Eat Your Heart out Tony Blair

You can tell that the standing  Women's Institute speaker in the above photo is in fact me, mainly because she has a large gravy stain all down her front!

Today I know I have have "made it!"

My life is now complete!

I have given my first talk to an appreciative group of the Rhyl WI

I must admit everyone seemed to enjoy  my brief lecture, and even the lady with the hearing aid seemed to keep up with me, though I am sure I babbled on a little quickly for her.
Perhaps they were being rather polite
as the talk subject
" a history of the gay hotspots of South Yorkshire"
 could have been just a little racy for them !
anyhow
Weaver Of Grass 

you were mentioned!!!!

I left before they sang Jerusalem

It would have made me cry

ps I was joking about the "hotspots"

The Brahams Blues

.

Over the last couple of months blogger has gone out of it's way to make blogging just that little more difficult for all of us.

I don't know if it is just this,or a sort of amalgamation of other factors, but I think we have all seen various favourite "onliners"  saying goodbye to their online diaries in order to re join their real world pastimes..

As many of us have plodded on, they have, with a word or two of explanation,  hung up their webpages and left them hanging on the web, like gravestones in a graveyard

Blogging, I have always thought, has that potential for fulfilling the need of someone who embarks in a conversation with a stranger on the train.

It can be psychotherapy , where emotional, psychological and social comment can be regurgitated safely away, shared and discussed with a potential group of despots from all over the globe.

It also can be a way of relaxing  the downtime hours;of sharing a life, an interest, an enjoyment in writing or design within a medium which perhaps has that simple ability to underline the fact that "we are here!- we are not invisible!- we have something to share...we have something to say."

Brahms Symphony No 3 is just an ideal piece of music to listen to when contemplating such matters. Press play and have a muse over your morning coffee.....

Information Is Power

Gladys Jones ( Auntie Glad) rang yesterday and left an answerphone message

Could I call around sometime in the afternoon?

Of course I did, and took with me a spare pork chop from the freezer, so I could swap it for the bag of scones that had been freshly baked and wrapped for me.

I had earmarked the chop for another of the village ladies (also called Jones) , , who had made me a jar of chutney last week, but unfortunately she had suffered a sudden stroke on Sunday and is now in hospital.

True to form, Gladys knew all about the other Mrs Jones. The nerve -centre  which is her aga warmed kitchen, could put MI6 to shame, as information from every corner of the village is transmitted with lightening speed through a whole host of "operatives" back to her.

She is an elderly version of Judi Dench from SKYFALL

Omniscient and benign.

I know the other Mrs Jones and her family well.

She has visited me often on the field when the weather has been kind

and always refers to me in her sing song Welsh accent as a formal "Mr Gray"

I will take the dogs up to the family farm today to see how she is doing.

Gladys has known Mrs Jones since the 1940s and as we chatted I mentioned that only in 2009 I remember seeing Mrs Jones hanging onto the back of a tractor when she thumbed a lift from Gentleman farmer Ralph back up to her old farm

 (Mrs Jones and The Tractor)

Gladys smiled

"she was a lot younger then " she noted

and I smiled too

Mrs Jones was a youthful 83 at the time

Doing The Right Thing

The reporting of abuse at the Winterbourne View

private Hospital near Bristol is nothing new. From our very early days as  student nurses, we was always sobered by tales of mistreatment and bad practice regaled to us by nurse tutors and senior management staff who would not ever permit abuse to occur on their watch, But abuse, especially in the more "unpopular" areas of nursing  ie, psychiatry, the nursing of vulnerable adults/  care of the elderly/ keeps happening, especially when ill trained, non qualified staff are not supervised, supported and developed well enough.

In my career, I have only been involved in one case of potential abuse.

It was in psychiatry, when a seriously ill female patient made an allegation that a male member of staff had assaulted her. The male member of staff , who was a rather dis-likable fellow, denied the charges, and was suspended until a full and proper investigation was carried out.

I recall the atmosphere on the ward could be cut with a knife as petty feuds, gossip, and personal and professional loyalties all clashed terribly and even when nothing was proved one way or another, the fall out for the nurse involved was serious enough for him to leave his post .

Years later I remember discussing the incident with an old colleague and friend and she informed me that she had worked with the patient after she was discharged home and subsequently found out  that the abuse was a mistaken memory of real abuse handed out by the patient's husband. A man that who looked remarkably like the male nurse who was accused.in the first place.

Apparently the husband had beaten his mentally ill wife for years.

No one involved in the original investigation ever realised this fact

The abuse at Winterbourne Hospital by the sound of it was endemic and part of the culture of the place. It reeked of bad management and as a result protocols will be designed and policies will be enforced to make sure that "this will never happen again"

But as I recall that unpopular male nurse from my own nursing past, I do shout out a word of caution here.Let us ,as a profession, remember the nurse in all this as well as the patient.

His career was effectively ended by a mistake, and even though nothing was proved, I think our overwhelming need to blame and our subjectivity took over

Poisoned Twister

I have never had a real problem with rats.

From time to time, their tell tale borrows can be seen sliding their way underneath some of the coops, but with some careful administration of poisoned pellets down their runs, the threat of any long term problem is usually done and dusted with remarkable speed.

I don't like rats around.

When he was a mere kitten Albert took on a rat on the field, and very nearly lost the fight until George interceded and broke the little bastard's neck with one powerful snap.

Yes....rats can be dangerous.

