People You Don't Know

Nothing to do with this post but I kind of love Norman Rockwell's illustrations 

Today, will be a bit of a "nothing" day.
I am working tonight. Chris is away in London having some "well dressed me time" with a friend
and the water for this part of the village has been cut off by some hairy arsed and bored builder types who are ooooing and arrrhhhing over a hole in the road.
It's 6.45 am and before I take Chris to the station, I am pottering around killing time.
A chap in a silver pick up has just passed the cottage and we both wave cheerfully at each other.
We do this regularly
I have no idea who he is.
He has no idea who I am
But we wave.
It has become a habit.
On our afternoon walk, the dogs and I will pass parents waiting for their children in their cars by the school.
I will wave and nod shyly at two of them.
They are always there, as am I and we all will look for each other everyday...it is the same for the unknown elderly lady in the corner bungalow...she has a frail look and blue skinny arms...and the old chap that lives in the house by the garage, he always wears a cap
All of us look out for each other
It has become a ritual.


I suspect that commuters play this little game more than I do. Especially when human nature dictates that you always have to sit in the same spot on the same part of 6.10 from Cockfosters and I suspect even the most antisocial member of the human race gains some sort of solace from a regular jaunty wave or a mouthed "hello".....do we not?


Yesterday one of "my" Dad's outside the school opened his window when I passed
He smiled in that slightly pained way, people do when they know there's some bad news coming
"I hate to ask but where's the bulldog?" he asked kindly
I explained with the same story I have repeated to a score of locals and he said he was very sorry
"I've missed seeing her" he added
It was nice of him to say it.


Do anyone else out there have "regulars" of their own? People they "see" everyday?
answers on a postcard please 

Teenage Angst

I re-read yesterday's blog and felt somewhat sorry for Chris's somewhat crushed genteel sensibilities.
I know I paint him as a sort of exasperated , somewhat fastidious academic that spends much of his time shaking his head at my teenage, animal obsessed, shit covered, scruffy bastard ways......and of course, in many ways this portrait is indeed a correct one......I do drive him to distraction!


So yesterday, I did indeed make the effort.
Meg was given a bubble bath , had her hair all fluffed up and smelt delicately of almonds
The dog snot was removed from the inside of the bedroom windows 
Apple blossom ,bunches of granny's bonnets and lilac were placed in vases and tastefully arranged around the cottage,
All traces of chicken shit was removed from collected eggs and all kitchen surfaces,
and after strimming the field borders, I had a bath BEFORE he got home from work and looked fairly clean and tidy!


After dinner we watched CHATSWORTH, the BBC documentary about the famous Stately Home ( Chris' favourite place by the way!) and after he had gone to bed in clean animal free sheets, I took the dogs out for their final walk with a clean and non farting Albert in tow.


It was all too good to last!
For when I got back, I quietly plonked myself down in front of the tv to sneakily watch a re run of The Walking Dead
As the Channel five announcer warned rather too loudly  that the "following programme was filled with zombie scenes of  graphic violence, gore and mayhem!"
I heard Chris groan loudly
"Oh God- the teenager has returned"
He sighed.........

...and on a lighter note....

Picture this

Chris returning from Church in his lovely new tweed waistcoat

He is all spick and span

He loves the more genteel aspects of life

He faces an animal filled kitchen

Meg had just rolled in a pile of incredibly smelly chicken shit

William is scratching at a possible new flea

and Albert is standing on the kitchen table trying desperately to catch someone's eye so he can have some lunch

He farts loudly when I retrieve some cat food

and splatters a small bowl of beautiful mushrooms with a tiny flourish of cat poo

Chris stands amid the melee with his eyes closed is silent resignation

"I was not born for all this!" he says sadly

Enough Already!

I feel more like my old self this morning.
Waking up after a good 8 hours to early morning sunshine always helps I suppose.
But my mind and mood does feel somewhat lighter than it has done.


Grief for an animal is a knotty subject for discussion.
Not here, of course, as those country and animal "lifestyle bloggers" that frequent this blog will of course understand fully, that dogs especially can worm themselves deep within a psychi and therefore will often leave a gaping hole within a person when they shuffle off this mortal coil.
No, it's others than may just think that a day's upset is quite sufficient thank you very much, now pull yourself up by your bra straps and " get on!".......
Perhaps the answer lies between the two camps.....
Having said this, even this morning, when I know I am feeling brighter, I still missed the ugly and somewhat blurry eyed bulldog face demanding her first snog of the day.
Bulldogs leave a big hole when they leave you, they surly do


I won't dwell on me today ( that's a bloody change eh?) my thoughts really lie with my brother's wife Jayne, who is only 22 weeks or so through the journey of her grief.
22 weeks.
It's nothing is it?
But after the initial "adrenaline rush" that always follows a death, I think, there evolves a time where everyone has a need to get back to normal, and this need for the mundane and the secure often leaves the partner, wife, husband or carer in a kind of limbo land where the obvious grief that is always there, and not magically healed by a few long weeks of distance and the delivery of a few sympathy cards.
Like I said my thoughts are with Jayne today.


