Mrs Miniver

I'm better slightly out of focus!

I'm more like Mrs Miniver than not today.
The weather is warm and the Sparrow Flock is causing a riot on the stone wall of the cottage.
The windows need to be flung wide open as the sky beyond the green hills is a Danial Craig blue.
A Spitfire drones overhead.
I'm not kidding a Spitfire IS flying overhead, it is a privately owned one from across the valley and you can always tell it's earthy tones as it grumbles past.
I'm suddenly transported to Kent in 1942. ( well the Hollywood version of Kent that is) but unfortunately Bwthyn-y-Llan is not Starlings, I haven't got a tittering housemaid called Gladys and I don't have to worry about telling my husband I 've just bought a new hat!

The Prof is out having a 1:1 with his 24 year old fitness coach.
It's something Walter Pidgeon would not have done. He just smoked a pipe and rattled his big pants!

I have been moving aquilegia from the back garden into the front. I am clearing the back garden for a make over and I want to save as many as the cottage plants as I can. Winnie is sunbathing on the warm soil.
She looks as though someone has hit her with a stick.
Greer Garson would never have owned a bulldog, she was a black labrador kinda gal!
I open the windows wide and hear the Spitfire again. I wonder for a moment if there is a German paratrooper in the larder?

I feel like Mrs Miniver today, popular but useless! 

Calling All Committee Members

It's that time again...the first Flower Show Meeting of the Year
So to Sailor John, Animal Helper Pat, Trendy Carol, Meirion & Daphne ( from the posh houses)
Chucklers Terry & Ann, Heulwen & Derek, Matriarch Irene and Trelawnyd Val
The  meeting will be held in the back of The Crown 7 pm on Thursday.
Items to be discussed include the format of this year's Schedule, refreshments and the future of Auntie Glad's stall!

Coming Out

My Uncle Jim and Dena

A woman I know told me that her daughter, who is 16 , recently noted at a family lunch that she was, in fact, asexual.
Another relative, a man in his fifties apparently chirped up with the question " A sexual what?"  And had to be patiently educated by his niece, who calmly explained that she had no sexual attraction to men or women .
I asked what was the family reaction to such news and my friend proudly shared that it was in fact a positive one, as the family apparently accepted the news with some interest coupled with slight indifference.
Perhaps that is a sign of the times....who knows, I am not privy to my friend's family dynamics.

When I was a child my uncle Jim divorced his wife and went to live with a woman from South Yorkshire ! The woman was twenty five years (?) his junior and hailed from a family that was colourfully working class and I remember so vividly just how shamed my grandparents felt at the news as they talked in hushed tones and cried together in the privacy of their bedroom.

I still love my grandparents so very much and it's nearly four decades after they died, but I know that they could not have coped with me being gay, not in the early 1980s. They thought and were shamed by things that shamed and upset people from another era........we don't live in that world anymore .

Having said this, my grandparents eventually came around to my Uncle's new life, much younger wife and bonny baby grandson. They did this because my new aunt was and is a decent woman with a warm personality. My cousin was a delightful little boy and my Uncle was loved so very much.
Loving him, for them, finally out weighed any prejudice they felt.

I would have liked to have come out to my grandparents. I would have liked to have come out to my
mother and father  too, but it was never to be and it was never the right time........ c'est la vie as they say in Frenchland.......

When I told Auntie Gladys that The Prof was my partner ( before we all met up for one of my first Flower Show Meetings)  I was acutely aware that in some small way I was "re-living" a moment I
wanted so much to have had with the matriarchs of my old family all now deceased .
It wasn't rocket science....in homespun psychology terms!
I said the words that I really didn't have to say and waited with winced eyes for the reaction.
Gladys was 86 back then.
"Will he be coming to the meeting too?  " She asked me, her eyes were bright and interested
" I don't think it's his cup of tea" I told her
" Right O  " she said busying herself with a tea towel   " " I'll wrap up some scones for him to have later" 


And she left him scones, tied in a bag to our front door for the next ten years! 

Run On!

