Alpha Male

Today I have set up a new tv from scratch

Programmed it to sky

Screwed in the top to the base

And connected htnl1 lead appropriately

I have repaired the roof the duck house
Cleaned out the back grid

Had a conversation with the workmen at the house renovation in the village about masonry 

And helped a neighbour shake the apples out of his Apple tree

I've gone all butch

Then I got back to normal

I shampooed the living room carpet

Bought flowers from marks and Spencer's

And screamed like a girl when a spider appeared from around the toilet when I was bleaching the rim

Hey ho

Thunderstorms, Bake Off and Cinema In The Afternoon (Gone Girl)

Last night we had a terrific storm. Around 10pm there was a massive clap of thunder overhead and the electricity went off. Immediately I was covered in frightened Bulldog and worried Scottish terrier. Even Albert hurried over to sit on the back of my chair.
minutes later the electricity came on again, but the surge must have played havoc with the tv, for it was dead as a dodo.
At least I managed to watch Bake Off before the tv imploded........it was the final last night, so there was much emailing back and forth with my nephew's partner on who was going to win.
The final had the bookmakers' favourite, the pencil-behind-the-ear Richard, pitched against the straight talking Nancy and the flamboyant and confident Luis and surprisingly it was Nancy who pulled her baking out of the bag to win.

she was a worthy winner, a good old fashioned baker. Dependable and consistent.
Wednesday's will be just a little more drab without it all.
 Yesterday afternoon me and the sister in law went to the cinema..... She wanted to see the new Helen Mirren but it wasn't showing so I talked her into seeing the "adult" thriller Gone Girl..which she was upset to see was an 18 certificate.
"I never see anything but U films" she said
As it turned out the David Fincher film was an inspired choice for it proved to be an intelligent noir thriller worthy of anything Hitchcock or dePalma  could have churned out.
I wont attempt to precis the complicated and clever plot, suffice to say the film seesaws around the disappearance of a beautiful young wife of a disillusioned, former golden boy in a recession hit mid western town. Did her husband kill his wife? Did the wife stage the whole thing? what was the true nature of their relationship? the film keeps the audience guessing to the very last reel and does so in a glossy, intelligent and surprisingly classy way/ It's a very smart movie.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike are wonderfully ambiguous as the couple, and the two leads are backed up beautifully by the likes of Carrie Coon , as Affleck's feisty twin sister. .Kim Dickens as a wily police detective and Tyler Perry as a big shot New York lawyer.

 

Gone Girl is not just a modern thriller of some class........it also has quite a lot to say about the reality of marriage........marriage  behind closed doors!

8/10

The Devil Rides Out

The previous post was just a bit of village news
This one is just....well.......odd
For many weeks now I have been meaning to blog this photo

For outside Gay Gordon's neat little bungalow has been hanging a four foot plastic skeleton complete with lurid purple neckerchief 

Is devil worship rearing its ugly head in the village?

Answers on a postcard

Flower Show News and Duck coalitions

I need my eyes testing again. I took Chris to the station early this morning ( he's working in London for a few days) and waved energetically at my sister on her way to work only to realise that it was a young man with big hair.

Before coming home , I popped into tesco's for cat food  and received a slightly disapproving glance from the checkout girl, who noticed my pyjama bottoms sticking out under my trousers and the large coffee dribble stain on my t shirt ( which was back to front)

I'm not good in a morning

Now , I am squinting over the Flower Show correspondence which is spread out on the kitchen table.

The 2015 schedule was finalised at our meeting last night and  and it was agreed that the Show profits will be put towards three village initiatives this year

We will support and pay for one trip out for the Friendship Group, give a robust donation to the Conservation Group to help with the planting out of the summer flower beds and give another donation towards the National Urdd Eisteddfod which our county is hosting next year.,A school teacher from the village has been instrumental in raising cash to support this youth event .

I had a break from letter writing at 8.30 and went to treat the animals to some cheap white sliced bread. From out of the blue eight ducks shot past me in typical Indian file all of them quacking and chunnering....it's taken a while but the beautiful green cayugas have now joined the last two remaining hysterical Indian runners and four Aylesbury Ducks and have formed a nice cohesive new flock on the field.
Ducks are funny buggers........they desperately need to be part of a group


My sister in law and I are bunking off this afternoon...we are off to the cinema!
HOW DECADENT!

