A Happier New Year

I had today's blog all written in my head this morning.
It was a meandering, reflective piece about my 2018 and what I could have done better in a marriage that I didn't realise was on it's uppers.
But what's the point?
What ifs help no one!
What's done is done..
Yet..many worries have not yet been resolved in the divorce, and my future remains uncertain
Uncertainty can be exhausting

This morning George got reviewed at the vets and was started on some steroids . We stopped at the supermarket at Denbigh before home and I treated him to a cooked chicken breast.
The vet receptionist gave me one of those " You AGAIN?"  expressions when we arrived. I gave her the buiscuit tin Mrs Trellis had given me a few days ago. It was fat club weigh in half an hour later and I just knew I have put on several pounds over Christmas.

Yes, this morning is a snapshot of an ordinary morning of an ordinary day.
Boring, mundane and probably like one that most of us experience after Christmas....only today is New Year's Eve......and I rather dislike New Year's Eve as there is a pressure for it to be albeit in part....interesting
Since the late 1980s when a dear friend died just before the celebrations started, I always have disliked the day.

And so, only after I've painted a picture of a morning of feeling slightly sorry for myself,  it was then when I rembered that a family friend had just lost her husband a few days ago. I had already written her a sympathy card which I'd put in Bluebell's glove box so with George still smacking his lips free of Chicken fat, I stopped at the friend's house to deliver it.

The new widow was filling her bird feeders in the garden when I arrived and her entire posture sagged in sadness when I approached.
All I could do was hug her long and hard as she cried.
And cried she did, as my croc wearing feet grew damp and cold on the wet grass.

There is nothing like witnessing real raw grief to get you to realise that your own problems can be coped with and even when you still think your life couldn't be more miserable and painful, my grief over a broken marriage cannot quite be compared with the finite end only a death brings in a long term relationship .

When We got home George retired to his armchair with Winnie as his organic hot water bottle whilst I made butter squash soup. I've been invited to a village drinks party tonight which is nice as I now could go as my pre planned Samaritans shift 00.00 to 02.00 am shift has had to be cancelled, but I think I shall stay at home alone. Robert Cameron , who invited me , told me with some feeling that I was "spending too much time alone .....which is not good ...you need to be with people who love you"  
But as right as he may be , tonight I feel is not the night to start the change in things.

" Tomorrow, I 'll start changing things a bit" 
Tomorrow is when I can start training for the marathon

"......... after all tomorrow is another day" 

Hey ho my dearhearts
Let us all have a better 2019 eh? 
Xxxx

Small Pools Of Light

I'm tired
It's a kind of wasted day after a night shift and I'm cuddled up with George on the couch.
He's got a bout of enteritis and is lying with a hot water bottle on his tummy.
We've not had a poo for a couple of hours though which is good
The living room is bathed in small pools of light, which makes a change from the pools of poo which decorated it in the last 24 hours
My Art Deco bear and hippo glimmer alongside various scented candles, a glowing fur cone and the deep red pulse of the lot burner
And the living room really feels like home

Pantomime ( aka Panto)

I went to the panto last night.
Now Panto in Rhyl wouldn't be my first choice given my sensitive snobby ways but all turned out pretty well despite a half filled auditorium .
Now I am aware that many of my followers wouldn't really have a " scooby doo" of what constitutes an average British panto....and so here are a few pointers

Think of a child's fairy story performed on stage with a backdrop of gaudy, cartoon sets and lavish over the top costumes.
Add to the mix, a few non related pop songs sung by with gusto by the twenty something principle boy or girl, a backing dance troupe of five or six , slightly uncoordinated teenage dancers in their first show and hordes of tiny tots from the local dance school who are there to make up the numbers.
Sweetening the menu can be a minor soap opera celebrity almost on their uppers who usually plays the villain , a couple of middle aged male comics, one usually dressed as a dame with massive tits and a potty mouth who can engage the predominately kiddie audience with enough silliness which smokescreens a whole lot of double entendres loved by the adults.
Finally, the children are encouraged to scream and shout at the action, slapstick comedy, and asides where sweets are thrown into the auditorium or the old water pistols are brought into play.
sophisticated, it isn't, but professional it certainly is and Aladdin last night at Rhyl's Pavilion was a typical example of of the craft which was as entertaining as it was colourful.
I didn't want to go
I'm still dreadfully antisocial at times and very low in family company
But the silliness, of it all perked the old spirits up.