There is a downside to writing blogs. My friend Nu reminded me of this fact recently when she admitted that our news sharing was somewhat one sided.
I tell you this in way of a bit of colour!
I have been watching the excellent BBC2 documentary series American Justice recently and the music which features over its opening credits has been causing me a headache in so much as I love it but couldn't find it's title or who in fact performed it.
I have been pondering this problem for a day or so, but it was thanks to Iris , my visitor of this afternoon that popped in with her market research laptop to ask me a hundred questions on sky tv and my holiday choices.
In a moment of small talk I mentioned that I loved this music but couldn't find out what it was and she introduced me to Shazam an ipad app that would recognise the music and tell me what it was!
How wonderful is that?
Anyhow enjoy the music! And if you get the chance watch the documentary.....it makes for  sobering viewing

Spring Flowers in the kitchen

Trelawnyd Boffin Sponsor

As promised I am bigging up the teenage Boffin Cameron's sponsorship page.
He's doing the Denbigh 10k to support his Cricket Club.
I'm expecting great things from his Flower Show Entries in return!
See link
http://www.leetchi.com/c/cameron-ackroyd

" Oh William!"

Old dogs have accidents .

Old people do too. 

It's the way of the world as we all get older

I once skidded on a puddle of urine as I was rushing around a corner of a hospital ward and fell hard on the floor ripping  the backside out of my pants and I remember often finding malteezer sized balls of poo lurking like land mines around clinical areas after being warmed and shaped down pyjama trouser legs and around netty knicker incontinent pads.

Nurses on elderly wards always keep one eye fixed on the floor as they go about their business.

This morning the Prof sang out that William had "flooded "  another corner of the living room after being let in by Albert. and  with a sigh I grabbed the biological cleaner and kitchen roll.

5.30 am is not a time to be cleaning up pee.

This afternoon I caught him just about to wee in the same, newly laundered spot and after I yelled his name, he sort of "came to" and realised his mistake, hanging his head in the shame of being shouted at yet again

Yells of " oh William " seem to echo about the cottage at the moment.

I put down the bucket of ashes I was collecting from the fireplace  and scooped him up into my arms and we sat on the armchair together for a long long sweet moment.

Old dogs are just like old people. 

They don't mean accidents to happen

Fat Club!

There were more people queueing up for fat club than I expected yesterday morning.
As usual there was posters advertising just how effective the programme adorning the hall and on a table there was boxes and packets of diet cookies, cakes and anaemic looking pasta all ready to be bought.
I know the routine, I've been there before.
Most of the " clients" were women and most disappeared off to the toilets before joining the weigh in line in order to squeeze that last tiny bit of urine out of themselves before they jumped upon the scales. There was only one bloke in line and like me , he was the newbee.
He flashed me a sympathetic look.
The woman behind me had a handful of dogeared paperwork and told me that she had been coming to the meetings " for years" 
" They are my social life" she admitted " they gets me out of the house"
I asked her how well she was doing with her weight loss and she laughed
" I haven't lost anything since Christmas"  she confided "But I am on diuretics now so things may start moving" 
I nodded
" How long have you been big?" She asked me after a pause
I thought I'd be honest
" I was born big" I told her.

The Walking Dead Finale ( Spoilers! )

He never saw her coming ! 

The producers still had  a few tricks up their sleeves as The Walking Dead draw to a bloody climax tonight.
With the ambiguities very clear of who are the goodguys and who are the bad guys , " Team Family"  is effectively double crossed by the ill conceived junk yard group and find themselves again at the mercy of Negan and his band cut throats.
Nothing New there, especially as the audience could see Sasha's self sacrifice coming a mile away, but the  real satisfaction of this last episode comes from the sight of Carol leading the Kingdom's small band  of knights alongside Maggie and a rag tag band of brothers from Hilltop. Who turn up at the eleventh hour to save the day.
In actual fact, it is the remarkable CGI of Shiva, who steals the show, as she interrupts Carl's murder with a murderous attack of her own, dispatching Negan's men with  a crowd cheering munch!
In the end no more of the now united team family are killed, and Negan is driven off alongside Dwight who is clearly Rick's new cuckoo -in-the-nest .
Maggie's final voice over, as the leaders of the communities unite,  is strangely rather moving  and underlines the equalities of the sexes and just how far many of the characters have now come.
" People that once would pass each other in the street" are now family. she muses in her southern drawl.
I do hope baby Hershel survives in season 8!