2 Weddings!

We held the Trelawynd Flower Show meeting tonight

I told auntie Glad that on June 20th we are holding our wedding party in the village hall

" you're getting married TWICE ?" She shouted knowing full well our official wedding is March 6th

I told her no.......and she said she'd couldn't wait  to come to the " do"
It'll be my first" she said .......she's 96 this year
We had a load of scones at the meeting ..they were lovely

Hey ho
She made my day

Coming Out

One scene in last night's film held a certain resonance.
It was the drama filled scene when a post teen boy was outed by his parents in the hysterical Aids times of 1984, and the recognition wasn't one from my own life, but one I knew Chris had gone through.
With typical Chris understatement , he merely said when we chatted about the film on the way home " it was a difficult time coming out in the 80s"

I came out in the early 90s.
I was in my late  twenties when I started, so I escaped that parent angst so many men and indeed boys put themselves through. My father died in 1989 and I decided very early on, that declaring my gayness to a mother with her own problems would solve nothing. My sexuality would  have been hijacked by her natural love for drama and made into an issue of hers and not mine.
No, my coming out was centred around the most important people in my life...my siblings and my urban family of close friends.

And I never had a bad reaction.

Of course some of my extended family had their reservations about it all , a fact which,  through patience and non confrontation on my part resolved itself eventually. My brother apparently cried a bit and my sisters, as I knew they would be, were fairly non plussed about it all.
I think it helped that I came out more with a whisper rather than a full on queer-in-your-face bang.

My best mate, who still is a pragmatic and friendly Yorkshire man, just nodded slowly over his pint in the Back lounge of The Dog and Partridge when I told him " I guess you want me go with you to the odd gay bar now" he said with a wry chuckle . He never even paused for dramatic effect.

You cannot quite imagine how wonderful it is to share something like this with people you care about and not illicit a powerful reaction......watching another scene from the film Pride last night, reminded me so much of this coming out time. It was a gentle scene where the elderly Welsh miner Cliff ( the lugubrious Bill Nighy) simply says " I'm gay" to his lifelong friend Hefina ( Imelda Staunton) as they are quietly buttering bread  for a miner's benefit party.  Her buttering knife pauses very briefly as she replies " I know" . and the pair continue their work  in companionable silence.
No hysteria.. No angst.......
Just normality

Yes.......I was very lucky indeed.

Pride

Pride is a feel good comedy drama that Britain seems to churn out rather effortlessly . Set at the height of the 1980s Miners' strike , it's a bit of whimsy based on the true story of  a group of gay activists who pick a small Welsh mining community to support when the trade union action takes hold. 

And so we have flamboyant gays meeting Welsh small minded ness , with the gays winning over the locals with feats of disco dancing warmth, advice on fashion and the the obligatory gay bashing bigot ruining the Kids From Fame feel with speeches on Sodom  and Gomorrah .

Interestingly enough amid the sentimentality ( and there is a great deal of sentimentality) there are subplots galore which centre upon, Aids, coming out, and family dynamics  and wisely director Mathew Warchus does not shy away from sex and the fickle nature of gay life in the 1980s but covers everything we see in so much warmth...you can't help but enjoy the ride..even though that much of the narrative is terribly heavy handed

It's a sweet film....and one which is elevated by some sweet performances from the likes of Dominic West ( as a faded actor with some sharp dance moves) paddy Considine ( as a miners' leader who embraces the gay activists ) and Imelda Staunton as Welsh matron who proudly informs local bigots that she's off to Swansea for a " les-off"......

Yes  all sweet fun!

I dare anyone not to watch the film without gently smiling to themselves ...mind you the scenes where the miner's wives sing " Bread & roses" as a sign of defiance against Thatcher's government and when ostracized  Welsh gay bookshop owner Gethin ( Andrew Scott) hears a gentle " nadolig Llawen ( Happy Christmas  in Welsh) from a friendly mother are dreadfully moving to watch and had me snuffling into my hankie

8/10

A Big Wet Vagina

I found myself on catch up today. I haven't taken the harvest festival food to the homeless  shelter as yet, William needs another trip to the vets and I need to pick up a friend's carpet cleaner in order to remove the mouse intestine stains from the hall landing carpet.
I did, however,  manage to walk the dogs , do some shopping and buy the house coal this morning and at lunchtime I popped into the the driveby McDonald's in order to buy a single ( yes a single) cheeseburger for me and a large fries for the dogs As we drove past the animal feed wholesalers I saw Bunty loading horse feed into the back of her jeep, so I stopped to say hello.
She told me that she had sold on the geese that I had sold to her, blaming the fact they continued to act  like" bastard geese from Hell" and as we chatted she helped me feed the dogs with their chips .
When she handed Winnie her fries, she swore under her breath as her hand disappeared into a huge bulldog mouth, then she wiped her wet hands rather theatrically on her jeans
" Christ Almighty it's like putting your hand in a big wet vagina" she bellowed
I could see her point..........