Going Gently

Another Belated Apology

Sometimes the reading of a little golden nugget of a blog post will spark a long distant memory of one's own. This is the joy of having such an eclectic library at the end of your fingertips.

This morning Cro's Meanderings (http://magnonsmeanderings.blogspot.com/ ) told a rather bittersweet story which outlined a tiny moment in time when he suddenly matured as a young man.

And this rather gentle post reminded me of a painful growing up moment of my own from when I was a boy of around eight

When I was little, it was acceptable that housewives like my mother had a little help at home .My grandmother called up three times a week during the holidays and she would cook, clean , iron the clothes and provide a steady humorous environment for her bored grandchildren and her naturally anxious daughter.

When my sister and I was having lunch with my mother and grandmother one day, something rather funny struck me about this ' arrangement' and feeling rather pompous I chirped up at the table

" when Gran comes here she always gets all of her dinners for free"

I didn't get a reaction to what I thought was a clever comment so like a little smart arse I repeated myself several times , that was until my mother very quietly said

"That's not a very nice thing to say"

By that time, like most little boys with questionable social skills, I had already dug the hole and jumped into it, so as I was incessantly chipping "why? Why?" I was suddenly stopped by my twin sister who was looking at my grandmother.

I followed her gaze and was suddenly quietend when I saw a quiet hurt on my grandmother's face. She said nothing, but with her eyes never leaving her plate she silently and carefully ate her lunch with care and precision..

I think I learnt more about life in that one second than I ever had done in all of my eight years on this planet.

To this day, some forty two years later, I still remember my regret and shame at this silly little remark as if it only happened yesterday.

The quiet dignity of my grandmothers behaviour and the sad shame and uncharacteristic calmness shown by my mother at that dinner table will always be with me.

According to Diane...........

Humn on reflection?

It's only a quick blog today I have been extra busy and have not even had my usual ' breakfast blog moment' with a cup of milicarno as yet : the wind has demolished the duck house during the morning, which gave the hysterical runners something else to get their slimlined knickers in a twist about and

I have spent most of the morning repairing it, then had to go down to Prestatyn to walk my sister's dog before walking my own in between preparing supper and retrieving Camilla from the riding stables field yet again.

The gale force wind has unsettled her, even though her dreadful crash landing of yesterday has not quite put her off from spreading her wings, so to speak. I wouldn't mind as much if she had the sense to fly back home.... But she's a classy Canadian gal ( like so many are) and prefers to be carried back home, wrapped in an old woollen overcoat.

Anyhow I have 2 minutes or so before I go out to meet my sister in law, so just have enough time to thank Diane over at HEART SHAPED for her kind, " I think you actually look like Russell Crowe from Les Misérables" comment from yesterday's blog. It did tickle me somewhat.......even though his face nowadays does have the look of a couple of fat birds wrestling under a duvet

(Listen I'll the take the compliment in the spirit it was given)

It also got me to thinking just who do others 'here' resemble from the world of celebrity ? Now I know I have mused a little about this before..as we have already debated that Tom Stephenson is the spit of John Hurt with a hangover...but who do YOU think you look like?

I would be interested to know

Anyhow, I am already late...I have not had time to even wash my face, so disguising the awful windswept hairstyle with a hat and covering up the spilled coffee stains down my front with the same coat I wrapped camilla in.... I am off out

god I'm a classy date

RUSS CROWE eat your aussie heart out

A Very Trelawnyd Funeral and Camilla's First Flight

Forgive this second blog which supplements my Mary Berry love fest
I bumped into Auntie Gladys in the village at 10.20 am when I was out with the dogs. she was walking down towards the church and she reminded me that today was Tommy 'Gop's' funeral day Tommy Gop was a much respected farmer from the village. He farmed the prestigious Gop farm for many years, a farm that dominates the approach to Trelawnyd from the West.
Gladys is an old hand at funerals, especially farmers' services, and so she quite wisely had planned to arrive over an hour before the service was to start.
This is not as bizarre as it sounds, for at the very same time, a whole gaggle of villagers were making their way down to the church to make sure they managed to get into the Church.....an hour later over seventy people were sheltering against the south wall of the Church out of the gale force winds.
As the Church bell rang out, I took this brief video, before I took my place by the graveyard fence to give my respects to the arriving family. You can tell just how windy it has been today, if you look carefully you can see one of the hen house roofs lying messily on the ground.

The wind increased in it's intensity throughout the day, so much so, that when I started to round up the geese as the light started to fade, a sudden sharp gust of wind caught Camilla's outstretched wings and the Canada goose took off like a remote controlled plane.
Now Camilla is the only animal on the field that has the capacity for self propelling flight, she has never done so because her flock are domesticated geese which have lost their free flying abilities, so her sudden 'freedom' was I suppose as much as a shock to her than it was for me.
Up she went, flapping and panicking to perhaps sixty or seventy feet, before another few gusts of wind buffeted her away over the riding stable fields.
I chased after her.
She glided downwards for a bit, got caught by another gust then after shaving some hawthorn hedging she clipped a telephone line that crossed the field and crashed heavily to the ground where she lay still.
I was convinced she was dead, and galloped through the horsefield like a mad Alec until I reached her.
She lay with her eyes open, and was very still, but she was very much alive and blinked at me with a somewhat surprised look on her face.
I wrapped her in my coat and carried her back to the field where the rest of her little flock honked noisily at me as I placed her inside the goose house to recover.
Out of all of my field animals, the geese are perhaps my favourites...I couldn't quite bare it if I lost one to a freak gust of wind.
A funeral and a wayward goose...
A normal Wednesday.....not.

