" A Fanny Stain on The Duvet"

The fanny Stain culprit ( on the left)

I don't know about you all, but if I am not working, Monday is the day I whip the cottage into some sort of cleanliness and order.
Of old, Monday was the day to do the washing and eat a meal of leftovers.
It was the day to start afresh
Dad went back to work, mum did the washing, the kitchen was scrubbed and the kids went back to school.
So was the order of a 1960s childhood.
Today some of that remains, albeit in my imagination.
Anyhow
Chris " facetimed" me when I was in the bathroom this morning
He was busy marking a PhD study
I was scrubbing the wee stains from around the toilet bowl
" are you having a bath?" He asked ( probably thinking that I was luxuriating in a mass of foam bubbles before skipping off to a coffee morning at the vicarage )
I told him what I was up to and he reminded me of another job I had yet to tackle
" There's a fanny stain on the  duvet!" he noted dryly
( not a phrase I would ever consider hearing in a predominantly gay household but hey...)
" it's on my list" I told him whilst thinking that the phrase " fanny stain on the duvet" would never have been a comment that would have ever left my father's mouth.
Apart from the occasional " ruddy and bloody" I don't think I ever heard my father swear
Anyhow.....
I remember when I was around eleven , my father was involved in a bit of a punch up in his shop.
He owned a television sales and repair Business and was in the middle serving two separate customers when one, a young man, got frustrated with the wait and called my father " A TWAT!"
My father who was probably in his late fifties then, didn't hesitate and smartly punched the customer in the mouth and the first we children got to hear of the affair was when the police popped up to the house to have a ' quiet word ".
Now the humour in this situation centred around my mother's lack of understanding of the word " twat" rather than any resolution of the punch up itself, for after the police had " discussed the matter" with my dad who incidentally was the chair of the borough council at the time, my mother embarked into wild fact finding mission to find out just what TWAT meant.
The policemen obviously wouldn't explain, nor would my red faced father......and even after a few phone calls to my brother in law, all my mother was informed that the word " twat meant a " woman's vagina"
I remember stuffing my hands into my mouth to stop myself from screaming in laughter, after my mother hurried around the house like a stereotypical Jewish mother shrieking
"Ron RON! .... you hit someone in the mouth for calling you a WOMAN's VAGINA?!!!!!!!!"
" why why would you do that?"
They were simpler days ........

'a ne fait rien"

I do like my sayings
I am always spouting some little nugget of wisdom or another.....just ask Chris
I drive him mad with them
One of my favourite saying is to punctuate some common phrase with the line
" as my mother used to say"
Of course she never really said very much of note that I remember but one line that was common in the Gray household was the sentence
" San Fairy Ann"
Apparantly it is a corruption of the French for " it doesn't matter" though my mother always used it as a slightly watered down swear curse.....a kind of " san fairy Ann ..to you!"
I was only thinking of this today as the French rallied together to stick a collective finger up at Muslim extremists everywhere
" San fairy Ann to you All!"
" you do not matter"

Bad Dogs

Off to work..so lazy blog today...........
I enjoyed these.......little snippets of art

Say Something

It's back in a few weeks

Hey hoooooo!

I like the song too

Losing Things

The Scala

 There is a downside to living in a rural backwater, and that culture can be  a rare luxury. We have just one arthouse cinema in the entire North of the Country which screens foreign films once daily  and one quality theatre ( both located at Theatre Clwyd which lies sixteen miles away)
The local community cinema , The Scala in Prestatyn, is another favourite venue of ours, but financial problems and funding issues has caused that to be closed only yesterday.
I'm saddened by the apathy of the majority of locals who are probably more than happy to buy knock off dvds to watch on their 64 inch monster TVs than to invest in a theatre ticket to see a quality movie on a cracking digital state-of-the-art screen..
It was a case of use it or lose it
And the bloody population has sadly lost it.

Geraint Roberts ( centre) backed by the choir in the village hall

I was also slightly worried that the musical director and conductor of the Trelawnyd Male voice Choir has stepped down after leading the  choir for the past thirty years. The local press state that no one has taken over the role of director and that the choir is now looking for a new leader......I do so hope that there are no more troubles ahead for the famous choir.
Hey ho

