Sunday

I've got today off.
It's a drab, grey kind of Sunday and I'm cooking a Sunday lunch for a couple of village friends.
Roast chicken, roast potatoes, leeks, carrots, homemade stuffing and onion gravy.
It's nice to be preparing a proper meal again and the dogs have caught up with my activity and are all a bit excited by it
I bought cheap white cheerful chrysanthemums and dotted glass jugs of them around the cottage

I've lit the log burner too and aim to watch some long overdue unseen films throughout the afternoon.

I bought a new limited edition print the other day
A bright colourful Welsh woman by Ruth Jên
All is fine

Friends

My very own Bel Ami 

I've caught up with several friends by phone and FaceTime the last couple of days
And I've felt the benefit of that contact
I've felt the benefit of warmth , and affection and of good humour
I've felt the benefit of a waspish comment and a joke over a Welsh Love Spoon
I've felt loved and I've felt supported
And I am lucky to have them, standing in the wings of my life
They are Just like Thelma Ritter in All about Eve

One Crazy Bitch

It's official
I AM A SLUT 

Now  I am referring to the archaic meaning of the word which, as memory serves, defines slut as being an unkempt slovenly woman and not a tart whose knees are behind her ears!

I've had a lie in!
Ok I got up at 7am and walked the dogs, but shortly after we all crept back into bed for a smelly  PJ lie in!
A lie in! I have not had a proper , teenage , fuck-the -word lie in till 11 am since Noah was a boy!
I got up at 11am and made eggs on toast
Then WENT BACK TO BED AGAIN!!!!
I'm one crazy bitch !!

The dogs don't know quite what to make of this behaviour and are watching me carefully through narrowed eyes.....
I have one more hour to go before I go in to work for a half day late shift!
And so I'm going to drink a bucket of coffee in bed and watch YouTube videos of Chris Pratt with his top off!

Guilt pleasures anyone?

French Soup

 It was the best French onion soup I have ever tasted. I told the waitress so at the Mostyn Gallery Cafe and she told the chef who looked a bit tearful and very pleased with himself when he poked his head around the kitchen door
I had bought birthday presents for a friend and a great niece  and a return gift for John ( the snogee from Sitges) and some Halloween horror shit for my nephew Leo and so I spent a merry hour or so eating soup and writing envelopes and cards
The waitress brought me over a free flat white , I think for being so nice to the chef
And I photographed the soup stains on my front ....just because I could

 When I got home I took Dorothy on her first walk around the village which was a task and a half.
Everything frightens her still, especially loud noises and traffic , and so we invested over half an hour  sat on the village green with her face hidden  under my armpit .
By the end of that time she was able to look out at the farm tractors without shaking....after this we walked around the Chapel on London Road which has just been sold. I hope that it's converted into a family home and not left derelict. We only have one working chapel left now....and that's located next door to Jason the affable despot..

Tonight a friend and I went to see a so-so production of The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
In Chester...we had a better time in the Storyhouse bar than we did in the theatre....
That's how it goes sometimes!

Judy

A lot has been made of the biopic Judy .
Renèe Zellweger's powerhouse performance
The long suspected child abuse by the studio boss Louis B Mayer
The tragically hopefully story of a performer bred solely to perform
I get all that.....
....the finished film is a polished version of a sad story, and a story we all think we know and understand ...
But one lovely scene lingers long in my mind and it is a tribute to Garland's array of gay fans , whose lives were essentially illegal in the late1960s, the time when the movie was set

Finding herself alone one night after her sell out performance at The Talk Of The Town , a lonely  Judy asks two middle aged gay fans out to dinner. Unable to find somewhere to eat the trio end up at the men's flat and after a rather sweet and enjoyable evening Judy sings a melancholy version of her signature song Get Happy, accompanying a tearful fan  ( Andy Nyman) on the piano .
It's a beautiful and telling scene in a rather interesting but ultimately unsatisfying  movie
But it wasn't THAT sad.....

when Im Calling you

I bought new work shoes yesterday
Plain black supermarket shoes
My smart trainers, though bloody comfy
Are not regulation
One of my new colleagues thought they looked like " calliper shoes" with built up heels
Ive walked in them for 13 hours
And am presently soaking my feet in a washing up bowl solution of Epsom salts
My bed is calling
It's singing this song
At the top of it's mighty unmade voice

Choir

Gorwedd Gyda'r Nerth

Tonight was choir night!
And it was bloody great to be back!
Jamie was sporting a new 1940s RAF moustache, Graham in the bass section was chattering far too fucking much and this week we negotiated a rather tricky Welsh hymn Gorwedd Gyda'r Nerth without wetting our knickers too much.
Ah yes, it was bloody lovely to be back !
  

The Handbag

She sat in an upright chair in the bare window bay and looked at the folded hands in her lap.
Her name was Grace, and she never looked through any of the 48 individual panes of glass in the nearest sash window at the fields and faraway housing estate which surrounded the Chester hospital.
She either wore a blue or a green dress with a matching cardigan.
The dresses were cheap and too short for her.
She wore her long grey hair in a bun at the nape of her neck.
The semi circular scar very evident on her forehead
A member of staff told me that she had been kicked by a horse
I believed his cruel words.
The ward manager put me right  after I had walked her silently to her chair one afternoon
"Transorbital labotomy!" 
" Surgery to quieten not to cure" he added.
Grace was not only quiet.
She was serene
But totally empty.
She walked, and slept  and allowed herself to be fed and peed noisily every three hours at toileting time. She sat still when her hair was brushed and merely turned her palms upwards so briefly in her lap as though accepting absolution from a priest  when someone interrupted her vigil in the bay window.
Grace had a handbag which was made of cream leather
I never once saw her open it, but it was always  by her side and she would carry it once it was presented to her, the handle loops in the crook of her left arm like the Queen Mother
One day I looked inside it
A grey handkerchief, a comb, a small purse full of coins and a photograph
The photograph was of two women , taken in the forties
Arms around each others waists on a beach. They were smiling
On it's reverse was the words New Brighton 1942 written in ink pen

I showed the photograph to Grace one day and she just looked at her folded hands with milky eyes
And the day I left the ward, I brought in a blank postcard of a painting of a vase of bright flowers , that sat on my bookcase at home
And for some strange reason I placed it inside her handbag
A handbag that was never ever opened .