Breakfast

Breakfast out this morning was a treat
Too much coffee
Long chats and a walk on the beach
I am beginning to love Breakfast meet ups,
You are simply more awake and have significantly more  time to chat!

We Brits seem to have inherited this wonderful phenomenon from the Yanks
Even a decade ago I remember Samantha, Carrie and Miranda meeting up in their local diner for fruit and cwafffeeee at some ungodly hour.
At least today it was after 9 am for me and a bit of plain black pudding was involved!

I'm tired at the corona virus panic
I've seen the yearly struggle of intensive care with influx of flu cases for a decade now and every year thousands nationally will die from the complications of the virus
Common sense needs to prevail

The restaurant I went to this morning was unusually quiet

At least we got a nice table

United

There were five other women at pottery class tonight, not including my sisters.
They were chattering wildly with the camp-as-Christmas stand in teacher as Janet, Ann and I just got into  things.
I didn't realise just how therapeutic clay play actually is.
Tonight I decided to make my own tribute to Antony Gormley field of figures instillation 
It's called " united" 
  

The Walking Dead and Choir

Jamie our 1940s moustached choirmaster liked my flamingo
The Trelawnyd contingent of the choir ( Heulwen, Hattie and I) will buy him one as a treat
He deserves it we all agreed

Daryl and Judith...a lovely understated scene

I got home after a strenuous choir practice and watched the whisperers' attack on Hilltop in The latest Walking Dead episode
It was a cracking return to form  and although I was slightly miffed that all of the settlement's children  had suddenly been magically transported to the outpost, I loved the series return to its 1970 disaster movie roots.
The episode was a tribute to long term relationships
Even though I have night and day shifts booked for the same week, I've made the effort to book nice things on my days off.
It's pottery tomorrow with my sisters, lunch out on a Thursday and a cinema trip with my choir sandwich mates on Thursday .
I've got Theatre tickets in Chester for Sunday afternoon!
A half hour ago I saw Jim at the lane kitchen window, his dogs were probably pissing against my wall
He waved and put his thumbs up
ALL IS WELL 
We both mouthed
Mr flamingo was lit brightly
And
All is well 

All Is Well

Whilst many frightened people were buying toilet paper from Sainsburys the other day
I bought a fluorescent pink light up flamingo
I use it in the kitchen as a night light for the dogs especially when I am on nights
It runs by batteries and sits to the left of my favourite oil painting of "Trees in a shady wood"

Last night just before I went to work I saw fellow villager " Jim"stop and look through the lane window. His dog was waiting to sniff Mary who had gone all stiff legged and serious at the sight of another terrier so close to home
" I like your flamingo" Jim said after We had approached " It's so cheerful........like your pictures "
I always like the way that Jim is unapologetic at being " caught" looking through my window
After all it is I that invites passing looks by constantly illuminating the scene and by not having shades on the windows
"  all is well when I see the flamingo lit!" He said rather cryptically as if liaising with a fellow spy
" All IS well" I told him as the terriers sniffed and bristled together in the darkness

Miriam Is Right

Recently Miriam Margolyes told the world that she was pissed off with her body.
She wasn't bitching about having a short dumpy Jewish moma figure, lord that has been her signature " look" since she was a girl
But she was grieving the fact that in so many ways her body wasn't performing the way that she wanted it to.
It has aged almost beyond recognition
I get that.
I really do
I repaired the cat flap the other day and sat on the hard kitchen floor for around an hour as I did so.
It took a great deal of chutzpah , physical writing and pain and heave myself up again on one of the kitchen chairs without screaming.
Old bones eh
I'm finding that at the end of my night shift. Whilst some of the younger nurses are bouncing off to the gym after 12 hours ,I'm hobbling like and diarrhoea ridden John Wayne towards the safety of bluebell, a couple of paracetamol hardening my muscles leg controls against collapsing on the back seat like a active nymphomanic would do after something vital snapped in flagrant delicto
It come to all of us

Sans eyes
Sans teeth
Sans taste
Sans Everything

Over

The daffodils on the field border which Trendy Carol planted seven years ago have flowered yesterday in the warm spring sun.
I love their resilience and their loyalty.
Daffodils seem to grow out of nothing and they multiply every year.
Like bills......

I've been saving money up since Christmas and this weekend paid off my half of the overdraft of my marriage joint account. It's another hurdle passed and sorted and I'm proud that I've juggled things enough to tick another box towards the goodbye of my marriage
I'm now waiting for the decree absolute to come through and that final tie will be severed.
I've asked my husband to be prudent with the absolute request
It needs to be over

Moody Cow

I wasn't going to blog today as I've started a run of night shifts

However my new postman ( who seems more cheerful and who is wonderfully bearded unlike my previous bad tempered old duffer) delivered a cushion in yesterday's post.

The cushion was handmade by Scarlett who thought it was apt for Winifred who, as you all may remember ,has a healthy dislike for all scatter cushions.

Thank you again Scarlett, I have written to you yesterday.

I was thrilled by it.

I have no other news. Save for the gut wrenching disappointment I have for my new frying pan which seems to encourage everything I try to cook to stick to it.  

I know I need to get out more

Well I am trying xx

Daffodils

I took this picture at the Albion pub in Conwy last week sometime.
I had driven over to Llandudno with Mary to drop papers off at my solicitors then decided to pop over to the Art Deco pub, hidden away in the narrow streets of Conwy town for a drink and a scotch egg.
Every table in the pub was decorated by a simple spray of daffodils

So lost in day dreaming I hadn't noticed a man waving at me through the serving hatch at first, but finally I did and he walked around to my snug table to say hello
I nursed his partner at the hospice

We chatted for a while and during our chat he summed up the whole complicated and multi facetted phenomenon of grief in one single poignant sentence

" Grief is just love that has absolutely nowhere to go"