Cheats

Years ago now I had the opportunity to live in the pretty seaside town of Southport for half a year. I rented my little house in Sheffield to a Cliff Richard loving support worker and moved into a Victorian nurses home just out of town and enjoyed a salaried time completing a certificates in Spinal Injury Nursing and in teaching and assessing. 

I also got involved with a guy on another course who like me was away from his home city.

The only difference with him was that he went home at weekends and I stayed in Southport or went to see family or friends. 

Now I share this information because blog reader Andrea sent me a photo of this Pittsburgh rehabilitation centre that was one of several I visited whilst I was on this course at Southport. The connections made there led to some valuable nursing experience in and around the city of Pittsburgh, a city of great charm, I thought at the time 

Anyhow I digress -back to my new boyfriend whom I shall call James.

James was funny, handsome and unexpectedly swept me off my fairly inexperienced gay feet without too much trouble. I had only just come out so was flattered by all of the attention, so missed the fact that every weekend he went home! 

It transpired that he went home to his fiancé. 

When I eventually found this out, I finished our relationship immediately even though James was quite happy to keep things going and I remember being flabbergasted by the apparent ease of his cheating nature even on the eve of his own wedding! 

There are always people in this world that cheat. 

I am happy not to be one of them.

Tell me your cheating story!

A Normal Monday

I've just made a batch of  pea soup and a pot of meatballs smothered with a tomato sauce....all from scratch, this mindless act of basic cookery seems to be the highlight of the day
The low point  was getting stung on the stomach by a wasp in the dog food aisle of Tescos.
That hurt like a bastard!
It's weird because I've hardly seen a single wasp for a few years
Mary is in season, a fact which seems to have set Winnie's masturbatory juices going ten to the dozen.

She's been rubbing her fanny on the living room carpet like a professional porn star for the past fifty minutes
A pretty normal Monday

Community Spirit

The Trelawnyd Volunteer Corps

And the junior division 

The affable despot Jason brought his chain saw

In just one hour sixteen of us more or less cleared the village green 

A big thank you to all that helped out, a job well done, the lavender bordered path looks especially good

The Prof, Wendy and the little boy no one knew clearing the flower beds

Goodbye Christopher Robin

The charm of AA Milne's Winnie The Pooh has always been lost on me; as a child I was more a Beatrix Potter kind of gal, and so some of the rather " magic" nature of how Milne bonded with his son over a child's fantasy life of stuffed animals, a red letter moment which led to the publication of a franchise, was beyond me.
However Goodbye Christopher Robin is not just, as what I expect is a rather overblown story of how Pooh was written. It is a rather overblown story of just how poor little Christopher Robin survived a childhood, typical of so many 1920's children who had to cope with emotionally and physically distant parents who had battled through the horrors of WW1
Alan Milne ( Domhnall Gleeson) and his wife Daphne ( Margot Robbie) are not sympathetic characters. He is inconsistent and clearly uses the private moments with his son as fodder for fame,
whilst his wife is a brittle, but vivacious socialite who is quite capable of leaving husband and child
when it suits her but the audience sees them through modern eyes rather than from the perspective of the buttoned up upper classes of pre 1940 England and so it is very hard to identify and even understand them as the norm
Thank goodness for Kelly Mc Donald's emotionally warm Nanny Nou, for it is her arrival that saves the film from it's own dourness and gives it some heart. In the end I found myself more interested in her relationship with Christopher Robin ( Will Tilston) than the all too numerous , soft focus scenes when Milne , Christopher and a gaggle of stuffed toys " played" idyllically in the woods of rural Sussex..indeed.the moment where Nanny breaks down when she thinks the now adult Christopher Robin has died in battle ( a thing his parents were unable to do) literally broke my heart...and.only then did I realise that McDonald's character reminded me of my own grandmother, a person who provided me with all of the warmth and heart that was lacking in my own parenting.
6/10

Nanny Nou

Tiles

Give me a dying patient on a ventilator to look after!
It would be less stressful that discussing the right ceramic tile design for the kitchen with the Prof that's for sure!
In the end, after a somewhat lively time comparing one colour with another  , the Prof wandered off to the showroom exit with a wave of his hand and the words " YOU  pick!!!!!" 
it's been all too queeny! Very much like the judging from Strictly Come Dancing! 

I will leave you with a somewhat happier image
A rescued donkey " smiles" at his rescuers after being saved from a flooded river!
Have a peaceful weekend  readers

First Adventure

This beautiful photo was taken by my great niece Ellisha on a recent jaunt to Morocco. There is something rather ethereal about it I think.
Ellisha is an art student in London, and being slightly dippy certainly ticks the stereotype box of someone more grounded in colour and form and beauty rather than in the practicality of life.
Her and a friend hiked up the rural mountains of North Africa for instance without any cash for food or even sensible shoes.
The risk taking of youth eh?
The young people of today have a much global world in which to explore nowadays.
You even can track your kids on an mobile app , even if they are journeying the Amazon.
How fantastic is that

What was your first big adventure?

Mine was a first trip to London when I was 18. I went alone and somehow found a bed and breakfast before I went ( how did I do that without the internet?) I went to see Evita, ( which I hated) I walked everywhere because I was too scared to try the underground and my elder sister actually phoned the bed and breakfast's manager to see if I was ok on my first night in the big smoke!
Hardly a breathtaking new adventure, hardly rock' roll, but for a gauche Welsh teenager in 1980.
It was a big deal....

Like I said...what was your first big adventure?

Self Preservation

A dog fox trotted through the Ukrainian Village this afternoon. I saw him as I was gardening in the front garden. He circled Irene who was eating cheap white bread which was a gift from the neighbours. She stamped her feet angrily at him as he went by. 

In a shot the Bachelors appeared at the field gate, and within seconds they tottered noisily across the lane to the safety of the garden next door where they sat chattering on the low stone wall. 

It never fails to impress me just how clever peanut brained animals can be when self preservation is involved.

They stayed in the garden watching me prune the buddleia for an age, and two hours after they first arrived, I walked them back to the field, when the fox was long gone.

Boisterous Lesbians

The Prof didn't fly back until late last night, so I went to Theatre Clwyd to see Daisy Asquith's documentary Queerama. 

Queerama is a collage of fictional images, film clips, vintage television interviews and documentary snippets set to music. It sets out to portray the reality of gay life in Britain from the turn of the century but in my mind it failed, as the film seemed rather biased towards the negatives of the gay experience rather than the many, many positives. 

The film also seemed more concerned with the lesbian perspective, a fact that was perhaps reflected in the audience which comprised of three small groups of  women.

I was the only man in the cinema, sat in my usual seat D13!

One couple and a group of three were particularly animated and chatted throughout the first part of the film regardless of anyone. 

I got several hostile stares when I shushed them but the chatting did stop.

Some of scenes of the movie, especially the 1960s documentary scenes where a pompous lady consultant psychiatrist declared to camera that homosexuality was due to " damage in childhood" were particularly ironic.but without the balance of the positives of gay culture both from times gone by and from the past decade the whole movie fell a little flat to me.

I walked out before the film finished, and the lesbians who I had shushed muttered at me when I passed them. 

I'm sure they called me a homophobe!