Earl Okin

I love slightly surreal moments.
They happen all the time if you are that way out and you have the psychi to look for them.
I suppose it's a bit like seeing ghosts.
You only see them if you're tuned into a paranormal wavelength.
or you are pissed.....it's one or another.

Anyhow, I was out up the side of Gop Hill this morning, listening to radio 4's DESERT ISLAND DISCS on my personal radio, and this strange little song entitled MY ROOM by EARL OKIN came on.
I was so taken by the very "oddness" of the piece, I had to check up on the unheard of Okin when I returned
He is indeed an oddity. With the look of a conservative MP and the humorous sexiness of an old Robbie Williams, he cuts a rather different type of rug than the usual Cabaret crooner....

I stood in the blustery wind above the village listening to him vamping it up in front of a tittering crowd, and enjoyed the whole surreal nature of it all

Where's there no sense there's......

I am working a sort of day shift today.
So I will be brief.
Remember Theresa?
The ancient turkey with one eye?
Well I didn't give her much of a chance after the barbaric attack inflicted on her by Bingley the stag, but after some antibiotics,some tasty life saving morals of raw pastry and some luck, the old gal has survived her ordeal.
Reading back through GOING GENTLY, I have only just realised that Theresa has overcome several near death experiences. She has been attacked three times now by her own kind (bugger alone knows just why). She has suffered a particularly nasty infected pressure sore (a result of over active and strenuous turkey lovemaking) and she has lost an eye.
But every time , after every disaster, the old bird bounces back.
Ok she looks as though she has been run over by a passing tractor.
But like a bedraggled and shopworn Joan Collins,
She's survived to fight another day

Old Dog

IPads are great fun, once you know just how to use them (which I don't as yet)
Chris said a worrying thing when he gave me it on Christmas Day, he said.."All of your life can be on this tablet"
Hmmm..... Worrying that.
Anyhow, as the cottage slumbers this afternoon in a heap of post Christmas Apathy, I have been creeping around playing with the video app.
I have sneaked around the place filming the natives...I have downloaded 4 tunes, joined Skype and pressed more keys than Liberace did in his camp as a row of tents lifetime.........
Who says you cannot teach an old dog new tricks?

Plain Packages

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that the lion can still roar.

Ok, that slightly self effacing ,bumbling character that spends most of his spare time squelching around in shit stained wellies and a gravy stained jacket is something I am quite happy to portray to my local ( and dare I say international) general public but sometimes it's nice to remind people that I do have a brain, and a certain amount of transferable skills from my "city days " fighting my way up the corporate and managerial ladders .
Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want all of that bollocks and micro managerial shit back in my day to day existence, nor would I wish to return to that "fire fighting mentality" senior NHS managers have to resort to when you have a score of needy staff members that come to your office with their mouths open like small fluffy baby birds in need of dinner, but sometimes I do get just that little bit exasperated by the notion of some that "there is less to me that meets the eye"

It's my own fault, me thinks.
wandering around with chicken poop on my person
but, like I said, just sometimes it is nice to be reminded that.....

I'm not just a shitty face!

Blown off for a bird

Well the old gal who got dumped by her family on Christmas Day finally blew my offer of Marks & Spencer nibbles out of the water in favour of a full Christmas dinner kindly cooked by another neighbour. This tickled me greatly, but I still went round laden down with a selection of goodies as well as Albert's 'slightly tainted" individual sherry trifle for her tea....at 82 her immune system could probably keep a small town on it's feet, I thought.
As it happened , when out with the dogs,I did spy a few more visitors knocking at her door in the late afternoon.....this also pleased me greatly
The Christmas spirit was alive and kicking in our small and wet neck of the woods

Ps
One of my more "individualised" Christmas gifts was a calendar from best friend Nuala, depicting "The World's Most Eligible HOT ROYALS!"
My favourite must be April's Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg
How very Downton

New IPad Christmas

Ho ho bleeding ho

"Get Yer Head Out Of The Trifle Bowl!"

The Prize for the best Christmas Card we have recieved this year goes to an old friend Judith from the Isle Of Man

She must have forgotten exactly where we lived as the address on the envelope stated simply

John Gray

Top of the Hill

Trelawnyd

Wales

This tickled me.

Anyhow am off now to soak my trifle sponges

unfortunately

Albert has just stuck his head in the double cream

(I did note that for the past hour he had been licking his arsehole in front of the fire)

Hey Ho

Tradition

Just before Christmas there is always a steady tide of visitors to the graveyard beyond the field.

This morning as I was standing guard over Theresa, the old one eyed turkey ( she needs guarding when eating her bowl of corn as the sheep always bully her mercilessly), I watched as lone figures started to arrive at the Churchyard with Christmas wreaths clutched in gloved hands.

The tradition of Christmas wreaths on graves must be a comforting yet bittersweet affair and by Christmas Eve almost all of the newer graves behind the Church will be decorated with circles of Holly, spruce and Christmas flowers.

Our Graveyard is where I would like to be buried. To the North of it lies the pretty Church, and  to the South , fields of horses and the farm of Pen-y-cefn beyond. (Pen-y-Cefn was old Mrs Jones' farm) To the East is the Rectory and the rectory glebe and to West lies my field full of poultry, who are always in constant motion and activity.

The graveyard is surrounded by greenery and animals.

It's peaceful but in a strange way, a dynamic place to be.

As Theresa bolts down her corn, Meirion, another old face from the village, arrives with yet another wreath and as the geese bicker loudly with  Polenta ( the large aylesbury drake) I wave over as he totters between the gravestones to lay it down in the winter sunshine.

I feel like shit, only because I am tired after last night's shift

Being outside and  watching the potentially melancholic  to-ing and fro-ing at the Church , is somehow rather relaxing  and comforting

It's become a tradition all of my own

The Graveyard from the West

Anyhow, With The Christmas Build up, reading blogs will the the last thing on most peoples' minds. so I will take this opportunity to say here's hoping everyone has a  peaceful and gentle Christmas.

Some people here will and some won't , that is the way of the world

I just hope that everyone will