Hippo On The Lawn

Mary ripped the "Underpants of shame" from Winnie mid afternoon
The Prof found them in a heap by the back door when he arrived home, and was not best pleased as they were his second best designer briefs.
( I had picked the wrong pair out of our undie drawer in the morning)
I have had to walk carefully ever since.

Anyhow, I've been thinking of a couple of fellow bloggers today.
Gary, the cheerful gardener from " A Day In The Life" who has been suffering from a bad chest for a little while now, sort of took a blog discussed turn for the worse yesterday . Alarm bells started to ring in my nurse brain last night , and I suggested that he got checked out by a chest physician .
Luckily his pretty wife also sussed that something more serious was afoot and a hospital admission ensued ,
I wish him well.

This kind of brought home the fact that we the blogging community generally lie in that fiifty year old plus category of people whose body systems all start to get a little cranky and " delicate" from time to  time.
In a similar vein, I am also rather worried about our old ex mercenary mate Tom Gowans over at " A Hippo On The Lawn" who has not blogged for almost a year. I last head from him by email, a good few months ago, and although his correspondence was filled with typical good natured British " spirit that won the war",  his chronic health issues ( namely a septic leg)  was still a huge cause for concern.
His recent silence is worrying to say the least  and it perhaps illustrates the way that fellow bloggers have become friends over the years of pithy two line comments and the odd email.
Tom, If you are still alive and kicking ( albeit with your good leg) let us all know.....

When a blog , just stops, out of nowhere everyone is left hanging.

The "Underpants of Shame"

This morning we had iced buns for the sheep

This afternoon it's the " Underpants of Shame"

Winnie has entered her short " season"

So will be " blobbing" red marks all over the cottage soft furnishings 

unless " cushioned" by a pair of my underpants

Hey ho

Iced Fancies

I got home after work around 8.20 am

I am off for a sleep but thought I'd share my first surreal 

village moment of the day.

Thanks to the person who treated the sheep to an early morning treat before 

I returned to Trelawnyd.

As I pulled up I saw Irene and Sylvia happily munching their way through 

two iced fingers.

Shotguns

Walking up the lane above the village on a Sunday morning in winter always feels a tad apocalyptic.
It's the distant " putt putt" sound of shotguns being fired off with gay abandon beyond the next village of Trelogan . The sounds echo around the small basin of hills which lay around Trelawnyd and provide an uneasy backdrop for a peaceful walk.
I'm not sure it is a wild bird shoot or a shooting range which is at the centre of it all, but it always reminds me of those BBC reports from the Bosnia Conflict of 1992.....the reports always reminded me of rural wales in winter.
Beyond the village there is a small 18th century house. I often see the homeowner sitting quietly at the front window. Often in the darkness of this winter's daytime, she will sit in gloom without any light to lift the muggy weather , but she will wave back when I initiate a greeting of a nod or wave.
Trellis ( the artist known formally as Mrs Trellis)  told me she is suffering from early dementia, yet still lives alone despite a few episodes " upset" where neighbours had been involved to reassure her that intruders had not entered her home and were hiding.
I saw the lady today, standing at her garage door. She was holding the collar of her dog, an old collie who had been bitten by Maddie our ageing Scottish terrier a few years back ( I tell you this only as a bit of background colour)
I waved and she waved back just as flurry of shotgun " putts" bounced around the hillside and I called out a slightly mock exasperated " there's no peace is there! " almost in what I hoped was a reassuring way.
The woman raised a finger to her lips to shush me  and said nothing before closing the garage door slowly.
The whole thing slightly unnerved me

It's Grim Up North

It's cold and wet
The rain hasn't stoppd for what seems like an absolute age.
Apparantly one small Welsh village in Pembrokeshire called Eglwyswrw, has had rain
everyday ,for the past 81 days!
It was so miserable this afternoon that even the geese were sitting inside their house when
I went to lock them up.
The log burner is lit, and we are having Indian for supper.
The Prof is in his arm chair covered by a warm throw
"Aye...it's grim up north"

Guilty Mary

Mary is going through her " chew everything in sight" phase. The other dogs have to have their collars removed whilst in the house, unless they are destroyed and electric plugs have to to be now put out of reach after her near death experience with the chest freezer electric plug, which she suddenly attacked out of the blue and severed totally. How she didn't get electrocuted bugger alone only knows. ( I was rearranging the kitchen at 1am so that the freezer food didn't defrost)
This morning she managed to pull William's harness through the bars of her crate and has chewed off its catches and another zip from another scatter cushion now lies on the living room floor.
" It's a phase" I told The Prof after he returnd from London late last night
The Roger Moore eyebrow has never seen so much action.

It's All Death Today

Alan Rickman

Was never better than he was in the role of the gentle colonel in 

Sense and Sensibility

A lovely actor  

" Death At Home"

The other night I had to break sad news to someone over the phone.
I had to inform them of the sudden death of a loved one.
I've done this many, many times over the years.
and it's never an easy job.

Shock is a strange phenomenon. You never know just where it is going to go when it hits and I was reminded of this when I read a rather moving post from Rachel's Blog last night entitled " Remembering Death At Home"
http://roadtokazakhstan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/remembering-death-at-home.html

When I was around 16 our paternal grandmother came to live with us. She took over our second living room and was cared for by my mother as she was increasingly forgetful and frail.
Her death one winter's afternoon came as a surprise though not a shock to my sister and me but to my father it was strangely devastating. Moments after her rather peaceful death and with the house full of relatives he tearfully rounded on my mother and screamed " You've KILLED HER...YOU'VE KILLED HER,"
I had never seen anything like it before and I remember standing there in the dining room rather dumfounded by his outburst -looking at my mother for a lead on the whole thing.
For a moment there was silence,
then,  I remember her lowering her eyes slowly with the stinging hurt.  She said nothing at all as my father was led away and relatives whispered " he's in shock, he doesn't know what he's saying"

It was my very first taste of how death can affect people.