Frank

It's not midday yet

But

I've made a will!
Endured fat club

Had my haircut 

And had a row with a miserable guy called Frank for leaving his

Labrador in a over heated car for too long.

Frank's wife kept banging on with

" Frank walk away , he's a nutter"

I told her that she was an arse hole too

Goslings

One day I will rear a few more

This was nine years ago

More memories to say goodbye to x

Chess

There is one thing I bet you don't know about me and that is I play chess fairly well.
Today, I played chess for the first time in ages.
It's a sunny day so Mary and I went to the Promenade to drink coffee (me) and eat a hotdog sausage ( her)
On a whim I took my giant chess set with us and set it up on the concrete steps near the water sports centre in the hope of a game .
(I have always envied those characters that play chess under the trees in those New York based film comedies)

I got a game too. A thirty something guy who, I suspect had autism, came over and asked me how much it was for a game . His mum and dad sat down nearby with a nod as I told him it was free as long as he played with me.
He nodded seriously and asked if I could remove my coffee cup from the board, which I did.
We payed two games and he won both and at one point we attracted quite a crowd of spectators.
He formally shook my hand before joining his parents when we had finished

Waiting for lunch on the beach afterwards

Bladder Bastard

Yesterday my bladder played up again,

This was due to getting dehydrated in London 

So like Tom Hanks' character in The Green Mile I had a rip roaring bladder infection to contend with.

My usual treatment (Bar antibiotics) is several litres of liptons Ice Tea and so last night-all night, I was peeing out the bugs every two hours without fail

Thank you nhs, but I am due a cystoscopy on the afternoon of my birthday...

Perhaps they will find something responsible !

I'm better today 

My sister- in-law and I went for a meal then out to see Tolkien, which was shite. 

We walked out of the cinema after an hour , which suited me as I needed a pee!
Off to bed soon with another litre of liptons!
Hey ho

Dusk

My back garden

At dusk tonight, all three dogs came out for a walk around the village with me. It was a  sunny night that was cooling rapidly and the delicate buttercup yellow Welsh poppies had only just bloomed in the garden this afternoon giving a flavour of the prettiness to come from the summer flowers.

There was a threat of a frost later.

I think the youth club is on tonight given the amount of shrieking going on behind the Memorial Hall's drawn curtains and the four of us sat on the green for a while squinting in the weak sun as the yelling reverberated up and around High Street as though the school bell had just rung for playtime.

With George more rested we walked on albeit very slowly

Past the affable despots' little chocolate box house and the bungalows on Bryon Street with their neat little green gardens. 

It was cooling very fast and  I could see woodsmoke rising over the bigger houses in the old part of the village.

Mrs Trellis had already drawn her curtains for the night

We turned back along London Road as George was getting a little breathless and had slowed his pace to a crawl 

Albert was waiting for us by the Church and was sat under the lytchgate like a sphinx' shadow.  He got up gleefully when he saw us and head rubbed each of the dogs in turn to say hello even though he had watched us leave only 30 minutes earlier ! 

Only Winnie gently head butted him back in friendly acknowledgement 

and the five of us ambled down the lane back home...... together

Friendships

I spent some time walking on the South Bank looking at the city, a sight which could have been a backdrop from a Mary Poppins movie.
I think it is my favourite place in London.
I wandered around the vast spaces of the Tate, enjoying the building much more than any of the art on show, then back towards the British Film Institute with it's labyrinth of  highly painted corridors and it's bookshop filled with exciting pieces just about the art of filmaking.

I caught up with Alex, a writer, who has been a blog friend for over ten years but one I had never met  and later with Kim who had been a close friend over a decade but with whom I had lost touch with for thirteen years.
It was an igniting and rekindling of friendships.

I think in my 50s I now do the friendship thing fairly well.
Having said that, I think I have always been fairly good in the role.
Ok I still play, as we all do, that game of wearing different hats with different friends and I am just as fickle sometimes when I chose to be with a certain friend because I need to , but I am way too old to be in that group that has friends they don't particularly care about.
Friendship is about a bond not about filling a hole in loneliness .

At one point Alex said something like "You are exactly how you portray yourself to be" or something to that effect when we are chatting about something silly I had observed , and it was a comment which surprised and pleased me...….. three hours later whilst chatting over a drink in the St Pancras Hotel Bar Kim flicked a hand over my trendy hoodie top front  with a laugh
"Grease stain" she commented in an unsurprised tone

Par For the Course I thought......

Alex and Kim

Three hours in soho pubs! 

Now leaving old friend Alex to meet kim....I may never get home !
Hey ho

Eve

I'm sat in a suitably London ish, beautifully appointed kitchen sipping coffee and watching the sky through the picture wall.
We always pick up where we have left off Nu and I and even though she has left for work the house shrieks of her opinions and her laughter.
This past year She has chased away my feelings of shame.
Or so I think as I sip strong coffee in a Scandinavian chic kitchen.

All About Eve was a clever version of my favourite movie. I wondered just how the nuances of those famous close up film shots could be captured in the theatre , you know the ones where Bette rolled her eyes and flicked her hair and when a shiverof hardness crossed Anne Baxter's face for the briefest of moments. So I was intrigued to see that the director Ivo Van Hove has brought into play camera work, great walls of close up shots of the action and cinematic trickery to bring those purely filmic moments of All About Eve to life.
I suspect you will either love of hate the play given where you sit with who is the best Margot Channing.
GIllian Anderson plays Margot rather more tragically than Bette did. There are flashes of homage to the Queen, where Anderson occasionally delivers a line with a diva's panache and spit but for the most part her Margo isn't quite so strident than I was expecting. Lily james' Eve is every bit as good as Baxter's performance was and Monica Dolan as Karen brought a toughness to her role  that Celeste Holm couldnt quite reach. Having said this, the famous scene from the movie where Margot opens up to Karen in a snowbound car is wonderfully observed in the play with Dolan stealing the scene with a sudden Show of emotion.

A Stirling version of a wonderful film and even though I walked away happy, I still missed Bette as the cornered Lioness Margot oh and I really missed Thelma Ritter's wisecracking corner-of-the-mouth hacking Birdy
No one could and will out bird Birdy