" and..WHAT Time do you call this???"

23.00 last night I was scouring the field borders with one of those solar garden lights in my hands searching for two lost runner ducks.
I could have done without it all, I am full of cold at the moment...a product of a wet, depressing week here in one of the wettest June's this side of the Pennines
For some strange reason two of the older girls have been flitting off to God-knows-where for God-knows-what and have been strangely absent for much of the day. Only after dark have they finally appeared anxious and appearing rather contrite at the front of the duck house, where I have found them quietly waiting for muggins here to use my opposable thumb skills to open the house door.
Last night it was going on 11.30 when the two appeared, a stupid time for a surly teenager to stagger home let alone two stupid ducks with brains the size of an average peanut.
The two girls were ripe for fox bait, and I told them so, but logic and anger is lost on ducks that spend most of their lives screaming and running around if you fart in the wrong direction, so I had to shut up and put them to bed with a kiss.
As I was giving the ducks a ticking off several surly teenagers walked up the lane for the cottage. It happens quite a bit as they tend to occasionally congregate at a "picnic area" in one of the sheep fields so that nefarious teenage activities can take place.
Seeing me standing in the field holding a solar light  up in my right hand, I heard one hiss to his friend

"Fuck.... it's the statue of liberty", which I thought was quite a witty statement to say after a probable 2 litres of cheap cider and a couple of large spliffs
I always thought that waiting up, late a night for the kids to come home from a fun filled night out, was something that would never-EVER happen to me.


I knew I would never experience that gut wrenching anxiety that parents have to go through when they think that paedophiles are hiding in every phone booth, just waiting to get their grubby little mitts on some teenager's knicker elastic but what is happening in reality?
I am finding myself,standing at the lounge window, chewing  my fingernails to the bone-willing 2 ducks that look like upright wine bottles to come home before curfew........what will I be saying next?...I ask myself
Will I catch myself yelling at Boris "You treat this place like a hotel!" when he drops his grain all over the floor of the turkey house or perhaps I will resort to the tried and tested " well if you don't like my rules you can get your own place!!!" when the geese nip another field visitor....
We all turn into our parents.......it's only a matter of time


ps Bunty has flown the coop so to speak! She has left a small space on the cottage guttering and a load of shit on the tiles....I wish her well

Dinnerladies

Shelagh Openshaw ( the actress Lil Roughley)  appeared in DINNERLADIES for part of only one episode
but writer and performer Victoria Wood very generously gave her one of the best lines in the entire sit come
Don't worry , you don't have to trawl through all ten minutes of it, just go to 5 minutes 33 seconds and play for a minute or two)
Enjoy

Frankenstein and dinner with the Vicar

Now I have never really been a fan of the film maker Danny Boyle.
I liked 28 Days Later...
But the other movies he has made, I can generally take or leave. Having said this, I had heard good things about his stage production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre, and so last night we went to the the encore screening of it at the Scala which starred Jonny Lee Miller as the Monster and flavour-of-the-month Benedict Cummerbatch , as Victor.
The play surprised me.It surprised me because of Miller's performance which dominated the stage with a physicality that wavered impressively between child like exuberance and menacing horror.
And it surprised me because the innovative staging which amongst other things, incorporated a massive steam locomotive whose moving parts were made up of actors ,a massive, fluid chandelier light show and an odd drum-like womb out of which the monster is born, naked and helpless.

Boyle's design is , at times, breathtaking and I couldn't help wondering just what he is going to pull out of his bag with the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
If indeed it is on a par with what I saw last night, the whole thing is going to be thoughtful, slightly quirky and visually very VERY punchy!



Apparently Boyle is using live chickens in his opening ceremony production
So it can't be all that bad!!!!
Tonight we are off out again!
(yes it's all go in Trelawnyd)
I am accompanying Chris to a church dinner in the nearby village of Cwm ( where the three parish congregations in the area get together for a bit of a bun fight)

I am driving and have promised a few villagers that I will give them a lift.....and I had to laugh yesterday when Mrs Trellis called around to see if there was room for her.

I told her that there was and that I would make sure the car was a bit cleaner before I called up for her and after slyly looking at the dog snot smeared windows of the berlingo parked in the driveway she said wryly

"I'll bring my own towel to sit on"

ps Bunty is still sat comfortably on the cottage guttering this morning

Bunty's Little Life

 

She was there again this morning.

Just as she had been over the last four days

A weak homing pigeon sat quietly on the guttering of the cottage

Waiting patiently for some food.

All the neighbours and neighbours grandchildren  are aware that she is about

They all spare her a quick look as they pass,

and we gossip briefly about her when they see me scattering corn on the road where she has realised food will be left

One of the kids has called her Bunty.

