The Morning After

Sick of seeing me in a collection of waterlogged coats, my sister in law sent me a pair of waterproof trousers and coat through the post, which I must admit was a bloody godsend yesterday.

In the years we have lived in Wales, I don't recall such a rainy day as yesterday. Drains flooded over in the lane, the pond and stream at the back of the field took on the look of a very expensive wave pool, and even the robust but hysterical Indian runners found the whole blustery weather thing a little too much to deal with.

Bad weather saps the mood

It saps the strength

and it upsets the hens.

Today, however, as Scarlet would chirp, IS another day. and as the sun has reduced the field to a steaming soup, I can take stock of yesterday's bad weather.

The Buff and her single white chick had been moved to slightly higher ground yesterday morning and look chipper enough, but Theresa the old turkey with the festering sex injury still looks chilled and slightly bowed. Even with adequate shelter the bad weather has a habit of weeding out the weak. The old, infirm or ill generally disappear in this sort of climate.

I am just about to take the old Berlingo in for her MOT.

I am not hopeful.

The weather, the climate and rough country roads have taken their toll on her too, and she is looking somewhat the worse for wear.so I am expecting the local garage to be offering her the last rites.....she has had to put up with a lot from me...what with pigs in the back, incontinent Bulldogs in the middle and even a fully grown male turkey on the front seat ( and no, before you ask, I didn't put a seat belt on him ).

I'll see what the mechanic says,

But I can almost hear the sucking of teeth from here.

Another worry remains Mabel., Although much improved from her dreadful illness of last week, she remains somewhat lethargic and chesty. Her temperature is down , that much I am happy with ( Chris went into hysterics yesterday, when he caught me gingerly sticking a thermometer up were the sun doesn't shine!) but I have noticed "little things" like a certain weakness in her back leg occassionally, which concerns me.

I will give her a few more days before I take her back to the vets, but I can't help having a nagging suspicion that something else is going on here.

So all in all it's a typical, non event Monday......

Wish the Berlingo luck....we are off to the garage

Enjoy this melancholy little ditty before I go

Working Hard

I could never be an academic
I haven't got the discipline
Now this revelation, I am sure will not surprise many people.as
The standard of my spelling and grammar would inform even the thickest of readers that I ain't no big thinker.
I couldn't deal with the pressure
Now after living with a pure academic for so many years, I have long realised that they work incredibly hard.
Chris will wake up at 5am do some work in his home office before even reaching University. And this afternoon, when  the dogs  Albert and I  have all retreated from the rain into a warm and welcoming living room, he has shut himself away with his laptop, to complete a report on this and a research bid on that.
It is a world I cannot ever  appreciate or indeed fully understand and thank goodness that his international video conferences only take place from his Bangor Uni office and not from the kitchen table as a snatched glimpse of me pulling the clingons from George's arse as I beaver away in the background, I am sure would damage his professional credibility somewhat.
On reflection, I think that my haphazard, shit covered world can be as alien to him as PhD stats are to me.
Somehow it works.......somehow we work


Years ago now, when Chris worked in a city University, I once went out on a "work's night out" with him. The place was nose to nipple with various bright sparks all talking shop, and for a while I got pigeon-holed by an extremely boring Professor who banged on incessantly about some high brow subject or other.
After a good while, nodding at him with a score of others who actually seemed to understand all that he was pontificating about, I made my excuses, went to the bar and downed several very large gin and tonics in quick succession.
Just as I gulped my third double.. a woman from the same group joined me and looked at me rather sympathetically
"That man is boring the tits off me" I whispered as her conspiratorially  ,.
"Tell me something I don't know" she whispered back, smiling into her drink
"I've been married to him for the past 20 years!"
hey ho

Remember Me Fondly

Last night I watched a rather sweet biographical portrait of the actor John Le Mesurier.
The BBC programme entitled "It's all been rather lovely" gave what I suspect was a wholly accurate account of a soft spoken, reserved ambition-less English gentleman who always seemed to do the right thing and who was loved by all who met him.
Le Mesurier seemed to amble gently through his life with the same vagueness he used in his characterization of Sargent Wilson of Dad's Army fame. 
A heavy drinker but never a drunk, he would much prefer listening to Jazz at Ronnie Scott's Club or sitting at the beach watching the sea with a drink rather than stretching himself with roles deemed more serious than the ones he appeared in; and the thing that I was struck with most of all when I listened to this account of his career , was the fact that he was deeply adored and respected by family, partners and colleagues alike.


The tributes given by Le Mesurier's sons were incredibly moving, as it was his gentleness and reserved affection that they particularly remembered......indeed their father's last words perhaps underlined just how he saw life.....he said simply and with his typical breathlessness....."It's all been rather lovely!"
I think that is such a beautiful thing to say

LeMesurier's self penned obituary in The Times

I think all of us would love to be remembered as Le Mesurier was.
It is quite easy to be disliked in  this world.
It is easier to be indifferently thought of (which is perhaps even worse)
but to be fondly  remembered is a lovely swan song to a life.
Don't you think?

