A Worrying Turn

Blogs talking about the oldest and one of the youngest Village characters

Go figure

It's been public knowledge for a little while now, but the care home that Auntie Gladys is in has been recently under close scrutiny by  the Welsh Care and Social services inspectorate after it breached 11 regulations in the care of its residents.
I have not blogged about all this as in many ways it was not my place to say anything, but very recently things have changed yet again.
We visitors had no idea that things were not quite they seemed as Gladys seemed very happy with her care, and although the place looked somewhat shopworn there was nothing in the home that unduly concerned me, nothing, that is, that I could see on an hours visit.
I know that Gladys' family closely monitored the situation, and have kindly kept a few of us here up to date with what was happening.
Tomorrow, it has been decided that the remaining residents will be moved by social services to another care home and Gladys will transferred to a more appropriate place on the English border some twenty miles away.

I've got the details of the new home if any villagers need it.
I'll be visiting next week and I may post the home's address here! A plethora of supportive cards may underline to te managers just how well loved Gladys is!( hint hint)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-39469229

Boffin Thank You

I promised to pass on Cameron's best wishes to the locals ( and blog readers) who sponsored him on his run last weekend, hope you can read his text

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

I went to fat club late this evening and left the cottage all cozy and toasty for the Prof on his return from work.
A chicken curry was warming in the oven and the dogs were all sorted
When I finally got home the fucker had eaten his AND my half of the curry!
I was so mad I could have clubbed  Julie Andrews to death with her own guitar

I Need A PA !

The Prof has his own PA.
She is an affable, and exasperated sort who is always hidden away behind a desk covered with paper,
I sort of know her feelings this morning as today I have spent several hours catching up with paperwork and phonecalls and phonecalls and paperwork.
Half an hour of my life that I will never get back was on the phone to an ever perky " Matty" at my pet insurers, after an unexplained delay in Winnie's operation payment.
" How is she now?" He asked in a desperate attempt to court favour after my third thinly lipped complaint of the amounts quoted
"Sexually very promiscuous" I replied shortly
"Oh!" Was all he managed to reply, albeit weakly.
Another thirty five minutes was spent on the phone to a dopey so-and- so at the pension department ( more paperwork outstanding) ten minutes booking dog haircuts, five minutes to the vets, and fifteen soul destroying minutes hanging onto the phone in the fruitless hope of speaking to a sales rep at Sky ! ( I had to give up due to an overdue bowel movement!)
10 minutes booking a badminton court at a local leisure centre ( I didn't understand the card system) 10 minutes on Samaritan business and two minutes ringing Animal helper Pat about the flower Show Meeting and finally after another 20 minutes of on line banking, I spent a joyless time answering a short on line questionnaire about the BBC, a product of a recent complaint about the odious Jeremy Vine, I emailed the radio 2 website last week ( fucking hell get a life John!)

Oh, and It took me a further quarter of an hour writing this shite! 

Bedroom Ettiquette

Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson had twin beds. So did my parents in the latter years of their marriage. Blogger Rachel has gone one step further, she and P has seperate bedrooms,each, no doubt, enjoying the starfish abilities of cool sheets and a double bed.
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow went a step further, they lived in seperate houses...but that's another story!
In our home, I sleep on the left and always have done. The Prof sleeps on the right with our only bedside table which is usually covered with books and ipads and phone.
The dogs take pot luck.
Until recently George has aways slept at the foot of the duvet, politely away from feet and movement.  Now he enjoys the armchair in the living room. Mary sleeps in her crate in the kitchen and Winnie enjoys the hospitality of the sofa. Winnie understands only too well that bed sharing with the Prof is a total no-no when he is in situ but after he has left for work she will gallop gleefully up the stairs and hurl herslf with gay abandon onto the duvet like a fat lady at the circus.
Willian is the only dog with any manners, for he will come up to bed after his first dawn wee stop and will place his head on the pillow next to mine.
If cold , he actually gets under the bedclothes like an old man.

I'd like a bigger bed. I've always thought that American sized hotel beds are a delight because you can get totally lost in them. You could, if you wanted share one with a bull ox and still have room for Shelley Winters......but that's another story.

When I was a boy we had nylon sheets that always caught on your toenails. We also had bunk beds, candlewick bed spreads and hot water bottles.
Oh and those warming stripy flannel sheets in winter!

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!