"Table for one?"

Miss Haversham

I have a friend who refers to himself as a male spinster

Everyday he faces judgements that  underline the "collective" view that

"Couples are good- singles are bad"

It's an unfortunate and sad state of affairs
.

Yesterday I read with interest James Friel's article on the subject

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20219349

He made that interesting point that at social gatherings he has often been treated abysmally by couples who feel that they have the right to ask him just why he is single?

His struggling answer of

: "I have never found the right person... I am a sad and sorry manchild... I am incapable of love... I am a deviant, and prefer giraffes."... is painful, especially as he always seems to notice the joint eye  rolling between the "couple" doing the asking.
What's that all about?

Friel  also comments that his own reciprocal questions of

"Why have you settled for him? Why are you stuck with her? Were you so afraid of being alone? would never be tolerated in this partner-led world. 

It would be deemed far too rude.
and he's right

Unfortunately we are a species that does not tolerate the single. (And here I am reminded of Anna, the single marran hen who has been banished to the periphery of the field borders by the confident flock hens)

Some of that intolerance of course, comes from the "spinsters" themselves.We all have experienced that lunatic, crazy gal lala from work .The one that cannot quite gel with anyone human even if it is in a benign social setting, Well he or she can provide the template for all normaltons who just choose or find themselves not part of a double act.

Everyone, unfortunately gets "tarred with the same brush"

Almost weekly, I go to the small arthouse cinema in Theatre Clwyd and I usually go alone.

I have no problem with doing so, for me the enjoyment of watching a good film outweighs the effort it takes to drag my sorry arse out into the cold, but I often do get the feeling that I am being judged by people when I am sat there reading my programme and quaffing my diet coke all by myself or when I am ambling around the art gallery on the first floor without the "benefit" of someone else to "share the artists' message" with..

I get the look.... you know "THE LOOK" which says 

"I wonder what he's doing here ......alone?"

It's not a figment of my queeny imagination

It happens........It happens everywhere.

Being alone in public = sad bastard
sad, sad, sad!

There is one exception to this rule... and we all know what it is.....

Take a walk down the beach with a dog on a lead
No bugger will judge you then!

William camouflage for singletons

The Bird (L'Oiseau) and The Bird

Yesterday felt a little melancholy.

Sad news arrived about Mrs Jones, who is deteriorating in hospital. I met with her daughter-in-law and had one of those sad conversations I have had a million times before at work.

It is now the time to support relatives. 

                                                                          *

Last night I went to see the French film L'Oiseau.

It was not an easy watch.

Anna (Sandrine Kimberlain) lives a quiet, pointless and isolated  life in a grubby Bordeaux apartment. She works as a faceless kitchen porter, has frosty relationships with her co-workers and spends most of her spare time alone in a emotionally bankrupt world where she says and feels very little.

Over a lengthy and moody introduction to her somewhat sad life, we gradually find out that Anna has lost a young son, a bereavement that destroyed her marriage,and it is this faceless, unsympathetic grief that director Yves Caumon presents, in all of it's uncompromising and difficult facets.

Anna, is not the gamine little Amelie, existing  in a cute, isolated little world. As portrayed by the tall, shopworn Kimberlain, she is a bookish,difficult, prickly shell of a woman, who is not adverse in picking up drunken strangers at obscure Japanese movies and walking the dark streets of the city at night.

She is not a woman anyone could warm to.

Her salvation comes in the shape of a small pigeon who becomes trapped behind her fireplace. She frees the animal who becomes an uneasy flatmate, and in their brief time together, the bird becomes the emotional catalyst Anna needs to start to move forward.

There is no sentimentality in Anna's psychological journey, indeed Caumon peppers the whole film with a challenging ambiguity. The "bird "is not merely a indication of hope and an object of affection, it could  also be  a mirror image of Anna, an animal trapped by it's own fears and inabilities. Whatever the answer is, Anna's transformation is documented with tremendous care and with meticulous patience,

and although the film is certainly not a "Lassie Come Home" movie, the tiny moment when the pigeon makes "contact" with Anna's buried emotions is incredibly touching to watch.

8/10

.

To bookend this "review" somewhat, I will leave you with some news of the three Marrans who were "donated" to me a few weeks ago.. The chap that brought them , warned me that all were big rangers, so I guess I was not too surprised that one evening only one bird arrived back to her nesting coop.The other two, I suspect crossed the riding stables' fields and have either got lost or got picked off by a predator before they could roost.

Whatever happened, the one lone Marran is proving to be somewhat of a compelling character . Everyday she gallops away from the existing hens to live a solitary, bullied life on the peripheries of the field.

It seems a somewhat sad state of affairs.

I know it sounds somewhat indulgent, but a couple of times a day, I will seek the hen out and will  surreptitiously drop some corn nearby so she can feed without interruption and without bullying from the other hens and the ewes .

And what have I called this sad lonely little character?

Anna of course

Thank You Carnival Committee

Our Broadband has been down, as has the phone.

