Showtime 2017

All done for another year.

An amateur vegetable grower cried when she won best exhibit in show for her onion set. 

Another new competitor in the floral art, who only entered as it gave her something to concentrate on after a stroke won a cup which made her shed a tear and Anthea D was cock-a-hoop to get a special rosette for her Victoria sponge Cake!

It was worth all of the effort just to see that!

As usual the Show ran itself, with the dozen committee members making it all look very easy.

Thanks to them, and to the competitors who support the show. 

It was fun

 

Eve Of the Show

456 entries taken a quarter of which have already been placed on the hall tables
Auntie Glad's Stall is stocked and ready.
The kitchen is full of homemade cakes to sell
The village schoolchildren's artwork has been hung and the bunting unravelled
I'm buggered

Friday's Blog

I won't have time to blog tomorrow so here is Friday's post!
A few people have asked why I was in London on Tuesday...well the best reason ( but not the only one) was that I managed to get tickets to the Royal Ballet for The Prof, who adores anything classic! ( he is working in London all week)
The Russian Marinsky Ballet was performing Swan Lake and although the tickets were very  expensive, the experience was absolutely sublime .
Viktoria Tereshkina as the White Swan was glorious but it was the precision of Corps de ballet that really brought a tear to the eye!
I had to  thank My Sister and Eirlys who looked after  William, Mary and George at the last minute and Greta who took in Winnie!
I feel sorry for Greta's dogs who normally share a lovely comfy bed in their classy kitchen....the big girl ousted them for the duration

Ps it was lovely to meet the village lady with frothy labrador today! As we said hello , she told me that she loved going gently.....

Apologies

I have to apologise to the residents of Rhodfa Arthur for the big creamy stain on the road by the Church. I've been ferrying flower show stuff to the village hall and left one of the raffle prizes ( a bottle of Irish liqueur) on the roof of the car.
One less Raffle prize....hey ho!
When I got back this little fella was sitting on the garden wall. No note, entry form ...nothing..so if anyone wants to claim him, please give me a ring

Laughter and Tears around a table

The train was packed.
I was on the 9.10am from Euston and was due back in Wales by midday, which was good as I still had a ton of work to do for the Flower Show and I am on a six hour Sams shift this evening to boot! So much for retirement.
A large Jewish family of five took up most of the seats around me leaving me and another middle aged couple opposite me, the only strangers in our part of the train. Next to me was teenage son of the family who looked perhaps fourteen. He was busy on his ipad
The mother of the children spent most of her time fussing away. She handed out food, constantly asked the children and her husband questions and organised the journey within an inch of its life.
In between all this she engaged me and the other couple in polite conversation.
Where we were going?  how awful it was to have only one toilet in our part of the train working ( yeah thanks Virgin Trains) would we like a polo mint?
All very nice stuff I must say, but dovetailing all this she kept on at her teenage son about what he was doing?
Was he on facebook? Was he emailing his brother in France?
What was he doing on his ipad?
It's terribly antisocial you know......!
Finally the boy snapped but did so in such a delightful way the couple opposite to me and I all burst into fits of laughter!
After the mother had asked him for the twentieth time what he was doing on his ipad.
The boy slowly put the ipad down, and said in a very loud and serious voice
" I 'm watching gay porn on it mother!" 

Anyhow, this afternoon I have been making traybakes at the kitchen table and as I did so, watched Mark Gatiss' recent Talking Heads tv show QUEERS. One monologue where Ben Whishaw plays a World War One soldier  in love with his commanding officer was incredibly moving, and I must admit I shed a small tear as I
Folded in the self raising flour.
Try and watch it, if you can get BBC IPLAYER
Hey ho

Ben Whishaw

Gay Britannia

Gale's parents on their wedding day

The novelist Patrick Gale talked about his father in a recent interview. His father, a prison Governor always slept in a separate bedroom from his mother and when he was in his early twenties Gale found out the reason for this was the fact his mother found out that her husband had embarked on a love affair with another man before her marriage.
The secret was never talked about, and two lives were shattered because of it. A wife bitter and lonely and  feeling second best to her husband's best man who lived a lie as most gay men did in the middle years of the twentieth century!
A tv drama based on the story of Gale's parents, Man in an Orange Shirt airs tonight as part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season

I came out when I was in a relationship with a closseted man.
It was a terribly conflicted time for me as I was torn between kind of respecting his " need" to be hidden and private with the overwhelming feeling of not wanting to be some way ashamed ( albeit by proxy) by being publicly gay.

The relationship was shit anyway, so it wasn't hard for me to eventually walk away from it, but I still look back with incredible sadness on the fact that my boyfriend then found it necessary to wear a wedding ring at work in order to look straight in front of a  boss who was a virtual stranger when I wanted to hold my head up and look at everyone in the eye

When I eventually came out, I did so to everyone I knew with the only exception of my mother. I spared myself that experience, not because I was in anyway ashamed or worried;  I just could not be bothered going through the drama , guilt trips and subsequent angst that would have ensued from an elderly lady with massive psychological problems all of her own.

With everyone else, I simply shared the truth.
And although, it was, at times, somewhat stressful.

I never had a problem with any of them.

LITTLE Bits Of News

The bachelors are getting somewhat pugnacious with strangers and ambushed several elderly hikers this morning who had to fend them off with their ski poles!
It's a case of little men syndrome
Well little cock syndrome actually!
At least the hikers took the assault with good humour- unlike the meter reading man a week or so ago, who was decidedly muffed at being chased down the path by three six inch birds with feathery feet.
I think we all know someone with little cock syndrome!
I'm behind with things with the Flower Show today and feel it.
I've still got 200 raffle tickets to sell, all of the hand embroidered tablecloths to wash and iron and still have a mound of baking to do and that's before all the admin bits to sort, people to bully, oh and notice boards to pick up.
There are not enough minutes in the day
The Prof is feeling neglected as is the norm this time of year, so I did make him " cock-eyed egg" for breakfast in bed! this morning as a treat! ( cock eyed egg is in fact egg in a basket!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_in_the_basket
Oh And I cleaned the crap out of the fridge in way of saying that I hadn't forgotten the housework, but the cottage still looks like a jumble sale venue with cakes, knitted items of all descriptions and brick a brac piled high in every corner.

Jo the policewoman caught me yesterday with my Bluetooth earphones on when we were out with our respective dogs, I could see she was impressed with my leap into 21st century technology.
" listening to anything nice ?" She asked me
I didn't have the heart to tell her that the Bluetooth headphones had not been charged properly and were only there to keep my ears warm.

There's a big gig in the church this morning, I waved at Gaynor - the- mad- organist as she drove in early to get a parking space .....seeing her reminded me that I 'm thinking of organising a village fete again next year to raise funds for the Church and Samaritans ......what Am I thinking of? ...it's a case of
if you want a job doing...ask a busy man