Creepy!

Our cottage lies down a winding lane on the western most fringe of the village. The lane meanders from the main road and drops some twenty or thirty feet as it follows the Church boundary wall before reaching my field and the farms down and across the valley.
Mary and I walked up the lane last night and as we turned the corner by the Church gate, I could see the School wall which is covered by a thick hedge. As we were lower than walkers would be on the main road, I could make out the Gothic porch in the old school building just peeping above the hedge.
There was a light on in the doorway, whether it was from a security light or from an open door, I couldn't tell and framed in the light was the clear figure of a person standing quietly.

The rest of the  school was in complete darkness and there was no cars in the small car park that I could see, so I stopped and looked again at the figure when suddenly the light went out.
It was almost as though the figure had seen me watching.
I was suddenly very creeped out.
The school remained in total darkness, and we stopped by the gate to see if any other light came on anywhere to signify that perhaps a cleaner was making their way through the building. We saw nothing.
There was no one to be seen
This was 8.30 pm 

Spring

The light in the lane got fixed yesterday which was a shame.
I loved the fact that the cottage sat in total darkness during the night.
I've never slept so well.
A man in overalls was tinkering behind his van when Winnie spied him through the window, and I let her into the front garden so she could watch him carefully from the gate as he climbed into his cherry picker and repaired the light.
She blew bulldog kisses at him and hyperventilated.
I called up to asked if he would say hello to her when he had finished and true to his word he did and I wasn't surprised that, as he reached through the bars on the gate, she rolled onto her side to show him her suture line in a shameless attempt to court sympathy
" She's just had a hysterectomy " I told him.
He looked impressed.
" So's the wife" he replied

Neighbour Trevor had asked if I could remove " a little bit of moss" from his driveway the other day, so seeing that it was a sunny spring day I turned up with a hoe to find several hundred square feet needed clearing.
Hey ho ( hey hoe) I managed to get the majority done which was a harder job than it looked, but I was happy that Trevor had offered me " the going rate" for a job well executed.
I earned only a fiver short of my hourly rate as an intensive care nurse! Go figure that one!

Mrs James called down, as I was working,  to ask if  could publicize her table top sale in the memorial hall on Saturday morning. All proceeds are going to a Parkinson's Charity.
Job's done!

The weather has changed for the better..... as I worked I spied 8 buzzards flying in lazy circles in the blue sky above the Gop they seem to herald the start of spring.

Winnie lurking in the front garden trying to catch a glimpse of an overall

“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”

I saw her in Marks and Spencers.
A rather chic woman in her middle sixties with fashionably cut grey hair.

I recognised her immediately.
She was my biology teacher at school.
Vaguely I remembered as a teacher, she was an efficient but rather distant individual,  but it was seeing her that sparked a memory not of her way back in Prestatyn High School in 1974 but of her husband who my English teacher
Her husband had the rather odd nickname of  " smiler" as I remember and I recall one small kindness he afforded me as a boy of twelve when I was bullied in one rather awful moment of childhood cruelty.
I loved my English classes and was a bit of buttoned up swot at every lesson, so occasionally provided a butt of the joke for several of the thicker and more disruptive boys.
One day, just before class one of those boys broke my newly bought ink pen by jamming the nib into the desktop.
It was a nasty little moment of destruction which was aimed to hurt..and hurt it did.
As class started, and biting away tears , I remember Smiler starting the lesson which was for us to write a précis  of the novel " A Kestrel for a Knave" and as he walked up and down the line of desks he gave us instructions of what he wanted of us to do.
As he passed my desk, and without comment he reached into his pocket and pulled out his own rather smart ball-point pen which he placed quietly before me.
The lesson carried on as normal.
It was a kindness that meant so very much to a twelve year old boy.

At the end of the lesson, as Smiler was stacking the novels into piles, I stopped at his desk and offered him his pen back.
" Keep it" he said giving me a slight nod of his head

Who was your special teacher?

Women's Problems!

The Prof runs a large and by all accounts successful University department with consummate ease.
The large stuff  he copes with.
My mind literally boggles with the scope of it all.
He doesn't , however, deal with the small stuff that well.
" I'm living in a midden!" He bellowed.
It was 5.45 am and he was boiling his breakfast eggs.
I could see his point. Winnie suffering from a bit of post op bladder weakness and had left a couple of puddles on the kitchen floor, puddles of which were added to by Mary who looks as though she is entering her first major season.
There was pee everywhere!
William, blind as a bat, walked merrily though the puddles!
" FILTH! FILTH EVERYWHERE!" The Prof bellowed some more.
His day was getting off to a dreadful start

I reached for the kitchen roll.


