Girly Nite

" You really need to take care of yourself" the Professor told me with a sigh recently.
I think he was making a point of things after I had used Mary's puppy shampoo to wash my hair. Or was it when he caught me going out with my pyjamas tucked underneath my trousers, anyhow it was some such event that prompted the comment.
Last night he decided that enough was enough and that drastic action was called for.
" Tonight" he informed me seriously ( over a cup of tea and slice of marks and spencers carrot cake) " we are doing girly things?"
My mind was boggled somewhat!
What were we going to do?
Have our nails done ? Colour our hair? ( what's left of it)
Watch a rom com in our dressing gowns whilst eating popcorn?
Get pissed on cheap white wine?

Oh no, the Professor had something more riveting and special in store!

Facial beauty wraps! 

Yeah........

It was a big job

Use It Or Lose It

This afternoon, I bumped into the chairman of our community council

He was hand delivering leaflets around the entire village.

He has been a big supporter of saving our village post office and has been intrumental in 

Having a service, albeit a single afternoon service, reinstated to the village.

Unfortuately only a few villagers have utilized the service

so a few slap bottoms are in order here

as I call all Trelawnyd-ites to get off their arses and USE THE POST OFFICE! 

It's open on Monday Afternoon between 1.30 and 3.30 pm

Janet and John

Facebook , at the moment is asking people to post old photos of themselves

So why doesn't blogger do the same?

Here's my photo

Janet and John go to primary school

I look like a thunderbird doll

In Praise of House Carers

Sometimes, when challenged with another  dollop of animal product , The Professor will bellow out a lusty  " I'm sick of living in this midden"
It's only recently when I found out that a midden is a " pile of kitchen waste"
I've been scrubbing and cleaning for three solid hours now and still, I don't feel as though I've made a dent.
20 individual pet feet, a rain sodden village, a real and sooty fire and a small cottage all seem to conspire against a home which could spring out of the pages of " Homes and Gardens" .
I've just cleaned the fluff from under our bed and found a mummified mouse amid the debris.
Yeah, like I said, the entrants of "Hello" Magazine don't have these problems.

The low point of all this elbow grease occurred just as I was scrubbing away a rather tenacious " mark" from the toilet bowl. Winnie, who was keeping me company as I worked was suddenly caught short and peed like a horse on the toilet pedestal mat soaking both my knees.
I had to forgive her, as she is presently suffering from " in season frequency"
Yes, we do indeed have a toilet pedestal mat! How very 1970!

Where does the fluff under the bed actually come from ?
And the dirty hairs under the bathroom radiator pipes?
Why do the windows constantly look dirty even though I've just cleaned them
And WHY HAS ALBERT WALKED OVER THE COOKER TOP  WITH SHITTY FEET YET AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 MINUTES AFTER I'VE JUST DONE IT?

I was wiping down the paintwork in the living room where William rubs him itchy bum when the postman knocked on the window. He waved a package cheerfully at me and as I opened the window
he chirped up with an irritating " a woman's work is never done " comment
Anyhow the package was in fact an original painting by Jill Chandler!
I've put it on show after polishing the dust clouds from the living room side table.

I've just written this in a twenty minute coffee break 

Sat at the kitchen table.

And from this vantage point

I can see two peas, an old fork, a mass of fluff and a crust of bread down the side of the cooker

Hey ho

The Revenant ( spoilers!)

Ouch!

 With all of the internet ballyhoo about DiCaprio latest survivalist movie The Revenant, I thought I would brace myself and go and see the three hour revenge fest.
Armed with a coffee and a smuggled in M&S scotch egg, I thought I was prepared for this epic set in the bleak mid western wilderness of 1823.
I wasn't.
From the stunning and totally visceral Indian attack of the opening few minutes, it was very clear that The Revenant is a very raw and demanding movie. It grabs you with some of the most stunning visuals I have ever seen captured on film, then throttles you with relentless drama, and nailbiting tension . There is no let up for three whole hours
The story is a simple one of revenge.
A large group of fur trappers are massacred by indians searching for a chief's lost daughter. The survivors are led by scout Hugh Glass ( DiCaprio) and his indian son Hawk ( Forrest Goodyear) but
an attack by a bear leaves Glass critically injured and causes upset  in the trappers' ranks as the
men argue whether or not to leave Glass in the wilderness.
One of the most belligerent trappers John Fitzgerald ( Tom Hardy) kills Hawk and abandons Glass and the film chronicles Glass' near impossible struggle against the elements, marauding indians,  stomach churning physical injuries , starvation and grief.
Fucking hell, it was all bloody too much.
The bear attack, alone made me drop my second scotch egg in surprise for it is the most intensely shocking and horrific sequence I have ever seen in my 45 years of regular cinema going.
I could hardly watch the screen it was that " bad"

DiCaprio is impressive as the driven and perpetually suffering Glass, it's a remarkable and physically demanding performance for sure , but , for me , it's Tom Hardy's brutal Fitzgerald that grabbed my attention more. It's a performance of some charm, depth and understandable harshness.

The director, Alejandro Inarritu, has produced an undeniably beautiful movie, as every scene of The Revenant is crafted and framed like a painting but this tale of revenge and survival is, in my opinion, a good hour too long.
It's a case of too much misery for one Welshman to adequately cope with on a rainy Thursday afternoon.
8/10

William loves the girls

It was almost dusk when the girls finished making the bread and butter pudding

Then, when I was washing up , there was silence in the living room

William had struck , and had taken charge 

"Back off from the loaf bitch! "

I've just had a row-ette with an old lady in sainsbury's.
There was only one white" half loaf" left on the shelf and I picked it up before she did.
The old bag tried that " I'm an old lady and don't want to spend an extra 60p on a full loaf" victim thing but I was having non of it.....
Having said that, I did finally give her the loaf, but Only after I told her not to pull the guilt trip on me
In retrospect the guilt thing worked.....
My mother did it, to me all of the time.

Anyhow I wanted half a white loaf because I have the Randa girls this afternoon and The activity of the day will be constructing a bread a butter pudding from scratch. It was either that or wash the car and less damage can be done to school uniforms with a bread and butter pud.

The Prof is away in London working this week, and has just popped into the National Portrait gallery inbetween meetings. He fell in love with this painting and linked me into it as he was looking at it.
How wonderful is modern technology.!
He was gazing at National treasures......and exactly at the same time ...I was fighting an old lady over half a loaf of sliced white.
Go figure

I may go to the cinema later 

Review later

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.