High Colour

I'm a terrible blusher.
Always have been.
It's a curse which has followed me through all of my 55 years on this planet .
I either look embarrassed , pissed or hypertensive at the best of times given my ruddy complexion ( when I was a baby I looked like a fat tomato!!)
And unfortunately with my years advancing the sometimes crippling affection of " the blush from nowhere!" remains with me.

I tell you this secret because I blushed terribly at the land agents' office this morning. I have driven the twenty miles to a little market town up in the hills to drop off the field paperwork and tenancy  agreements as well as the rent payment and couldn't quite locate my wallet from my manbag!
The camp-as-Christmas clerk had already wrong footed me by complementing the bag only a minute or so before , so it was with much embarrassment that I had to empty most of the bag's flotsam in front of him in order to reach the rent cheque.
An almost empty bottle of aftershave, blackcurrant fisherman friends cough sweets, empty envelopes a note book with " weight watcher's recipes" written on the front and George's antibiotics were all hoisted out and as the clerk wryly commented that the bag indeed was " a regular tardis!" 
I blushed like a teenager after he had said it
Like I told you....it's a curse

Blushing often comes in waves , it's almost as though one " attack" sets another off. Only a half hour before the bagblush I had seriously coloured up at the vets when George (who had not been to the vets since he was a puppy) opened his bowels in a fit of nerves in the middle of the waiting room floor.
It was only made worse by William who being half blind stepped in the shitty puddle before I could stop him.

I was still glowing a bit as I took a picture in to be framed at a local art shop.
" is it too warm for you in here?" The shop owner asked politely
" No I'm fine' I said " I've got a cold"

Hey ho

Rock 'n Roll

Rush hour Wrexham

In February I've been asked to take part in a weekend course for Samaritans
It means a multiple workshops and an overnight hotel stay,
One of these events took part in the picturesque city of Bath so I got quite excited at the prospect of a pub trip, a brief bit of local colour and maybe a nice meal out!
Suffice to say my weekend is in Wrexham ( Google Wrexham and you may get a feel for my disappointment )
I also had a message from a fellow Sam called Graham ( not his real name) who is a retired pensioner ...who is going on the same course and who wanted a lift
Hes a lovely person who added as a postscript " I'll bring my ukulele " 
Rock n fucking Roll! 


Lewd Behaviour


Much has been made of the dreadful conduct of the rich and famous at that charity night at The Dorchester last night.
The sight of a men only night out where 300 men slavered over a bevvy of mini skirted hostesses ( who happened to agree to go to the night in question with matching skirts and knickers) makes me feel rather sick but I think it is important to have some balance here so I wanted to tell you of the time in 1999 when I went to a nightclub in Sheffield with a friend.
In a function room of the club there was a "female only" charity night taking place.
Male "exotic" dancers were on show, the ladies had a  basket meal, much too much to drink, a comedian and a raffle and
their behaviour would have made Caligula blush believe me!
My friend and I were molested, groped and goosed several times by some of these women as they staggered back from the loo ( and we were in a corridor at the time on the way to another bar!)
A barman had his shirt removed ( well ripped off!)
and I am sure an "oral act" was actually performed on one of the dancers in full view of the wife of the head of the council!
lets get a bit of balance here
bad behaviour is bad behaviour ! whatever sex you are
plain and simple.........lets not make it into a man hating moment please!

I can Sure Move For A Fat Lad

George ambling

Like I said yesterday, George was attacked by a staffie.
He wasn't injured, but the reason for this was luck more by good judgement.
We were lucky.
I had taken the dogs to the Dyserth Walkway which is a country walk on the former track of a hillside railway line. The walkway is popular with walkers, bikers and dog owners and can be rather busy so the independent Welsh Terriers and George are always placed on a lead.
Winnie, who is too friendly (and too big to attack) ambles along behind at her own pace.
It was dusk and as we returned to the car park, I let off George to sniff at the grass verge whilst I placed the other dogs in the car and had just closed the car door on them when I heard a man's harsh shout of "Come here!"
George was perhaps thirty feet away happily sniffing at a clump of grass and perhaps a hundred yards beyond him, down the walkway came the staffie at full pelt.
It meant business.
Everything happened very fast, as behind the staffie two scruffy young men and a teenage girl came running and I jumped up like Fatima Whitbread, running from the opposite direction. The Staffie pounced on George a couple of seconds before I got there and the two had already started to fight.
I kicked the Staffie as hard as I could and surprisingly my aim was dead right and the dog bounced off snarling and as I picked George up it spun back to have another go.
I stamped on it again.

