Red Dog

The dishy Josh Lucas as Red Dog's beloved owner
he has bloody lovely teeth!

During the 1970s Western Australia had it's own sort of folk hero in the shape of a kelpie/cattle dog cross who was nicknamed Red Dog. The dog, turned up at the small mining town of Dampier and was adopted by a local bus driver for the local Iron Company. After the death of his owner Red Dog got a name for himself for travelling great distances on his own, (a feat that captured the imagination of many) and was adopted as a sort of mascot by the Dampier Salts Social club, the local bank and by the small mining community itself, before he died of malicious poisoning in 1979.


Yes, the story was just, ripe to be made into a bit of cinematic whimsy, with the doggy central character winning over the hearts of those gruff stereotypical Australian miner types who were just begging to be made into better human beings by the love of a not-so-dumb animal.

Miners with sideburns

So Red Dog (The Movie) tells this story with charm and some gentle humour. The miners are indeed "tarts with hearts"; everyone is pissed 80 % of the time and the dog "actor" (called Koko) is just this side of "cute" to get most of the audience blubbing into their hankies by the last reel.

Think Whiskey Galore crossed with Local Hero and add a touch of banal 1970's Aussie sit com and you'll get the gist of Red Dog........it's not a great film...... but is a rather sweet, entertaining and enjoyable one, once you sit back and relax a little

8/10

Up, Up And Away

Today I read with some interest, that The Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan has now become the city's tallest building. The structure has risen out of the ashes of The World Trade Centre disaster and once completed will stand 110 stories and over 1,300 feet high.
It looks impressive,iconic and defiant
as it is meant to.
Now I love skyscrapers.
I always have.
However I am truly terrified of heights, and cannot even climb a ten foot ladder  to paint the outside of our bedroom windows !
I inherited my fear from my mother, who when faced with a steep slope or hillside view would enter what could only be described as a frozen catatonic state, which was characterised by a great deal of crying and moaning coupled with a somewhat theatrical sit down wherever she felt safest.
This fear, which as children we loved to take the mickey out of, has only ever affected me once when I was "up" a skyscraper. 
It wasn't up The Empire State, or at the "Top of the Rock" (The Rockerfeller Centre for those that don't know) or up the US Steel building in Pittsburgh..no I had a full blown anxiety attack whilst on the Observation Deck up the Space Needle in Seattle

It was a grey, windy and wet day when I walked out onto the Space Needle's saucer itself. Within seconds, and out of nowhere I was literally overcome with the awful sense that I was falling and without holding onto the low guard rail, I think I would have collapsed onto the floor.
For an absolute age, I  could not move a muscle, not one, and it was only because of the kind intervention of a middle aged Japanese lady who must have taken pity on me, a strange young man shaking quietly in the rain , that I was saved. She came over, asked me something in Japanese then grim faced took my hand firmly and led me back inside where she sat me on a chair and fussed around me like a mother hen
If she had not intervened, I think I would have been still there
awful....awful 


Funny what you are afraid of.....
and what's my favourite film,?
The Towering Inferno
Go Figure?

'young frankenstein' what knockers!

I saw Young Frankenstein last night on Sky... I am ashamed to say that I have never seen it before.
Loved every schoolboy humoured bit of it to death
Ps The Berlingo made it through it's MOT with 250 quids worth of help

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!