What's Spanish For Downton Abbey?

sorrel loves her Downton Abbey and so historic houses of any sort provide her with a bit of daydreaming pleasure just like the odd walking zombie fires up my walking Dead juices.
Today's  trip out today children was to our very own nearby Bodelwyddan Castle ( go on you non Welsh readers try pronouncing THAT one)
The castle in its present form dates from the 1840s and today houses many of the nations portrait paintings in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery.
One of my regular readers should enjoy this posts photos as she was a pupil at the castle when it was a girls' school until 1982.So Nia........enjoy the view....I remember very well, picking you up in my old Austin 1300 in the early 80s

The second bump on the far hills, is Trelawnyd's Gop Hill

We had a mooch around the restored Victorian formal rooms and only ran off and left Sorrel when she buttonholed a bemused Spanish museum tour guide to ask where the castle's kitchens were. ( she loves the "downstairs" life of these old houses!)
He had absolutely had no idea what she was on about and tried to explain in terrible English where the cafe was located.
The more she asked where the kitchens and servants' quarters could be found ,the more confused he became, and by the time she started to mention Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey , he had given up the ghost and had walked away .......... 

After an hour or so enjoying the. House, we had a stroll in the grounds( where I took this "mother and son" portrait before we set off home for tea and buns

Chris NEVER outwardly smiles

Inside he does

Honest

MIL

Sorrel, my mother-in-law....doesn't DO the outdoors

She is pathologically terrified of birds.......

Which doesn't help on her visits here

She is much better suited to a nice coffee and some designer shopping

HOWEVER, she is doing a bit better with the wildlife here at Bwthyn-y-llan

Which includes a moment of closeness with American  turkey stag Bingley ( below)

Her country experience lasted 20 minutes

She has now gone to Chester with Chris for some retail therapy

and some clean pavements

I am making her a birthday tea later

Now where do I find 70 candles

The Walking Dead Finale

Daryl & Carol:  A brief moment of warmth amid the undead

Thank goodness for YouTube. 

After MIL went to bed ( suitably impressed she was with the sanitary state of the cottage BTW)  I found a Spanish version of The Walking Dead Finale and enjoyed a zombie filled 45 minutes three days before it airs in the Uk.

How sad am I?

Now I think I must clarify just why I love this series, right here and right now.....

It is in fact that

the whole thing reminds me of those 1970 disaster movies of my youth......

Sure it's all a bit of a blood fest......and undoubtedly it panders to the teenage viewing public, but the small- group-of-varied-humanity that has to band together to survive the zombie  apocalypse is basically a The Towering Inferno tale with undead gore thrown in......it's as simple as that!

* spoilers!

And so the finale had poor Andrea ( the civil rights lawyer) seen off by the nerdy but likeable zombiefied Milton,

Whilst the pantomime baddie Governer killed most of  his own people in a hissy fit worthy of Joan Crawford

The prison group survived intact until series 4, which was nice........earth mother Carol held asperger Daryl's hand for a couple of seconds ( sweet) Hershel snitched on fledgling psychopath Carl and Rick finally stopped hallucinating ,which was a frigging blessing..........all this mental illness bored me titless

I enjoyed it......even though the whole thing was cut to hell in the editors room......

Hey. Ho......series 4 does not air until the autumn...............you will be zombie free until then..........

O.D.R

I have become disorientated with yesterday's bank holiday and for some reason thought that today was Monday. It isn't of course, a fact that has thrown chez Trelawnyd into a bit of a disarray for today is in fact, the day that my mother-in -law arrives.
.....and as Terry Wogan always said......" there's not a child in the house washed"

Dog snot on windows........harder to remove than concrete

Regular readers of Going Gently will know that Operation Dog- Snot Removal (O.D.R) is about to begin. 

This event usually comprises of a few hours of slightly hysterical scrubbing, buffing and dusting, accompanied with moments of bad temper, yelled phrases of " DON'T WALK ON THE FU*KING....FLOOR I'VE JUST MOPPED IT!" and of course  periods of excitable weeping

It's a well walked road which most children-in-law in this world will recognise.

Being prepared and making the effort before a visit equates to being respectful.

It may be old fashioned

But it is as ingrained in me, as deeply as childhood memories.