Like I said we were lucky.
Lucky that the staffie was a young and underweight specimen,
Lucky that I can move with the speed of a jungle cat when I need to,
Lucky that my boot connected
and lucky that one of the scruffy owners grabbed him and carried him away after the fact
If all of the dogs had been there Blind William or the slight Mary may have been attacked on their leads.
I found it strange that neither man complained that I had kicked their dog and even though the girl mumbled a "sorry mate" I let rip with a mouthful of expletives  a docker would be proud of.
I was still swearing as the group shambled away onto the main road.
"You Were lucky" I bellowed like Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky Balboa "If the bulldog was out she would have fucking killed it!"
Charming!

George Attacked


I've just been messaging my sister ( who is a dog owner and lover) about George being attacked by a staffie earlier today! Now don't worry he's fine ( thanks to my hard brown shoes which kicked the shit out of the attacking dog let loose by three trailer trash characters.)
But it was a rather upsetting experience
I'll tell you the story tomorrow , suffice to say as a treat I bought the old guy half a cooked chicken from Sainsbury's for his tea
I hate, HATE, HATE bad dog owners!

Three Billboards ( Spoilers)


I first became a fan of Frances McDormand after I saw her play wily old police officer Marge Gundersun in the Cohen Brothers' black comedy Fargo back in the mid nineties. In that movie and in most thereafter she has dominated the screen with a quiet authority so it won't surprise anyone that  she brings that raw acting power to her performance of a grieving mother in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. 
She is simply wonderful.
Like Fargo, Billboards is a dark and at times violent black comedy that walks the fine line from potentially being rather a bleak movie to being a surprising uplifting and hopeful one. I say surprising  because it is essentially the study how the rape and murder of a teenage girl affects a small family and most importantly her feisty battling mother who cannot cope with the fact that her daughter's killers have escaped detection by the local small town police department.
McDormand plays Mildred, the boiler suited, bandana wearing mother who takes it on herself to rent three local billboards in order to highlight what she thinks is the lack of action of the local Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). 
This drastic action has a knock on effect within the Small Town of Ebbing, as with tensions running high because of the open secret that the much loved Willoughby is in fact dying, Mildred has to fight the unstable and stupid deputy Dixon ( the excellent Sam Rockwell) an un supportive ex husband and the sympathetic yet powerless Willoughby in her crusade to find the truth.

The film plays fast and loose with reality at times, in a very similar way that old fashioned Westerns do to modern eyes and I think this is a conscious decision by Brit director/ writer Martin McDonough  who obviously has something to say about blue collar America where institutionalised racism, homophobia and small thinking can often rule the day.
Wisely McDonough chooses the main thrust of the story to be that of grief and redemption rather than focus on a social commentary and this is where McDormand comes into her own .
Reminding me of that wartime poster of the all-American factory worker , she takes on all comers with a potty mouth and the fierceness of a cornered lioness . Rarely smiling but possessing a wry humour McDormand's character wavers between being sympathetic one minute and truly monstrous the next and it is this ambiguity that makes the film so interesting.
9/10

Writing A Film Review

The Prof is in Ireland today
I went to the cinema to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing , Missouri as a treat
It was a cracking movie
I'll post the review tomorrow as I'm having a little difficulty dealing with my new laptop
However I shall leave you with a photo of me and my co-pilot reviewing my review with the computer on my knee..
She likes to see what I see


Baked Beans on A Friday


when I was little...say around ten years old Friday afternoons were happy times.
It was when my sister and I went to my grandparents' house after school. The house was full.
With people talking , eating homemade cake and drinking tea as we, my mother and her friend and my elder sister and her children crowded in to a bungalow the size of a large chicken coop.
Eventually only my twin sister and sister were left and tea was served on a coffee table in front of the tv. Baked beans on cheap white bread toast and tinned fruit cocktail and evaporated milk.
Bloody lovely.
It was a happy house, and we children, who were used to a rather less favourable environment at home , sucked up the pleasure and warmth in it all, like hens do in an early evening sun.

On tv every Friday was an American soap opera...I was reminded of it this morning after I had read of the death of Dorothy Malone ...She of the shiny blonde hair and breathless voice

Funny What You Remember