Going Gently

Touching Base

London as it was yesterday, cold, snowy and mighty fine

I always enjoy my London visits.

Of course the chance to be neat and tidy, the opportunity to 'see the sights', ' do the shows' and eat the eats are all part of a wonderful break away from the humdrum and the ordinary, but for me, the main enjoyment has to be touching base with Nuala.

For over 23 years she has been my best friend and all of those 23 years she has lost non of her lust for enjoying everything that comes her way.

It is an enviable, infectious and laudable ability .....to enjoy new experiences, new people and new things with optimism and genuine pleasure and it is an ability that Nu manages to carry out effortlessly but never demurely.

I am lucky to have her around.........

Anyhow I am on the train back home now.

This morning I bought a mixing bowl from John Lewis for me and some tea

from Fortnum & Mason for Chris

I enjoyed a sneaky scotch egg while out walking along the South Bank and surprisingly have spilled nothing as yet on my second best jumper of the trip.

It's been a nice break

Shard Feelings

Nearly two days and a trip to the theatre,cinema,coffee shop,Borough Market,Brazilian eatery,fish restaurant later..I thought things couldn't get any better but they did.....Nuala remembering my fetish for skyscrapers treated me to a wonderful trip up the London Shard.....
My boyhood TOWERING INFERNO obsession was well and truly relived....hey ho.

" I'M ON THE TRAIN!"

Ok, I think most of you will know me and my slightly dyspraxic ways by now

So the choice of a custard yellow pullover

Perhaps was not the wisest of choices given my propensity for dribbling

But as you can see, with the judicious positioning of a trendy scarf , I am in fact,

blemish free so to speak...

I have , however lost all street cred with my executive businessman neighbour, for he has just given my IPad a quick once over as I was looking at Tom Stephenson's photo of a rude vegetable.....

Hey ho

My one attempt at looking urbane and sophisticated foiled by a carrot's vagina

Bollocks

Beam Me Up Scottie

When I was a boy, pet shops were strange, slightly alien places with large open sacks of smelly dried this and that lying next door to aquariums full of neon tetras and buckets full of millet strings .
They were totally utilitarian places, that often smelt of leather.....and when you took a second look, there was always some sort of depressed feathered creature asleep on the counter.

That was then.
Now it's all very high tech .....it's gone all Star Trek
Last night Chris and I attended a 'friends and family' open day at a newly opened pet superstore.
We were invited by my twin Janet, who has, after 30 years in the same job, has just moved careers into the modern day petshop retail sector and given the fact that our combined age is well over 100, the night still felt as though I was going to a school open day.

The pet superstore was a surprise to be sure!
The whole place was totally space age! With rows upon rows of gleaming pet food, a pet grooming centre ,more medications
that you would see in your average hospital pharmacy and squeaky clean miniature hamsters climbing across their rope swings within futuristic aseptic containers, the place looked more like Waitrose than the pet shops I knew from old.

It was nice to be there to support my Sister on her first official opening day... But we needn't have worried....working along side kids just out of their teens , and faced with handling snakes, rats and bearded lizards and a computerised till more complicated than in ITU ventilator ...she looked as though she had been working there for years.

Off to London later tonight.......meeting up with Nuala..my touchstone

A Chance To Win

I don't know if it's the big hair,

The slutty twins,

Or the lobster claws

But it gives me a lift every time I see it

When I was young I always wanted to be a waiter
however my FIRST ever job was as
A peddle boat supervisor on Prestatyn Beach
I lasted a week and left after I was thrown into the pool by three foul mouthed 13 year old girls from Liverpool!
NOW
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB.?
I WILL GIVE A PRIZE TO THE BEST ONE

Old People And Pets

Yesterday was Bright and warm, unlike today which is cold and damp, and I was glad of having the berlingo as I called over to the RFWF's farm with some flowers for his family. The funeral service will be held on Tuesday at the large marble church in nearby Bodelwyddan ( go on pronounce that one) I suspect a large number of fellow red faced Welsh Farmers will be attending and our tiny church here in Trelawnyd just cannot cater for a large congregation.....especially if the weather is somewhat "difficult"

Another funeral to attend...it's the way of the world when you have older friends I suppose....I am reminded of what one of the youngest and shall we say, less sensitive of my colleagues said to me yesterday morning... She said "Knowing Old people is a bit like keeping pets...you don't have them for very long"
Out of the mouth of babes.

Later this week I am off to London to see best friend Nuala. it has been a long standing arrangement which could not have come at a better time. It will be therapeutic to have a change of scene for a day or so.

Anyway, this morning, I let the new birds out of their run in order to join the main flock. I am not a lover of ' fluffy hens' I prefer a more bog standard sort of bird. but the silkies, I must admit are striking looking birds.....

The RFWF would have disliked these frou-frou characters too....

Perhaps some of his no nonsense approach to life has rubbed off on me after all

The R.F.W.F

I was busy at work last night.
It was not until around 4am when I fell into conversation with another nurse as both of us were drawing up medications at the nurses station.
She is a farmer's wife who lives five miles or so from Trelawnyd
And she told me how sorry she was to hear that my friend , the Red Faced Welsh Farmer had died yesterday.
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about...all day on Monday I had not ventured far from home because of the looming night shift and so I had not seen anyone from the village .
In this case, bad news had not travelled very fast at all.
I couldn't quite believe what she was saying.

If you could have caught me in Sheffield's All Bar One a few year's ago and stated that in 2013 I would count an elderly,flamboyantly argumentative old pirate of a Welsh Farmer as one of my friends, I would have told you to stick your crisp Chardonnay where the sun doesn't shine.
After all, what on earth would a prissy middle aged gay nurse possibly have in common with a rough and ready, gun toting animal farmer from the Welsh hills?

But a valued friend, he did indeed become

And over the years, he developed into a bit of a fairy Godfather in a tweed cap, when I needed a willing hand with this and that.
His stories were always long, meandering and entertaining
His temper was legendary
And his kindnesses to me and to a score of others from Trelawnyd and beyond, were many and varied.
I shall miss him dearly....
They don't make men quite like him anymore

His real name was,in fact
John Lloyd-Ellis