Luckily I have already made a cake, so I only have 100 things to do..........

I must be quick though, I have got to lather Eric's arse with antibacterial spray before the kitchen gets bleached............and I have just spied a substantial mound of cat puke behind the toilet...............

Bank Holiday Blues

The other day , when we had gone out for lunch at that seaside cafe, my sister in law, quite in passing, revealed that my late brother absolutely detested Sundays.
I knew immediately just why that was, after all we grew up in the same household, albeit ten years apart.
Sundays, when we were children meant a day at home with the parents.
And they were never really happy times.

Obviously my brother carried the memories of those rather sad Sundays to his grave....I luckily have not, although after thinking about it carefully, I suspect that my historic dislike of Bank Holiday Mondays come from the same stable so to speak.

My parents never did anything on Sundays & Bank holidays. They watched TV, had a roast lunch , a cold tea and that was it. When my classmates went out of the day to Conwy Castle or for a run onto the Denbigh Moors, we children were left to our own devices around the house , the apathy of a non working day was more depressing than anything you could imagine.

I have never in my earlier working life had the childhood expectation that Sundays could be fun, after all they were often a normal working day like any other. when I was a senior nurse, I never worked weekends, and so with Chris in tow they became relaxing fun days, and so only the memories of a bank holiday Monday stick with me from my childhood.....not a bad weight around my neck given the fact there are only a few such holidays in the average year . Unfortunately for my brother, there were 52 Sundays in a year.
52 sad memory pricks

Finale

I am working a thirteen hour shift today, so today's post is a brief nod to the finale of The Walking Dead which airs in the States this evening........please can anyone that watches it please let me know who becomes zombie fodder and who survives into series four........?

If not I will have to wait until next Friday........

Happy Easter by the way!

Forte's

As a late baby boomer, I do have a sort of hankering for the food of my childhood.
1970s food ( especially party food) was all a bit technicolor, frou frou and kitch. Tomatoes had a frilly edge. Black Forest gateaux was all the rage and the height of good taste was a cheese and pineapple hedgehog surrounded by  " lurid looking dips and a mug filled with breadsticks"
Occasionally we have lunch at a horrendously revamped seaside cafe in Rhos on Sea called FORTE'S

The decor in FORTE'S may be pure 1980s soap opera, but the food is pure 1950s-1970s nostalgia.
Jacket potatoes ( with a selection of fillings including prawn cocktail!), knickerbockerglories in pressed glass boats, all washed down by fairly weak watery tea served out of tiny chrome teapots.
The waitresses are clean and tidy and wear neat motel staff uniforms and there is not a crumb to be seen on any of the kitchen worktop looking tables.
Classy it is not
Comforting it very much is.
I have a sort of false nostalgia for Forte's
There was one in Prestatyn for years with its Lloyd Loom chairs ( the furniture still remains there to this day)and  my mother actually worked there  when she was a 16 year old refugee from a bomb damaged 1941 Liverpool......it's funny how a history you didn't actually experience can infuse your own nostalgia buttons so to speak.
So today, we shall sip the weak tea out of cheap, white , clean cups and may share an exotic banana split complete with its paper flag and glacé cherry.........
And we shall celebrate the likes of Fanny Craddock and my mother's homemade " savoury dips"
Now I know, where I get my taste for scotch eggs from

A Cockerel On The Draining Board

Eric, before the examination

I had forgotten it was Good Friday and that Chris was home.

Without thinking I brought in a bloodied and rather sorry Eric, who had been cornered and beaten up by Alpha Male Bogbrush and swaddled him up before planning for a review of his wounds.

I had just dipped the bantam's arse in the washing up bowl filled with clean warm water when Chris walked in

"OH GOD ! more bleeding animals in the kitchen" he sighed loudly, eying the rooster through narrowed lids and added with a somewhat exasperated scowl

"Does he HAVE to be sorted on the kitchen tops? ...I would like to make my hot cross buns WITHOUT the chance of contracting salmonella!"

Chris disappeared for a while as I sponged Eric's bloody arse with the dishcloth but gamely returned when I was just about to apply a soothing lathering of Vaseline to all of the "red bits"

" This is all rather revolting for a Good Friday Morning" he said shaking his head.