Off to work tonight
Hey ho

Veronique

Thank you

Badly Done

I once ended a friendship after a friend publically insulted his partner at a dinner party.
It was a moment that proved to be uncomfortable all round and one that was incredibly reminiscent of that scene in Jane Austen's Emma, where Emma Woodhouse belittles the poor Miss Bates at a picnic gathering much to the shock of all present.
In the novel Emma is rebuked by her suitor Mr Knightly which causes her  much shame  and to this day I wish I had said something at the time.
There is a saying that one swallow doesn't make a summer, and so I was aware that the insult could have been just a misjudged out-of-the-blue  comment.but the venom of the rebuke was so graphic I suddenly felt that I had seen the true character of my friend and it coloured by feelings for him a second after I had heard it.
This was twenty years ago, and I still felt I should have said " Badly Done ..." at the time and so when I received a Christmas message from this former friend just two weeks ago I deleted it without a reply
" Some things that are said.....cannot be unsaid" 

Thank You..it's fucking over!

My Christmas is over....the cards are all down, the tree is planted in the garden and a strange bobble hatted figure has just dropped off my last gift.....a box of biscuits and a small plastic bulldog

A shadowy Mrs Trellis disappearing up the lane

It's now time to move on from this an emotionally hard Christmas to pastures new.
But I need to thank a few people.
Thank you to my family that have put up with my anti social behaviour with some alacrity ( even though it was honest and very real) ..and thank you to my sister Janet who I know I dragged to see Mary Poppins against her will.
Thank you to villagers Nick and Linda, Heulwen and Derek, Mrs T, John,Ed and the lovely Cameron's for their invites to socialise on Christmas Day and to the Cameron's again for calling in twice in order to deliver a surprise turkey dinner with all the trimmings as well as an " emergency "bottle of gin! My comment on your Facebook page stands " Good people ...good friends"
Thank you too to Wendy, Barbara Ann, gayle, Rachel, and to the anonymous ( Ter?) who posted me a snood  and 100£ in CASH!!!! ( you have single handed allowed me to pay for the field rent for the next year...money I just so didn't have to hand) - your gesture made me weep buckets!
Thank you all  for your cards, and gifts and kind wishes.....and emails ......and to Nu for that timely lunch!
Thank you Animal helper Pat for your Barabrith and to pippa for your Sams gifts!
Thank you to Sue for your hug and Boxing Day gifts and thank you Jon, Kim , Judy, mike for your kind texts of concern
Thank you Naomi, Nia, Jan, for my new Christmas decorations and to Greta for the gin !!
And thank you to the choir who made our concert such a special experience for me...I was so proud to be a part of it all
Ps.... oh thank you to dog breeder susan who told me that Mary's sister was expecting puppies in the new year !!!!!!!!!
Ok
I think that's everyone...
You get the message .....thank you xxx

Every Gusset a memory

Victoria Wood once said " I can remember when pants were pants. You wore them for twenty years, then you cut them down for pan scrubs.....every gusset a memory!"

This morning I reviewed my knicker drawer
It made for some dismal viewing.
I have exactly ten pairs of underpants.
Two of these have holes the size of an average guinea pig in their gussets.....
One looks grey and should be white
One pair has knicker elastic as lax as a vaginal prolapse
For nearly two decades I have never bought any pants and so this morning, somewhat late in the day I realised that it was about time I bought some.
As far as I can make out you now have to buy underwear which has the company logo on its waistband. To show this logo off, is the next job, especially when you bend over to tie your shoelaces or reach up on a shelf to retrieve a book.
It's all in the waistband!
So to the knicker aisle of TK MAXX  I went and thirty minutes later a whole lot of reduced pants were chosen and paid for. £ 6.00 for two pairs!
£ 30. 00 in total!
Enough to last me the next twenty years!

When I got home the Christmas decs were all taken down....I used this idea from my sister for storing the Christmas lights....they will illuminate the dark corners of the inglenook fireplace.

Tootsie

I first saw Tootsie 36 years ago
It was in the Odeon cinema in Chester and I was on a date with Mandy Boardman who was a student general nurse.
I watched the film again tonight and boy does it stand up well after all of these years.
A glorious cast of  Hoffman, Lange and  Pollack supported superbly by the likes of Terri Garr, Bill Murray, Charles Durning and Dabney Coleman look like they are having the time of their lives in this cross dressing comedy which still has so much to say about the gender gap, sexism and people's rights.
Written by Larry Galbert and Murray Schisgal and directed with confidence and  wit by Pollack himself Tootsie is a timeless classic that has been much copied but never quite beaten.
9/10
( my claim to fame was that I have almost sat in the same table as Pollack and Hoffman did in their Tootsie scene in the Russian Tea Room