I Never Knew Liquorice Was A Root Until today

I feel ready to learn something new.
A new skill, a new set of facts, a new way of doing things.......I'm not bothered what
It's just finding the right thing.
I fancy Spanish or perhaps painting.....or a degree in something stimulating.
My fingers are too chubby for me to learn the piano but if weave can learn the Ukulele perhaps I could?
Or what about a cooking course? Naming Garden flowers? Or Pilates ?
I could learn pottery, wood skills or plumbing?
( I'm colourblind so anything electrical is a no no)
Or Something in a English literature perhaps...

The world's my lobster

So Long

Today another blogger bit  the dust.
Unlike hippo- on the lawn , who just disappeared mysteriously with a festering thigh wound, debts and half the African mafia after him, Rachel popped away from blogland with a short whimper of  " I've had enough" which is a shame.
It is sad, for we will miss her idiosyncratic style, her paintings, her chatty blogs about nothing in particular and her humour.
Bloggers come and go. Some get tired . Some die, and some.......some  move on with their lives....

Choking On A Swedish Meatball et al

Winnie nearly choked to death on a Swedish meatball last night.
Such was the excitement of the moment, that she had no idea of what was happening and continued to get into position alongside the other dogs in order to receive the next morsel.
Luckily she has a mouth the size of an average gin trap , so I coolly inserted my whole hand into her mouth and plucked the meatball from her oesophagus before her lips went blue.
Not fazed she gulped it down almost immediately.
A near death experience should not prevent a girl finishing her meatball!

I tell you this, only as a bit of a comic aside
I'm in the kitchen pottering as a roast dinner cooks.
The Prof is reviewing a PhD in his office.

Some people have a lovely way of speaking don't you think?
I experienced this phenomenon this morning when I spied Mr A working away in his garden.
Mr A is a farmer and had lost his mother recently and although I had sent my condolences I had not physically seen him to talk to.
This morning we talked.
I asked him how he was feeling, and after a pause, and in that slight sing-song Welsh way of speaking only the North Walian's do, he said slowly
" The heavy veil of sadness has lifted from me  just a little" 
Richard Burton couldn't have said it any better

Darkest Hour

I expected to love Darkest Hour, I really did.
But I only liked it, which was a pity.
I thought I knew the preamble to Winston Churchill's " We'll fight them on the beaches" speech,
But as it turns out I knew nothing of the old buffer's prickly relationship with King George VI , and the manoeuvring  of his cabinet members Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlain as they tried to dispose him.
The play with these four key characters made for riveting viewing with the peace loving Halifax ( a wonderful  Stephen Dillane) being more than a match for the flawed but battling old minister!
Ronald Pickup also lends some depth and pathos to his all too brief role as the dying Chamberlain
However ,the introduction of Lily James as Churchill's sweet new secretary and Kristen Scott Thomas as Clemmie, the long suffering and almost impossibly loyal Wife seem surplus to requirements for me as they didn't really add anything to the drama which was a shame as I like both actresses.

I almost hated the implausible sequence where Churchill met " real Londoners" in his secret jaunt on the underground. It smacked of cheap sentiment even though Gary Oldman carried the scene with great skill and a lovely twinkle in the eye, which , for me captured the real Churchill ( I imagine) quite perfectly. His performance is outstanding throughout.
Of course , it is perfect that the movie ends on the bravura " beaches" speech and I must admit I did shed a brief tear as the old Prime Minister marches out of the House of Commons amid the roars of approval by all members of the house
7/10

Era's End

I pulled the previous post because of some particularly nasty troll work.

That's enough to be said on the subject.

This morning I stopped in high street to have a good theatrical cough. 

I already told affable Despot Jason that I had consumption ( a fact he found highly amusing) so was in the middle of a good hack when I suddenly spied a " sold" sign on Auntie Glad's old house. 

I had a good sigh.

Residential home care costs are high, so it was enevitable that Plas yn Dre eventually sold but the finality of the " sold" notification outside the former grammar school built in the 1600s made me stop for a moment.

Mrs Trellis tottered past, her bobble hat perched far too high on her head. 

" The new owners will have to fill some very big shoes" she trilled

" Indeed they will" I agreed.

Silence

Put down your iPad or close your laptop.
Close your eyes and put your hands into your lap.
And listen.
What do you hear?
Even in the cottage, where the walls are 18 inches thick there is noise...distracting noise.
Bulldog snores, the click of the kitchen clock, the rumble of the farm tractor in the lane, the crow of the bachelors, the crackle of the wood burner .

I clean the Church when it's my rota week.
I don't go to Church other than that.
I don't believe in God.

Having said this , I love the little Church of St Michaels.
It's a peaceful place on a sunny but very cold Friday afternoon.
I sat for long time before hoovering and polishing as I always do.
Thinking of nothing in the stillness

And I could hear nothing...nothing at all

Hello darkness , my old friend,

I've come to talk with you again.

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain...

Still remains...

Within the sound of silence

Heaven

Mary

There is nothing more pleasurable than a very hot bath.
Welsh terriers adore a long soak and both William and Mary sat in the tub for nearly forty minutes each today with eyes half closed in pure terrier ecstasy.
I can potter around the cottage in the full knowledge that neither one will jump out until I lift them out.
I made a low macaroni cheese, a swede and carrot mash and cleaned the floor as both soaked until their paw pads went crinkly
   

Fanny Chat

I was in Boots -The Chemist on Monday and overheard a young woman say to her friend something about "..having an itchy fanny".
Usually with these sorts of strange conversations I would have lingered a little longer in order to hear more, but the vagaries of vagina chatter does leave me somewhat cold.....
it always has...

Anyway speaking of vaginas,
(as Miriam Margolyes once purred "I'm warming to my subject!")
I was once threatened with physical violence by someone for looking at a woman's vagina.
In my defence I must add that I was a student nurse working at the Jessop's Maternity department in Sheffield at the time  and the vagina in question was just about to expel a bouncing baby boy. It was the baby's father who threatened me, in a sudden and rather unexpected bout of excited paranoia.
" WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?" I remember him bellowing at me as I was trying to look all inconspicuous at the end of the bed.
Thank goodness I resisted the urge to  point at the "spot" in question and just opted to shuffle away instead.

When I was a boy, a old Welsh farmer once showed me how to "help" a  stuck lamb from it's mother's back end and her distressed bleating gave me nightmares for an age afterwards.
Child/sheep/any baby birth would be shrouded in mystery to me until this day

Years later when I was a charge nurse, an elderly lady's prolapse waved at me like a baby elephant's trunk after she sneezed violently when I helped her into a wheelchair.
I was so shocked I did let out an unprofessional shout of "fucking hell!!!" when it appeared but luckily she was unfazed with the whole thing stating pragmatically that " it did that sometimes" and could I just don a glove and "pop it back"

It wont surprise you then, that "toilet parts of the lady persuasion" are another country to me. True Winnie's enormous fanny is the only fanny I ( and the rest of population of North Wales) has seen in many a year so it is understandable to all that I am no expert even though I have been a nurse for 34 years.
and long may it remain that I am not