Beep....Beep!

I am planning an overdue visit to my old hometown of Sheffield.
It's been far too long since I touched base with the old steel City and I have missed my old friends...John ( a Zara wearing old Queen) , Jane ( a cheerful earth mother) and mike ( an easy going old fart)...so very much.
Chris is treating me to a nice hotel room and the date has been set for May the first, so all I had to do is to galvanise the groups, so to speak and turn up.
It will be lovely to see them all again.
Texting is an ideal medium to organise a reunion.
A few choice words and " beep beep!" Job's done
Yesterday, I contacted my three main friends and in a fit of excitement made a few more texts to other old Sheffield  friends that I have not caught up with for a few years now...... Seeing that I have a whole day to "catch up" with old friends.... I thought that I could stagger a few reunions over a late lunch or an early dinner so to speak.
One old friend I sent the "generic..meet me" text to got back to me almost immediately. The last time I saw her, she was a harassed wife and mother, who lived a quiet surburban life of school runs, part time nursing shifts and occasional depression.
Now things appear somewhat different........
Our Text Conservation went as follows.......
ME: "......so I can't wait to see you......I cannot believe that we last met up five years ago....what's new?"
HER: " Left my husband, living in a rented house.......share the kids, they all have their problems and life is a struggle at times but bugger it.......I've had a gastric bypass, lost 8 stone, dyed my hair purple, had several piercings and now shagging a 22 year old ex cage fighter who has put me in debt.... But hey ho" ( now you know where I got the catchphrase hey ho from!) ...." If you can't have a midlife crisis at my age when can you have it?!...............
I will tell you all the mucky details when I see you. X.......what's your news BTW?"

ME: ( wracking my brain) " I think I have gout in my right big toe"

HEY HO

Sheffield City Centre

The Toilet Paper Saga

Our old back door had taken a battering over the years. Seven dogs, two cats and wood rot has left it looking like the doorway  to the Hillbilly's cabin from Deliverance , so in the sake of security and marital harmony we got a little man in to replace it

The delightful and much missed Constance giving the old door a hammering

The workman arrived around 8.30 am just as I returned from night shift. He got on with the work without drinking copious amounts of tea and coffee, which impressed me, and soon was gouging out lock holes,assembling windows and shaving wood as I walked the dogs and sorted the animals out.

When I returned he asked me if he could use" the facilities"  and without thinking I showed him the bathroom before realising that I had not checked it.

All civilised people should check their bathroom before anyone uses it

It stops all of those embarrassing moments when the odd "floater" is located down the pan.

The workman was upstairs for an absolute age, and when he returned all he said as he got stuck in fixing up the new cat flap, was a rather sullen " you have run out of toilet paper"

I realised that I had made the most embarrassing faux pax.

There was not a sheet of bog roll to be found in the house

I had visions of the poor man rifling his pockets for a stray handkerchief or even a shop receipt to " ensure the " necessary deed" was done so to speak but like all social interactions we have with strangers , the two of us couldn't bring ourselves to acknowledge the fact that acceptable bum wiping could not be carried out......

I hurried up to the shop , bought some toilet paper and treated him to a packet of chocolate biscuits in way of an apology......

Hey ho

The new door complete with cat flap

"I Am Watching You"

My scratches and bruises may have faded somewhat

But I have not forgotten Eric, the hormonal cockerel's attack of 48 hours ago.

I got home after work this morning and gave the little bastard my best DeNiro " I am watching You"

gesture as he emerged full of chutzpah from his coop.

Hell has no fury as an middle aged homosexual scorned.

Mark my words

It WON'T happen again.

He didn't seem to pick up on my non verbals

I think this one off testosterone victory has gone to his head.

Anyhow

The cottage seems to be in disarray this morning. A workman is busy fitting a new back door.

as all three dogs watch him with shivering terrier excitement 

The kitchen is full of dirt, wood shavings and wet tools

It is raining heavily, the first time since we had the snow

And everything's a mess

I need to clean the cottage as Chris has invited Mrs Trellis to dinner this evening

And I haven't even bleached the toilet as yet

I need a scotch Egg

Bring it on short arse!

Lore

I don't think I could possibly follow yesterday's blog with a suitably robust entry, and so I won't even try.Today I will bore you all with a  review.
I have not been out on a film evening since I had the flu, ( and that was bleeding weeks ago) so I washed my face , put on a clean beanie and went over to Theatre Clwyd to see the German/Australian production of Lore.

Not quite Edelweiss 

The story of innocence lost during wartime is a common enough theme within film narrative, but under the poetic guidance of Australian director Cate Shortland, Lore, gives the subject a visual and overwhelming sense of decay, grief and loss.

The war in Germany is ending and an affluent family is relocating as the allies fight over which part of Germany they will each control.After her SS parents are arrested ,14 year old Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) finds herself with the daunting job of mothering her four siblings on a 500 mile journey from the Black Forest to Hamburg to the perceived safety of their grandmother's house.

