A Thought At A Traffic Light

This morning I had to attend several study sessions on Intermediate Life Support .
The Prof had several bigwig meeting booked too.
We were booked  into adjacent buildings.
I dropped him off, completed my study, shot back home to sort the animals out, then returned to pick him up and drop him at another meeting in another town.
It all felt terribly urban

He then had multifaceted strategies to sort out.
I went to jet wash the car!
We do inhabit very different workds during the day!

I had pulled up at a traffic light in the centre of a large nearby village when I spied the couple in the window seat of a cafe.
I know her fairly well even though she is an odious, bitter little woman with a nasty edge.
He, I quite like, for he is quiet and polite to the point of almost invisibility.
They were tucking into a lunch which looked as comforting as it was substantial.

I watched them for a moment before the traffic started to move on.
Both were tucking into their food with clear enjoyment. The wife nodding to her husband that
" ...it was very nice indeed! " and I suddenly felt just a tad guilty for disliking the woman who had irritated me for so long.
She had done nothing more than pucker up over a plate of burger and chips.
But for that tiny moment I recognised her humanity and felt the briefest twang of shame for my dislike of her

Power Walks

In a desperate effort to reduce my rapidly growing waist, I have been power walking up and around the Village, Gop Hill and the road looping around to the collection of houses called The Marian.
In the daytime Mary is my guide and companion and on the evening walk Affable Despot Jason does the honours.
Now the despot is blessed with a natural wit and an over abundance of Northern " Chutzpah" so the evening walk feels so much shorter when he takes the lead in the walk and the conversation.
Having said this
On our ascent of Gop hill, I was gasping so hard, I couldn't have joined in with the chatter even if I had of wanted to! 

Lion

It's always nice to see a Brit nominated for an academy award but I must admit I was fairly surprised to see the floppy haired Dev Patel up for the best supporting actor gong , especially as he dominated the second half of the movie Lion as former Indian street child Saroo, a boy seperated from his Indian family by a quirk of fate who was brought up by an adoptive Australian family thousands of miles from his rural dirt poor native village.

I was reminded of the movie as I watched the dogs and Albert lying in their untidy heaps on the bed this morning for in one sad pivotal scene a handful of Calcutta Street Children are seen huddling together for warmth and comfort on cardboard beds by the side of the road.

The sobering truth is that these Street Children are not just  figments of a Hollywood screen writer's mind. They are real sad little scraps who don't know the comforts that a handful of terriers and a wide eyed black cat enjoy in a small Welsh village.

The astonishing Sunny Pawar

Lion is an interesting, uneven movie. The first half is literally stunning. It is a total assault on the senses as we follow the ever chirpy five year old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his ever loving mother ( Pryanka Bose) and hero worshiped older brother Guddu ( Abishek Bharate) in their dirt poor rural existence in central India.
Saroo is seperated from his family, and by an odd quirk of fate transported over a thousand miles to Calcutta where he survives on the dangerous streets for months until adopted by an Australian couple from Tasmania.
This chapter of Saroo's life is true heart in the mouth stuff thanks primarily to the child actor Pawar who literally breaks your heart with his solemn face  and doleful eyes.
Unfortunately the whole pace of the film grinds to a halt soon after, as we then follow the continuing story of Saroo, a man living a fairly loving and comfortable life with his Australian parents  (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) Saroo ( Dev Patel) is conflicted by submerged memories of his former life and after a long period of reflection and research ( with too many scenes of the angst Patel staring off into the middle distance) the adult Saroo is finally reunited with his mother in a tearful sob fest finale.

Now Patel is undoubtedly moving in his role as the adult Saroo and I sincerely hope that he nabs the Oscar for his performance, but for me the real dramatic punch of Lion is the honest, naturalistic turn by the baby faced Sunny Pawar that really lingers long in the mind
8/10

No McDonalds!

Alice's comments in yesterday's post tickled me.

She thought that when I referred to buying  a sneaky egg mcmuffin, we actually had a McDonalds in the village! 

Today, I've been playing with my ipad doodle! 

It gives you all a bit of a flavour of where things are in Trelawnyd 

The positions of everything shown on the map are very general!

