Notting Hill

Before my I met my husband, I had a relationship with a man that ultimately and simply didn't work
It didn't work intermittently, so lasted in total for several years
Yesterday, I was reminded of the exact moment I knew that relationship was almost over for me
It was a moment that involved Julia Roberts.

My boyfriend, Philip, was a closeted gay man and when I first knew him had been so for many years.
I was a gauche and relatively inexperienced gay  who had just come out to his family and friends so we made for an extremely odd fit from the get go.
I had a big need for acceptance and heteronormality in our relationship
He wanted a romantic relationship but had two lives as well as two properties, one in the city and the other in the Lake District
He shared his left between Sheffield and countryside, and straight and gay lifestyles were interwoven between houses
It was a relationship doomed from the start.

But I was mostly desperately hopeful it would work.

I remember meeting him on one Friday afternoon to go to the cinema
I had wanted to see Notting Hill for a while and had  a weekend off
He finished work early so we could go and see it near MeadowHall a famous shopping centre and cinema complex
I was looking forward to a weekend together but before we even sat down in the cinema he informed me that he wanted to drive to his second home after the film for some " time out"

A love story was perhaps a wrong choice for a film that day.
But when I look back, it proved to be somewhat cathartic, for me , more than Philip
The film, as we all know,  is a light comedy in which Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are sympathetically charming as gauche bookshop owner and needy Hollywoid star and the wonderfully
Schmaltzy ending had me weeping buckets even then,

Romantic films have a power all of their own, and this is especially true when the audience identifies with the story and invests in it , and by the last scene of the pregnant Anna Scott sharing a bench with her husband in a blissful study of coupledom, I was almost overwhelmed by the insatiable need to have my own  Notting Hill moment.

I remember walking out of the movie with our hands touching.
We were quiet and emotional and filled with the romance of the moment
" I feel as though I shouldn't go back to the Lake District !" Philip said quietly as we approached  his car
" Well don't ...stay here!" I remember saying , trying very hard to play down that moment so close I was to tears.
He dove back to the Lake District moments later
And I stood at a tram stop for home
And I knew then that the relationship would never work,
and at a moment in the near future ,would be over

Whitty, Christine and Bryn , Morning cockerels and the Church bell

I like The chief medical advisor Chris Whitty 
He is quiet, to the point and clear in his advice and his ideas
He has credibility and gives bad news without apology .
He's done well

What day is it today? I wasn't sure at first
Mind you one of the  cockerels had perched himself inside the open bathroom window at 5.02 am this morning and filling his lungs cock a fucking doodle doo-ed at full blast .
I thought I had just been electrocuted
Lucky for the little bastard , he managed to dodge several thrown bottles of bath gel and shampoo before he escaped into next door's garden but I did manage to give him a sharp smack on the arse with an almost empty bottle of listerine mouth wash

I never got back to sleep.
So I've been watching my phone from under my duvet
The Trelawnyd Street Warden's Social app has been rather frenetic today after Tim ( "Tim, Tim smart and not dim") , found out that our Church Bell mechanism has frozen and there has been much talk about how to get it freed up so that the bell could be rung at the  8 pm Thursday thank you to front line workers.
Even former Church Warden Christine Davis rang me up with some ideas to help which was kind.
Christine and hubby Bryn have just moved out of the village and will I am sure be missed by many of the villagers as both have been pivotal to village life and its activities for many years.
At the moment the group is trying to source a cherry picker!
How exciting

I'm back to work tomorrow and have booked the dog walker for the girls
after very early walks this morning we all went back to bed and watched the first episode of The Great British Sewing Bee recorded from last night.
It's what we all need at the moment
Nice people, doing nice things , with nice fabric
Nice........

Mark , one of the contestants !!! Cute as his buttons 

Zoom

Thank goodness for Zoom
The app is doing mighty fine in this time of isolation
Even in this tiny part of Wales
Tonight my family got together for a simple quiz
Nothing showy
Nothing flash
A child reading the questions out
A funny wisecracking nephew
A surprise of a decorated toilet roll as first prize!!
It was lovely
I love my family

 

Yesterday the Choir met and sang a much loved African song about a hypochondriac !
We clapped and sang and as always it was a bunfight of noise and chatter and giggles about silly things, brief personal news and of course of   Lindi's Charlie
( Charlie is in fact a dog!) 
I love my choir 

Speaking of dogs Hattie called around for some more  "Mary Time" today
I feel this could be the start of a new business venture

