News

1. Winnie fell in love with the visiting electrician yesterday and I think the feeling was mutual.
She adores workmen
It's a blue collar lurve.
Luckily he was used to dogs, so when she followed him up into the airing cupboard, he didn't batter an eye and when he flashed his head around the hot water tank and she jammed her head alongside his to see what he was doing, I could hear him talking to her in a sweet paternal type way.
When he left , she walked him up the garden path and blew him kisses from the gate.

2. I was caught photographing a fellow villager's face over the garden wall yesterday afternoon. He was " striking a pose" reminiscent of Madonna in a Vogue period which looked even more surreal given the fact he is 80. The farmer driving past looked rather wide eyed ....I must admit.
( The reason that I was ipad photographing my friend was the fact he has had cancer surgery on his face and because he is worried about the resulting scar tissue, I have arranged to photograph the area every few days, in order for him to check the progress of the wound)
If I die tomorrow at least The Prof will understand that just why I have a dozen close ups of my neighbours face tucked away in the ipad.

3. A nameless villager complained to me that another nameless villager was leaving their side door to the garden open all of the time.
" They are showing off" the complaint went " they only want passing people to see just how lovely their back garden is"
I didn't quite grasp the upsetting nature of it all so muttered a nondescript " oh dear!" in way of a response

From left to Right, Mrs Trellis, The Vicar and unhappy unnamed villager! 

4 The number of International Novelty Veg/ fruit photo entries is worrying low at present!  Mrs Trellis suggested that the quality of the first entries have paralysed the other potential exhibitors.
I told her she would need to start whittling away at a cucumber and polishing her Polaroid if more didn't come in soon!
So please! Send your novelty veg entries into email jgsheffield @hotmail.com as soon as possible please! We need to beat last year's 60 entries!

5.  Affable despot Jason and wife Claire now have picket fence! I adore it as it looks sooooo 1940 American movie Studio set......I am so reminded of Starlings - The Miniver house in Mrs Miniver
I am however slightly disappointed that Jason has not painted it white as yet! All picket fences should be white!

It  is affable despot Claire's birthday today!

Claire

6. Auntie Gladys has been surreptitiously been selling her own raffle tickets for the flower show raffle even though I have most of the official ones in our back kitchen. You can't keep a good 97 year old down!
I have written to local squire Nigel Steele- Mortimer to see if he will open this year's show, the vicar
wasn't keen last year!

Squire Mortimer

7. Mary's ear infection has returned. The Prof has allowed her to sleep with us as a result.

The Bus Stop Rule

I had my PDR review yesterday. ( Performance Development Review)
I felt sorry for the senior staff nurse doing it. I know she was just ticking the box so to speak as this year is hopefully my last year of official employment.
There was nothing much she could get her teeth into .
When asked about my role , I answered honestly that I thought that I was a safe pair of hands.
Nothing more.

In my past life I must have done hundreds of PDRs Most of which have been routine affairs but there was always a few that had required very careful handling.
Relationships have always muddied the waters when it comes to work, for there is a great pressure to get on with folk especially when working within a team.
When I was younger, I worried a great deal about everyone liking me.
Now I dont give a flying fuck.

I once had to do a PDR with a nurse from Central Africa who was renown to be a somewhat prickly and quick-to-take offence sort of character. She once tried to accuse me of being racist but was shouted down by two fellow black nurses who defused the situation by interjecting some deep bellied laughter into the proceedings........but that's another story.

Anyhow I remember her tearfully complaining that she thought that several staff did not like her and she could not quite figure out why. I tried the old reflective practice thing, explored situations that may have given her a clue to just why her  relationships were not quite up to expectations but she had little self awareness to speak of so I resorted to a discussion of the old bus stop rule.

" Picture yourself at a bus stop with 12 strangers " I said
" ok" The nurse said
" How many would you like do you think?"
She thought for a moment
" Perhaps two" she answered
" How many would you dislike, do you think?" Was my next question
And this time she answered " one perhaps"
" And how many would you think are just ok?"
"Nine?" She said counting in her head
" So why would you expect things to be different just because We are all nurses?"
She thought for a moment and shrugged
"That story does not help me " she said in that sing song voice many African women possess
" It also does not apply to you! " she said pointedly
" why does it not apply to me?" I asked her
" You're driving the bus" she said .

Awwwwwwwwwww

The cutest of police officers proposes to his boyfriend

Ships That Pass!