In the great scheme of things , a little life of a knackered old pigeon means absolutely nothing,

But do you know what?

to me, who it could be said shares a quiet village based little life

The fate of  Bunty has become quite important

 

In Darkness

Real life heroes are ordinary people that make extraordinary decisions in life.
This certainly can be said of the little known ( well in this country anyway) Polish Sewer worker called Leopold Socha. During the German occupation of the city of Lvov during WW2, Socha found by accident a group of Jews hiding away in the sewers beneath the Ghetto. He agreed to help them for a price, eager to supplement his meagre wages, but over their 18 month period of captivity his mission to protect the small group of survivors became less mercenary and much more personal in nature as his risked his life and those of his own wife and child to care for, what he later termed as "his Jews"
For people that have seen Schindler's List, the story of the reluctant hero will be all too familiar, but director Agnieszka Holland in her film In Darkness has closely followed Socha's emotional  journey which runs  alongside the harrowing subterranean experiences of his eleven charges rather than to concentrate on the German brutalities of the Ghetto Jews.
It is a difficult film at times to watch, especially as we don't have the soaring emotional finale of Spielberg's film to "enjoy" (There is merely an exhausted sense of "getting through things", when the final reel has run)
But, it is a film with some incredible power and dramatic punch all of it's own.


Robert Wieckiewicz gives a convincing and non showy turn as the Leopold, as does Benno Fürmann (right) who plays, Mundek the leader of the Jewish refugees. Both actors give their characters a depth and believability without resorting to the tried and tested  bouts of emotional romping.
A moving, atmospheric and worthy drama
9/10

Local Hero Pat

Pat at one of my first Open days with husband John

I was not going to blog this morning, I didn't have anything really of note to share.
So I was going to leave writing anything until this evening after I had returned from Theatre Clwyd after seeing the Polish war film In Darkness 
However , as I am waiting for the rain to pass so that I can get on with some weeding, I thought I would "big up" one of those unsung heroes that live among all of us, who often never gets the thanks and praise that they deserve.
This morning Pat, (my official animal helper) called around with some post for Chris. A keen gardener, seamstress,embroiderer,Womens Institute leader,cake maker, and all round "good egg" Pat has been the backbone of  village initiatives for many years. 
A busy mother and grandmother, she always finds time in her hectic schedule to help the conservation group, Support the Flower Show,bake for village events and provide an extra pair of hands to me when a sick hen's crop was in need of a rather disgusting "purge" or the piglet needed a jab up the arse.


Yesterday she humped a load of home grown plants to the Coffee morning in the Memorial Hall and sold almost the lot in support of Christian Aid
(it is interesting to note that Trelawnyd as small as it is, is well know for raising around around 1000 pounds each year for this cause).
and tomorrow, no doubt, she will be quietly "getting on and doing" rather than "sitting back and watching daytime trash tv".
Women like Pat ( and these kind of people generally tend to be women in my experience) provide the glue for communities like ours to survive, especially in these modern insular times of  the nuclear family. They can be relayed upon to "get things sorted" and will do so without fanfare, fuss and ego in a world that sometimes never realises the importance of their contributions, especially when it is perhaps viewed as being "out of fashion" and "middle English".


Never under estimate the WI
Remember how they almost brought Tony Blair to his knees!?

Revenge is a Shit filled plastic bag served warm

The Lane

Like most small lanes in this overcrowded country that we live in, the lane outside the cottage can be used as a bit of a rat run. Generally traffic remains light, but what with the "help" of Sat Navs, which occasionally send large lorries to their doom to the dog leg corner right outside our cottage and business men cutting through  from the A55 on their way to the coastal towns, walking down the lane can be filled with potential danger.

Cwm Road (it's not bit enough to BE a road) up to the village

Last Thursday evening I was surprised by a dirty white 4 x 4 down the lane.I was walking the dogs and had Albert in tow, so effectively non of us had any place to go when it roared around the corner into view.

I pulled the dog leads tight and faced the car in the centre of the road forcing him to stop in a hurry and as Albert squeezed himself up through the hawthorn hedge into the safety of the sheep field, I motioned the driver to reverse up a bit so we could reach a field gateway so he could pass us safely.

Now I know I didn't look very happy,

and I know I made it clear that I thought he was going way too fast for the conditions, 

So feeling like a somewhat combative middle aged old fart I prepared for a bit of a battle

But the driver was not having any of it, he inched forward making me pull the dogs up right up into the hedge side and slid past me, flicking me the "Vs" as he did so.

Unfortunately this is not a rare occurrence, not in today's ill mannered driving world!

Yesterday afternoon, I spied the 4 x 4 again when I was out walking the dogs.

It was empty and parked on the road in a small lay by above the village. There was no sign of the driver or anyone else for that matter and on impulse, I reached into my pocket and jammed a rather full plastic bag full of dog shit on a grill by the windscreen wipers

A childish gesture certainly

A satisfying one..........oh yes.............................

Down the Lane

 I am doing a day shift today which is a bummer as the sun is burning brightly and I would have liked to strim the field, so I need to be off to sort the animals out , but before I go I will leave you with a photo of Sorrel's single chick, my one and only "baby" of 2012

 The chick looks like a hen to me, which is a wonderful bonus....and by tradition I asked a passing egg customer ( this time a couple of walkers) to name her. After some time thinking hard, the walkers suggested Celeste......

So....Celeste it is.......

Michael Nyman - The End of the Affair

I just heard this on Radio 3, just as I was locking up the turkeys
More uplifting than the more famous "Diary of Hate" theme, this music complements the Jordan film magnificently
It's one of my favourite film scores....I had forgotten just how powerful it is
Enjoy