A Dog For All Seasons

I got up in a right grump this morning
I had florid dreams about a whole new cast of The Walking Dead and how they were fighting in a brave new world.
Covid related no doubt.
Last night I wasted too many hours of TikTok videos .
It's a new phenomenom to me.
Entertaining but vapid
I feel somewhat unsatisfied today

And so I've kept busy. The little yellow chair in my little yellow living room was marked and needed a shampoo. I had covered it but Mary's in season spotting had found its target and it was bloodstained
In a divorce you don't get maintainance for the pets!
And any spare money has had to be put towards solicitors' fees rather than spent on a bitch's hysterectomy which is something not covered by insurances, so it has taken me months to put aside a few hundred pounds towards the operation costs, an operation booked for the beginning of this month.

After washing the upholstery I spent a satisfying hour cutting Mary's hair on the garden wall.
Great lumps of Black and Tan fur wafted up the lane like miniature tumbleweeds only to be snapped up by the wood pidgeons and hedge sparrows who are busy nesting in the Churchyard .


Dogs hate having their hair cut.

I always think that they look guilty or shamed

Apparantly the Church bell's mechanism is stuck fast , so there will be no ringing of it tomorrow evening unless it can be freed up. A couple of the villagers are looking into the borrowing of a long ladder.

I've cleaned the car, made bread and after my sister dropped off some sweat pea seedlings, and bedding plants did some gardening with the cottage windows wide open in order to hear the dulcet tones of Paul Schofield in A Man For All Seasons running on Sony classics

Flowers in the kitchen window 

And facing the sun I. The living room 

Family Quiz on Zoom tonight

Lazy Arsed Video

I've been asked to show just how I get to talk to so many passing characters in Trelawnyn, so here is a lazy arsed video showing anyone interested just " where stuff is!!!" 

I only know it's Tuesday today because Hattie reminded me it was choir meeting at 6.30pm Tonight.

Questions in a postcard ...

A dog heals a tired soul

I had fallen asleep in the armchair of my yellow living room when a call came over the kitchen wall
It was well past 6 pm in the afternoon!!, I had been asleep hours
I answered it wearing just one croc and with dribble down my t shirt.
Luckily Hattie is made of Sterner  stuff than most .
She wanted  and more importantly needed Mary's company
The little terrier the ideal panacea to awful corona ward shifts at the hospital.

We we chatted I told her of the village street Warden app obsession with the Elon Musk's satellite watch from last night that had wardens around the village ( and indeed the night staff from my hospice) all watching the skies to see the 44 strong satellite train scooting across the Welsh sky at 10pm last night
She said she would have a look at the skies again tonight

But all she really wanted was a friendly supportive chat and a daft dog to spoil and to cuddle and to walk quietly with
And Mary is the ideal foil for stress.
It was lovely to see them both walking down the lane together

   

Night shift 1.31 am

Well it stops me from eating on night shift

Twittering

Blogging is much more labour intensive than instagram and twitter

I've just realised .......#dumbbastard
This I what I would have twittered today

• I must be getting used to lockdown because I now realise that The Archers are now not on a Friday night.# duh
• The aquilegia are flowering in the front garden and I've only just noticed....it's not like I have been away on holiday or anything.#pissboringcomment
• I've just bought myself an expensive new wallet on line.....what possessed me ? I think I have been watching too many reruns of Sex and The City ....#who do I think I am ?# Fucking Carrie Bradshaw...# Sarah Jessica Parker #silly money
• Someone I kind of know told me they found me attractive yesterday...I don't really believe them#postdivorceblues
• What am I missing most at this moment of the lockdown ? An empty cinema and a good afternoon film #irony#I lovethestoryhouse
• Our Hospice has just had a gift from a local school PPE visors # thankyou Ysgol Y Creuddyn #really???#REALLY????
• Trump allows some Florida beaches to open #arsehole
• I made myself a fruit salad for my supper tonight as the more than welcomed food parcels from  the village have played havoc with my underware waistlines #fatbastard
• Was going to record PhamtomofTheOpera on tv last night but realised I had already seen it on Broadway # gayboyshowoff
• Big up to Vikrim who sorted my life insurance out whilst he was working from home today# aviva good service #bad compnnection# hetoldmetostaysafe
• Caught Winnie showing walkers down the lane her " poorly" leg but was in fact showing them the wrong one! #fatbastarddramaqueen

What would your twitter comment and # follow up be today!!!!!!??????