This photo is a kind of metaphor for our lives at the moment.
Winnie at one level and Mary at another.
The Prof came home last night exhausted. I am up at 6 am this morning and wont get back from work until 8 pm. By then the Prof will be journeying to work elsewhere.
Ships that cross in the night is an apt phrase.
We grunted at each other this morning as William opened his bowels on the landing wall ( he's old and he likes backing into things remember?)
Only eleven months before I retire!
Then I can get a proper job
One with no unsocial hours

People's Judge

The Prof is away again so it's been an afternoon of guilty pleasures.
No, no scotch eggs......no Walking Dead box set.....no slo mo re runs of Russell Crowe dressed as a gladiator................I have resisted them all.
But I have been watching The People's Court which has recently had it's first airing on British  tv.
For those few that don't know The People's Court is the glamorous version of Judge Judy but with a Spanish speaking New York/ latin judge at the helm.
That Judge is Marilyn Milian and I have decieded that she is my new best friend. 

Independence Day -Resurgence (Spoilers)

I needed cheering up today , so my sister and I went to the cinema

Independence Day ( 1996) had three ingredients that made it a hit.
It had two exhilarating set pieces ( when stripper mother Jasmin ( Vivica A Fox) , her son and dog faced certain death in an fireball engulfed freeway tunnel followed a little later by the cheer rousing scene of Will Smith sucker punching an alien pilot with the audience pleasing line " Welcome to Earth!"
It also featured a much imitated rousing-to-arms Presidential Speech by Bill Pullman ( which unbelievably Nigel Farage stole today for his " victory speech!!)
Nuff said.

I, oh so wanted to enjoy Roland Emmerich's overblown remake of his seminal 1990s disaster movie, but I couldn't as he has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the bloody thing.
We have space ships and a united world from the get go. Fighter Pilot Hiller has died ( a wise Will Smith me thinks) and his widow Jasmin ( now the head of a hospital) lives only long enough to save a new mom and her baby before she dies when the alien gigantic mother ships crashes back to earth! Add to the mix London getting flattened by most of Asia's skyscrapers which have been sucked free of gravity by the aliens, an African tribal chief with a murderous look in his eye, a mad ex president, the multicultural cast of Top Gun , and finally ( and to my true enjoyment) a school bus full of kids, a 
wide eyed dog and Jewish octogenarian  Judd Hirsch (reprising his role as Julies Levinson ) careering across the Nevada Desert chased by a 200 foot alien Queen 
The whole thing is a dreadful old mess.
Hat's off to Brent Spiner though, he did entertain me with his frantic turn as the mad as a badger scientist who spent the last two decades in a alien induced coma!
6/10

I'll leave you with novelty veg/ fruit photos

Yorkshire Pudding's post sex bananas

Gail's creation! 

Keep Calm And Do Nothing

 Long term readers of Going Gently may well remember " The Ghost Hens" .
I found myself thinking about them this morning, as bleary eyed! I sipped my coffee amid the maelstrom of political upheavals in the capital and the up and down stress of a husband coping with a particularly stressful week at work

Now, for those that don't know, the Ghost Hens were five genetically fucked up broiler hens that arrived at the Ukrainian Village as brainwashed , psychologically damaged little pullets. Designed to eat themselves fat in a matter of weeks, these sad little hens had been brought up in a massive barn of a building under artificial lights with thousands of other little fuck ups .
They had never seen the sun, never ate a blade of grass and had never had the room to scratch their own arse without getting battered by another google eyed clone.

Faced with their very own warm hen house and a miniature run, these sad little characters continued to eat themselves fat in silent desperation, but they did eventually react to their brave new world, and calmly and very slowly they started to turn their faces into the sun to live a little.
Surrounded by animal drama and chaos, The Ghost Hens always looked unflappable but their inactivity was just a useful way of coping. They were too big and too comical to run around in silly chicken circles.
They just couldn't do it.

This week as the Prof hurried from one mindset and thought and plan to another , I took a leaf out  of the Ghost Hen's book and provided an anchor of calm.
I quietly made lamb kofkas from scratch, polished shoes without moaning and listened to tales of academic intrigue with an understanding stance.
There is something useful in not reacting, especially when your other half is pushed to the limit.

Anyhow,
I remember taking the above photo very well.
It was approaching dusk on a summer's evening and the rest of the field was in constant motion.
The other hens were mooching homewards to roost, the geese were bickering over a patch of grass like they do and the hysterical runner ducks were being , well, just hysterical.
Only the Ghost hens remained still. Sitting in the evening sun until their white plumage tinged pink..........
with their fat bottoms planted into the grass like old ladies arses on comfy armchairs.

Their faces were held very high as they enjoyed the last bit of sunshine of the day.

Leave?

It's 1.30 and I've just got home. The results are comming in and it's looking like "leave" winning at the moment....
I will leave you with a cracking novelty fruit entry from jennifer
Donald Trump out of peaches!

Uncanny