Christmas Trees, Lemon Meringue Pies and another "goodbye"

We sorted out a Christmas Tree today. 

I know it's terribly early....too early for us really (we don't usually embark on the annual pine tree bunfight until the 14th of December or so) BUT  as we have a friend visiting next weekend, we thought we would get the whole shebang over with and make the place look all festive for when our guest arrives.....

Last night we called down to Dyserth for a return meal with the Rector.

It was an impressive meal that was finished off with a cracking homemade Lemon Meringue Pie.

If the Rector does not sweep the board at next year's Cookery Classes of the Trelawnyd Flower Show, well then Mary Berry is a kitchen dunce transvestite!

I think vicar's must always make good pastry cooks..... it's all that time dipping their hands in that cold font water me thinks.

Tonight we are off  to my sister-in-laws home up in the hills. The family is gathering to mark the anniversary of my brother's death. We will raise a glass of champagne to him, let off a whole load of balloons and will share a hotpot supper.

I cannot believe it has been a year since he died.

It's a truism

The older you get,

the quicker time goes.

Scary That!

Sister in law Jayne and My brother......(don't ask!)

am working the 7.30 am to 8.15 pm shift tomorrow!

"What's that Skippy?"

Yesterday afternoon I realised that Albert was missing.
I thought back when I saw him last, and the  moment I remember seeing him was early on Tuesday morning, when he was seen skipping up the garden path with a mouse stuck firmly head first in his mouth.
I checked his usual haunts. The Window seat in the bedroom, Chris' office bed, the sunny patch on the lounge carpet and nothing!
His food bowl in the kitchen, I suddenly realised was still full of food and I felt that awful prickly cold,, we all have experienced when a little loved one has disappeared.
Albert last went missing after breaking his back leg. The injury was mismanaged by the vets who tried to plaster the fracture rather than to pin it. Subsequently Albert was left with a painful and stiff back leg that I know causes him some discomfort in the colder months of the year.
When he was injured, he just went to ground in the garden for a few days, and it was in the garden where I found him , weak and bloody and cowed under a hypericum bush.
I searched the garden, then the field and asked the neighbours if they had seen him, All said that they had but none could pin point  when it was. Albert is a constant visitor to all of the neighbours' gardens. He is the only cat on the street.

I called and called Albert's name and clapped my hands at the back door, and nothing!...and as I tottered to and fro anxious in my quest the find the little fella, I hardly noticed William standing by the door to our outside toilet,a place where we now store literally a ton of rubbish.

I searched the garden again and William stood looking at the toilet door
I searched the shed, and William didn't move
Then I took the dogs for their walk around the Gop and on our return William ambled back to his position at the toilet door as I clapped and called for Albert to return

When I walked back into the house, the penny started to drop ( yes I do have a lightening fast intellect) and when I looked down at William, I saw a slightly exasperated "for fuck's sake" look on his face....
He sniffed at the toilet door, then looked back at me with another expression that said quite clearly
"He's in the bloody toilet, you stupid sod!"
Sheepishly I opened the door, and from under a pile of old plastic boxes,paint cans and the old sofa out popped Albert. The cat rubbed faces with a grinning William, who almost could have been pursing his lips, like a lemon faced vicar's wife, at my inability to "read the signals"

I only text with One finger........

I was late for work last night. 

I rang in to let one of the sisters on day shift know but she forgot to pass the message on. Subsequently night staff were panicking somewhat when I didn't turn up and rang around my family to see if I had collapsed at home and/or had been partially eaten by my animals like most sad bastards seem to be when you let yourself go and you wear a beanie hat 24/7.

Well the night staff seemed very happy that I was indeed alive when I eventually walked through the automatic doors of the unit, which was very flattering indeed!. 

I may not be the best ITU nurse of the bunch, but generally I know I am fairly fun to work with. even though I have socks older than most of the nurses that I share the factory floor with.

Younger people today, to me, seem to have a wonderful confidence about them. A confidence and an awareness that I certainly lacked when I was 20 or so.

When I was a young man, there was just three channels on the tv, phone calls were only made sneakily in a cold hallway with your parents shrieking "you you think we are made of money" and the only immediate way to share some immediate gossip was to sneak out to your Austin 1300 and switch on your brick sized CB radio

The world news was read to you formally by a jaunty Reginald Bosanquet at 10pm every night, shops never opened on Sundays and the height of sophistication was to order a dubonet and lemonade at The Stables night club on a Friday Night.

Everyone today seems so much more urbane, informed and switched on than I used to be.

pah, let's face it... they are certainly more switched on, relevant and "in the loop" than I am now......

But at least I have humour on my side............

In-Laws

MIL fighting the terriers

My father died way back in 1990 (apparently he was telling a joke at the breakfast table) and my mother died in 2002 (probably after having a sneaky fag on the fire escape of her nursing home)  Relationships with them, I must admit were somewhat tempestuous throughout my late teens and early adult life, but before they died, I was lucky enough to resolve many of those cracked and knotty issues laid down during my salad days.

