Wiff?

Can anyone recognise these flowers?
I've filled the cottage with them today.
Delicate spiky petals in a starburst shape.
Wild garlic, grown on the borders of the field.
I adore the smell of garlic, I can't get enough of it......the cottage now smells like an Italian restaurant and I couldn't be happier.
You can't smell dog!

When I wear aftershave, I wear Clinique HAPPY 
I like the smell of fairy soap and find that carbolic smell of old hospitals strangely nostalgic.
And I love the aroma of pea and ham soup when it is simmering.

Roast chicken, fried onions and newly laid tarmac are favourites too as are honeysuckle and jasmine and I must not forget to add butterscotch angel delight, fresh coriander and nappy cream to the list.
But tonight, I'm happy with garlic

What's on your list?

Happy Birthday Prof!

Today is the Prof's birthday.
He's working away in London overnight.
I got up at 5.30 , made  him tea and presented him with his cards in bed before I was even awake.
He seemed to like my gift of tickets to Swan Lake at The Royal Opera House .
I dropped him off at the train station before 7 am and packed him off with a small bag of goodies from Marks. 
I went to Marks and Spencers yesterday and conscripted the jaunty Angela into my quest to set up the Prof with some birthday goodies. Initially I only asked the saleswoman if she had any miniature cakes ( the Prof like me is healthy eating) but after learning I was collecting a birthday goodie bag she warmed to our quest and helped me dig out a few choice bits and bobs which included miniature chocolate bars, little bottle of wine, a bag of nuts(!) birthday candles and the like. For a minute she disappeared excitedly into the card section and returned with a small multicoloured mass of birthday streamers and a classy party bag to complete the ensemble and then ooohhed enthusiastically when I showed her some posh moisturiser I had bought to beef up the gift! 
Middle aged ladies do love a gay shopping drama!

A Spoonfull Of Sugar

Saving Mr Banks was on tv last night and it proved to be an unexpected gem of a movie thanks primarily to the standard of the acting. Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L Travers ( the writer of the Mary Poppins books) were absolutely top notch and at the top of their game!
The film was ostensibly the story of how Disney courted the prickly Travers in order to get her to sign over the film rights of her beloved heroine but it had much more to say about how the ghosts of the past visit the lives of the living, and not always in a positive , healthy way.
I blubbed through the final third of it like a good un.

We all live with our own ghosts from the past. Bereavement, childhood disappointments, parent divorce, sadness, illness and abuse of all kinds , being a child is often fraught with damaging moments that disappear under the banality of life only to resurface at inopportune moments of adulthood.

I once washed a patient's hair when they were on skull traction. It was a tricky proceedure as the patient, a man in his fifties , had broken and dislocated his neck only a week or so before, but as his hair was matted with blood after the callipers had been literally screwed into his skull, the job needed to be done.
Slowly I rinsed the man's scalp with warm soapy water, making sure that spinal alignment was maintained, and as the bloody water flowed away into the bucket on the floor I saw he was  crying away large silent tears and those tears just didn't stop.

This emotional  'reaction' to paralysis and trauma was a common event in spinal injuries , especially when a nurse performed intimate cares with patient behind the safety of closed curtains, but my assumption in this case was oh so wrong as I found out after I had wiped away the tears the patient was in no position to wipe away himself.

" My Mother died when I was ten years old " The patient eventually told me in way of an apology " You washing my hair suddenly reminded me of her " .
He cried for an age afterwards, the grief about his disability  finally being unleashed by a dreadfully painful and precious childhood memory of a mother lost.

Village Voting

The view from our bedroom...spring has sprung

This week the people vote for our county councillor representative and two Trelawnyd-ites are up for election.
I know them both.
Helen Papworth, a quietly spoken woman who lives down our lane, is a writer and illustrator. David Ellis has been a stalwart of the village infrastructure for many years. I am sure both would hold the village and its population as their priority if they were elected, so in the similar way that the BBC is publicly impartial in such matters I shall keep my thoughts on who would be the better choice to myself.
I used to be on the community council myself, but that was in the days that The Red Faced Welsh Farmer was alive and very much kicking. Then the community council meetings were an entertaining bunfights  with TRFWF throwing conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory at the harassed Chair with much shouting and a twinkle in his eye. It was worth sitting through the dross just to watch him perform!
Alas things are much more professional now.
I was talking about the local elections to a nameless villager only yesterday.
He said he wasn't voting at all, claiming all councillors to be " a shower of shits" 
We all have an opinion.
I bumped into Affable Despot Jason yesterday too. It's springtime and  he's out of his usual hibernation, so much so that he's started a new cycling fitness regime. "I'm up to 50 miles " he told me proudly, tossing his floppy hair and flexing his muscles like Gaston from Beauty And The Beast.
" It's a mid life crisis" despot wife Claire chuckled as she got into her car

New blog character " Tinkering Pete" waved as I passed and asked me a question on The Walking Dead. He was hoovering and cleaning the inside of his ice blue vintage Jaguar, ( something he does every day of the week- hence the nickname)
His beloved car will be entered into the local car show at the end of the month,the very successful car show which is organised by my brother in law Tim! See
http://prestatyncarshow.blogspot.co.uk
Mrs Trellis was practising her piano when I turned the dogs for home, I think she was performing ragtime which seemed a little incongruous to me, I wondered idly who she would be voting for in the elections?

