Quote of the day

I arrived at the kennels early and caught the owner  harassed, lumbering and running late
" Can you hang on a minute!? " she called from the locked courtyard as she busied herself with collecting a collection of barking dogs.
" I've not stopped " she yelled "I haven't had time to even put my bra on!" 
I burst out laughing and despite myself I looked to check.

Now I am on the London train, having suffered the irritation of the many already drunk racegoers going to the Chester races. I have on my best disapproving Miss Jean Brodie face on as you can see
Hey ho

" A Herd Of Baby Elephants"

What is your best bit of the day?
I'll tell you mine in a moment, not that it shall be of any great surprise to most Going Gently readers, but then it will make a gentle anecdote to gently start of the day!
I was in Tesco's this morning buying a giant sized bottle of Prosecco- like you do!
Ok I must have looked like a slightly upmarket dipso preparing for a mornings tipple in front of Jeremy Kyle, especially as it was one minute past 7 (am ) but I did have a good reason. Winnie goes to her Babysitters for a day or so as I am off to London with to meet the Prof and another trip to the ballet ( my Christmas gift to him) and so the keep the babysitter onside Prosecco gifts will be offered.......anyhow as usual, I am digressing! ( I also forgot to add that I lost a further 7.5lbs at fat club last night!)

My Best Bit Of The Day ( now I do sound like a contestant on Just A Minute) is the few seconds " happy realisation " that I have returned to bed after 5.30 am morning walks.
With the Prof happily sitting over his boiled egg and iPad news at the kitchen table, the dogs, Albert and I amble  back in after a dozen wee stops all bleary eyed and still sleepy. Everything is serene to the point of coma until we all get to the stairs and the mad scramble for the best bed position starts.
" For Fuck's sake, it's a herd of baby elephants!" Is the Prof's usual comment as we thunder up the stairs and in a mixture of brute strength, the lifting of the oldies and juvenile jumping everyone ( four dogs, one cat and I) have managed to get onto the double bed within seconds.
It reminds me of one of those 1970 Guinness Book of Records pranks where 30 students cram themselves into a phone box! anyhow I digress again!

By 5.45am we are all asleep

This is my best bit of the day!
What's yours?

Black ( or was that brown?) Humour

I worked all yesterday on day shift, which was a change.
A nurse, who I hadn't worked with for an absolute age asked me what I would miss about work once I retire in nine or so shifts time....and without thinking too much, I told her honestly
" Nurse humour"

Nurses' humour is notoriously dark.
It is dark but never bleak, and can be rude to the point of making a docker wince.
It also can seem terribly irreverent to people " not on the same wavelength" , but it is not designed to be listened to by non nurses....nurse humour is for nurses only!

I've told this story before, but I remember my mother recalling an overheard whispered conversation between three nurses at the end of their terribly hard night duty shift.
One nurse hurried to the nurses' station and hissed at her colleagues" I've just found another one dead!" To which all three burst into nervous laughter!

I've seen alot of this kind of behaviour over the years.

Years ago a rather nasty neurologist who had come to the ward on which I worked to re assess a patient that was in a vegetative state, rounded on a sister who he thought didn't quite show him the respect he expected. After making a fool of her he then asked her if the patient had changed neurologically since he last visited
" He spoke briefly after you saw him" she said seriously
"And exactly what did he say?" the consultant snarled
" Don't let that rude twat visit me again" she replied.

It is well know that a "code Brown " means that help is required with a full bed of poo and rose cottage is the nickname for the mortuary, but these are the polite areas of nurse humour.
The hidden reality is much, much darker.......
.......and so much funnier!

Prof's Birthday Night Out

We went to a retro 1970s Italian last night for a meal to celebrate the Prof's Birthday
He enjoyed himself
Honest

Bringing The Outside In.

Yesterday's blistering blue skies have turned a cold grey and Wales has returned to it's native drabness.
The Prof has numerous deadlines to reach by Monday , so apart from a brief tussle with his twenty year old personal trainer this morning and a meal out with me this evening ( I'm taking him to a popular Italian place in Conwy), he will be hidden away in his office.
Like most academics his office is a functional place in which to work, and before he went out this morning he asked me if there was anything I could do to cheer the place up a bit before he started his writing.
Thinking of those lovely photos of yesterday, and after a surreptitious flit round with a duster, I decided to bring a bit of the field onto his desk to lift the gloom of the day.

When I was collecting the flowers I noticed that the baby rabbits , in their enclave, are all now showing signs of disease

A Photo blog

Sometimes I write too much. This afternoon I have been strimming the field. The dogs and Albert accompanied me. A lovely, lovely afternoon..here are the photos

The cottage with the Gop in the background covered in flowering gorse

Winnie spied Monika and her baby in the churchyard and went off to investigate

( they had sandwiches)

The Church

Albert

,

George and Winnie 

A rare shot of everyone together 

Irene and Sylvia standoff the dogs 

william chasing the batchelors 

Polish monika's little girl with Winnie And Wiliam 

The montanta growing over the gate 

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

" That's Winnie, she's a rescue bulldog!" 
So proclaimed a small boy dressed who was dressed in a blue pullover after he had crossed the road outside the school.
The boy and his younger brother stopped briefly to rub Winnie's nippleline  before being whisked away by a busy mom. The mother said something to him and I heard him say " He told us a story in school"
I remember giving him and others an outline of Winnie's history after being surrounded by kids when picking up the despot's girls one afternoon. They were fascinated and somewhat horrified by the fact she was not allowed to suckle her own puppies, their imaginations sparked by what seemed such a cruel and odd act.
Children love a good story..
Much of Going Gently is storytelling I am aware of that. I have inherited the habit of sharing stories from my mother and Grandmother who were naturally dramatic raconteurs of a good tale. Give them an audience, and off they could go, recounting oral histories of wartime dramas and near miss encounters with the luftwaffa better than anything Ian McKellen could do ever do on stage.
Family Oral histories are handed down through generations, that is until they are petered away by processes of dilution.
We have no children of our own to impart these tales to and the children of my siblings are now removed from the family memories somewhat which are themselves dulling with time.
Sadly so many of our oral histories will go the way of the wind.

If you could choose just one story-one to share and one to keep forever- which one story would you pick?

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