Lore's journey across Germany is suitably harrowing, but it is her loss of innocence amid the nation's shame and collective grief that is the most impressive to watch, especially given that the family's only  salvation and aid comes in the shape of Thomas ( Kai Pet Malina) a Jew cast adrift from a liberated concentration camp.

Lore is not the matriarch of the Von Trap family in this movie. She is fickle, angry and racist and that is why her character is so compelling. Her blossoming sexuality around Thomas is soured by her ingrained mistrust and hatred of the Jews , a fact which is complicated by the slow realisation that her parents were indeed responsible for the atrocities that the damaged and starving German population are forced to bare witness to by the allied armies.

Rosendahl gives an impressively frank performance as the contradicted Lore and Malina is equally good in his role as Thomas, the Jewish survivor that is not quite what he seems. Both capture perfectly the desperation of survival inside a country stripped of everything it once held dear.

This is  a powerful and uneasy movie

8/10

Sexing Camilla

My profession (aka. Paid job) is as a wildlife ecologist,so I can finally offer you some professional advice John! Since Canada geese are not sexually dimorphic (they have the same plumage), in order to tell the sex of the bird you have to get up close and personal with them. This entails grabbing the goose, putting it on its back between your legs on the ground with the head tucked under your body and pressing hard with your thumbs on either side of the vent/cloacal opening. If it is a gander, a corkscrew shaped appendage will pop out. If not, you have a female. On goose banding days we do hundreds of them at a go. We also do bag checks of duck hunters and it is much easier sexing a dead goose than a live one!

So said the delightful Sherry from Spinners End Farm and this morning I took her advice, grabbed Camilla/ Charles ( delete when appropriate) when I let the animals out of their houses and in one swift movement popped the goose on his back and straddled him.

Everything was going swimmingly, even though Camilla was honking like an express train, and I was just about to flex the old thumbs around the aforementioned cloacal opening when all hell let loose.

I had just had time to turn my head to the right when I was hit in the face by a flurry of claws, beak and red feathers.

No doubt spurred on by Camilla's distress calls, Eric the diminutive cockerel had suddenly decided to go all super hero and batter the shit out of me, and luckily for him I was in an ideal position ( with my hands busy) not to be able to defend myself.

Eric got several more karate chops in before I made a run for it.

Camilla remains unsexed

And I got my arse well and truly kicked by a six inch high cockerel

Eric wounds...I need a hot sweet tea

Eric is the one on the left with the killer expression

Camilla Or Could It Be Charles?

Camilla ( or Charles) leaving her/his bachelor pad this morning

Things return to normal today. Chris has already left for the University early this morning and Sorrel leaves on the 10 am train. Trelawnyd, for me will change from a full,constantly " moving" cottage interior , returning to the steady routine of vegetable bed preparation and rooster arse Vaseline dabbing.

April heralds the start of goose eggs season.

Winnie and Jo always choose to drop their large oval eggs inside the goose house and as soon as they arrive, Camilla, the Canada Goose gets ousted from the flock.

It happened last year and no doubt it will happen next year, as suddenly the three domestic geese decide that Camilla cannot be tolerated for the duration of the short egg laying season.

I suspect Camilla is in fact a gander.

Perhaps any professional  " goose person" out there could confirm my  suspicions.I would be grateful

In the meantime, Camilla is shacked up with Bogbrush and his cohorts, and will spend a lonely and slightly sad existence on the periphery of the goose flock until hormones return to normality in a couple of months.

Right, I can hear my MIL stirring so I am off to cook her breakfast.....

I may treat myself to a scotch egg after I drop her off at the station......Marks And Spencer do a cracking quality two pack!

...get me........Marks & Spencer Scotch eggs on a Monday!

How decadent 

Hey ho

Oh She Loves Her Crumpet Does Sorrel!

It's Sorrel's last night here in Wales

So it's a time for warming her crumpets by the fire

Ohh errr missus

A Toy Boy Down The Lane

The ducks have been playing up 

Led by the three drakes, Halleh, and the new boys Bert & Ernie, all eight have been disappearing through the snow damaged fencing to wander across the horse livery pastures and down into the lane.

A rather bedraggled middle aged woman knocked on the cottage window at lunchtime, just as I was settling down with a coffee and Just A Minute, and told me that they were out on the road.

She informed me that " her David" was stood guarding them and asked if I could sort them out.

We wandered down the lane and after thanking David who was a dishy looking twenty something and still holding my mug of coffee in my hand, I yelled at the ducks to get their arses back in the field.

Ducks may be thick as mince,

But when they are bollocked, they tend to return to places they know and love.

So as the ducks panicked, ran in a few circles before galloping  home, I turned to the woman and said

"Thank you.... It was lucky that you and your son was about"

The scruffy looking  woman pursed her lips slightly

" He's not my son, he's my husband"

She said with a slight hardness in her voice.

And neither of them reacted at all

When I said with an embarrassed and slightly camp 

"Oohhh............lucky you!"

Bert and Ernie ( their feathers already back to a cracking condition) are 4th and 2nd from the right