1  Our Cottage
2  The Ukrainian Village
3  Trendy Carol
4  The Church
5  Animal helper Pat
6  Village Helper Islwyn
7   The School
8   Gay Gordon/Big Mary
9   Mrs Frazer
10 Mrs Trellis
11 Gop Hill
12 Village Centre, Auntie Glads, Harmonika,High Street
13  Memorial Hall
14  Chapel
15  Affable Despots
16  Old Post Office
17  The Crown Pub
18  Village Green, Cameron the boffin

" It looks mighty fine" 

The Pussy march impressed me. 

Garfield Had It Right

I was going to blog about those chance conversations you have in the street, when you live in an odd little place like Trelawnyd, but a set of strange morning circumstances have taken over somewhat and these have overshadowed a somewhat surreal conversation I had with Mrs Frazer outside the pensioner bungalows yesterday which culminated with her pulling down her blouse in order if I could confirm her GP's preliminary diagnosis of shingles!

Now, the sun is shining, and all is well with the world.
Earlier, this was not quite the case.
I was out last night until 1.30 am and crawled into bed around a quarter to two.
The Prof's alarm went off just after 5 am I was due to drive him to the station at 6 am in order to catch the Edinburgh train!
You with me?
Anyhow things were ok until I dropped him at the station where he realised that he had forgotten to locate the whereabouts of an important document.
No problem.......could I find it and email him the fact!
He caught the train
I drove home and ripped the cottage to pieces to locate the document
No luck.
The prof got off his train somewhere in England, and promptly caught another returning to the station where I picked him up. Again, I, drove him home where he located the aforemntioned document within 30 seconds of walking through the door!!!!
I could have ripped his smug expression right off his face!
Then for the third frigging time I drove him back to the staition so that he could recommence his journey.
By this time I was late taking William to the vets for his appointment so he and I shot up to the surgery via Mc Donald's drive through where I ordered an egg McMuffin and large coffee for me and hash brown for him!
Even a stressed middle aged homosexual and a half blind Welsh terrier needs breakfast!
Anyway
I stopped at the  busy T junction at St Asaph where I took a massively comforting bite of muffin and a huge swig of coffee and in front of several school children standing for their school bus  promptly sneezed my whole mouth's contents onto the steering wheel and windscreen.....

What did Garfield always say at the beginning of the week?

" Ok Monday........hit me! "

La La Land

I was in two minds about seeing LaLa Land.
On the one hand come the multiple plaudits from the critics
On the other.......anecdotal so so reviews from ordinary cinema goers.
So I went with an open mind.

As it turned out, La La Land is a sweet movie; a modern day musical which starts as it means to go on with commuters stuck in sunbright LA traffic singing and dancing around their cars in a multicoloured explosion of bon vivre! 
The story is suitably cheesy.
Aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) meets up with Jazz bore Sebastian ( Ryan Gosling) a pianist down on his luck.
Over a year we witness their courtship in Los Angeles, the " city of dreams" as both try their best to attain their dreams in Hollywood and it's a courtship punctuated with a whole plethora of musical set pieces with the leads singing and dancing on the Hollywoods Hills, on the Warner Brothers' back set and and in one magical sequence weightless inside the city's planetarium!
Gosling is delightful as the puppy eyed Sebastian, playing the piano as easily as he sings and dances.
Stone is impressive too and almost steals the film with a plucky charm and warmth. They are incredibly sweet in their many scenes together.
La La Land doesn't quite reinvent the Hollywood musical, but it does kick start the genre somewhat.
Having said this I could done without the Jazz ( I am not a lover of it) and some of the final quarter of the movie sags just a tiny bit, but I dare you to watch the powerhouse sequence of Mia's final audition    
( sung by Stone as the camera revolves around her) without crying...it's a lovely bit of cinema.
8/10

Gravitas

A rough looking type and his missus parked their car behind the cottage in order to check over the plot of land which is up for sale just up the lane
He half blocked old Trevor's driveway and returning home Trevor beeped his horn for the bloke to move.
" You can get a fucking bus through there!" the man snapped angrily and taking an instant dislike to him I stopped the dogs as I passed
" He's an old man and he needs you to move your car!" I said carefully giving the man a very direct look and irritably he did as he was instructed, scowling at me as he did so
Only when I returned home did I realise what I was wearing

My " plucked chicken" hat does not quite give me the gravitas I thought I possessed!