Best Before

Last night, while I was out in the lane in my pyjamas giving the dogs their last wee stop of the day, next door neighbour Mandy came out of her cottage and presented me with a newly bought six pack of potato crisps ( chips as you Americans say)
There is a story behind this little kindness.
For years our back garden wall has provided an avenue for barter, egg collection and gift giving.
Dog walkers often give me their orders on the way down the lane and will collect their eggs boxes on their way back to the village. Bags of stale bread, old pasta, and garden greens are often anonymously  left for the animals and only a month or so ago , two large bags of strawberry plants were left for me to plant out in " Bosoms". from someone unknown........it was only by chance that I bumped into Alan Walker the other day, who mentioned in passing that he hoped I could use them.
Yesterday a dozen empty egg boxes arrived from somewhere or other , and it's only been a few weeks since a plastic carrier bag full of scones was found looped around the front door knob.

Anyway last week , I came across a large unopened multi packs of crisps out on the wall. There was no note with them, nothing to let me know which kind soul had left them........nevertheless I was delighted at this unexpected surprise and as I took the dogs out for their walk I tucked into the first packet with all the gusto of Billy Bunter sucking the centre out of his first cream horn.

I was on my second packet when a  head popped up from behind the neighbour's wall. It was the ever cheerful Mandy
" are you eating those crisps?" She asked with a slightly worried expression
" yeash, they're lubley" I tried to tell her with my gob full of potato
" The packet is a year out of date !" Mandy wailed " I left them for the hens!"

" 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!)