I've spent the day gardening watched carefully by the two women in my life. 

The Same Boat - The Walking Dead

In six series The Walking Dead ,has never produced a wholly female dominated episode. The Grove in series 4 was centred around  Carol's relationship with the pre teen psychopath Lizzie but it was effectively a two hander between Carol and Tyreese. That's as far as it goes I think.
Like the female protagonists in 1970s disaster movies, women in The Walking Dead have often been sidelined to let the men shine , but since Melissa McBride was given her acting muscles a real flex  to let the mosey Carol shine into something far more interesting  , she and the other powerful women of the zombie Apocalypse ( Michonne, Andrea, and Maggie ) have proved to be some of the most popular characters in the show over the years.
In The Same Boat  we follow Carol and the pregnant Maggie as they are kept captive by the savvie Saviour women. The episode cleverly see saws in a " is Carol as frightened as she is making out? " way
And both Mc Bride as Carol and Lauren Cohen as Maggie really do shine in the more meatier and well rounded roles as they realise that they are not really any different to the women keeping them captive.

Maggie and Carol

The Same Boat had great pace and tension , and it keeps the audience on their toes right to thevery end...it also has quite a bit to say about the role of women in this brutal new world . That is until Our girls eventually turn the tables and rule the day. 

But...as usual.......they win at a cost.....

Nice to see Daryl giving Carol a hug too! 

Cups & Saucers

The Ward I worked on, prior to it's demolition 

Recently I was in a situation where someone in a position of authority gave a speech that sucked .
I disagreed with half of what was being said and for most of how it was being delivered and found myself saying as much.
My counter argument, as I expected, wasn't accepted , so I had to fall back on that statement  of someone who won't back down which is  " we will have to agree to differ".
We will agree to differ , to some may sound like a cope out, but I don't think it is......agree to differ in my view,  is a line in the sand.
The older I get, the easier, I find to make a stand. A stand for the big things as well as the little ones  and institutionalized apathy and low level bullying are things that really get on my tits.

I am reminded of a little war, I was involved  with a long time ago now. It was a war over saucers!
In 1983 I worked on a long stay psychiatric ward as a student nurse. The patients all had been in hospital most of their lives ( as had many of the staff) , there was little to non therepeutic care given and what was on offer was more prison orientated that hospital.
The patients were cared for in so much as they were clean and fed and kept warm and safe, but the atmosphere felt as grey as the neat suits , the male staff worked in.

One of my first duties was to make the patient's tea at suppertime. The tea was brewed in one very large teapot. First you put in the tea, then the boiling water. You stirred the mixture, then added milk and sugar! All in one pot. And each patient got the same drink,regardless of want.
All but one patient was offered their drinks in nhs cups. No saucers were used.
I was told that they were never used.

Now I was a shy 20 year old then and,I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut when in the clinical area, but the no saucer rule didn't sit well with me and from day one, I refused to play the game.
When I gave out the tea ,saucers  were always used.
This raised eyebrows for sure, and even one senior staff member openenly referred to me as a" being a poof" for insisting on the change, but through quiet consistancy, I got my way,
It was a small, line in the sand victory.

In any organisation , everyone should be encouraged to take little leads on things. To be able to say their piece , to question the status quo, and to agree to differ when debating a point.

That's good leadership .

Optimistic Comment Of The Week!

Mrs Trellis out with her whippet, blue bumped into Mary and I on a sunny spring morning.
Mary bounced about in her usual friendly manner.
Blue barked in a rather worried way and leaped into the road dragging the diminutive Mrs Trellis with him. She tensed up pulling manfully at his lead.
He eventually settled down as we chatted then reared up again like Flag in The Yearling when Mary edged forward, in the hopeful quest for a play.
Again Mrs Trellis was hurled into the road, her heels clacking on the ground, but this time she gave a hopeful little laugh and called out breathlessly
" He's doing rather well at his dog training classes!"
" That's good" I called after her as owner and Whippet careered madly down the lane....

God loves an optimist

Big 60

Birthday girl Sandra

The Village Hall always looks at it's best during a party, and tonight after work we joined a good score of Trelawnyd-ites alongside the friends and family of popular villager Sandra C in cekebration of her big 60 . All great fun ......

The village Hall in Full voice

The " Affable despot family" 

Total Bollocks

If you want to waste £6.50....rather than making the journey to the cinema to see London Has Fallen, I suggest to collect your spare change and flush it down the bog.
The film's crap, and not even entertaining crap at that!
Picture this....the world's leaders congregate in London for the funeral of the Prime Minister, as it turns out, the whole thing is a set up by those awful Muslim Extremists for the Capital to be bombed, the world leaders to be killed and the main prize ( The American President) to be captured and executed on youtube.
Only the terrorists were not banking on super service man Mike Banning (An oddly wooden Gerald Butler) who singlehandedly kicks the bad guys ass all over a suddenly empty capital city.
It's a boring, rather too brutal and not even mildly entertaining die hard without the humour but one brief moment did make me howl with laughter.
As the American President arrives, the World leaders get picked off one by one. The German Chancellor is shot in the back by terrorists in Busbees; the Japanese Prime Minister is drowned in his car crossing Chelsea Bridge , the French Premier is blown up on the Thames and the Italian Prime Minister ( wait for this one) is blown to bits having a  fumble with his girlfriend atop Westminster Abbey!

Bunk Off

The Prof is away until tomorrow. I am working all day tomorrow which I know is bad timing, so today, I am bunking off from work at home and am going to a cheap early showing of some shitty film this afternoon. 

A film which I shall talk about later if I have a mind.

I shall leave you with a somewhat unflattering snap of Me  ( with the more photogenic Mary) taken last night, after a strenuous day clearing the entire back garden ( and shitting behind hedgerows!) 

It's a hard job being an internet sensation

An Incident Free Day

Today was going to be an incident free day.
I am still full of aches and pains following my unfortunate tumble " Pussy Willow Hunting" and yesterday I spent a dreary 5 hours cleaning the cottage carpets with an industrial sized carpet cleaner which gave me a whole set of new aches and pains to cope with.
I am thinking of writing to the Governor of the New Wrexham super prison with the suggestion that his prisioners should indulge in some old lady carpet cleaning duties as part of their punishment for it is soul destroying and back breaking work.
Anyhow , as usual, I digress.
Like I said , today was going to be an incident free day. I was toying up whether to have a sneaky trip to the cinema or to clear the back garden of it's winter crap.
Against my better judgement the garden won.
And so before that could happen, I strode out with Mary for our two mile morning constitutional.

Now it's a little known fact that occasionally I suffer from what is blanketly termed irritable bowel syndrome. I don't really mention it much. There is enough shit talk on Going Gently at the best of times, suffice to say when I need to go! I gotta go! 

I was at the furthest point away from home when I had the urge shall we say and knowing that only so much buttock clenching would be effective short term , I weighed up my options.
There were none, well none other than to jump the nearest gate and disappear behind a hedgerow, so I am ashamed to say that in Farmer Basil's field on top of the Gop I picked a suitable sunny spot to "contemplate things"

Big mistake.

In seconds what seemed like 200 ewes appeared from nowhere. I was metres from their feeding troughs and when one gets the idea food is being deposited , they all get into the act so within moments of fumbling with my elasticated waistband ,a near hysterical Mary and I were faced with hundreds of eager faces all expecting dinner.
I might as well waved a union Jack over my head to let any passing motorist or indeed Basil down on his farm where I was and what I was doing.

I'm 53 for Christsake, I should be acting as a grown up!