Carshare

Many readers here will never of heard of the gentle Uk comedy series Carshare.
Following such Northern based classics as The Royale Family and Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies , Carshare's plot and narrative are simple, plain working class affairs.
Set essentially in a small car on the A roads of rush hour Manchester it is the will-they, won't - they story of John and Kayleigh, two retail workers who share a car to get to work.
John ( Peter Kay)is a lumpy commitment phobe who hides his shyness behind exasperated humour and Kayleigh ( a delightfully warm Sian Gibson) is a bubbly , slightly dippy girl looking for the Mr Right,and together they chat about life, music, shared colleagues and gossip and during the series' brief three year run. All over that time audience has been busting a gut to see the two of them finally get together and bowing to that need Kay has produced a satisfying ending to the uneven courtship
Last night's finale was a typically gentle affair.
There was no big kiss.
No big, drama .
Just a gentle love story of two, slightly sad souls who finally hold hands and commit to each other on the way to work.
Not a dry eye in the house

Tea Tent Shenanigains

My brother in law runs The Prestatyn Classic Car Show 
My sister organises the catering with a team of volunteers that are similar to my old Flower Committee despots.
Thousands of people descend on the seaside town as they did today and most want a drink and a cake and comfortable place to park their arse .
I joined the small team of eight volunteers and a smattering of air cadet teenagers in the furnace hot tea tent.
Pauline was sweating cobs over a mound of babs and stated she " couldn't stop as she'd only done the ham and not the cheese " as the others busied themselves over cutting the cakes into manageable chunks.
It was going swimmingly until the water urns blew their fuses
Luckily previous flower Show disasters have made my sister and I used to sudden tits up moments like these so after collecting a collection of kettles from local shops we entered a local house and started ferrying boiling water into the tea tent whilst the other ladies fended off a small riot with glasses orange squash and the odd Ribena before the handyman arrived.
The lady in charge of the washing up bowl flirted outrageously as I took over the tea making responsibilities . My previous Trelawnyd memorial hall kitchen experience obviously impressed her....but I knew she was only after another trusted pair of hands for the Prestatyn Flower Show teatent as matriarch Denise was on holiday!
There is no room for ditherers in a busy teatent

I only did a four hour stint, ( whilst most of the volunteers did all day!!!)  but after I had finished I had to go home to lay down in a darkened , cool room

A Load Of Bullocks

It's a hot day today and I am just about to walk down the 2 mile ( 600 feet drop) walk to the coast.
I'm helping out in the tea tent at the Prestatyn Car Show an big event organised by my brother in law
Refreshment tents need a cool head, and an ability to squeeze a dozen teabags at once while smiling through the back of your head.
A piece of cake!
I'll post some hetero macho photos of the event later, and because of the mostly " male" nature of the event I will make sure I dig out my zombie apron for the event
In the meantime I will leave you with a shot of the friendly bullocks from the other side of the village
Mary loves them so

Leo Varadkar

A brief snapshot of Varadkar's speech

Driving around beautiful rural Ireland earlier this week,one could not help to notice banner after banner screaming for support of the existing abortion laws.
To me the vote to ammend, what I see as a restrictive , barbaric and illogical set of rules was a no brainer and Leo Varadker's speech celebrating this monumental change almost brought me to tears this morning.

Streetcar

I must had sat through half a dozen or so productions of Streetcar Named Desire in my time but I have never seen one as honestly brutal as the production we have just seen at Theatr Clwyd tonight.
With an uncensored rape scene, and a raw protracted viewof a florid mental illness it was an exhausting watch which made my sister sigh " I need a lie down in a dark room!" When it was all over.
The final scene when Blache ( an amazing Kelly Gough) crawls out of a stylised bathroom where she was trying desperately to shower her anxiety away literally breaks your heart and when she is finally led away to the asylum as fraught sister Stella ( another fantastic turn by Amber James ) looks on , I am sure there was not a dry eye in the house

Wedding

The is a wedding in the village this afternoon. I know the family, they are a nice lot.
Mrs Trellis had parked herself by the lychGate with her camera a good hour before the church bell started to toll.
She loves a good wedding.
Off to the theatre later with my sister.
A Streetcar Named Desire .....

lust in the dust! 

Contratiempo

Great to see a more mature hero taking centre stage

A wonderfully strong , tense performance by Ana Wagener

Now if you fancy a convoluted, classy and satisfying Spanish thriller which has more twists than the Monaco Grand Prix go and see Contratiempo ( The Invisible Guest), its great fun, even though it's got more holes in its narrative than a lump of Swis cheese.
Now I need to take a deep breath here as the story is comwhat complicated.

Successful, married  entrepreneur Adrian Doria (Mario Casas) is accused of the murder of his mistress (Barbara Lennie) after he is found unconscious next to her dead body in a locked hotel room in the mountains . With time running out before his trial a witness preparation expert on her last case ( a statuesque Ana Wagener) has just three hours to come up with an impregnable defence, but it is suddenly made clear that the murder has been made more complicated by the accidental killing and subsequent cover up of the death of a young man and a desperate investigation by the man's grief stricken parents to find the truth.

Like I said this is a cracking thriller that had Nuala and I shrieking at the screen in the  tense excitement of it all and the final reel  twist is so satisfying even Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to say he had directed it.
9/10

Casas and Wagener

Camp

" May I have a word?" 
This phrase seems such an innocent one doesn't it? But when a patient's next of kin says it with her head around your office door, you know that something awkward is about to happen.
I motioned for the relative to come into my office and I got up and closed the door.
"What can I do for you" I said in my best charge nurse voice
The woman was in her fifties , well dressed and confident
" I'd like to see if we can change my husband's primary nurse?" the woman stated, a polite smile on her face.
Now her husband, had been only recently admitted to the ward following spinal surgery and unlike most of the patients on the Ward he had the luxury of walking out of the unit on his own two legs.
His allocated nurse was an experienced gentle Filipino nurse called Stan.
Stan was as camp as Christmas.
The relative cut to the chase immediately
"my husband feels somewhat uncomfortable having such a flamboyant carer" she said bluntly
I smiled a big smile
A BIG BIG FALSE smile
My reply went something like this
" Your husband has been allocated a talented , well experienced nurse to over see his care, , he has been admitted to a centre of excellence and has even been given a room of his own. We have a long waiting list for admissions here and your husband got a bed without too many problems, 
I'm sorry I'm not changing any of his nursing care"
I was shaking like a leaf inside
But ..........it felt........ Soooooooo goooooooood