Cosmo

In 1980 I briefly dated a local girl called Sandra B.
We met at the " Stables" disco in nearby St Asaph, and sucked each other's faces off after drinking Pernod and lemonade beneath the ultra violet lights which always had a nasty habit of showing up any dandruff problem.
This morning I bumped into her in a supermarket ten miles from Trelawnyd.
I had just dropped Chris off for a boffin meeting, she, like me was doing the weekly shop.
We haven't spoken for 34 years.
Chic and well groomed, she looked ten years younger than her 52 years, and I recognised her immediately as she looked at me at the checkout with a slightly quizzical look.
Now I know that I am not looking at my best today, but despite the red snotty nose, the grubby woollen hoodie, the bloodshot eyes and the grey beard ( dotted with breakfast Muesli) she did indeed recognise me.

I know, I know...I look like shit

Now, I don't know about you, but catching up in a supermarket check out , looking and feeling like shit is not the easiest of jobs ....especially as the last time we met up, I had a 32 inch waist, wore a bow tie and was a straight bank clerk!
It was one of those silly conversations
" I've been married -divorced, have three grown up kids and am now dating again" Sandra chirped in way of a life CV
" I've been a nurse in Yorkshire most of my life, am getting married next year and am gay" I recipocated with a snotty smile
" How Cosmopolitan" Sandra said without pausing
I could see the check out girl looking me up and down
I couldn't have looked any less cosmopolitan if I had tried.

Bollocks

Some days don't work out too well do they?

Only 24 hours after telling Chris I have not suffered a cold all year

I have come down with a stinker.

I went to bed early last night with a lemsip, thermal long johns and my lumberjack hat on

and subsequently was wide awake at 5 am

I walked the dogs,

Cleaned the cottage and fell back asleep and overslept.

This had the neighbours knocking on the door to see if I hadn't died in my sleep

When I hurried out to let the animals out, I fell over on the field.

I then drove down to Prestatyn to drop off my great neice's birthday pressie 

and got a parking ticket.

Now I have earache and I have just dropped a tray of meatballs I've made for supper

It's only 12.30 pm too!
At least Albert has stopped limping

So I'm off for a hot bath with Vic

So will leave you with this video....

It did make me titter to myself

Who Do I Think I am? ( & a sex starved Bichon Frisé)

Adelaide

My elder sister has been researching our family tree. She has been concentrating on our maternal grandmother's family and after just a few night's research on line we now have a list of rural Irish and English  ancestors stretching back to the 1700 's .
My sister is like me, in the respect that she doesn't have a " need " to visit family graves, but given the nostalgia of her search, she took herself off to find my grandparent's grave , a visit that resulted in a mini panic attack when she couldn't quite locate the exact spot where my grandparents were buried.
I have been thinking about my Grandmother's early life today.
These thoughts were sparked by my sister's research and by a book loaned to me by affable despot Jason which chronicled the photographic work of Horace Warner in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Warner took some extraordinary photographs of the street children from the slums of Spitalfirlds, and one such photo of a young girl called Adelaide Springett, dressed in what was described as her best clothes, almost broke my heart
My grandmother was born into a poor Irish/ Liverpudlian family in 1900. The family lived in basement rooms near the infamous Scotty Road and were no strangers to poverty, Gran was estranged from them  when she married my grandfather, who wasn't a catholic and She seldom talked of her blood family as an older woman.
The sadness of my grandmother's early years seemed to have been compartmentalized as we grandchildren  always remember her as being one of the few fun people in our growing up lives.

Today on the way back from walking the dogs on the beach, I took a detour and stopped at Coed Bell Cemetery. I wondered if I could remember where my grandparents were buried.
Leaving the dogs in the car, I walked up the hill , through the stones and crosses and strangely walked straight up to the grave. There was absolutely no hesitation at all.

In our modern day world of benefits for the poor and needy, and council initiatives and social housing, it is easy to forget that only 100 years ago, the poor were effectively on their own. 

My grandmother was no stranger to the pawn shop, fear of the rent man and scrubbing other people's floors. She left her husband and two young children to waitress tables in the Isle Of Man to make money. She put camphor candles out each night to ward off the cockroaches and learnt to waste nothing at all in the kitchen.....

She lived in a world that was so different to our own. That photograph of little Adelaide is a reminder of just this.......

I spent a good half hour in the rain and the wind with my thoughts about all this

But was suddenly transported back to "John Gray world " when I returned to the dogs in the car.

I had parked in the tiny car park in front of the Graveyard and the trusty Berlingo was standing right up close to a white estate car. 

A slightly harassed looking middle aged woman was sitting in the passenger seat with a hyperventilating Bichon Frise bouncing around on her knee. And as I started to unlock my driver's door the little fella tried to claw his way out of his window towards me gasping and gagging like that cartoon Tasmanian devil!

" I don't know what's gotten into him" the woman explained as the little bastard's eyes rolled back in his head..." he's usually so well mannered with other dogs nearby"

One look at the berlingo' back window told me all I needed to know.

