Evie's Christening

Mum Rebecca and Evie ( third from left)  my nephew Chris is far right

Being  middle aged old poofs, we are not really used to Christenings.As far as I recall they can be rather stiff affairs with one half of the congregation trying to look sombre as a host of small, scrubbed shiny children wriggle loudly in their parents' arms, desperate to be able to gallop around the aisles like puppies around a garden.
My great niece,Evie, was Christened today in Ormskirk's Catholic Church . At the very start of the proceedings the affable elderly priest,Fr Godric Timney, underlined just how informal he wanted things to be, and I suspect most of the congregation was just a little surprised just how informal it would be as he chatted away to us, the God Parents ( who her quizzed good naturedly about their roles) and to all of the children present, who he called up to the front of the church to participate in the proceedings.
Several of the children were given "jobs" to do. One was sent for the anointing oil, another held the Christening stole whilst another was sent packing to get the candles. It was a delightfully informal affair.
Towards the end of the "get together" ( I hesitate calling it a service), Evie, overshadowed the chattering kids at the front by crying away quite lustily and the Priest, who was obviously an old hand at these things sang out
"Bawl away Evie, I don't mind, for I have the microphone!!!"
It was lovely.
After the service we joined around 80 guests for a cracking meal at a local restaurant and by late afternoon we were winging our way back over the Welsh Border, both Chris and I asleep in the back of my sister's car, like a pair of big toddlers in our booster seats

and all I drank was diet coke!

Erddig and My Favourite Lesbian

Chris and I outside Erddig

Nigel and I 

Like Three middle aged old poofs Nigel, Chris and I all traipsed over to the National Trust House at Erddig for a mooch around the house, grounds and cafe. The rain held off and the trip proved to be a rather relaxing and enjoyable afternoon 
Speaking of middle aged old poofs.. here is a somewhat bawdy clip of my favourite lesbian Miriam Margolyes being interviewed a few years alongside the charming Stanley Tucci and the non-flavour of the month comic Jimmy Carr......
she tells a bloody CRACKING story
Enjoy x

J. Brahms

Wales is again on a flood alert for this weekend and the weather has again closed in on the village, making it seem deserted, lonely and rather miserable.

I have no farting anecdotes, animal poo stories and eccentric village character tales to share today...it is the day I will be cleaning the cottage before our friend Nigel arrives and it is the day that I will run the duster and the dyson around the church 

Even the dogs do not want to leave the warmth of the kitchen sofa

This piece of music, is perhaps Brahms's at his most lyrical and melancholic.....

It sums up this kind of grey day perfectly 

Prometheus

Some beautifully designed visuals
and a nicely crafted performance by Michael Fassbender
isn't enough to save this Hollow venture into pre Sigourney Weaver land......
6/10
Hey ho
(ps I thought I was the only one in the cinema and seconds after I sat down , I ungraciously forced out an incredibly loud fart!!
A minute later I heard a single cough from one of the seats in the back row
"Beam me up Scottie"

Who would have thought it?

The pretty pre Raphaelite Nurse brought her scrambled egg back with a laugh this morning.
She did not have a clue about just why an egg should be filled with chilli flavoured scrambled egg that is until she had read my blog last night ( I didn't even know that she read it) and she took it all in good stead as good looking nurses have a tendency to do....
It never ceases to amaze me that some 350 souls look at this blog daily. Of course some of that number will be directed to the site by google who will pick up on my more racy of "key words"  such as "crackhead whores"........bless them, I guess that the everyday adventures of a set of bald hens would let these clients down somewhat, and their fat little fingers would be a blur on the delete button.......but I must say, to all of the others who make the effort daily to read this drivel....a big thank you.
I now have 414 followers. Perhaps a quarter of which call in regularly and it does tickle me somewhat to think of the eclectic mix of people that are lurking out there in blogland....
So to all of the....

Chuckling Yorkshire teachers that think they live on a tropical island,
Canadian ladies with exquisite tastes,
hard working farmers from the American South and Midwest,
hard working farmers ( and their wives) from the UK!
Hard working small holders from Wales and France
Gentle ex pats with artistic pasts,
Aussie Bush dwellers and Yanks from all states
Owls, Pear Trees,Parrots,Foxes,River dwellers, Undertakers, Opera Singers and the odd housewife with a story,
Idiot Gardeners and the campy film reviewers
Zombie lovers and sweet natured dog owners,
Germans,Canadians, aussies and Kiwis
Londoners and Country dwellers!
Hippies and goats! oh and my "locals"
Lesbian mums and Californian Cafe owners with "issues"
People with heart (s)
People who rant,
Gentle gardeners , gentle photographers and gentle writers,
The Gentle
Arty boozers from four continents ,
Diary keepers, The social commentators..... the middle aged guy with a story!
The sad and the happy,The Gay and the straight,
The great and the good....

http://steve-bailey.blogspot.co.uk

Thank You, again!!!

