Snippet

At 4pm Mrs Trellis could be seen tottering through the village holding a heavy saucepan.
She was somewhat red faced and puffing like a steam train when I passed her on the opposite footpath of the main road
" Is the Prof in? " she gasped " I've made you both a rice pudding"

The Affable Despot

I know that some people out there think that the characters I often describe in Going Gently do not, in fact exist! Mrs Trellis, Pat the animal helper, Harmonica, Gay Gordon and fat Mary....I have often had a barbed comment outlining that they are, in fact, a product of my imagination
I guess I can't blame people......there are always disbelievers wherever you go.

Last night, Claire, the wife of affable despot Jason, facebooked that she had been married now 9 years.
She posted this photo which I asked to share, as I know he has quite a following .....

See......people....real people DO exist in Trelawnyd!
Hey ho

Wedgie

The Prof was in a strangely uncharacteristic playful mood today
When I bent down in the bread aisle of Waitrose
He grabbed the band of my underpants
And in front of a dozen astonished shoppers
Gave me a huge and exceedingly painful wedgie ! 

Travelling Alone

Rachel has impressed me.
The thought of travelling alone  around a vast country like Russia, would have filled me with paralysing  dread.  even the thought of it has me sweating like a Hooker in church! So the fact that she is presently crossing the frozen wastes by train in nothing but a fur hat and the faint smell of vodka fills me with awe.
I couldn't do it.

I have only been away by myself once.
Years ago, after one of several messy break ups with a psycho boyfriend, I took myself off into Sheffield city centre in order to buy a vacuum cleaner. ( like you do) I ended up buying a cheap ticket to Seattle and just a few days later, I took myself off to the city of fish, clouds, rain and frazier without really knowing just why I was going.

It did me good for Seattle is a friendly city.
I mooched around the harbour and the antique shops, drank copious amounts of coffee, had a wet and rather eerie trip on the Puget Sound Ferry and visited the cinema time and time and time again.
I talked to people daily, had a chance encounter with a Japanese/American lesbian called Hisoka who gave me a gift of Alan Bennett's book " Talking Heads" and I recharged my somewhat frayed psychi which had been battered somewhat by a relationship that was in essence ....shit.

1001!!!!

Thank you my followers xxx

Sharing Your Bed

This morning's pile on...

There are times during the day when stressed new mums have some " peaceful time" in order to get on with jobs, have a bath, talk with a friend uninterrupted, or just to chillax.

These times are often snatched when the baby is napping.

" My time" is early mornings after the first walk of the morning has been completed, as the household  retires " en masse" to bed.

This morning I left them all to it. I had my nursing reregistration paperwork to complete at the kitchen table

Sharing your bed with dogs for a few hours is one thing, sharing your bed with a six foot academic is quite another, and it has always struck me as interesting just how normal sharing an all-too-small duvet, a square of mattress and a few pillows actually becomes when you have embarked in a relationship.

In our early salad days, the musical farts, the teeth grinding, the pig snoring ( me) would often cause a sleepless night and a  fractious morning at work. Now, those noises, the half arsed, middle-of-the-night- tussle to cover every inch of cold body with warm duvet and the get-up-in-the -night for a wazz are just a reassurance. 

Now don't get me wrong.....I do occasionally enjoy the bed to myself when the Prof is away and indulging myself in a bout of horizontal star bursts remains an incredibly satisfying thing to do, but the stillness of an empty side of a double bed ( the right side----I always sleep on the left) remains rather troubling after two decades of bed sharing.

I shall leave you with a cute photo of Mary ( shamelessly posted to encourage those last few readers who haven't officially followed me to do so) AND a cute photo of the wonderfully cool Selasi (who I have just seen on a re run of Bake Off ) 

I am sorry to see him go.

The cream on the nose is adorable

Aberfan: Cantata Memoria

I have just been watching Welshman Karl Jenkins' incredibly moving Cantata Memoria.
It is a multilingual choral work with a special importance for all Welsh people of a certain age for it commemorates the deaths of 116 children and 28 adults in what became a mining disaster that shocked the world
Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.
For those that may not be familiar with what happened, back in 1966, after a period of heavy rain a coal spoil tip which had been mismanaged and neglected by the National coal board disintegrated into the small Welsh village of Aberfan. The slurry overwhelmed the village and practically destroyed the village school where the children had just arrived at their desks for registration.
I was just four years old when the disaster occurred but it has always had a certain resonance with me as I remember when , as an older child of eight or so,  I and my fellow classmates were reminded by our own teacher that most of the dead where younger children of similar ages to us.

The Jenkins' work is a stunning piece of  National and indeed international remembrance for Children lost in such disasters. It's been a long long time since I have been so moved by such an event

Fuck off Sweetcheeks !!!!!!

Now I feel, I may need to clarify something here
I'm not always a nice person.
When the mood takes me, I can be a real c*#t , especially when I am tired.
It's almost as though my inner gay drama queen/waspish bitch troll-from-hell takes over from that skipping Mary Berry/ Laura Ingles persona that I like to think I am for most of my waking hours.
Earlier today I felt like a real knock-down, gouge out yer eyeballs slap fest.
I was tired, this morning.  On my break at four am, I had just fell into a doze over a peanut butter-on-toast sandwich, when a visiting colleague entered the coffee lounge and proceeded to tell me all about their new kitchen ( completed with a boiling water  hose for washing the friggin skin from tomatoes!)
I covered my face with a Hello magazine and prayed for death!
Suffice to say my break turned out as restful as the latest Trump/ Clinton  debate.

When I got home I caught a very large beer Lorry stuck at the corner outside our cottage. The driver had ignored signs stating very clearly the unsuitability of the road and had taken a chance to shortcut his journey.
He was scraping the top layer from our wall when I marched forward like Bodicia, with hypertension.
" BRING DOWN ONE PIECE OF THAT WALL AND THERE WILL BE TROUBLE!"
I yelled holding onto a yard brush
The neighbours came out to watch!
" Keep your wig on grandad ! the driver yelled back just before his tattooed co driver cooed out the killer blow of " Calm yourself sweetcheeks"
WIG? G R A N D A D ? 
FUCKING SWEETCHEEKS! ? 
I thought I was going to have a stroke I was that angry.
Luckily , Mike, who lives down the lane intervened and with his guidance and with millimetres to spare the Lorry pushed forward, just as I hurried into the cottage for my iPad camera to record the debacle.

Out with anger
In with love..........
Off to bed....
NO ONE RING ME!!!!!!