Winnie was standing in her best " come hither" pose, with her fanny positioned directly in the open window crack!

Hormones are very powerful things!

I own a slut

John Lewis = class

The countdown has begun

Bras, Pants And Gifts!

I wasn't going to the blog until after episode five of The Walking Dead which airs this evening, but in between power washing the back patio and waiting for tradesmen to arrive I have been in receipt of a couple of kind gifts and have rather surprisingly caught a fellow villager at her back kitchen window in her bra and knickers when I was out collecting egg boxes

I don't know which one of us was more embarrassed

It's a while since I've seen a lady just in her smalls!

Anyhow let's change the subject

 A big thank you to villager Christine who reads the blog

And left me out a small gift of a vintage toasting fork!
Which I am modelling with the help of a small pork sausage !

And another big thank you to Gayle from Arizona

Who sent me a pack of walking Dead playing cards!

Christmas has come early!

Super Hero Vicar

The Remembrance service in Trelawnyd is held at 2.30 pm and not at 11am. It is led by the vicar and by the chapel minister, and is usually supported by the congregations of  both.
Out of respect , I usually tag on with the dogs in tow, to stand at the back of the memorial Hall garden where the village war memorial is situated.

The war Memorial in the shadow of the new house build

The usual suspects where already there when I arrived, Christine and Bryn, Auntie Glad in her usual blood red coat, Mona from Ochr y Gop farm, Meirion Ellis , the vicar splendid in his black robe, the head of the community council, Pat the animal helper , there was perhaps twenty or so clustered around the memorial, that is, until the heavens opened and everyone had to scurry into the village Hall to keep dry.

I tried to get a shot of the vicar as he swept out of the rain with his cape billowing behind him and his Gothic hood pulled down over his face, but it was raining too hard
He resembled a somewhat slow moving video game super hero

I squeezed in behind with the dogs but stayed in the porch as Winnie was snorting so loud (she would have drowned out the service if we had followed everyone in,) so we braved the rain, and ran home, like a small herd of stressed out pigmy hippos to steam dry in front of the fire.

Old Dogs

A year or so ago Meg had a period where she experienced odd little " absences". She would stand, have no awareness of what was going on around her and just stare and shake. To me, it looked as though she was experiencing partial seizures.
These seizures disappeared after a couple of months and the vet seemed unconcerned when I took Meg in for a check up and so we breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Yesterday she had another " do" . And we were a mile down the beach promenade during a heavy rain  storm.
It couldn't have been in a worse place.
I didn't know if it was a return of the " fits" she had experienced before , or whether it was something more serious,It certainly seemed to be worse than ones I had seen her have before..... so I had no choice but to pick her up and head back to the car.
Now, carrying a sick dog whilst holding the leads of  three others during a burst of heavy rain is not the simplest of jobs and I was struggling a bit until a young woman who had been sheltering in her car in the car park next to the promenade jogged over and jumped over the wall.
I think I must have looked a little upset.
" do you need a hand?" She asked kindly and within seconds she had taken the other dogs' leads from me , allowing me to carry Meg more easily and she helped me back to the car, getting a bad soaking in the process..
She jogged back to her car after she asked if I would be ok.
Within a couple of minutes Meg had come around from her fit, and quite suddenly her eyes started to focus again and she started to push her way into the front passenger seat which is her usual position when we are out driving.
I turned to see where the young woman had gone, but she had left already.
I never got the chance to thank her.
Ten minutes later Meg was as bright and as clingy as ever.
Partial fits could be a sign of something serious. We all know that. But we will wait and see if things deteriorate further.
I am loath to suddenly start to look at what could be the cause..
Old dogs eh?
They break your heart

Meg asleep on my head after night shift last year

Warming Your Muffin

Chris left Wales for Ireland very early this morning. He probably left the house as I was putting up the sixth unit of blood up for my patient  in the wee small hours.
All I know , was that when I got home the dogs had infiltrated the living room ( thanks to Albert who has the ability to open the kitchen door) and had merrily dotted the carpet with several little puddles.
Of piss.....it's not their fault.....its Winnie's leaking fanny that causes the problem.......

So I've shampooed the carpet, walked the dogs in the pouring rain and have just lit the fire. The cottage now looks homely and warm and everything in front of the fire is steaming gently.
My twin sister has just emailed me, wanting to know what I want for Christmas. and looking at the fire this morning, I know exactly what I shall ask for..
I want an old fashioned toasting fork!
As children we would often toast bread, muffins and crumpets in front of the fire. The ritual was always fraught with a tiny bit of danger. Of slightly scorched kiddie fingers, smokey tasting toast and proper butter stains.over your front.
If you were toasting bread. It would always be thickly sliced bread, an inch thick.
It was like toasting very small cushions .

The older we get, sometimes the more we enjoy recreating the happy memories of the past.
It's a miserable wet day today.....so...I think I'll treat myself to a crumpet this evening.......I'll fashion a short term toasting fork out of one of Chris' knitting needles.......and will give the toasting a bit of a go........