Boobs for Bloggers, Pegg for me

For Tom, Chris and Cro

  English Humour

1962

For me

for very sad geeks

and for older classy geeks

and for

Bloggers with Boobs 

(just for you Nana!)

Popty-Ping

The other day, I heard that the colloquial Welsh name for microwave oven is POPTY-PING.
This amused me even though I didn't quite believe it (it was said in passing on a smug radio 4 comedy show) so this morning I checked with a couple of Welsh speakers from the village to see if this was indeed correct.
One older lady rejected the suggestion, stating her word for a microwave was indeed the word "micro-wave" only said in a sing song Welsh accent! but the other lady said the radio programme was indeed right with the proviso that the more common version of the word was the less onomatopoeic "Popty-Microdon"
It's my latest favourite Welsh word


Last Wednesday night I was working with three Welsh speaking nurses., who frequently burst into bouts of Welsh chatter when they got together. Two more Filipino nurses on shift, shared confidences in their own sing song Tagalog which left me and another member of staff "out in the cold" so to speak.


This nurse, bored with not understanding what the hell was going on suddenly, feigned a butch stance, put her hands on her hips and sang over to me, as I was preparing a set of ivs 
"let's talk gay" she lisped
Well it was funny at 3.30am!

Popty-PING!

Good News

before you ask No it's NOT Mabel

Last night,in the hospital I looked after a person who strangely enough had a remarkable likeness to Mabel. 

This just HAS to be an example of Kismet...or probably it is just a case of bulldog obsession

Whatever it was!

 at least I didn't have to syringe water into my patient's mouth every hour and literally carry them outside for a pee twice a shift.

Mabel , I am now sure, has turned the corner.

When I got home this morning she got up off her couch and ambled up for her usual "first fuss of the day"

Sure she was slower than usual

and sure, her breathing was still a little bit raspy

But the twinkle was back in her eye

and after six large gobfuls of roast chicken, the kitchen was filled with the musical normality of bulldog farts once again.

There was even more good news to celebrate here at Bwthyn-y-llan after I got home.

Sorrel, the heavy footed Buff has made it through the night without pancaking her last remaining chick into the floor of her run like a child fashioning pies out of plasticine! Mother and baby seem to be doing well.

The chick is my first baby of 2012

Bet it's a f*cking cockerel!......

Motherhood

Ok Ok

Time for some different news.

The beautiful spring day of yesterday, has bounced back into a rather blustery and wet Wednesday.

Overnight new mum Sorrel hatched out four tiny white chicks in her impregnable broody box, three of which she has accidentally flattened like pancakes with her large inexperienced buff orpington feet.

Nature can be a bit of an odd bod sometimes, as many younger animals do not have that innate ability to care for their babies with an ingrained, unwavering skill. Some mums simply need to learn 

When I was a gal, mothers generally were housewives

They cared for the kids in houses that were often influenced by a matriarch, a sort of sage that showed new mums the ropes so to speak.

Grandmothers and aunts

They were the unsung supervisors,role models and mentors for a new mother

They helped with the washing on Monday

and often did the ironing on a Tuesday afternoon.

They were the ones that knitted those intricate white cardigans and bonnets we were all forced to wear

and showed their daughters just how to bath the baby in the sink, once the dishes had been removed.

I don't think I am guilty of seeing the past through rose coloured glasses when I say mothers in the past were apprentices of sorts, with their extended family acting as unofficial assessors and teachers

Today new mums are expected to go back to work . Indeed many have to return before little Jake or Amelie has outgrown their first babygrow! Grandparents seem younger than they did.....they are not just around the corner anymore and many of them have careers of their own.

Being a matriarch housewife is not seen as a vital job anymore.

Money needs to be earned

 

So who DOES mentor new mums nowadays?

Of course grandmothers will always be the first port of call

but I wonder just how many inexperienced "Sorrels" there are out there, isolated stressed and clueless

what do I bloody know?

I haven't got an 'effing clue have I?

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

I will leave you with a pic of the "patient"

Fingers crossed

23.08 pm

I have just syringed a final 50 mls of water into Mabel's mouth
and have set her up on the kitchen sofa for the night
Her breathing is bloody ropey I must admit
So I have put a cushion under her head in order for her to get her breath
She has eaten some SPAR chicken ( hand fed- of course)
and looks slightly more alert as she did


I am presently sat in my chair in the living room, watching tv
Chris is in bed with the other dogs
Albert has just opened the kitchen door on his way up to bed and rather surprisingly Mabel has followed him,  and has walked slowly into the living room like an old nag where she suddenly offered me a somewhat tired kiss before sitting heavily at my feet
I think she is looking  better


hey ho
off to bed... its been a long day