A Late Entry

 Tomorrow Mr Butler will be wandering around the village with committee member Irene, in a bid to judge various garden categories for the Trelawnyd Flower Show.
We never have many entries, so this year I have felt obliged to enter our front garden...which looks ok -ish if you ignore the dog pee burn marks in the lawn.
Mr Butler is a national judge where Flower Shows are concerned, and travels the length and breath of the country during the summer " show" season judging for the most part vegetable and fruit entries .
Our show is one of the smallest he attends , but he says that it is one of his favourites as generally one of our younger female committee members a companies him on his rounds

 I am on nights tonight, so hopefully I will be hiding away in bed for an hour when Mr Butler arrives
I couldn't quite cope with his gently shaking head when he spies the slug holes in my hostas
And the hastily bought garden centre blooms which I have just bunged in at random this morning

Bliss

I was invited to the post Prestatyn Flower Show "do" this evening
It is a time their committee gets together , drink  too much and has a takeaway
It sounds like great fun.........especially as most of the characters I have met ARE great fun
However.....
I couldn't go... Animals to look after... Which was a shame
So as they all got stuck into a nice Pinot
I watched the shit Star Wars- Attack of the clones on tv
And had my feet licked by a fat bulldog
The feet licking ............was............bliss btw
Reflexology on the cheap

Look closely .its Winnie in full  lick

The Great British Unwashed

I'm the one on the left

In two days,I have done around seven and a half hours taking money on the Prestatyn flower Show  gate. Generally it is a worthwhile and enjoyable job, full of good humour and idle chatter.

Only occasionally does some uncouth specimen spoil the harmony of the day by complaining on the cost of admission  (£1.50!) or the fact the Show doesn't provide it's own toilet facilities!

The best complaint of the day came from two middle aged women who, quite honestly had seen better days. Not locals, they actually stopped me on their way home to complain that one of the brass band players ( Rhyl's excellent brass band had been commissioned to play to entertain visitors ) had showed too much of his arse cheeks when bending over.

I tried to make light of it by smiling a big smile and saying  " well it's a very hot day" but this seemed to irritate one of the women more and she kept on repeating that the whole spectacle was " absolutely disgusting "

I smiled a big false smile at the woman and chirped out in my best sing song voice

" life's a big disappointment sometimes isn't it?"

And went back to my next customer.

The great British Unwashed

Who needs them?

Preview

Just watched a four minute preview of the new series of The Walking Dead

Hidden away amid the action was one brief clip of

Carol & Daryl together!

Roll on October

The Prestatyn Flower Show

Only a week before The Trelawnyd Flower Show ( which takes place on the Aug 9th) is the much larger and more robust Prestatyn Flower Show.
I have done my stint taking monies on the gate today....in the glorious sunshine.....almost content ( but not quite) in the fact that I got a third place for my veg basket and 3rd prize for my hen scarecrow
( there were only THREE ENTRIES IN EACH EFFING CATEGORY!)
To add insult to injury my two competitors in the scarecrow competition were aged 6 and 7 respectively.
Little bastards.....bet they got their parents to help them!
It's not fair
I'm an orphan

My basket of veg is the piss poor one in the background

A Monster  cabbage entry

Garlic Farts

Chris has gone to London for work, then he's off to spend a few days 

With his family in Kent

He won't be back for a week.

I treated me and the dogs to a pepperoni pizza tonight

It was Winnie's first experience of a " thick garlic crust"

And I think she liked it given the amount of herby farts coming from her cage at bedtime

"My land's only borders lie around my heart"

The unlikely star of the games...one of 41 Scottish Terriers

So says the final stirring line from the musical number Anthem from " Chess" , and the sentiment kind of captures the national pride evoked by sporting and cultural events such as The Commonwealth Games.
I always cry at open ending ceremonies.
It's the surge of emotion that carries me away........
And when you analyse it, the odd situation of several thousand happy people celebrating the fact they all live in a country that the emotional romping organisers have wrung every bit of positivism out of in one huge set piece...it is no wonder that the tears start to flow.
National events like these provide us with a collective " feel good" moment
And we don't have many national feel good moments in the great scheme of thing ...do we?

I am patriotic but not particularly nationalistic...does that make sense?
My loyalties have always been somewhat split.
I am very proud to be a Welshman, even though I don't particularly have a welsh accent and can only hold down a rudimentary welsh language conversation. I am a typical hybrid of North Wales.
My parents essentially were English, ( hailing from the North West) and my Grandparents came from Scotland, Liverpool with Irish and Lancashire backgrounds themselves....I am, as most people are in the  uk, a mongrel.
At the end of the Trelawnyd  Male Voice Choir concert, I adore standing with the audience to belt out the Welsh National Anthem ( which I taught myself to sing from reading it time and time again from a tea towel someone had given me)....yet when I watched the  Yorkshire segments of the Tour de  France , I could have popped with pride for my adopted home of South Yorkshire, as the population good naturedly took the event to their hearts.
It's a simple psychological phenomenon
We , as a species , love and need to be a part of something... We need to be owned by a tribe.

Last night, swept up with good intentions  and good will, the Scottish crowds warmly greeted the Malay team which were flanked by several Malaysian air hostesses .in an act of solidarity and respect the stadium fell silent to mark the recent air disasters and messages of goodwill were sent to Hollond on their national day of mourning.
Such is the power of events like these
I just wish politicians and the fundamentalists in this world could take note  

Commonwealth

As I could make out ,the only thing the organisers of the Commonwealth Games didn't throw into

it's opening ceremony was porridge 

Everything was there

Rod Stuart, The Loch Ness Monster, charity donations,

Susan Boyle , men with kilts and Lulu

But for me

The real stars were the dozens of scotties 

Leading out the athletes

With their fast little legs and proud fierce looking faces