Chirp


 Lots of wonderful replies to yesterday’s bit of fun
Some moving , many funny, all interesting 
Thank you
Keep them coming if you want , 
I’m listening to this song as a certain bulldog licks my tired  tired feet

Conchita


I just realised that I need a bit of glitter in my life! 
How about all of you ? 
What do you need........
Just one short sentence ! 
Prize for the best answer!

14

 

Hello deArheart,
I’ve got 4 minutes to blog before work.
Clinique Happy has been squirted, face washed, eggs on sourdough eaten, dogs walked, Mary given her antibiotic, coffee made and decanted into my travel cup
Three minutes to go
Soup in the slow cooker liquidised.....it’s butter bean and chorizo again tonight.
One minute to go.
Hair brushed, teeth brushed , 
One minute late
Back home in 14 hours

Fish Pie


Yesterday my bubble friend Ruth was over.
We ate fish pie ( completed with quarters of hard boiled eggs), drank wine  and watched Amelie 
It was a nice evening. 
Amelie is a movie that only gets better when rewatching . 
It’s film in which it’s editing takes centre stage and where a million visual ideas joint together seamlessly 
I adore it.

Today I’ve bought eggs from Rachel at the village riding stables and have dodged snow showers in favour of cold sunny breaks, then I’ve picked up antibiotics for Mary ( at last my demand for a swab on her ear has yielded a bacterial and not fungal infection as I suspected ) and bought flowers for Trendy Carol who never takes any payment for looking after the girls when I’m at work. 

It’s a no news, bland blogging day today.
I will leave you with this excruciatingly funny clip of  Nick Mohammed
He sings the plot of a film to its score


Enjoy x








Theatre Again




I haven’t much spare cash. 
This is merely an observation rather than a moan.
Fuck me if it was a moan the trolls out there would wet their knickers in the scrum to message what a truly awful person I am .
No, it’s a truism. I have to watch my money. 
True I treat myself to the odd desk and very trendy sofa . 
But generally I have to be frugal, and generally I am 
I have a tv the size of large cornflakes packet, I never buy new clothes and my main extravagance is never on expensive cars, men and liquor! 
But I have just bought a couple of tickets to the outside production of Pride and Prejudice in Grovensor Park in Chester.
How lovely to be sat watching a play again


Old Enough.....Ugly Enough



I went to bed early last night. 
It was 8 pm....unheard of for me.
Subsequently I was wide awake before five, woken by Dorothy who had noticed one of my psoriasis covered kneecaps sticking out from under the duvet  and was busy plucking off the scabs with her teeth and tongue.
It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, to be sure , so I sipped my coffee ( I leave a flask by my bed now for early morning get ups), left her to it and prepared myself for another day at work.

We all have our own sayings, I’ve always thought.....
Many of them are inherited by parents or significant others or we just have them evolve through the general trails and tribulations of life.
One of mine is .....
I’m old enough and ugly enough to deal with it.....”
 This is all about not keeping your gob shut, whether it be in a conflict situation or just in everyday life.
I have an example
Last Monday I went to the garden centre in the village for bedding plants.
The lockdown rules had just been relaxed and the place was busy.
On one till, in front of me a middle aged woman was having an argument with the cashier. The wrong price had been accidentally left on a plant pot and the woman was insisting that she was only going to pay the price advertised on the pot  which was ludicrously cheaper than the right one . 
The cashier politely pointed out that all of the other similar pots had the correct pricing on them and only this one had been incorrectly labelled. She apologised for the mistake but the woman was not having any of it and became belligerent and rude in her manner.
The manager was called and she too was polite , only to be shot down moments later by a louder voice and harsher words and buoyed up by her own adrenalin she looked around the waiting queue for any sign of support.
No one caught her eye but me 
“ Oh pay the proper price you miserable cow” I said
It wasn’t the reply she was expecting.
I should have added something here, but I didn’t as to be the sub text is plain to see
“ If you don’t want my thoughts on the matter don’t ask for me to comment” 

And so it’s Easter Sunday. 
Easter has always been a non event for me. 
For me it was a bland day, filled with Jeffrey Hunter in King Of Kings, a half decent roast dinner and my ex husband going to church. Even as a child the day was marked with bad tv and too many Easter Eggs
So the prospect of working in the community and driving around the pretty places here such as Llanfairfechan can only be a bonus from the old norm. 

I will try to keep to the speed limit too, I suspect I was clocked in the hospice car doing 35 in a 30 mile an hour zone on Monday......another 3 points on my licence ! 
I’m not complaining by the way, just commenting
I’m not as nice as Jeffrey Hunter.....
Hey ho

Happy Easter All



Standards

 


Mave and I , alongside Peter, a soft spoken Glaswegian with a plethora of ribald stories and Latino Tim from Atlanta in Georgia won the Big Gay Quiz last night which was fun.
It was nice to enjoy some healthy double entendre conversation without someone getting all thin lipped and upset about things.
I’ve found that to my cost here.
Say something earthy and indecorous  
And there is always someone with a mouth like a cats arse, bursting to tell you off .

I’ve made the effort today. 
I’ve ironed a shirt and jeans ( yes IRONED!)
And I’ve had a shave , oiled my beard and combed my hair. 
Standards have been slipping in Chez Gray recently and it’s time to get a grip on things.
I’ve even had several squirts of Clinique Happy...
I’m ready for action

I made lovely strong coffee this morning and flavoured it with algave Nectar and sat outside in the sun with a book. 
At lunchtime I’m meeting up with my sisters for a distanced garden lunch which will be a real treat.
The sun is out but it’s a little cold
Bracing ! 

Strangers on a train

Before I ventured to Bodnant Gardens 
Mary and I visited the Horizon Cafe on Colwyn Bay’s Promenade.
You still cannot sit on the outside tables there, but the cafe does the best brewed coffee and so I treated myself to a grande and Mary to a single sausage .
We sat on the raised flower beds and watched the sea.
The woman with the Welsh Terrier stopped. 
I had met her before several times and she commented how neat Mary looked.
Her Bertie looked scruffy and unkept and remained uninterested in Mary as he always seemed to be
The woman stopped intent on talking.
She wore a straw hat and dungarees and looked around sixty
I wasn’t bothered one way or another .
The conversation flowed immediately to lockdown. 
The woman asked if I was furloughed and I told her where I worked.
She had lost her job in a solicitors office last year, she told me but didn’t miss it
She also asked if there were many men working as nurses at the hospice as she presumed it was more a mature woman’s role.
Back to the nun’s perception of palliative care I thought and said so
But she was right , like primary school teaching ,palliative care seems less populated by male workers.
She asked a lot of questions and instead of fending them off, I found that I was answering them
How long had I been working at the hospice?
What made me pick it?
Why had I gone back to work after retiring?
She was relentless
But I answered her questions as if she was working for the gestapo 
There is something very flattering about someone being interested in you and when I said I was divorced 
She shared the fact that she had left her husband the day after she lost her job.

“I think you and I are like Anne Elliot from Persuasion” she said with a laugh before she moved on with the scruffy Bertie in tow
We are late To Bloom,”