Myxomatosis

Myxomatosis has hit the village rabbits with a vengeance .
It's a terrible terrible disease.
The affected rabbits suffer rapid weight loss, lesions and tumours over their faces and genitals and die a painful death after respiratory complications set in only fourteen days after being infected by host fleas. Only perhaps 35% of the population will survive.
Albert usually drags in baby rabbits during the spring months and even he has stopped feeding on the field. It's as though he knows the animals are tainted and like the sad zombies on The Walking Dead the dying crouch feebily on the sides of the lane and road waiting to die.
At the bottom of my field, isolated by thick brambles, a small enclave of young rabbits remain seemingly healthy and playful.
I watched them this morning, playing together in the dawn sun.
I hope they survive this outbreak, but things do look rather bleak

Thinking

I facetimed my husband just before he went to bed in his London hotel room this evening
He 's had a crap birthday.
He asked me if all the dogs were on the bed and I said "of course not!"
Of course they were!
Hey ho
Before I went to bed Winnie sat in the arm chair next to me and carefully watched me for over an hour as I watched tv
I have no idea why, but she did it..... There must have been a reason....she looked so serious!
Bulldogs think..I know they do........but of what? .......I have no idea

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!