OMG an egg that scrambled itself!

There is an egg eater amongst my hen population,

The broody hens are causing congestion in the broody boxes which isn't helping but

I think I know who the culprit  is...

She is one of the crackhead whores.

Yesterday I tried an old trick to teach her a bit of a lesson.

I blew an egg, scrambled it slightly, and mixed a load of chilli powder into the mix before returning the mixture back into the shell. I then placed the egg back into the targeted coup and promptly forgot about it!

Today, as I was strimming the hawthorn hedge, I let one of the village children collect the eggs for me. She took a dozen home and I sold the remainder to the pretty nurse with bright ginger hair (I don't know her name)

I have only just realised that the doctored egg had been placed in the one of the sold boxes!

Now how do I explain that one?

"It's all in your mind"

When I was a psychiatric nursing student, as part of our "reading list" we were asked to watch two movies. The 1965 film Repulsion and the 1948 American production of The Snake Pit.
The Roman Polanski film Repulsion chronicles the mental deterioration of young Belgian woman ( Catherine Deneuve), who is shut away in her isolated London flat, and features some striking sequences that outline  paranoid delusions and visual hallucinations suffered by someone who is experiencing an acute psychotic episode.
Even by today's standards, it is truly a disturbing piece of work.


The Snake Pit , which was more melodramatic in style, was a film that was instrumental in reforming in patient mental health treatment in the United States, for it graphically outlined abuse by ill- trained and damaged nursing staff as well as the more archaic aspects of asylum treatments. The film also looked at the inpatient experience through the eyes of a patient, which was revolutionary for the 1940s


Both films provided invaluable talking points during our nurse training.

Olivia De Havilland giving it "large"

The lone " unstable "woman who is caught up in a "is she really mentally ill or is she speaking the truth?" kind of drama has long been a bit of a Hollywood cliché. It is perhaps a more palatable way of presenting the true reality of a mental breakdown, a reality which has seldom resulted in box office gold and/or indeed critical acclaim
The realistic depiction of mental illness on film, by the very nature of the beast, is painful, hard work and can be intensely frightening...

Last night I went to see the Scandinavian film Babycall, a film that brought into play every "is she really a nutter?" cliche known to man.
The story centres upon the mentally fragile Anna, (Noomi Rapace) who has just escaped an abusive and violent relationship. She has been relocated into an isolated high story flat in Oslo with only  sparse contact with social services as company.
So that she can constantly monitor her troubled 9 year old son, she sets up a baby alarm in his room and during the night she starts to hear the screams of an unknown child being abused.....

However, things are not quite what they seem..........


Noomi Rapace

As a study of a woman that could be suffering from delusional schizophrenia, the film is a cracking watch, thanks primarily to Rapace who captures perfectly the brittleness and blunting of effect the abused Anna would show, but unfortunately the whole thing veers from an interesting psychological study of a mental breakdown into a somewhat confusing supernatural chiller.......

Rapace, I will give 9/10
The film , I would give a disappointing 6.5

Fields Of Dreams

I am always moved by people that have dreams, people that aspire to something.
You see it everyday in the High Street when another shop opens.
A livelihood that has to face the gauntlet of recession and hardship.
That shop is someone's dream.
A passion and a hope.

Last night I went to the Trelawnyd and Gwaenysgor Community Council meeting and in passing had chance to read a photocopy of the Prestatyn Weekly Newspaper dated the 23rd of October 1909.
In it was an article discussing an initiative by Mr Michael Antonio Ralli,who was the Greek Consul in Liverpool, to build our village Hall as a way of giving jobs and motivation to the local unemployed.
Ralli was a somewhat colourful character to be found in a predominantly Welsh village. He was a Greek from Odessa who made a small fortune importing cotton from Russia when American could not export it's own during the American Civil War and I find it fascinating that after a period living in London and Liverpool
he and his wife Polynmia, would end up dominating an insular and quiet backwater village.
A Ukrainian Greek as Lord of the Manor
How Exotic!

Polynmia Ralli

Trelawnyd ( or Newmarket as it was formally known) was Ralli's dream, he clearly wanted it to develop in status when he gifted the Memorial Hall to the village
The newspaper cutting eluded to that fact when it stated that Ralli's wish was to make Newmarket a "Garden City", a rather grand dream for a village of 600 simple souls, but a rather sweet one nevertheless.
 I wonder what Ralli would have made of the fact the Newmarket title was renamed Trelawnyd in 1954...
The "new" name was in keeping , I suppose, for it has a name that Ralli might of liked
.....Trelawnyd  literally  means " a town full of wheat"