Their Finest

Claflin and Arterton

Sometimes all you need is a good solid movie to entertain you.
It doesn't have to be sparkling, worthy or great.
It just needs to be satisfying.
Their Finest is such a movie.
Set at the height of the war in bomb torn London, it tells the story of Catrin Pugh ( Gemma Arterton) a fledgling writer who is employed by the Government's propaganda department to co-write an "uplifting" movie script.
Of course the path of such an endeavour is not an easy one as Catrin has to negotiate sexism, a temperamental diva in the shape of aging actor  Ambrose Hilliard ( Bill Nighy) and antagonism from a flawed but terribly attractive boss Sam Claflin. But with some plucky charm, the help of a
wisecracking lesbian manager ( a statuesque Rachel Sterling) and a fortunate meeting with two movie struck Kent twins who failed to reach the stranded Dunkirk troops in their father's fishing boat) all comes good in tbe end.
Their Finest looks all rather lovely. The stars are fabulous in their forties outfits, the backdrop of the bombing lends a certain drama to the proceedings ( though, in my opinion not nearly enough) and Nighy brings his usual and very welcome laconic charm and humour to his comic relief.
Arterton is rather good too as the sweet and not-so-innocent Catrin but the film is really dominated by Claflin who underplays his role as the bad tempered senior writer , eventually softening to Catrin's charms with a shy smile!
Their Finest is worth a visit. It's it's not a fantastic movie but it an IS entertaining one.
7/10

George

George now looks like a proper Scottie

He's twelve

And he ate 12 cocktail sausages all to himself as a treat in Sainsburys car park! 

A sweet, sweet moment! 

Pay Something Forward

Early today George and I left home in a miserable rainstorm.
It's his turn for a professional haircut
On the garden wall, by the kitchen door I spied a small bouquet of spring flowers, tied carefully in the middle with a miniature length of ivy.
The sweet work of Mrs Trellis, I thought.

It put me in a good mood, that simple act of kindness, and so it was easy to pay it forward when I eventually got to the pet store where the groomers worked away in their cramped windowless workstations and the salespeople tidied shelves and served the ungrateful public.
I left three boxes of chocolate eclairs for the staff to have with their coffee as George was lifted onto his grooming table. It only cost me the loose change left in my pockets
But boy, did it make me feel good.
The staff didn't need to thank me...... it was Mrs Trellis that should have been thanked

What's the last time you received a small act of kindness?
I'd be interested to know.

My Television Debut

Tim

There is something that you may not know about me but I have once appeared on tv!

Years ago I nursed an RAF pilot called Tim, who crashed  his Harrier Jumpjet. Typical of most servicemen that suffer a catastrophic spinal cord injury, Tim dealt with his injuries with a stoicism and bravery that was not only impressive but genuinely inspiring.
I remember one beer filled night when a dozen nurses accompanied a dozen patients to the pub which was located up a hill beyond the rehabilitation unit where we worked. After last orders as the nurses pushed their charges back to the wards, Tim organised the 'convoy' into an " aircraft V" formation with him leading the charge in the centre of the road and at full gallop the wheelchairs careered back down the hill .
It was a moment of pure , wonderful madness, with patients and nurses yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs as their wheelchairs bounced off each other and into the road, the grass verges and muddy ditches.
To me this is the essence of rehabilitation.
Risk taking, humour and a bit of stupid lunacy.

Anyhow I digress.......back to my one and only tv appearance!

Years after Tim's discharge from our unit the BBC featured his accident in one of their Emergency 999 programmes. As part of his story, a camera crew appeared on our unit to film some of the hospital based scenes of his rehab with an actor playing Tim in a wheelchair.

I was asked to feature in the fictional moment that Tim was mobilised in his wheelchair for the first time, so I donned my best, slightly tight, charge nurse uniform, made sure my hair was combed and squirted myself with aftershave and in front of an irritating ten year old director , I physically manhandled the 'paralyzed' actor from his bed and into his wheelchair by using a sliding board as the cameras rolled!
It was all very Hollywood, with me acting away with all the right phrases and caring expressions.
Meryl Streep couldn't have done any better.

Months later, the tv show aired and I sat for what seemed hours on my sofa for my big tv debut moment!
My scene lasted perhaps just ten seconds or so, and seemed to be totally filmed from behind.
And only one of my best friend's saw it.
He rang and told me honestly what he thought of my performance
" I saw your big fat arse on tv last night" he said dryly.

For Tim's story see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/136189.stm