Favourite Person Thursday

I have chosen two winners

For this week's favourite person Thursday 

Both characters have been well known for their

" take me as you find me" personalities

Both look like they can handle themselves very well indeed in a pub fight

And both, as far as I can judge would have been very good friends if 

they had only met in real life.

Sour puss himself, sex on legs Mr Russell Crowe

A bit of rough

And the recently deceased Clarissa Dickson Wright

Barrister, cook, writer, tv personality, and "shoot EM, kill EM, eat EM "supporter

Honest and no shit!

Off to bed now for an hour after night shift...I am giving a lecture in the memorial Hall this pm

Wish me luck

Coincidence

I just love the power of the internet.
A few days ago I received an email from a Mrs Grenough, a stranger.
By chance she had come across my village history blog and shared with me the following information

........"my Nain and Taid [ Grandparents] were Norman and Maggie Jones of Plas yn Dre in Trelawnyd. My father (their son) was Cledwyn Foulkes Jones ( he died 1989) but was brought up in Plas yn Dre.

Trelawnyd is (or was) full of relatives; I had 2 great Aunts; Lizzie and Mary Foulkes who lived in a cottage opposite the Church, another great Aunt and Uncle, Harry and Rene Lewis lived on London Rd....one of the houses next to the hall and is now derelict....I think their son Colin is still in the area.....

Anyway, the point of all this is that many years ago my father was involved in some way with the Village Eisteddfod and at the time someone gave him a beautifully bound copy of; 

"A list of place names in the Parish of Newmarket 1920" by 

Helena Banning Roberts of The Laurels Newmarket

It was the winning entry for the Eisteddfod that year (it went under the title of "An Essay and History on the place names of Newmarket" by Rustic)"

The Greenoughs yesterday

She also went on to kindly offer me the book, and told me she could drop it off herself when she came to visit with her elderly mother who lives down the coast.

Yesterday she and her husband found me collecting eggs.it had been over forty years since she had come down the lane to Bwthyn Y Llan, for the spinster aunts , she had mentioned in her email as living in the village had actually resided in our cottage!

Apparently the sisters had both been sent away into service in Liverpool when young and had returned to live in the village where they grew up. Mrs Greenough remembers their ( our)  cottage very well, always having the fantasy that she would live in it when she grew up.

Mary & Lizzie's grave in the churchyard
I will put some flowers on it today

I find it fascinating that our paths crossed in such an arbitrary way, but it does feel that the book has " come home" in a strange sort of way

The book, as it turns out is a fantastic chronicle of the old village. Every house and cottage has a mention. Historic place names, fields, farms and house names are all referenced with brief histories, information and anecdotes , it is a comprehensive snapshot of the village past....I couldn't have asked for a better gift.

The book..

Funny too, that I am giving a talk on my history blog, to the village friendship group tomorrow afternoon. I shall take Helena Banning Robert's book with me.

Funny how things work out eh?

For Sol- The Walking Dead

Happy Days

The Walking Dead is now heading towards the end of its fourth series, and one of its most popular characters has been finally allowed to act in between zombie head stabbing and " it's behind you" horror shocks. Carol ( Melissa McBride) has been an unlikely survivor from the very first episode. Her psychological journey from battered and helpless housewife to a flawed but much stronger member of " team prison" has had fans rooting for her, so it was with interest that I watched Carol's stand alone episode entitled " The Grove"  last night.
In it Carol had to finally deal with the psychological damage inflicted on the child survivors of the apocalypse and her realization that 12 year old  Lizzie had to be " put down" because she has been transformed into a troubled and mentally ill killer was heartbreaking to watch
McBride is a rare creature in the horror genre for  she is an actress of some depth and range. Destined to be killed off in an earlier series, she has developed a huge fanbase through brief but telling time on screen and I am glad that the producers have developed her character rather than kill her off in favour of a younger and bustier Buffy-the- zombie killer .

Hands On Feet

I adore my feet being rubbed...it has been a lifelong passion. If no massage is forthcoming from the academic, I will content myself with a good licking by one of the dogs.
Dogs love cheesy feet!
Years ago now, I was a reflexology " volunteer". My good friend Joy and her classmates were studying for their massage exams and needed a regular pair of feet to practice on almost on a daily basis.
I was more than happy to be their guinea pig, having my feet rubbed then was the idea panacea to the world's stresses of running a busy spinal injury ward.

One evening, I went round to Joy's house for a " rub" and got allocated to one of her new colleagues who needed some extra practice. The trainee reflexologist turned out to be a shy British Telicom workman called Charlie who had just started his training . He looked slightly awkward as I was his first " client" and he made a point of saying that all his "practical" work had been done on his wife.

Anyhow, off he went squeezing and rubbing and being the ideal reflexology model, I gave him feedback and asked appropriate questions of his technique.
Now, I never fully understood the science behind reflexology, all I know is that it feels bloody good.....so after Charlie had given my heels a particularly thorough seeing too, I made a point of complementing him by saying
" that was bloody amazing!..you could do that to me all day"
Charlie blushed and looked particularly awkward
But I pressed on regardless
" what part of the body corresponds to the heel area" I asked...trying to sound like the ideal student
Charlie coughed and looked uncomfortable
And Joy, who was rubbing another volunteer's feet nearby, leant over and stage whispered the answer into my ear
" your BUTTOCKS," she said with a smile!
I closed my eyes and tried to look invisible for the rest of the session

Attention To Detail

I was hanging washing out by the back door when a car came down the lane. The woman driving slowed down when she saw me, and thinking she wanted eggs, I half waved and turned to pick up a half dozen from the kitchen window-ledge.
The woman had been sent down the lane by her sat nav and as chance would have it, she turned out to be a former colleague from years ago.
We chatted for a moment before she had second thoughts about the eggs and asked for a mixture of duck and hen's. As I collected them she got out of the car, and stood in the doorway chatting about work and before she tucked the cartons under her arm she spied a small glass vase on the side , in which I had placed a single purple primula flower.

