Bitter & Twisted

Monday it was all about a spunky Irish Staff Nurse,
Yesterday it was a piece about modern art
Today, we are back to normal,
It's a blog about a bitter and twisted white guinea fowl called Angostura

Angostura merrily ripping the arse feathers from a clueless Boris

In this world  mean animals are just as common as mean people.

Often there is no reason for it, as it is fairly rare that an animal has experienced an abusive and dysfunctional upbringing that could be blamed for ingrained antisocial behaviour.

Some animals are just bad tempered bastards, plain and simple!

I have once such animal, and her name is Angostura.

Angostura is a white female guinea fowl.

She is around two years old, and was brought to me by a poultry keeper from Prestatyn who asked if I could take her because she was just  too noisy to keep in a built up residential area.

The real reason for him re homing her , I suspect was a somewhat different story

Anyway, for those that don't know, guinea fowl can be incredibly noisy.

Males and females have distinctly different calls, but both can fire off warning calls with the intensity of an average machine gun when the mood takes them. In a town, this ability is an obvious no-no. In the country, however, these calls can be a vital alarm, warning me and everyone else within the village envelope that a fox is lurking somewhere out in the long grass.

My resident guinea fowl, Hughie, little Ivy and Alf are cracking watchdogs.

They will chatter angrily amongst themselves if they see so much as a cat that they don't recognise, and will scream a warning to anyone that is happy to listen if the animal farts in the wrong direction.....Angostura,however, is a somewhat different kettle of fish.

Most of her day is spent plotting murder and mayhem rather than watching and warning the field population. She is a bitch and is not a happy bunny.

The recipients of her bad temper, are the slower, weaker and more gentle of the field birds and in this respect, Angostura is no different than the average school yard bully.

50 times a day, and with her little black flinty eyes burning with uncontrolled anger, she will suddenly zoom in on a victim,  gallop up to it,  and then will grab a gobful of feathers before ripping them out with a somewhat theatrical flourish.before running away.

It's not a nice personality trait.

This morning I had had just about enough of her, for not only had she happily removed most of Boris' bum feathers as soon as his back was turned she had started to notice Sorrel's tiny single baby who had been hidden away in the allotment nursery cage with a worrying intensity..so it was effectively one spat too far when I spied her tugging at the tail feathers of a passing Indian Runner Duck at feeding time

Picking up a couple of tin feeding bowls and hissing a somewhat undignified "YOU ROTTEN LITTLE MISERABLE BASTARD!",I proceeded to chase the tiny nine inch bird around the field flinging the bowls at Angostura as I did so.

The chase carried on until I lost all my puff, and as I stood in the centre of the field all red faced and breathless, Angostura  retreated quite unscathed to the top of the Churchyard wall, where she watched me silently with her black, hard little eyes.

My neighbour Mandy who was pottering about her front lawn when all this was going on,

didn't batter an eyelid

She's well used to me after 6 years of such behaviour

Angostura 1

John 0

Christina's World

I am not really a fan of modern art, but every time Chris and I have visited New York, we try and make time to visit The Museum Of Modern Art on W53rd Street.
Years ago, one painting caught my attention and my imagination. It was Christina's World by Andrew Wyelth  Now, I had no idea just how famous the painting was in America, I was simply drawn to the picture's strange story of a frail, faceless woman in a field.
The inspiration for the painting was a lady called Christina Olsen, a probable polio sufferer, who Wyelth had once seen crawling across the Olsen family farmland. The model for the painting was in fact Wyelth's wife Betsy, who introduced him to Christina in 1939 and the two families became close friends for many, many years
Interestingly Christina, her brother Alvaro and Wyelth are all buried in the same cemetery , near to the Olsen farm in Maine
When I first saw the painting, I fell into conversation with an elderly New Yorker who asked me how the painting made me feel. I told him that I thought it was in many ways a powerful piece and that it reminded me of patients I had nursed with  paralysis.
This was before I knew any history of the painting, and my companion not only explained to me all about Christina Olsen but also took some time explaining that Andrew Wyelth was grieving for his father and nephew, who died in a train accident, when he painted the work.
"That's why the colours are all muted and the subject is so melancholic" I remember him explaining
I have loved this painting ever since.
To me it isn't a sad piece of work, but a hopeful one
It portrays someone who lives in a small, safe life......
A woman who looks into her world rather than gazing wistfully away from it


