Going Back to my Second home

I can't really get going blog wise today

I have not caught up with blog reading

nor have I felt like commenting

But generally I feel alight, just a little weary.

We have been clearing the back garden for a couple of days

It's looking rather sweet

The cottage Garden

I go to Sheffield for a visit on Wednesday

It will offer me some timely therapy 

It's been almost a year since I last caught up with old friends

so it's time I visit
I need to chat, to laugh and perhaps to have a bit of a cry
Megan was correct when she noted that I have experienced a lot of loss recently
my heart, indeed feels just a little ragged
she's right in what she said

I will be touching base not only with the usual suspects-( the waspish Blog commentator Bel Ami (John H) Syfy geek (Mike) and Earth Mother (Jane) but will also have time to catch up with another three old friends, Kathryn, Vince and Bev , people I usually don't have time to touch base with on my usual flying visit to the Steel City.

Old Friends ground a person.

They will do me good.

I can feel a group hug coming on
hey ho

My Immortal

What We DO have!

Welsh Terriers William and Meg "smiling" for the camera

Concentrate your life to one thing and you are in danger of neglecting all of those other things waiting in the wings.

Today has been a day to catch up with gardening

and today has been time to appreciate what we do have rather than what we have lost

Here is a brief snap shot of some of the good things

Winnie and Jo (centre and right) Russell (left) and you can just see Camilla  behind

Albert looking startled ( out rabbit hunting)

I have agreed to take another duck after the weekend
A robust Muscovy drake

Sorrel and baby are doing just fine.....well the fat bastard  hasn't stood on him yet!!!

George looking older than his years, hidden away on Mabel's sofa

Buster- the abandoned bantam (right) giving it large with the geese

Ta Muchly

Thank you all for your best wishes, here on the blog and in person

It's lovely to think that a flatulent, toothless, frequently lascivious and always affectionate old bulldog with pendulous breasts and a mouth the size of a gin trap could illicit so much good will from so many people from the four corners of this very small world
I miss her dreadfully

Normal service will resume as soon as possible
I don't feel too robust today

The Last Mabel Post

The Bluebells at Bodnant

Today has been Chris' birthday
We planned to go out for lunch and hoped to follow that with a visit to Bodnant Gardens to see the spring azaleas .
Not much to ask for your 43rd birthday
Simple pleasures.
Well, we did go out for lunch and the bluebells were out on the lovely Chapel walk at the gardens, and I played a game that I was enjoying the day and Chris kindly played the game that he didn't notice that really I wasn't.
It was good that we went out, the weather has been nice today


Mabel's condition deteriorated overnight. Her paws became oedematous and even though her breathing improved somewhat, it was obvious that she was suffering from a certain degree of heart failure.
The kind 14 year old vet scanned her again this morning and isolated masses on her liver and spleen, which indicated  to him (with all of her other symptoms) that she was indeed suffering from a probable and widespread lymphoma. A lymphoma which had certainly affected her spinal cord
The prognosis, given her physical condition was poor.


Like I said he was very sweet.
He came out with all those tried and tested kind words that I use at work every week,
and he didn't look too embarrassed when my face crumpled like newspaper as I said my goodbyes.
She died peacefully with her big fat stupid head in my hands...
and before I left, I kissed her gently on the nose as I have done most days since she arrived in Wales


Minutes later, I was driving an empty car home as if nothing had happened.
But of course , it had


I have posted before about a psychologist that I worked with, who always used to say 
"you feel what you feel", when faced with someone that questioned the validity of an emotion that they were experiencing 
Well I feel guilty and slightly ashamed
That's how I feel today.

Revolving Doors

I didn't really want to be responsible for another Mabel blog, but today my little world yet again has been concentrated down into vet assessments and the caring of a sick animal.
Today's medical findings were of no surprise.
I was right, and take no pleasure in it.
Mabel's infection is still there
New Antibiotics have been prescribed and a inconclusive abdominal scan performed
A neurological check at my request showed she has lost her proprioception of her back left leg.
Proprioception as any old spinal Injury Nurse will tell you, is the body's ability to know where it is
Whatever the cause
The outcome is potentially serious.
She is too sick to be sedated for xrays at present, The vet wants to do those on Tuesday. My job is to keep her going with subcutaneous steroids, antibiotics and fluids until then.
She looks poorly

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?