She pointed to the flower and cooed

" you can always  tell a gay man's house from any other"  she trilled "it's the attention to detail"

She fingered the flower

Isn't that just lovely!........beautiful!" 

She whirled around , all excited at the sight of our gingham green kitchen tablecloth and the other vase of daffodils that sat on top of it and stopped dead at the sight of Winifred squeezing out a massive wet turd onto the centre of the patio

To keep the gay stereotypes going........I couldn't resist a loud 

"TA-DAAAAAAA!" as Winnie finished in a flourish

A Six Month Review

Sunbathing and asleep, Winifred in the garden a day ago

When he took one look at those big bloodshed eyes last autumn, Chris shook his head very slowly and said in his best exasperated Lord Grantham voice " If she blots her copy book within six months ..she's out!"

Well it's now six months later, and of course, she's not out!

She wouldn't ever be out,even  if she had turned out to be the bulldog version of Hannibal Lecter

That's the rule of rescue dogs

Once their feet are under the table

They are there to stay.

Like all of our re homed bulldogs, Winifred has blossomed in her new home.

Last week, I thought she had wandered off through the open garden gate and after several minutes of running around , I eventually found her sat hopefully in the back of the berlingo waiting for an extra car ride. Car journeys, walking amongst the pack and exploring the field with a lurid red plastic ball in her mouth are now highlights of her new country existence 

Now  although Chris remains vociferous in his " dislike" of everything bulldog, I do think that Winifred has melted one small tiny cold corner of his heart over the months.

Every night she will wander up to his place on the sofa, and will offer her big fat lips up to him for a kiss and every night he will give her a brief throwaway reply of " get lost fatty"

But I always catch him giving the old gal a brief pat on the head or a quick rub of the arse

Bosom friends they'll never be

But she's thawing the academic slowly and surely

....with her big goo goo eyes and her massive  lion sized heart

The Tower

Travelling by train ( or more precisely travelling in four trains) yesterday, can be a bit of a chore, but at 51 , I have finally worked out how to download movies onto my iPad, and now can indulge myself with  a bit of mindless cinematic fun to keep my mind off the great British unwashed.
Yesterday I sat through two hours of Korean disaster movie.
The Tower is a shameless rip off of ever Irwin Allen disaster flick of the 1970s. It is almost a remake of The Towering Inferno, with elements of The Poseidon Adventure , Earthquake, Backdraft and rather tastelessly 9/11 thrown in for good measure.
The production looks amazing, to be sure, and why wouldn't it ?.....(South Korea has a habit of bunging shed loads of dollars into its epics) but it despite its Hollywood roots The Tower remains reassuringly Korean in its make up as:-

• All of the male characters scream  VERY VERY LOUDLY and cry at a drop of a hat
• There is always one googled eyed screaming comic character to " lighten" the drama
• Many of the characters refer to each other quite formally as " Mr" or " Mrs"
• Everything is done at breakneck speed.

It's all bleeding rubbish. But it was polished bleeding rubbish........and perhaps because it was an emotional day all round yesterday,I found  the scene where a dejected cleaning lady Jeon Guk-jyang  gazes up in the night sky at the artificial snow produced for the opening ceremony dreadfully moving.

The only problem with watching a movie on your iPad in a packed train, is that when you laugh, you look like a loon!
I couldnt help guffawing at the moment when at the assembled party at the top of the soon to be destroyed skyscraper, all of the dinner suited guests raised their glasses to sing out a collective  cry of
" MERRY CHRISTMAS"
Possibly the hardest phrase for a set of Korean actors to shout in English!

Hey ho
Working tonight...have a good weekend 

Gentleman Jim.

It was lovely to see my friends last night. It's been a year since we all met up, but like true, good old friends, we bounded back into old conversations and old ways of behaving, even before the first sip of expensive beer passed our lips.
All three chums were on good form and all three thought it slightly odd that I was going to my Uncle's funeral today. An uncle I hadn't see since 1989.
Last night, I couldn't really answer their question.
This afternoon , I still can't articulate just why I wanted to attend
But, after four train journeys and a gut wrenching experience in a speeding Rotherham taxi, I sat thinking about that very thing in the grounds of  a beautifully sunny and peaceful Northern town crematorium and I came up with the simple notion that it was just the right thing to do 
The service and my brief reunion with my aunt and cousin was more emotional than I expected and  the Asian taxi driver who dropped me off then collected me up afterwards picked up on the fact when he was shooting through East Herringthorpe at fifty miles an hour!
" You not going to the pub?" He asked,
" no I don't need to go, I just wanted to pay my respects for old time's sake at the service" I told him honestly
Old time's sake.
My Grandmother, Jim's beloved mother, would have said that .