Yesterday I noticed a couple of rat "runs" under the turkey house and after the hens had been safely locked away I placed a load of the cerise poisoned pellets on a small tray and slid them under the house where they could be munched upon in private.

This morning I had forgot all about the poison and had completed most of the morning jobs when I just so happened to look over at the turkey house.

I KNOW it's a soddin Hamster!

Scattered all around the the side of the coop, and thankfully out of the way of the ewes were the pellets. The rats (devious little buggers that they are) had munched the poison over night and then they had pulled the tray out into the open where they had scattered the pellets in the grass with gay abandon.

The hens were all out and bright blue pellets to a hen with a brain the size of an average pea means only one thing

"DINNER"

With the ever curious warrens galloping forward  in the pouring rain, there was only one thing I could do to stop a mass suicide from taking place and so I sat down on the poison, effectively covering it from prying beaks

what followed next was a bit like some sort of odd game of poultry twister

with the ever knowing hens trying to get themselves a gob-full of goodies as I tried manfully to cover any stray pellet with some part of my body.
I was down and dirty in the muddy grass for an estimated 20 minutes!

Anyway, I think I succeeded , but remained, soaked  on the ground until all of the girls had became bored with the game and had wandered off. I only left the field after every one of the miniature pellets had been removed , it took an age

As I walked back to the cottage, looking, I may add ,like the "wreck of the Hesperus"

I spied neighbour Mike who just gave me one of those 

"I won't ask" type of looks.

I threw him a look which stated "don't!"

The next time I see a rat, I'll strangle the bastard with my bare hands

Best Of British

Odd Looking, camp and truly terrifying ( no not me but Javier Bardem!)

I won't pick the whole Skyfall to pieces too much.

I have not really got the time today

Suffice to say that I enjoyed the quality of it all.

It is, a bit of a class act......and these are a few reasons why

• Director Sam Mendes allows a quality cast to shine alongside the usual wham, bang, wallop of care chases, doomed bond girls and big brassy opening credits
• Judy Dench is absolutely cracking as the "treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen"  00 leader.M . She underplays wonderfully , giving a certain sympathy to an essentially unsympathetic character
• New Q (Ben Whishaw),M's aide Tanner(Rory Kinnear) and fellow agent Eve (Naomi Harris) are given space to impress as the plot hurtles onwards in typical 007 style and they support a rather shopworn Bond ( The human but never too humane Danial Craig) but are certainly not overwhelmed by him and his usual flippant charisma
• Javier Bardem is an inspired choice for the 23rd Bond Villain. His opening speech in the movie,( a chilling monologue about rats that inhabit a small island), is worthy of something Hanibal Lector would deliver, and sets the scene for a truly frightening Bond adversary who is not adverse in a bit of camp, malevolent seduction techniques when Bond is haplessly tied to a chair...
• Mendes obviously has a great deal of fun incorporating the tried and tested Bond Clichés  alongside some innovative cinematography and fresh ideas of how MI6 could work in a modern world.

I enjoyed it all, even though it was slightly overlong....and I suspect that Mendes, Dench and cinematographer Roger Deakins may be in line for some Oscar nominations in 2013.... 

I hope so.......

The new Bond is a class act

But we shall see

8.5 out of 10

SkyFall Premier (Prestatyn?)

 Ok just a couple of photos......I wanted at least one to prove that I can scrub up! 

Mind you only my underpants were my own!

Above Chris, George Clooney and sister Ivana Trump

Ivana again and Mick Jagger (brother in law was playing "Jaws" note my sister's paracetamol wrappers on his teeth!!)The whole night was , at times rather sureal

I will review it all tomorrow

No.....I Expect You To Die Mr Bond

No NOT the cast.... we were in the audience!

Tonight Chris and I will be attending the premier of the latest James Bond film SKYFALL at Prestatyn Scala Cinema. Apparently it is a black tie jobby, with all the money collected from ticket sales going to St Kentigern's hospice.( the hospice that my brother had some respite care in).

My sister and hubby will be going, so it sounded like it would be a bit of fun

Now Chris will go directly from work with his DJ but I am in a bit of a quandary, for I have no posh formal evening ware to ,well, to wear so to speak..( "quelle surprise?" I hear you all whisper under your breaths)

Now before some of you suggest that I don a figure hugging all-in-one cat suit and go as Pussy Galore--DON'T!, I shall,I am sure come up with something as I know that alongside some of the glittering "beautiful" people that are going from Prestatyn, there will be a few Bond villains lurking around, most of whom will, I am sure, be stroking  white fluffy childrens' toys in typical Mike Myers form

It wont be the first time I have attended a Prestatyn  "first night" so to speak.

Many years ago now the family were renound for raiding their dress-up boxes and making tits out of themselves at the old Scala.... well tele was rather shite in the 1980s!

Above is a photo from the early 80s when the family all agreed to dress up as cowboys and Indians before we went to watch a local production of Oklahoma which starred, amongst others my Uncle Bert and Aunt Judy.

If you look closely, I am the fresh faced young thing in the centre of the photo with my arm around the redneck hillbilly!

The best outfit must certainly gone to the strange figure on the far right ( the masked and bearded lone ranger) that was my sister's maverick mother-in-law  who was in her late seventies then ...I remember her with some affection swigging from a bottle of bourbon with some gusto  as we all queued up to go in!

Now that's class!

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ps I have just asked a passing neighbour what bond villain I could possibly dress up as t5his evening and without hesitation he said Hugo Drax from Moonraker

what do you think?