 
hey ho

SGB

Around 3pm, I walk the dogs around the village and deliver eggs if there is a need to do so.
Today, along London Road, I bumped into the ever cheerful Jason, who as usual was carrying his toddler daughter on his shoulders.They were off to pick up Jason's other daughter from school.


As I stopped he looked me up and down slowly
.
Egg and chicken poo on my hoodie top
Ripped combats
Rubber over shoes,
hair all over the place
Not a good look, I would admit
"Do you know" he said "that The Red Faced Welsh Farmer ( RFWF) is setting up his own blog!?"
I fell for it
"No " I said
"Yes!... apparently he refers to you in it as The S.G.B.!"
"What's that stand for" I asked
He laughed 
"SCRUFFY, GAY BASTARD!"
Time to tidy up, me thinks...........
and I am serious....

One Little Word

Last night's Jenny Agutter-fest underlines just how one word or phrase can elevate a pretty ordinary film scene into one that is remembered fondly by thousands.

By inserting the tiny "MY" into Agutter's plaintave "My Daddy", the whole reunion scene cranks up in emotional intensity...a simple andlovely moment.

Here are a few more of my favourites:

I could go on but I have chicken coops to paint

and finally for Tom (Bath) and Tom (Angola)

Miss Agutter in Walkabout

MEN!

Daddy My Daddy!

Does anyone remember Jenny Agutter running down that railway platform crying "Daddy My Daddy!"?
well this is the next best thing!
ENJOY

Close Ups

When it is wet and miserable

Jobs get done in a hurry

and things are not really seen.

I took my time this morning

 

 .Wet dogs half asleep in the kitchen

  Aquilegia vulgaris flowering In the Garden

 Boris giving me the "dead eye"

 White Bells 

 The Blind Rooster Cogburn listening to the field chatter

A rescue hen

Sat in the rain with my hoodie over my head

I have rubbed canesten cream into Buster's Comb, wattles and earlobes

He sat there calmly during it all with eyes closed

He knows it will help him.

Later despite the wet, I will plant out the first of my potatoes, onion sets, broad beans and swedes

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