UFO

In springtime, every spring time, Camilla, the Canada Goose tries to fly.
I don't  know if it is just a seasonal exuberance that makes her take to her wings,
But what I do knows is, that despite a natural ability that could take her a quarter the way across the globe all she manages to do is to soar a  hundred feet or so up into the air before crashing and burning into the neighbours' field.
Where flying is concerned
Camilla has all the natural grace of a skateboarding Winifred.

It's a case flap wings like a loon,
Somehow catch a cross wind coming from the east
And it's up and off .
Three times yesterday I had to traipse over the sheep fields to retrieve her.
And three times Camilla just stood there shaking her beautiful head, stunned and shocked at hitting the wet grass at twenty five miles an hour.

Her last flight was observed by neighbour John, who was busy constructing a home made boat in his drive.after she had honked her way by him, he called over to me and pointed out the direction the ungainly goose had disappeared into......
I had taken twenty or so steps down the lane when I heard Graham , the Shepherd, shout out from his supervisory position above his lambing pens
It was obvious to all that Camilla's third flight was as precarious as all of the others

All Graham yelled was a somewhat sarcastic and slightly excitable World War Two-esque warning of
" INCOMING!!"

Plodding

Last home as always

Last week, at work, I found myself supporting a junior manager. She was having a moan about a bad shift she had experienced, where a few colleagues didn't quite pull their weight as part of the team. 

I took the opportunity to share my thoughts about " the plodders" of a team, every group has them..... Never the high flyers,  never the ambitious ones, but often supportive in their own pedestrian kind of way.

Plodders , I always think, can form the backbone upon which a team can support itself.

I think she got my gist.

The plodder in our house is George.

Physically slower than his fellow pack members , he is always last through the door, last home after a walk and last up from bed in a morning, but it's his character that so amuses and exasperates me during everyday life, for George is a chronic procrastinator. 

In George's world, every blade of grass needs a sniff and every new view needs to be looked at and looked at again. There is no urgency in George World...and why would there be? , he learnt long ago that whatever he does, she could never compete with any other dog.

Being small and stocky means that the bigger, more assertive and faster dogs beat him to the bone every time.

What's the point in rushing?

George is best served in his own little world

It's a world of plodding.

The Great British Sewing Bee

Heather doing a hidden zip

 While I have been waiting for this years's Great British bake Off , I have had to content myself with it's less well known sister The Great British Sewing Bee , which finished this evening on BBC2
Would freehand champion Chinelo beat the off the wall sewing champ Tamara? Or would horsey metaphors lover Heather gallop up on the rails ? All was to play for in this dress making tv competition' where a selection of talented British needle workers knocked up a succession of hemmed items with beautiful seams.
In the end it was posh totty Heather that won...... And fair do's her final frock was pretty impressive.....then again what the hell to I know about fashion?
I still wear wellies to the cinema

Sigh

I really only watch the show for judge Patrick Grant........his beard is worth an hour in front of the television anytime...........

A Free For All

The berlingo was having new tyres fitted this morning, and so, while the cheerful mechanics did their thing. I took myself off to a nearby " budget" supermarket for a coffee and the paper.
The coffee was shite as was the news, so I killed some time wandering around the aisles buying things I didn't really need.
I was just pricing up a packet of cheap chicken roll ( a dog treat) when I noticed a young woman brazenly stuffing a packet of meat down the sleeve of a coat she was carrying over her arm.
I turned to stare at her and she caught my eye for just a second before walking off.
It was a look more of defiance rather than shame.
And that pissed me off more than anything.
I walked  to the tills and caught the eye of a supervisor, and I told her what I had seen. I described the thief and pointed to where I last saw her, and left the professionals to it.
 A few minutes later there was a scuffle of sorts beyond the checkouts. The thief was shouting at the supervisor and a security guard. Her coat and it's contents strewn across the floor.
A packet of meat, chocolates , toiletries and what looked like expensive men's razors lay on the tiles.
Apparently razors are a popular choice by addicts as they can be sold on quickly..so my check out girl explained....she also told me that the woman in question already was banned from the store for theft.
" they come in everyday, seven days a week stealing" the checkout girl added wearily
" it's a full time job for many"

It's another world is it not?