Tracheostomy Tales

Some dogs have a natural ability to be still.
This phenomenon is common in Welsh terriers who often will sit and watch when confronted with a new experience.
Our first Welsh terrier was called Finlay, and in Sheffield I often took him into my Spinal Injury ward  to " visit" with certain patients that were in particular need of some physical contact with something affectionate and warm blooded.
With a whole succession of patients he would allow himself to be lifted up onto the bed and with an innate understanding that he needed to be quiet and still, he would lie in a crook of an arm, or with his head on a sheet draped chest and would lift the spirits of the most vulnerable of patients.
This morning I remembered one such patient I shall call Brenda . Now Brenda was a physical scrap of a woman who had suffered a catastrophic paralysis after a long illness. She arrived on our unit chronically anxious, permanently ventilated, depressed and physically clapped out and through a great deal of hard work from a pragmatic irish staff nurse called Helen , her general condition started to improve.
Finlay visited her several times.
Every time he would sit on Brenda's  bed, then throw himself backwards to lie like a baby with his head on her shoulder. And there he would stay until it was time to go home.
His presence had the effect of an intravenous injection of 10mg of Valium
Nursing, a decade ago, seemed to be somewhat freer and less governed by health and safety issues than it is today, and Finlay's last visit to Brenda was a case in point.
I placed Finaly in bed with Brenda and busied myself with other jobs around her room and on the nursing station which was a few feet away.
After around 20 minutes or so , I was chatting to Helen the Irish nurse when I saw her looking quizzically at Brenda ,
" what the feck has that dog got in his mouth?" She said
I looked at Finlay and suddenly for a second I thought my dog was smoking a cigarette
We both rushed over to a smiling but very wide eyed Brenda
to find Finlay had gently pulled out the inner tube of her tracheostomy and was sucking on it like a lollipop.

Finlay in typical reclining pose

Hen Do

I won't have the opportunity to have a " hen or stag" night with my best friend Nuala for she is travelling for the next 7 weeks or so. She is off to New Zealand, Fiji, Vietnam and Japan with her hubby but will be back to " give me away" on the 6th of March, so today's trip to London is the nearest I will get to a send off , so to speak.
We've had a lovely day.....a quick jaunt around The Institute of Sexology Exhibition at the Welcome Institute, a nice lunch in a sushi restaurant Nizuni on Charlotte Street followed by champagne in the Charlotte Street Hotel ( v posh) and theatre at the Wyndham to see the much praised  KING CHARLES III.
I loved it all.....we barely had time to say goodbye before I caught the tube to Euston ......not a bad day's itinerary seeing that I have only been in London just over seven hours....
I just had time to grab a sandwich from marks' before waiting for my platform to be announced when a woman of around 40 poked me on the arm and bellowed " it's strange seeing you without Winnie"
I had absolutely no idea who she was but apparently she reads "  Going Gently " every day
" you look neater than I expected" she said
Ahhhhhh
Fame at last!
And as promised hello to Karen from Wrexham.( she's on the same train!)

Village News- A Round Robin

Grey and Cold....Trelawnyd Hibernates

There is just one thing that prevents the  spreading of news in a small Welsh village and that is wet, cold weather. Next door neighbour Mandy described Trelawnyd as being in hibernation this morning, and she was right, for on the surface there was not a soul to be seen in the dank streets and slick lanes as I took the dogs on a walk around the Churchyard in a futile adventure to find the secret nesting place of two of my best laying hens

Before Christmas I bumped into old Islwyn Thomas who told me that Gay Gordon had been taken poorly right in the middle of a " Turkey and tinsel " weekend up in a Morecambe sea front guest house. I wanted to see how he was doing so I went to see Gay Gordon's lady friend , Mary to catch up with any news.
Now Mary is a cheerful old soul who looks like a massive scatter cushion with a quarter of the stuffing removed and the last time I visited her bungalow, the dogs and I got stranded in her exterior garden elevator for a very stressful twenty minutes ( I won't go into details here) so carefully I side stepped the elevator and knocked on her door.
There was no answer so I trolled the street to see if I could glimpse a flick of net curtains anywhere.
There wasn't any sign of life until I got to Llys Mostyn where the man who lived in the corner house was venturing out with his miserable little Shih Tzu.
He told me that Gay Gordon was still in hospital but was improving  which was good news.

Auntie Glad suddenly appeared on High Street when we turned the corner and she told me that she had been visiting an elderly neighbour ( who interestingly was 20 years younger than she) then asked me all about my trip to Kent on Boxing Day
She wanted to know every detail......... everything we did.... and I had to smile as
She listened to everything I said with sparkling eyes
Gladys has the knack of taking pleasure out of every bit of news....a fact most of us overlook as the
boring shit of life .......Taking pleasure out of a a five minute conversation is a wonderfully altruistic skill

I am off to London tomorrow for the day, so I then went round to ask if John F would lock up the geese for me in return for half a dozen eggs , he agreed cheerfully as did animal helper Pat , who agreed a barter swap of 6 eggs for some baking margarine when I popped in on the way home
This afternoon I will be making a chicken a mushroom pie for Chris' tea tomorrow and I couldn't be bothered braving the miserable weather to walk up to the garage shop......

Hey ho...it's all go