A sausage for The Barber

I have left a couple of sausages on the draining board to defrost

For I am off to the barbers today!

It may sound strange but it has become a little bit of a tradition to slip the barber a furtive sausage after he has saved my usual "wreck of the Hesperus" hairstyle and has wrestled it into some semblance of normality.

I blame Auntie Glad for this odd and secret food giving practise, for after every Flower Show Meeting, she will gesture quite madly  that "The package"  has been left  by the door for me to pick up without fuss and without the other Flower Show Committee Members noticing! 

(The package, of course, is a neatly wrapped bag of fresh  homebaked scones)

The secret nature of the gift has become a joyous tradition between the two of us.... a tradition I am now visiting with the barber, albeit with a bit of home made pork!

It all started when the barber noticed that I had mud all over my arse after I had sat down in his old fashioned leather chair. .

I think it had been a day I had been wrestling with animal helper Pat over  a buff Orpington's impacted crop, a fight that resulted in me falling over on the field ....anyhow the barber had noticed the muck on my pants and had commented on them ( he was probably worried about the state of his leatherette!!!)

We got to talking about the birds and then the pigs... and the barber mentioned that he adored home cured bacon, a warm memory from his youth

On my next visit I brought him a couple of number 21s sausages ,a pressie he was genuinely touched by

and the tradition of "sausages for the barber" was started!

Bless

ah bless, he doesn't know what to do with his arms

More Gays In The Village?

Yesterday was such a bloody awful shift that I couldn't quite wait getting out with the dogs into a blustery , damp and cold morning to blow the cobwebs away.

I walked up trough the village and up over the side of the Gop, then returned down High Street.

Many of the houses at the top of the hill have similar Welsh names. Pen-y-Bryn, Tan-y Bryn..they all mean roughly the same thing...ie. "Top of the Hill!", so it was with some minor interest that I spied two "ambling" types who had stopped halfway up the hill to point at the side of one of the bungalows perched on the incline.

As I passed I heard one of the women saying to the other

 "Perhaps....... it's a gay household!"

intrigued, I had to stop (pretending that the dogs were having a quick pee) to see what they were referring to...and after a minute or so scratching my head., I worked it all out with a smile

The non Welsh speaking woman had read the plaque on the side of the house

It said

Tan

Y

Craig

In an impressive Gothic script

So the Woman could almost be forgiven for mistaking the sign as reading

IAN

&

CRAIG

Tan-y-Craig more or less means "On the Rock" in Welsh ( another version of Top of the Hill!)

I kind of prefer, Ian & Craig...whoever they are!

yawn

Long, shift today

My feet are aching and I just can't be arsed to do anything but

Watch Episode 7 TWD

and gently stink my day shift stink in the armchair near the fire

Balloons Over The Moon

58 red and Black balloons crossed the night sky over Denbigh this evening, most were illuminated briefly by the full moon
Not too much fuss.....not too much drama
A few glasses of champagne were raised
Andrew would have liked it!

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............