The Journey Home

My journey home tonight was delayed by a couple of hours, so I am thankful to Trendy Carol and her hubby for seeing to the dogs at short notice.
I managed to get The Walking Dead on my iPad but most of the action was set in a cave so I couldn't quite work out who was chasing who.
Also the zombie growling was a little too loud for the other passengers to stomach so I had to turn the volume down.
Not good if you want to enjoy the zombie apocalypse at its best
I'm not an avid shopper but I did have time for  mooch around Waterstones ( where I bought three books and birthday cards) primark ( where I bought some woolly hats..) and a posh kitchen shop ( where I bought a frying pan) 
When I met my friend I noticed that he studiously ignored the fact I had bought a frying pan
" Only You" he remarked shaking his head with a sigh when I finally got it out

There is nothing quite as lonely as the last train home.
The carriage ( even on a Monday night) has the vague wiff of alcohol and tiredness

.

The Venice Sleeper

The Welsh rail system is abysml
The rolling stock is outdated and feels dirty and unloved and carriages can be cramped and uncomfortable.
Im on the 14.20 to Manchester and already there is no wifi and I am unable to buy a coffee with my debit card
The train is the sort you  have to open the windows to gain access to the door handle and the guard although English is giving his announcements in a sort of strangled Welsh first.

My spoken welsh is almost  as good.
But at least he's giving it a try.

Not very romantic
Not very mysterious

I feel as though im travelling in 1978.

I'm planning a holiday of sorts in my head. It will have to be funded by overtime and from a jar in the living room cupboard where ive placed money made from the selling of unwanted items on ebay

Im going to venice on tbe train
Apparantly there is a sleeper train from Paris. A friend of mine catches it every year and his stories of waking up in the centre of the city after a night lulled by the thump-thump of the train wheels is the stuff of Agatha Christie

Lets hope the venice sleeper is better than transport for wales eh

Theatre On A Sunday

What fun
Theatre on a Sunday afternoon!!!
The Storyhouse in Chester's own production of Miss Julie was an interesting choice for what I suspect is an experimental foray into Sunday productions and I think my Sister enjoyed this adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 play as much as I did .
This production has been moved from the original Victorian Swedish setting  to 1940s Hong Kong
Where Miss Julie, a brittle and somewhat lost colonial daughter plays a dangerous flirting game with her father's Chinese chauffeur as his fiancé, the family cook and nanny, looks on.

The original play has a great deal to say about rape, mental health and class. And this Amy Ng's version adds race, English colonism into the sexual mix.

Sundays can be depressing days and my sister described them as having that Sunday night before school feeling! 

It was nice to do something different

Deva memories reworked

This video was forwarded on to me by Miss Norm
It's been 34 years since I left
I knew most of the staff and a few of the patients shown

Reclaiming

Mary watching Albert

Night shifts make the cottage feel unloved, cold and miserable
I find I have to reclaim it back, so to speak after I finally get out of bed with the dogs and Albert in tow.
After walks and the extravagance of buying two bunches of spring flowers ( one bunch for the kitchen and one for the living room)
I reclaim my home
The fire is lit first as the cottage's 18 inch walls take an age to air against the damp cold of winter's nights and the flowers are illuminated by the glow of the standard lamps hidden away in green corners
The cushions are returned to the kitchen reading chairs as Winnie moves her heavy botty onto the sofa for the duration.
Supper is warming in the oven and the scent of beef hash mingles with the smell of wood smoke and the wiff of linen from the  gift candles that I saved from Christmas.
The dogs are fed and settle down in untidy clumps and the dishes from the last four days of snatched tea times are washed and stacked and then put away.
My Sitges lamp warms my art wall in gold

The washing machine whirls quietly behind music picked just for me from Spotify
Its warmer and I can now take off my fleece
and my new bobble hat.

I am home

Be Careful What You Wish For

More stormy weather had the five of us scuttling off to bed after my second night shift of three.
By 1pm, the wind had woken most of us to a restless mass and we resembled a nest of baby blackbirds waiting for their mom to return with food until I couldn't bare it any longer and I took the younger dogs for a walk in the old Churchyard.
The new Postman was standing at the cottage gate when we returned as the driving rain started.
He was afraid to walk into the garden as Winnie was Standing guard in the doorway, and passed me a small parcel to me before running back to his van.
The parcel contained a hand knitted bobble hat.
It was just like the one I described earlier this week. The one I coveted from the amiable gay smoking guy on the railway line.
And it fitted perfectly.
Thank you Lee it was a lovely gesture.
I banked up the fire, ate some baby bananas and drank tea as the wind and rain increased
And I'm typing this , in bed
Still with my bobble hat on

Bed

Another Atlantic storm is whistling through the brazen cat flap as violent as the tornado did in Dorothy's wooden farmhouse in the Wizard Of Oz 
I've lit the fire
And I'm off to bed

Returns Monday

Being Unfaithful

Have you ever been unfaithful?

I guess I am in an ideal position to be able to ask this question because I have an anonymous feature in my comment box, so if you would like to share things with the group , feel free to unburden yourself without judgement.
I'm asking this because I have had the conversation with an acquaintance who admitted that they could have been unfaithful a couple of times within a long term relationship, but didn't .

I have never been unfaithful inside any of my relationships but I was tempted once as I recall, after being approached by a drunken hunk  of bearded god who gave me the glad eye on a ward night at Sheffield's Ledmill. 
For me, the frisson of excitement and flattery couple with the fact a red cheek was rubbed against by a lumberjack the size of Norwegian Christmas Tree was almost enough to get me giggling like a Schoolboy on heat....but I kept my head ( and my knicker elastic) firmly under control and went back home to my partner.

Being unfaithful is a complicated phenonomen
It's swathed in guilt, sometimes a rewriting of the truth,
Bargaining and denial.
It can be a springboard to a new begining or a death knell of a relationship
It can be something you just think and fantasise about
Or it's something you can do without guilt or remorse

What's your story?