I have been car-less, phone-less and internet-less over the past few days, and feel, just a little, that I have been transported back to a Trelawnyd of years gone by….

When the word “blog” was a mere spelling mistake!

So please forgive the hiatus…

Yesterday an impressive looking box arrived on the doorstep. Inside were a small collection of tiny English oak saplings, a leftovers present from Trelawnyd’s Carnival committee, who had obtained a whole wood of these little trees as part of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.

(The Woodland Trust donated literally thousands of these saplings to ensure that scores of Golden Jubilee woodlands would be planted up all over the UK)

The Flower Show Committee, of which I am Chair, supported the re-emergence of the Carnival wholeheartedly and made a donation towards their expenses last year. Subsequently they have supported The Flower Show’s wish to plant some British saplings in the “bald spots” of the Churchyard by presenting us with some of their own saplings

It’s good natured mutual support.

That’s what community should be all about in my book.

You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

The oak saplings are tiny and delicate so I have just planted them in my own allotment in order for them to become a little more robust.

Only when they can fend for themselves so to speak, will I transfer them to their final resting place in the old graveyard.

Shiver Me Timbers

Sometimes I think I do live in a kind of rural pantomime.

This morning the RFWF roared past the cottage in his red landrover

He was leaning out of the window with a big grin and looked remarkably like Robert Newton from Treasure Island

"I have found you a ram!" he called out

( I wouldn't have been surprised if he would have added 

"me hearties!!!" whilst waving his cutlass out of the window.

 

I would love to be a "bit of a character"

Not "mad enough to be termed an eccentric"

But mad enough to be seen as "interesting,"

  and different.

It will never happen because I think I am just too bland

But I am working on it.

Years ago, when I was a bank clerk, I recall serving  a rather unkempt lady who we the Nat West Bank staff helpfully described as "nutty as Marathon bar"

(It was renamed Snickers years later btw)

I remember her withdrawing a couple of hundred pounds from her account, which she carefully counted in front of me and then , with slow deliberation, she lifted her blouse and stuffed the 40 five pound notes around the circumference of her bra

As she finished she suddenly thought of something , then retrieving one  crumpled five pound note she asked me for one bag of mixed silver

"Do you know where I am going to put that?" she cackled

"I hesitate to ask" I remember saying

And with a smile she started to feed the coins into a Remembrance collection tin on the bank's counter

After an age, she took all of the plastic poppies out of the tray and went around the bank presenting all of the waiting customers and staff with a flower each.

Eccentric or mentally ill?

who knows..

But I recall she made for a more interesting morning on a drab Welsh morning in Rhyl in 1980

Autumn In The Village

A Brace of Wild Ducks left on a gate

Bonc Terrace above Chapel Street

Sign Outside the Village Hall

The Church ( during Sunday Service- they were singing the hymns when I was there)

The old Chapel (which was a market Hall in 1700)

A lazy blog today.

A walk and a few photos

Rare blue skies

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Short post as I am ust a little jaded

Up late watching The Walking Dead (twice) my fault!

then woken up at 5am as Chris couldn't sleep and was reading the news on his ipad

I am back to work on night shift tonight after a whole month away from intensive care (I had holiday time to take)so if I don't get some quality REM sleep, my eyeballs are going to resemble two fried eggs in a bucket of blood if I am not careful.

So I have a plan

Chris kindly is going to do the shopping,

I am going to walk the dogs

Then I am going back to bed.

Don't expect a great deal from me for most of the day

Poncho

I am changing my image

A poncho on the field?

waddu think?

"Yo! Morse!"

Pittsburgh A lovely city

This blogging thing cracks me up.

I post a throwaway post outlining a somewhat nauseating segment about anal sacs and

BAM!

43 COMMENTS RIGHT OFF!

I think we have all found our level.

Anyway it may surprise you to read that I can be rather squeamish especially when eye and finger injuries are concerned.

Of course I am generally not at work.

I was taught many years ago, when you are faced with something unpalatable on the ward

SQUINT A LITTLE AND ALWAYS BREATH THROUGH YOUR MOUTH.

It works.

Try It.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to go to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on some work experience. As an observer I arranged to see the acute spinal injury care within several health care facilities around the city and in one slightly surreal moment I found myself in the ER of a huge teaching hospital watching the massively complicated multidisciplinary care of a guy who had sustained multiple gunshots injuries in a drive by shooting.

I have never seen so much gore in my life, and politely kept well out of the way until my guide, a doctor wanted to point out to me one of the more juiciest gunshot wounds in the minutest detail.

I declined with a smile and for some reason, in way of explanation I actually said to a hushed room

"No thank you..I'm English*!"

Yes.....I can be a real pussy!
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* btw
I used to get the bus every morning from my lodgings in the old Polish quarter of Pittsburgh into the city centre and the passengers,(predominantly black service workers) got used to this slightly gauche Brit fumbling about with his dollar bills at the ready. and used to call out hellos when I got on.
They were not used to meeting many English people and used to refer to me as "Morse" which always tickled me greatly ( the tv detective was popular there in 1991)