(We have a postcard of the painting on our fridge in the kitchen....I caught myself looking at it over morning coffee...hence the post! x)

Eunice Remembered

Funny how memory works.
One minute at the ungodly hour of 7am I am trying to give a cockerel his daily antibiotic
The next I am standing like a loon with a small smile upon my face, remembering the antics of a lumpy, much loved eccentric Irish nurse I once worked with by the name of Eunice.
Eunice was a ward manager's dream of a nurse.
She was a middle aged grafter; a carthorse of a nurse who would slog her guts out for a shift and still retain her loud,innately naive and essentially good natured personality, a vital aspect of keeping morale up in a high stressed environment.
Possessing a broad North Irish accent that could cut bread, Eunice could, at times be, incredibly  insensitive ( and loudly so!), but as she often "put her foot into things" without any maliciousness  whatsoever,  her faux pas were generally viewed with some affection.by staff and patients alike.
Three "Eunice" episodes come to mind.....
Well with a handful of squirming cockerel, they came into my mind this morning.


Once we had a bit of a gangster admitted several weeks after he was the victim of a drive by shooting He possessed a little bit of a "bad boy" reputation,especially when nurse/patient relationships where involved, a fact that resulted in the more nervous of the staff giving him a wider berth. Eunice either forgot or chose to disregard this fact and I remember seeing her cheerfully whistling her way up the ward corridor with a tray of tea things when she spied him sitting up in bed in his side room all buff and bare chested.
She looked at him for a moment and yelled
"och YOU'RE a fine figure of a man!"
The patient half smiled at the comment and Eunice continued
"Have you an extra nipple there? so  you have?"
The patient looked down at his chest and frowned
"It's a bullet hole scar" he said rather testily
"Och it looks just like a nipple to me!" Eunice shouted cheerfully and went on her way!
You couldn't make it up!


Another time, I recall meeting up with an incredibly distraught family in the public cafe which was situated by the main entrance of the Spinal Unit.It was one of those unexpected meetings that had to be dealt with "then and there" and using all of my counselling skills and sensitivity I found myself on my knees holding a mother's hand as she almost hysterically vented her grief and anxieties.
Eunice came out of a nearby hospital shop weighted down with chocolate for the ward staff and bounded over.
Without a thought she pushed between me and the relative and slowly inserted a family sized MARS bar into my uniform pocket, where it poked up next to my pens and scissors! 
"Excellent for stress" she bellowed before skipping off, leaving me and the relative ever slightly bemused!


But my overwhelmingly affectionate and sweetest memory of Eunice was from Lodge Moor Hospital, which was the first rehabilitation unit I worked with her . I had finished my morning shift early and was walking up the long, long pre war main corridor for home when I heard her shout "Hold onto yer drawers!!".
In the distance I spied one of the electric porters "buggies" coming towards me rather erratically ( you know the ones you see in 1960's movies towing the catering wagons) and as it got closer I noticed that Eunice was driving it. Four or five  shopworn rehab nurses were perched precariously on the back of it, all of them waving quite gaily and as it shot past me , I heard Eunice yell
"we've all had a bad shift and couldn't be ARSED walking back from the diving room"
Open mouthed I then watched the buggy turn the wrong corner , and with a loud bang it careered into the WRVS tea bar, scattering old ladies and overturning tables as it did so.
You could run by the seat of your pants in the nhs then.....
Today
You would be shot!
hey ho

Garden- May 2012

Showing off one's garden is exactly the same as writing a blog.......

ie you only show what you want to share

The piles of rubbish, shady areas,  

disappointing flower beds and infertile areas
of both

are mostly all tucked safely right out of sight

Suo-gan - Bryn Terfel -

Bryn never sang this Welsh Lullaby in tonight's concert, but I thought I would post it anyway.
He didn't sing that many Opera pieces and songs either, letting the recipients of his scholarships (young talented singers and musicians from Wales ) showcase their own talents, but what he did sing was impressive...especially a particularly nice version of the Police's Roxanne

Bada- bing- bada boom!