   

The Walking Dead Episode 12

At last we have a slower episode and it worked so well!
Date night!
Michonne and Rick have some quality time, find guns, find their relationship's depth and have a few laughs along the way.
It's an clever moment in time.
Apart from the playfull humour there are flashbacks to older, and sadder episodes here....Glen on the dumpster, the survivor battle in the supermarket, death scenes of numerous old characters, but Michonne and Rick win through in a wisecracking , uplifting and rather romantic honeymoon moment.
This story is bookended by a worrying Thelma and Louise moment as Rosita teams up with Sasha in what could be a suicide bid to kill Negan.....
But it made the audience take breath, revert to The Walking Dead of old, and reconnect to the characters
A great episode!

Marriage Two Years On

In a 'recent' interview, the artist David Hockney made it clear that he thought that too many gay men are now determined to lead boring ordinary married lives. I can understand ( but not agree) where he is coming from, for I suspect he feels that some gay men are losing their queer slightly subversive
edge in an attempt to be part of the mainstream.
I see things slightly differently.

Two years ago today we got married.
We got married  because we wanted to.
We wanted to publicly declare our relationship.
We wanted to celebrate that fact with our families and our friends
We wanted to, be married in the eyes of the law of the land with all of the legal benefits that allows us

We wanted to have the same rights afforded to every straight couple.
And we wanted to dress up and wear shiny shoes!

Our marriage also unearthed interesting feelings that we did not expect.
Days before the wedding, cards of congratulations and gifts started to appear. A bottle of champagne here, a bunch of flowers there. Hundreds of cards, scores of gifts, money and good wishes arrived and they overwhelmed us because neither the Prof  and I expected anything.
We didn't expect anything because, I suspect deep down, we didn't really felt that we deserved  anything. Weddings were for straights, and not for middle aged old poofs like us. It's a subconscious idea that we thought only existed in the minds of bigots.
And we and the " actors of the piece" we actually thinking it! 
Auntie Glad, in her own morally right way of looking at things made it clear as she dropped off a card and a wedding present " It's the law of the land! " she observed simply.
A 96 year old, a devout christian getting on with a huge change of thinking because common sense told her so.
If she could get her head around things, we could, I remember thinking.

The wedding was lovely. It was lovely because it felt right.
It was right for us and it was right legally
And morally it felt right. 

And if that's us selling our gay, subversive side?
So be it.
I never had a subversive side anyhow

Hey ho!

Movie Chatter

In a former episode of the BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are? the journalist Anita Rani explored her family's experiences of the partition of India. It was a moving piece of television for it underlined the chaos , violence and misery the forced migrations of the Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations as Pakistan was forged out of the India subcontinent.
The " story" how Lord Moutbatten oversaw this move to independence has recently been made into a film.The  Viceroy's House, which we had the misfortune to sit through last night, is an attempt to show the human side of " Partition" through the experiences of the Indian staff who served the British hoi polloi.
Directed by Gurinda Chadra, the whole thing feels like a awkward mash up of Downton Abbey  with a Bollywood  melodrama as the Indian actors seem to overplay the drama whilst actors such as Gillian Anderson ( playing a rather forward thinking Lady Moutbatten) underplay beautifully.
And one is left feeling that the melodrama portrayed by the servants rather trivialised the real and very terrible tragedy Partition brought to two new nations.

The dishy Manish Dayal with Huma Queresi 

The Prof harrumphed his way through The Viceroy's House and shook his head when this trailer was shown just before the main feature

Described thus
"A Dog's Purpose" shares the soulful and surprising story of one devoted dog who finds the meaning of his own existence through the lives of the humans he teaches to laugh and love." 
The Prof could see me sobbing within the first minute and said gruffly
" Not one for you then"
I agreed

Anyhow to finish we have gay Disney! What a palaver over Gaston's fat little Queen side kick Le Frou! It's all been too much about nothing ,especially as the Russians have got their knickers in a
twist about it.......what no one seems to realise that Le Frou is the second gay character in Disney
No one has mentioned Ursula from The Little Mermaid! 
Now if she wasn't a fucking drag queen my dick's a kipper!

Hey ho! 

Flex Them Muscles!

The Prof has just gone to the gym for a 1:1 session with the fitness coach.
No doubt his mentor is a buff 22 year old called Luke who has thighs like tree trunks.
I 'm not jealous of a gym bunny no older than a pair of my socks.
I've got staying power.

Without the Prof around for an hour the cottage is quiet. The radio has been turned off and the windows opened to the sunshine and the crows bickering in the Church trees.
I've got my coffee, the dogs have been walked and fed and it's time to sit and think.

I spoke to a guy this morning who lost his wife suddenly. She had been ill for sure, and I suspect was expected to die at some point but he lost her when he and I expect she was not ready.
He knows I am a nurse and asked me questions I was in no way in a position to answer but what I could share was the simple fact that younger people compensate for their disease or their condition when they are poorly, so often deteriorate quickly and drastically when their reserves fail them.
Sometimes, no mater what is done nothing can change the final outcome.

The man shook my hand firmly after our conversation. I don't know if it was my words that helped or just the chance for him to ask the question that gave him some comfort.
Grief needs an outlet me thinks.

When he drove off, I realised that I didn't even know his name.

As I type this Bulldog and Welsh terrier bitch, 

Share a place in the sun