Why I Am A Little In Love With Mary Berry!

The Queen of Victoria Sponges

No matter how old we are, all of us, if we are truthful, still retain the ability to enjoy a teenage crush.

Mine will waver somewhat between Russell Crowe in those britches from Les Miserables. Norman Reedus in his poncho from The Walking Dead and Hugh Jackman in a teeny weeny face flannel.
Just occasionally I have a bit of a gay crush on a lady....and the biggest crush I have had in recent years is the one I have experienced for that doyenne of The Great British Bake Off, MARY BERRY.
Last night I watched the pseudo documentary on Berry's life. It was presented by Berry herself (and was interspersed with cookery demonstrations of her favourite recipes) and what came over from the entire production was the overwhelming fact that Berry is a delightful, genuine and perfectly sweet human being.
Brought up in a loving but strict wartime household in affluent Bath, Berry recalled unhappy school time experiences when she as a fairly poor academic struggled with unsupportive teachers and an acute teenage bout of polio.
By hard work and some luck, Berry concentrated her studies with a "twinkly eyed" home economic teacher, and this in turn led her towards a successful journalistic and tv cooking career which has spanned over 50 years.
Berry stands for everything that is right in this country. She is a self made,decent, professional middle class woman that despite her undoubted success within media has retained the much maligned ability to be ....well.....just...nice!
She is an expert without ever showing off.
She still is happy to judge the local village produce show without any pretensions
and she does not apologize for being what she is.
a quietly strong,and unflappable lady who possesses "that spirit that won the war"
In bucket loads

now who do YOU have a secret crush on?

The Rule For Old Birds

I have a strict rule on the field

Old birds are never culled, they are retired and cared for until they die away naturally.

Sick animals are treated and culled if necessary.

But generally after their 'production' time is over, the birds are allowed to have a couple of years respite with their faces in the sun until they shuffle off this mortal coil.

Sun! I have almost forgotten what sunny days are like.

Yesterday was a wild, wet and stormy day, it was a day when the weather seemed to cut right through you, and twice during my rounds I found the bodies of two pensioners tucked away in the hedgerow.

An ancient buff ( above) had disappeared off and away from the others before she had collapsed as did Theresa the knackered old one eyed turkey, who had wandered off just before locking up

I wasn't sad at all at the findings for winter weather is the equivalent of the ice flows for Eskimos , it culls out the old.

The bodies, I moved to the local Badger sett. At least they would enjoy a good meal during the night and when I thought about it all, the more I felt that the Eskimos had the right idea.....

When my time comes, before I have to rely on some uninterested carer in a urine smelling retirement home to wipe my arse, I think I would like to have the opportunity to wander away in the rain to lay down under a hawthorn hedge and have a final chance to look at the sky.

Then the badgers could stuff their fat faces on me for a month

My Rocky Relationship With Vomit

Now not wanting to sound like a rotund Julian Clarey, Still I have to say that I can cope rather well with most bodily fluids if they are flung at me.
This 'robustness' hails not only from my general nursing experience but from my time as a psychiatric nurse, a time when I have been pelted with and covered by every consistencancy of human waste possible.
(I remember one particularly revolting experience,when as a student nurse I got hit by a wet 'Cowpat' of a human turd right on the back of my neck, just as I was enjoying a cup of tea too!)
Anyhow, I do have one Achilles' Heel when it comes to waste,
And that is vomit.
Even now when I am holding that paper mâché vomit bowl up to the retching face of a patient, Inside I do that reciprocal heaving motion in sympathy so to speak, and if I was totally stripped of my professional responsibilities, I am sure that I could quite easily push their face out of the way and fill the bowl myself......TO THE RIM!
Now this weakness comes from another long distant nursing experience........it's not a product of the all of those student-post-nightclub-on-an-early-shift throw ups.....no....it hails from an unfortunate mouth-to-mouth moment with an elderly drunk, who promptly vomited the contents of his savory mince dinner into my mouth moments after he had so thoughtfully collapsed at the dinner table.

So....keeping all this in mind...imagine my delight in finding one of the hens suffering from sour crop.
Now sour crop IS a fun thing!
For those that don't know it's a fungal disease of the crop of a bird and happens when the bloody thing does not empty. The crop fills with what could only be described as green foul smelling liquid vomit which has to be expressed by the caring owner ( ME!) before the poor animal can be treated with a soothing medication of natural yogurt.
God I hate this job
Twice a day I have to turn the poor bugger upside down and drain her of what often seems like a quart of what can only be described as 'zombie fluid'
Then, when I am in a state of that could only be described of as an attack of the vapours, can I inject the much welcomed yogurt, moments before I start retching myself.
It's all rather unsavoury to say the least.
Hey ho
I am off to lie down in a darkened room