A Bit Of Common

Chris took the car to the station early this morning. He's working in London over the next few days .
I worked past midnight at SAMs so couldn't be arsed getting up to take him, subsequently I had to catch the bus down to down to collect the trusty Berlingo.
If there are people from the village on the bus, then the fifteen minute journey to town can be rather jolly, but more often than not a rather loud rough looking woman from somewhere  " up country"  holds court at the front of the bus where  she talks loudly to the scouse bus driver.
Today we had to endure a somewhat robust blow by blow critique of various video nasties from Sky tv's horror channel and so when we finally got to Prestatyn , I had to take myself to the quiet order of Marks & Spencer 's food Hall to gather my thoughts.
Relatively speaking , the  food hall is a little oasis of calm and class.......especially when you have just suffered a somewhat flamboyant review of something called Baby Blood and I was just searching the " cooked meats" for a reduced price scotch egg bargain when I spied a rather chunky guy slowly jogging down the aisle to where his wife was  busy gazing at the raspberry trifles.. She looked up and frowned and her  theatrically waspish comment that followed had me chuckling
" Don't Run Kevin !" She hissed " your man boobs look like space hoppers!"

Harvest Festival In Trelawnyd

Ok, I concede that my previous post was a lazy bag of mashings. Sometimes it is easier to post a video than to think of something interesting to write.......

Nothing of great interest has happened today. I caught up with some shopping, and cleaning and have pottered for most of the day...but the appearance of a little bowl of fruit did prick my attention. 

After Chris went to Church this afternoon, I suddenly realized that he had forgotten his carrier bag of " Harvest Festival " goodies, which I had bought from Tesco this morning. 

(The Church at this time has always decorated with fruit and veg  and boxes and cans of food and toiletries . The cans, packages  and toiletries are always donated to the homeless shelter down in Rhyl)

Anyhow, as the congregation was singing  We Plough The Fields And Scatter , I tip-toed into the Church porch and dropped off the foodstuff next to the baskets of fruit and piles of apples and oranges which decorated the porch seat.

In the centre of the seat was an vintage fruit dish filled with shiny blackberries and over it was a handwritten sign which said " washed Ready to eat". A serving spoon and a collection of little bags  lay nearby 

I guessed rightly that the blackberries were a sweet thought by Mrs Trellis to the congregation .

A kind little snippet , from a dying tradition.

Get Mum!

Sometimes you just have to enjoy a belly laugh at someone else's expense

This video is worth the three minute investment

Mugging

Yesterday when walking on the promenade at Prestatyn

One certain bulldog cornered two Eastern European men eating chips on the wall by the old Grand Hotel.

She managed to bully several chips and a large bite out of a deep fried sausage from them before I got to her

And she didn't change her deadpan expression at all during the assault 

Doing a long day at work today...Chris is in charge of home!

Answers

In 1994 I was lucky enough to visit Pittsburgh's spinal injury rehab facilities

Whilst working on a six month course. I loved the city which strangely enough is twinned with 

Sheffield

Kew Gardens always remind me of my friend Nu

We have spent many happy hours ambling past the glasshouses

Just chatting.

I adore New York. I love Art Deco and I like Christmas

So one of my favourite places had to be the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan

Chris and I used to visit Chatsworth most Sunday afternoons when we lived in Sheffield

It's a sublime place

So sad to hear that the Duchess of Devonshire , the last of the Mitford sisters died this week

All Bar One is an average to good wine bar in Sheffield City Centre

It was ( and is) a place that I have met friends for many many years

I had my first date with Chris there.

I have fallen down the basement steps there

And I have spent many a drunken night of fun there

Good memories

Sitges just south of Barcelona has been one our favourite holiday places

Relaxed and classy it has non of the excesses of other Spanish resorts

It's also very gay friendly although Chris and I don't bother with the gay haunts

( what with my dress sense...you can't blame me?)

From Above

Last night i went to see the Argentinian movie Wakolda which was shit. I left after three quarters of the film and went to have a look at the exhibition in the Oriel Gallery which was a glass instillation called The Colour Of India . 
As I walked around I fell into conversation with one of the staff from the theatre who shared with me some of her ideas for an exhibition I was intrigued, with some of her ideas, one of which was a collection of aerial photographs of her favourite places in the world
Now some of her choices were exotic to say the least...... The Great Barrier Reef, Parts of the African gold coast.......the ice fields of Chile but i kind of liked the idea
so here are a few of my favourite places..... not as showy admittedly, but kind of fun....can anyone guess where they are?

No1 A Favourite City..I worked in in 1994

 

No 2 A Place me and a best friend often visit

No 3 a building complex 

No 4: A second Home Lady Mary

No 5  The Purple Pin site of many a good night out

no 6: A holiday destination

Answers on the pastcard

bet no one can quess them all

Making A Silk Purse Out Of A Sow's Ear?

Please forgive the "local" nature of today's post. I understand that it will have little interest to anyone not living in the village, but I wanted to chronicle a bit of Trelawnyd news.
I was making dumplings this morning when animal helper Pat called a hello over the garden wall.
she told me that she had just walked through the village and had noticed that workmen had been hard at work clearing the jungle of trees and bushes around two derelict houses in the centre of the village.
The houses have been an eyesore for decades, and their presence has given that part of Trelawnyd an unfortunte air of decay which has coloured what visitors to the area think of us,so the news of the renovation was very welcome indeed.
I mixed my dumplings, made a banana loaf (remember the Great British Bake Off was on last night) then took the dogs up to London Road to see the changes for myself.
We joined a small crowd.
Well , when I say " small Crowd" I actually joined Gay Gordon who was pearched on his invalid trolley and Mrs Trellis who were watching a mini digger ripping away tons of undergrowth with some interest

before the work you couldnt see the village hall at all from the road

" Hello Flower!" Gordon Bellowed when I arrived " what do you think of all this? "
" Good news eh?"
I nodded... it was VERY good news for the village, I agreed
Two renovated family sized houses for Trelawnyd,
and a clearing of delerect properties and opressive overgrown gardens
Rural regeneration? lets hope so

The old photo  below shows clearly how the original houses looked

 

 

Terror At The Mall

I have seldom  seen a documentary that has reduced me to tears, but tonight's showing on BBC2 of Dan Reed's film Terror At The Mall had me bawling.
The film, through some horrific CCTV and harrowing personal testimonies told the first hand story of the Shabab militant attack on the Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi just a year ago.
With Muzak  echoing around the burger bars and upmarket supermarkets the audience watches in horror the security camera footage of ordinary people fighting to survive the idiocy of four killer gunman who have chosen to kill women and children for a fucking cause.

I hope that any surviving Somali fanatic somehow gets the  chance to see this documentary in some airless jail cell...for overwhelmingly it celebrates the strength and the dignity of the human spirit regardless of race, class, belief and community.
It's not just a horror story.

The fate of one group of survivors linger long in the mind. Behind a small display table a group of black African, white African and Asian women had taken refuge with a handful of children. Together, after several hours, the women fled the crossfire, each one carrying the child of another. And together they reached safety after being saved not by the incompetent security services but by a handful of off duty police and civilian men with their own weapons.

One woman of that group, a serene and quiet spoken Valentine  Kadzo ( below), finally added  "We all come from different communities, but at that time we were one. I’ll always treasure that moment because everyone was caring about the other.”

It was those worlds and their delivery that made me cry even more