Of course I have inherited a couple of parent in-laws since then. 

And I am lucky enough to be blessed with having good relationships with both 

They are nice people. 

FIL "pointing"

If you really think about it,getting to know your partner's parents is a totally artificial experience.

Initially they aren't friends, they are perfect strangers,  and are ageing adults that  only have one other person in common with you. Your relationships with them could be fraught with history issues, conflict of attitudes , competitive urges and insecurities, or you could be lucky enough to become friends with two people who are actually responsible with the hairy-arsed despot that you have ended up sharing your life with.

I am lucky enough to be in the "hairy-arse" camp.

Having in-laws, in my experience is an easy and enjoyable sort of job. Neither camp possess any of the normal psychological baggage that is a child and parent relationship, so we can buffer and bookend our mutual loved one in the middle,so to speak

We are something separate. 

Thank the Lord that we get on.....

off to bed for an hour....working tonight!

St Asaph

Heartbreaking floods have affected nearby St Asaph terribly

One elderly woman has been killed and hundreds have had to leave their homes

My Eldest sister's son has a garage business in the town which is now under feet of dirty water
See video 
my nephew's garage is on the far left of the photo

and there's me banging on about a couple of guinea fowl

so sad

Constants

We have been lucky. 

Only a few miles East but 600 feet above the flood plain near St Asaph, The village is safe from the floods which seem to be taking taking priority in the National News.

The land has taken a battering, and on a tiny domestic level so have a few of the animals, as this year has been the wettest and the most miserable on record.

Yesterday, I noticed that the guinea fowl looked miserable and cowed against the rain. Unlike the other animals, they alone have braved the elements 24/7 without any respite, and after a summer and autumn where they have been drenched and cold most days, the poor birds were looking tired, and out of condition.

I mentioned to my FIL (father-in-law) that I was worried about the male guinea, Hughie the most, as he looked the weakest. and although both birds made it to their roosting tree last night, I worried about their future as yet another dreadful and blustery night lashed the field.

This morning both birds had gone.

I walked the Churchyard and the field at dawn and found two telltale patches of speckled feathers. Obviously Hughie, had been unable to roost effectively in the rainstorm last night and  the had been taken from the ground, sometime during the night. His mate Ivy, who looked fitter and healthier than he did was no where to be seen, a fact I thought surprising.

Idly, I wondered if she had come down off her tree, (which she had been safe from predators for several years now ) to be with Hughie at the end. Perhaps  loyalty to her mate had been her last in-vain gesture.

The dog fox would have taken both birds, without even a pause.

We are lucky here. We have had no floods, no evacuation from our home and none of the Nation's news teams clogging up the wet roads in order to report on a local interest story..... There has been no drama to really talk about....

All we have had is just to sad little patches of feathers marking the death of a couple of semi wild birds who sat as constant security guards over a small wet field in our corner of Wales for a few short years.

I know it sounds stupid, but before I packed up my FIL to take him down to the station for his long trip back home, I stopped briefly in the rain and shed just one tear for two old loyal birds who couldn't cope with yet another wet , cold and miserable season

The Poseidon Adventure (on land)

It's all looking very much like a scene from one of those 1970 disaster movies.

The field is sodden.Everywhere is flooding and I must look like a butch Shelley Winters in my delightfully masculine plastic waterproof pantaloons!

Great pools of water lie on the surface of the grass sorry mud, and several of the coops in the Ukrainian village ( sorry Ukrainian "willage") are lying on unsuitably waterlogged marshland.

The Field at Dawn this morning

I moved two houses to more suitable positions yesterday and am about to brave the Somme-like conditions to shift a couple more before I make the menfolk their breakfasts.(visions of Doris Day anyone?)

The birds won't be let out for a while this morning...around 7am I heard the gate clatter in it's lock and looked out of the window to see a huge dog fox standing in the mid ground, just beyond the stone wall.

He had jumped the gate!

That was one big bugger I can tell you.

I "hissed" at him and he fled before the ewes stomped their way into view 

Another threat to add to mother nature's brickbats
hey ho

An Early Christmas

Christmas Dinner Hysteria has arrived early at Bwthyn-y-llan

I have already burnt the pork crackling

Albert has managed to squish two paws already into a dish of stuffing.

and f*ck knows where I've put the honey covered parsnips 

Father -in-law has been promised a home cooked, home "grown" pig dinner with ALL the trimmings

and a full pork dinner with all the trotters he will receive

Now where's me gin ?

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Postscript  ( written two and a half hours later)

The pork, as it turned out was absolutely lovely.... a real tribute to number 12 and number 21 who we culled last winter!

strangely enough there was plenty of apple, sage and onion stuffing left over!
strange that! 

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pps I am not known for my acting ability