"Our" dog breeder once gave me a bit of invaluable advice about the vagaries  of dog illnesses.
"Don't worry too much about your dog" she said brusquely "as long as it will eat a piece of toast!"
For some strange reason dogs seem to love toast.
In our house, given our more cosmopolitan tastes, the dogs will do ANYTHING for a quick bite of a bagel.
Now we don't do those awful "traditional New York"  bagels that come in a synthetic pack of 5....no sir---ee......we wouldn't wipe our bums on something as artificial as those.. no we, as a family are addicted to freshly baked bagels from Sainbury's bakery which are as traditionally tasting as ones we have eaten in the deli's of New York. 
Mabel had a real talent when it came to eating bagels. Given the size of her chops, she could get a whole one into her mouth without watering an eyeball. The terriers are much more civilized in their eating habits and will line up rather politely at the breakfast table, ever hopeful for a the odd morsel
They don't get a lot though
Bagels are an impressively low 3 points of weightwatchers
Badabing-bada boom

Tonight we are off to Bangor
For those that don't know Bangor is North Wales' only University City.
and apart from being the academic centre of excellence, the place, in my humble opinion, is a shit hole.
With a non student population of a mere 13 thousand, Bangor is more like a parochial small town rather than a true multicultural city,but occasionally something of interest can rear it's head amid the handful of Welsh "Weatherspoon" pubs, Greg's the bakers and Blodwyn's Beauty Parlour
Tonight Bryn Terfel will be singing to mark the centenary of "PJ Hall" at the University and we have tickets!!!... which is a real treat. 
Janet ( sister) has been conscripted for hen duty, so we have no need to rush back..... and may even have time to share a little pinot before driving home...... mind you where we are going to find a wine bar in Bangor  that does not cater for the Lambrini brigade?

Pass The Torch and Long Live The King

What have Mikhail Zolotovitsky, Paul Gavin,Terry Hughes and Robin Govier (pictured) got in common?

Well these four men, whose ages range from 23 to 76 will be four of the torchbearers of the Olympic Flame when it passes through our small part of North Wales on the 29th of May.
According to the official website, the torch will pass a mile or so south of Trelawnyd and I for one will be waving my Union Jack with game gay abandon as one of the chaps passes by.
I am a fan of the Olympics....and I am pleased that we are hosting the games.
I am not a sports fan though....all that running and jumping stuff leaves me a little cold, but as a celebration of positivity and a most welcomed panacea to the bloody awful mess the bankers have wrought on the world, I cannot wait to see fellow blogger Nota Bene and the other thousands of volunteers waving their collective flags at the opening ceremony.
It will, I am sure bring a tear to my eye!


Closer to home, I have been witness to a certain change in the power base within the hen community on the field. It had to come I suppose...a kind of Shakespearean tale is developing where the existing king ( the old cockerel Stanley) is becoming physically less dominant and noticeably frailer whereas his son (The buff but slightly nervous Badger) is developing into a magnificent adult bird.
Stanley is around seven, which is a fair age for a male who is constantly supervising and shagging a large group of gals during daylight hours, and like any ageing lothario he has got to a stage where the mind is willing but the body is weak.
Fairly soon the king will be dead.....and I will be thinking and saying "long live the new king"


This morning Stanley has an inflamed and closed right eye. He has lost a little weight and feels a little thinner than he used to be. I have treated him with antibiotics and have set him up by himself with extra food and water in his own run in sight of his adoring ladies.
He is an ideal cockerel. He is a gentle natured, vigilant protector of the flock and during the occasional threat from a marauding fox has always put himself into harms way to keep his own hens  safe and I hope his son, who is the spit of his father, will eventually take over the mantle and the responsibility of the old king with such dedication and bravery.

The Old King

Just Panties (What Else Do I Need?) for Nigel

Chris is still away today but seemed to have enjoyed the West End Production of SWEENEY TODD very much....
It never fails to amuse me that the most dire and black of stories can be adapted into a Hollywood style musical....
This clip is a case in point and kind of dovetails quite nicely into the slightly surreal "sausage" blog entry of this morning
The "famous" Panties song is from The Poseidon Adventure- An Upside Down Musical
This is for my friend Nigel
CONGRATULATIONS
xxx