I saw Auntie Glad on Saturday afternoon.
Chris spied her first and called out
"scone delivery! as the diminutive white haired figure, tottered around the front of the cottage where she tied a bundle of goodies to the front doorknob before marching back up the lane towards home.
I caught her as she passed the back door, and we chatted for a while.
The Trelawnyd Carnival Committee had  asked her to be the Jubilee Queen this year, which tickled her pink, even though she felt she had to decline the offer...
"They wanted me to sit in a car and wave my handbag" she laughed.. "at my age!"


In the 1960's Gladys lost a daughter of 17, tragically and senselessly.
I remember her telling the story to a somewhat open mouthed newspaper reporter a year or so back, and the way that Gladys finally managed to get over her awful grief is something she has shared generously many times since.

Gladys ( 2nd from right) at the memorial Hall in the 1950s

Gladys went into a deep depression. She showed no interest in normal things, she retired to bed, and as the weeks pasted, I am sure that her family was at a loss of how to help her.
Eventually the family GP took things into his own hands and informed Gladys that she needed to "get going " again, she needed to get out of the house.
She needed to live again.
Did he prescribe her sedatives?
no.
Make her up an tonic?
No
He simply found her a job,
and he told her plain and simply that she was to start work the following Monday.... no ifs, buts or maybes
and according to Gladys, that no small feat saved her life.


As a nurse, especially one that works on ITU, I see a great deal of raw, painful grief.
Over the last 22 weeks I have seen and experienced my own family's raw grief
and of course had the complication of the loss of a pug nosed bulldog......for me (and I can only speak for myself) it is a time to lighten


If I was  a Jewish Mother ( and believe me there ARE similarities!) I would wring my hands and say
"enough already!"


Off to plant my onions

Not A Real Knob in sight

Well if you enjoy a rather slow moving story about the friendship between a Victorian cross dressing waiter and a cross dressing lesbian house painter then Albert Nobbs is surely the film you would choose on a blustery Sunday Afternoon.

Not surprisingly there is not a Knob in sight in Glen Close's strange little tale of an ageing servant (Miss Close) who as an orphan disguised herself as a man in order to escape abuse and find some standing in a world which simply did not support a lone woman with no family.

In the film "Albert" is portrayed as a sad, isolated and somewhat emotionally closed character, ever fearful of being found out from his repressed, sexually confused little world; a robotic existence which is only thawed by a chance meeting with Hubert Page (Janet McTeer) a male acting lesbian , who exhibits a cracking pair of bazookas to Nobbs at a somewhat critical moment in the proceedings

Mc Teer 's performance is nicely judged

How people live with unhappiness when repressed by abuse, upbringing, class and sexism is this film's main theme; a theme that is only really successfully broached in the all too few and rather moving scenes between the icy and naive Mr Nobbs and the emotionally connected and butch Mr Page

Not the best film I have seen recently. But an interesting if melancholic effort nevertheless......

Saturday in the garden with Maude (aka Chris)

Webcam 15.10pm Trelawnyd, North Wales, The World

Now I should be the one slumbering in this photo
Just One hour's sleep in 24..... but as you can see, although I have a face that looks like a duvet in drastic need of an iron....I am still up and trying to look "with it"
Last night was a busy shift and an incredibly sad one
I won't bother elaborating
Chris is enjoying the surprisingly warm afternoon here in North Wales.
The garden is peaceful, and his birthday kindle lies unused.
I feel that we could be expecting the vicar for tea!

Things Change, Things Stay The Same

We are all just like chickens.
Well, to be more specific,
our lives are somewhat similar to those experienced by my colourful "crackhead whores", to Vinegar Tits' battling existence 
to Sorrel and her kamikaze chick's peaceful salad days.
Like them, we all just bumble on
Most of us live within the physical and psychological confines of our own back yards.
Sure we have the complications of paying bills, of family traumas, personal triumphs,  milestones, disasters and the "colour" of life in this complicated modern world, but essentially we are chickens, bumbling along together ,
the great and the good .


Now where am I going with all this?
Well , I'll tell you
...it comes from catching up with old friends,
it comes from a timely email from a loved one across the globe
and it comes from the timely realisation that the banalities of life often "take over" from what is important in the world. And that is our relationships.


As a gay man of a certain "age" I have always prided myself on keeping in touch with people.
I think of myself as "thoughtful" 
I "make the effort" so to speak
And for the most part ( and when comparing myself to the male species in general) I think I am pretty good and touching base.. but in recent times I have let that slide somewhat.
A birthday forgotten, an email not sent, a phone call not made
You all know the story.


yadda yadda yadda
Over the last couple of days I caught up with a year's worth of friend news.
Some news, like my own was normal banality.
Other news was much more poignant and important.


On both sides.


and it was good to share.


It's easy to get out of the habit

Sheffield@night

Too much wine

Lots of Gossip
Several Group Hugs

a hangover of some note
A FAT BASTARD fried Breakfast

A Gud Night

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