Going Gently

Miss Betts

Never underestimate the power of praise..

I was perhaps fourteen or fifteen and was sat at my desk in an English lesson reading a chapter of The Catcher In The Rye"
The teacher, Miss Betts, was marking essays at her own desk in the corner by the window. She was a kind of a hippy-type character. long hair, long floaty skirts. Flat Chest, ethnic jewelry.
She was a serious teacher. Earnest and never, as I recall, happy looking.

Anyhow, after a long period of silence , she sighed and spoke out to the class
"John Gray, I am impressed with a simile you have just used in your essay!

" The summer sun flowed through the dining room windows and warmed the house like a hand shake on a cold day"
She didn't look up from her marking and the rest of the class didn't react that much to her comment, but for me, that snippet of public praise made me feel ten foot tall!

That was 40 years ago. And I still remember it as if it was yesterday.

Old " Friends"

Everyday I visit old friends
I say hello after checking the only non grassed grave in the graveyard
The grave Albert has visited in the middle of the night.
Sylvia who ran the Flower Show with such a hypertensive strength lies with her husband a dozen rows from the Red Faced Welsh Farmer who has fresh geraniums by his headstone. Gwyneth from Pen-y-cefn Isa Farm ( the 80 year old who used to stand proudly on the back of Ralph the gentleman farmer's tractor ) is a little to the left, her headstone is all in Welsh.
I say hello to them all.
I also say hello to the ones I feel I know but never met.
Miss B A Jones ( Bessie Bryn Teg) the schoolmistress who used to rule the village school children with an iron fist lies with her sister Ginny Bryn Teg ( who used to own the cow!) Old Norman Roberts who did so much for village affairs. and 16 year old Edwina , Auntie Glad's daughter who died after a car accident up in Lloc.
Further back there are the Hannah Jones' , Parrys and Williams' ........Teddy, beloved young son of Ann and William, and Elias Jones who was killed in the mining accident in Gronant in 1890...2000 people came to his funeral .....2000!
In a odd way they all feel a little like friends...
Am I strange?

Mandatory Training

I'm sitting at the kitchen table early this morning drinking coffee.....the Prof is away and I have to go into work to complete mandatory training. In my day, mandatory training was always done in work time.
Not anymore!
Hey ho....Trendy Carol has just passed the window ( Laura Ashley Coat, frilly blouse, skinny jeans and pumps) and Terry from the flower show passed earlier. He gave me his best " I see you" eye poke thing......the rivalry in the Great Trelawnyd Bake Off continues.
I will leave you with a video to watch today.
I took it last night as I rested my croc feet.
Watch carefully....it's a play fight between baby Hippo and little dog.
The baby hippo pulls her punches so well

The Great British Sewing Bee

The latest series of The Great British Sewing Bee has been ever so slightly lacklustre only because most of the characters involved have not been that interesting tv fodder.
The winner , Charlotte made a late spurt in the interest stakes by making her final model the step mom of her kids......how so very Hollywood!
Bring back the Bake Off

Regret

The " Big Bundle of fun" that is Vanessa Feltz has turned out to be a rather insightful interviewer.
I listened to her this afternoon interviewing a 30 year old woman who demanded a sterilization on the nhs because she knew she didn't want children ever!
The woman was articulate and unwavering in her beliefs, yet I thought it interesting that the woman's own mother had requested a sterilization which she had requested a reversal so that she could bare children from a second marriage.
Feltz explored the fact that the interviewee's upbringing was poorly parented . The woman's father had also comitted suicide and it was incredibly sad to hear the woman admit that her own mother regretted having any children.
I wonder if the regret of having children is ever real? Ok if your son turned out to be Jeffrey Dahmer the seriel killer then you may furnish some disappointment in the decision , but then , it is widely thought that seriel killers are bred and not just happen.........
Oh dear I've opened a can of worms in my head.

How many people out there planned their kids?
How many are brave enough to say that they regretted that decision?

I'm In Trouble

I fell asleep at the kitchen table this morning with my head resting on that flamingo and woke up over an hour later with an orange shaped pressure sore on my forehead which was colour pink. The prof likes this fruit cover, he says it stops Albert farting on the oranges.I was woken by Mandy my neighbour, who wanted to know if the chickens would eat an old christmas pudding.

The Flower Show Committee

Terry , my nemisis is second from left

Anyhow a day ago, I recieved a facebook message from Ann fronm the flowershow committee. It

on behalf of husband Terry who is currently 2:0 down in our yearly needle match.

And I am in trouble.........for Terrence , the wily old bastard, has chosen a range of cakes for our bake off as well as a plate of Welsh cakes, which are Terry's speciality.

So if anyone has a fullproof chocolate cake recipe , please let me know!

I'll leave you with some novelty veg photos...please keep em coming

From sue

From anonymous

Bunty Catch Up

I have not seen Bunty for an age.
Not that this bit of information is in anyway surprising given the fact that I don't have her phone number and she has obviously lost mine.
But I kind of wish that she lived a bit closer to us, for I do find her entertaining in a big butch lesbian kind of way.
For those that don't know Bunty first appeared in Trelawnyd many moons ago. She bought some very aggressive geese from me and her foul mouth, blustering way and fuck 'em attitude entertained me from the very get-go.
She is not a lady to be trifled with.
At the time she lived with her long term policewoman girlfriend up in the hills somewhere, but commuted into England daily for her job ( which she never spoke about) she loved her livestock, cut her hair short with a masculine side parting and had arms like hams.
Anyhow, I tell you all this in way of background colour for when I was just about to turn up the Marian with the dogs, she stopped her jeep on the main road.
" HELLO GRAYBAGS!" She bellowed ( Graybags is the nickname she gave me when we first met)
" You look like shite! "
I explained that I had gone into work this morning only to find out I was infact on night shift, and that was why I looked so tired
Someone beebed her as she hadn't put her indicators on so she bellowed out of her window a very lusty " PISSSSSSSSSS OFFFFFFFFFF" before giving me a big smile
" what's new? " she asked.
It must have been well over nine months or so since I had bumped into her and so I was thinking about our news to share before Bunty jumped in to tell me all hers .....
Apparantly she had split from the policewoman ( who had been banging a fellow copper) , had met a new beau on line , and had moved in with her and her 5 year old daughter in a semi detached bungalow in Towyn on the coast all within a month.
The new girlfriend, I was reliably informed, was a divorced lipstick lesbian with a body like Jessica Rabbit.
" why don't you bring her to the Flower Show?" I suggested " I'd like to meet her"
and Bunty laughed one of her long lusty laughs
" FLOWER SHOW?" She bellowed " We're not friggin dead yet!"
She then pointed to Mary and asked " Is he new? "
" Yes" I said lifting Mary up to the jeep window " Her name is Mary!"
Bunty kissed her on the nose and cackled

" Auntie Mary had a canary up the leg of her drawers
When she farted....it departed
To a round of applause! "

And with that she sped off into the distance, waving a big fat arm out of the window....I could hear her laughing until her jeep passed the garage shop a hundred yards away!