Land of Morning Calm
My last shift today, no 6 out of 9...I needed that bucket of coffee this morning
I think, like many people I know, foreign travel will not really feature in my plans this year.
A friend has just invited me to Sitges in September which I’m seriously considering albeit for a long weekend rather than a two week break but apart from that , I think , like thousands of others I will concentrate on meeting up with friends in Blighty ...namely London, and in Yorkshire and in Liverpool and indeed in Wales.
Next year things change as I am planning to go to South Korea !
How’s That for a curved ball ?
My friend and colleague Ben is moving there with his wife and daughter this year and in the spirit of adventure fellow colleague Ruth and I thought we’d throw caution to the wind, and don our explorer hats. to “ do” the Far East Country which still remains a mystery to many westerners and meet up with him in the process.
Note to self
Time for some overtime .....we may even visit Busan lol
Ps village news...a couple of days ago it was Auntie Glad’s birthday
She was 102.
She will have no recollection of me and the flower show and of tying bags of scones on the door knob of the cottage
She won’t remember the last show when she opened the proceedings with a bravura speech
And she probably not remember often sleeping in the sun outside her front door on sunny Welsh afternoons
Interlude ....I’m at work Again
I’ve got three long shifts together
This just about kills me , what with PPE and the fact that I’m wearing a couple of hats because yesterday I was community working and now I’m on in patients covering sickness
Hey ho
Enjoy the music
A Wisteria Arch
Yesterday the weather was superb, very much like the skies and temperature over Windsor.
After the funeral the dogs and I pottered around the garden.
Dorothy shadowed my every move with sad eyes. Mary just laid by the gate , hopeful that someone would say hello to her and Albert sat under the honeysuckle and pretended to be asleep.
The ponies saw me in the garden and ambled up to watch us.
I love having them in my field,
Their presence makes the field come alive again, like it used to be.
My sister has transformed the garden , the bluebells and pockets of aquilegia, iris and euphorbia are all springing up as is the hydrangea in the old french cooking pot I placed in the gap by the holly bush .
This year I thing I will plant a wisteria and will trail it over an arch by the front gate.
It may bloom before I die....
I’m working in the community today,
Nice weather for it!
My tiny hamster ears do not cope well with face masks
A Touch Of Class
Nuala texted me around three to see if I was watching
Of course she knew I would have been.
I found the whole thing rather moving.
It wasn’t grand, I thought, but more beautifully choreographed and the more personal touches such as the use of the land rover and his riding carriage with his gloves left quietly on his seat were simple and powerful reminders of the man.
A Kiss Is Just A Kiss
Last night I got home just in time for The Big Gay Quiz. Our team won a respectable fourth place, which was fun. Afterwards I watched the lovely gay, Yorkshire Farmer film Gods Own Country which is a delight and incredibly moving.
It must rank as my favourite gay movie
Anyhow....
There is a famous line in Gone With The Wind when Rhett Butler turns on the spoilt and game playing Scarlet O’Hara
“Open your eyes and look at me. No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."
It’s a cracking quote and is one that got me thinking on my commute home yesterday.
Where did I have my first proper kiss?
I’m discounting the time I was unexpected kissed by a policeman in full uniform when he came around to the psychiatric unit I was working in for a brew on night shift.
I was more surprised than romantically aroused when that happened, so much so , I just stood there like a pudding and was still puckering with closed eyes long after he had exited the building...
Hey ho
Happy days
I think my first, properly romantic gay kiss was with the older brother of my first girlfriend .
I was 18. He was 26
He was in the RAF ( hummm there is a uniform theme going on here) and I was a bank clerk and I ended up sharing his bedroom with him at my girlfriend’s house when he was home on leave.
I can’t remember the whys and wherefores
But I do remember the kiss
Chaste and gentle and of so pivotal in the life of gauche teen
It would be several years later when the kiss’s ripple spread wide on my life’s pond
But it sowed the seed towards my coming out
Luxury
I’m writing this on my lunch break...it’s 17.29 lol
Hard shift made better by a gift from a local ice cream parlour to all the staff
Bloody lovely
The Daughters I Never Had.
Albert and his deformed leg
For this week I have been working one day off one day on.
And apart from meeting up with an old friend this afternoon, all I have done today is sleep.
Feeling that I’ve wasted a bit of the day , I woke up enough this evening to be more productive, and in the warmth of dusk I’ve listened to David Sidaris as I potted up more cheap coloured plants by the back door.
Albert watched me from the sunny garden wall, his deformed leg stretching out painfully before him.
He blinked slowly at me in that silent hello that cats do when when you catch their eye.
Then sat still pretending to be asleep.
He remained there, until the sun shifted and I had retreated to the kitchen in order to oil the work tops and feed the dogs.
The cottage is tidy and I’m pleased.
I sit at the kitchen table and reviewed my to do list.
I didn’t cross anything off today.
In the middle of my list, just under
Inform car insurance company about my speeding fines
And just above,
Pay fucking vets bill
Was the words
Hattie’s gift
Hattie leaves the village in a few days.
For several years she has lived in one of the cottages by the old post office. They are tiny street based cottages accessed to the rear by a tunnelled ginnel located every third home. and hers had its own pretty little back garden which faced south .
Now she and her boyfriend are moving out of the village to a new build in the next village a jump to their own home which is wonderfully exciting and fortunate in this time where the housing ladder is so difficult for young people to climb.
I will see Hattie in choir of course, but some of me will still miss her move from just around the corner.
She is a young woman of warmth who possess a big heart and she is a person who has the envious and innate talent for making people smile.
The villages took her to their heart readily and easily .
She reminds me of my nephew’s partner, Rebecca who possesses similar traits, the both of them, in my mind ideal daughter material.
The daughters I never had. I thought idly today.
I would have made a good dad me thinks, and I told Albert that when he followed me indoors
He blinked at me in his agreement
Hattie and I at the Folk concert at the village Hall
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