That's my Boy

Handsome and resting

I am not a fan of big pet store chains, but I will have to admit, the groomers at our local Pet's At Home " superstore" have done a cracking job on William today.

He was so well behaved that  they have asked him to model as one of their assessment dogs.....

I will have to check if that means we get a free haircut?

I feel like a father whose toddler son has just won the egg and spoon race.

And The Car Followed....

Last Night I finished a shift at 1am in the morning.( duh I mean this morning!)
The office is located in the back streets of Rhyl, which is one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Wales....it's not a place to walk with money in your pocket.
Anyhow as I was driving through the deserted streets in the town centre, I noticed a car behind me in the rear view mirror..
I turned left from the centre
The car followed
And left again past the police station
And the car followed.
I turned right into High Street
The car followed
I drove over the railway bridge
The car followed..it was a white estate car with a single man in the driving street
I went straight on at Sainsbury's roundabout
And straight on at the  Rhuddlan roundabout
And the car followed.
There was not another soul on the road.
I entered the blackness of the countryside
The lights of the car followed me.
And I started to get nervous
2 miles later...I drove through Dyserth  village.
The white car was still there
I drove back into the countryside.
And in the mirror, the white car could still be seen.
A few miles later, Trelawnyd was in sight, and so I did something rather rash for me,
Without indicating I suddenly turned off the Trelawnyd road towards Gwaenysgor and shot down the narrow rural road to see if the car would follow........I suddenly didn't want to drive home when Chris was not there...with a strange car on my tail.
I was bloody well unnerved by the whole thing because......
The headlights suddenly ,followed me.
I shot through the " s" bends of the country road like a whippet
Turned right at the crossroads and doubled back up the tiny mouse lane towards
Trelawnyd........
I must have hit 40 mph up the pitch black one track lane
But all was quiet and in darkness behind me when I finally got home
I turned off the cottage  lights as soon as I galloped down the path
And immediately went to hide under the duvet with the dogs after double locking the back door

Annoyed that I had scared myself so much.

Oh no ....NO NO Noah!

Chris is off to Paris via Kent today...so me, Albert and the dogs shared a roast chicken and the leftover prawn crackers from last night's takeaway
( dogs absolutely adore prawn crackers if you didn't know....and even Winifred, who had never eaten one before coming to Wales, can cram a whole five inch one in her gob at one go.
Such are the little treats on a Sunday!
Now I have just sat through perhaps one of the oddest movie epics EVER...yes I finally took umbrage at Tom Stephenson's unfathomable hatred of Mr Russell Crowe and took myself off to see Noah
.....".I cannot think of anything quite so bizarre as Noah! " 
( sounds like one of the reject songs from the Sound of Music)
It's the weirdest thing since Ed Miliband .

Gone is the simple two sentence tale of a 1960s childhood, where all we knew about Noah was the animal pairs up the gangplank bit and now we have an angst fantasy story where giant stone monster angels construct a giant car park of an ark whilst Russell Crowe's Australian sounding Noah, battles with the cockney king of the barbarian's Ray Winstone whilst Welsh accented Anthony Hopkins does his Gollum impersonation on top of Mordor Mountain.
Bring back that Archers sounding nursery song " the animals came in two by two"
Ok......I did allow myself a small smile, when Noah stood before the truly impressive arrival of the bird flocks......but as for the rest!
It's a huge pile of old shite
I walked out before the end......and I wasn't the first

Wedding video......

Nicked straight from High Riser's blog ...this wedding based video ( don't worry I not becoming a bleeding weddings bore) is a real delight
Just finished a 13 hour shift...... And my feet are on fire........
So I am about to get the  bulldog of the house to lick them back into shape
Meanwhile... Watch the video and cry like a baby
http://www.acrylicafternoons.com/nmedusted.html
Ps just heard a  podcast from Jarvis  cocker's story of falling from a Sheffield window..............
Don't you just love him?