" Over Here If You Think You're Hard Enough!"

You have to look hard at this snatched photo
Welsh Terrier head through cat flap bottom left
Two miniature cockerels taking the piss top right.
This was 11 am this morning.
I had been in bed exactly one hour five minutes after nights!
At least once a day the cockerels wander over from the surrounding gardens to stand on my wood pile.
If I didn't know that cockerels have brains the size of a couple of peanuts I would suggest that they do this out of devilment , but come they do and they always seem to faceoff Mary who thrusts her head through the catflap squealing like a pig in mock anger.
The noisy standoff lasts around half a hour, with both birds flapping their wings in a gesture of" come over here if you think you're hard enough!" 
Little cockerels have a great deal in common with testosterone filled little men who have peanut brains.
All anger -no sense

off to choir later followed by the pub quiz in the village with gorgeous Dave and the affable despot Jason

scotch eggs x2

Speed Awareness And postcards - the final push

I've just booked myself on a driving awareness course....92£ for four hours;it's based at a hotel venue in Mold... I wonder if we'll get tea and biscuits?
I was stood at the kitchen window drinking coffee this morning, thinking about all this and feeling rather sorry for myself when a farm tractor pulling a trailer shot down the lane at speed. I head a rumble and a bang and a second later Albert shot through the cat flap like a rat up a drainpipe as the dogs jumped up like loons, barking furiously .

I'm not the only one who needs a driving awareness course.....

Dear Etranger

Single on Sunday can drag
So I took myself back to Chester for Soup and a film

The only thing I fancied was an unsentimental, unidealized look at the problems faced by a blended family in modern day Japan which proved to be an interesting look at the culture of the country as well as giving us an objective view of a family in crisis.

Makoto ( Tadandobu Asano) is a forty something executive living in a tiny mountainside apartment with his rather bland second wife and two step daughters. He sees his real daughter just four times a year and starts to struggle emotionally with his roles as father and step father after being demoted and humiliated at work and finding out that he is expecting another child, news that has huge ramifications for his blended family members.

This is an interesting film that underplays the drama  rather beautifully. For two hours the audience watches the interactions of this damaged family , with all of the good and bad, deftly and clumsily handled moments by all and as in real life we see no baddies and no goodies.....just ordinary people struggling with their emotions, ghosts and regrets.

Not a happy movie.......but not an unhappy one either
Rather like real life....

The message murals on the curved Art Deco walls on the staircase of the Storyhouse in chester

Lunch.....I hate it when people photograph their fully laden plates

Food is for eating

" A Certain Liquidity Of The Eye"

My favourite piece of gay fiction , is Mark Gatiss' theatrical monologue The Man on the platform. 
It's a gentle melancholic piece about the friendship between a World War One army private and his captain and it appeared as the first of four gay monologues in the play Queers which has been subsequently showcased at the Old Vic and on tv.
Percy, the central character talks about that joyful moment when he recognises a fellow gay man in public and describes the mutual acknowledgement as the spotting of " a certain liquidity of the eye"
as told in the tv version , by Ben Whishaw, the words seem to hold a special poignancy

I was sat in the Jaunty Goat cafe in Chester this morning after going to a Spanish class for beginners. The class had been a bit of a disappointment, as it wasn't as structured as I would of liked but the cafe was friendly and trendy enough to be a real treat.
It was a place The Prof and I used to frequent a lot, and it was my first time back alone.

As I sat and ate avocado on sour bread toast and drank coffee, I started to write today's blog in my head and half day dreaming I caught the eye of a man sitting at the bar in the window. He was a little younger than I , but just as scruffy in a more trendy kind of way. He had a beard and wore a beanie hat indoors. He was working at a laptop
Our "look" reminded me of Gatiss's liquidity of the eye reference though I would describe it more as a      moment's glance  that lasts a microsecond  longer than normal.
Most gay men will recognise this non verbal ' flash' within a look and even though it's been a long time since I have experienced one, it made me blush , just a little.

I tapped away on my iPad as the scruffy guy worked away at his keyboard
I ordered another coffee as he finished his, and we swapped a couple more glances inbetween sips and taps and reading moments.
I noticed he had a small nervous tic, a blink of his right eye as he read.

All too soon I watched him get up and get his coat on then slowly wrap his scarf around his neck.
After he picked up his laptop he turned and we caught each other's eye again and after this we both half smiled a goodbye.

Then he had gone.
And I smiled to myself not only because  I had enjoyed a minute flirt with a sweet looking man .
But because I also noticed that I had dripped a sloppy bit of avocado down my sweater front.

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Paradise Road

I've just watched this after two decades

Sob fest