A Little Bit Of Magic

 

I haven’t got much to say today.

The meeting with village leaders Ian and Helen was productive and we now have a plan regarding getting an action group ready to support the Church , but generally yesterday was pretty quiet and today, I will be working then sleeping in that order.

No real magic today,

We all need little moments of magic in our lives…..just occasionally 

Things to offset the humdrum and the ordinary .

Things that we will always remember.

A sunset, a view, a glance, an uncontrolled giggle….a moment  …..we all have our little fragments of magic

I remember a few years ago now going to The New York Met for the first time.

It was to see The Magic Flute 

It wasn’t the Opera the took my breath away, even though it was big and brash and extraordinary beautiful but it was the unexpected drama of the Met’s famous Lobmeyr Crystal Chandeliers as they were raised and lowered before the performance.

It was a wonderful piece of choreographed magic. 

Understated but showy all at the same time.

And something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up

What is your magic moment?

The one that first enters your mind

Black Widows, Church Meetings and bad Humour

 

My meal on Tuesday bloody lovely

My next day off is Sunday, I’m back on nights Thursday, Fri and Saturday nights 

Sunday afternoon my friend Colin and I are doing a gay afternoon 

Lunch out and the Bette Davis movie Now Voyager at the Storyhouse….

I’ve told him we are drinking vodka martinis 

I got myself all a bit fed up yesterday .

The good humour, meal out and theatre of Tuesday boosted me so much that I came down with a rather large bump yesterday 

The day was boring and gray and wet 

I mooched most of yesterday then met luckily Gorgeous Dave for a trip to the cinema

We had arranged to see a well reviewed art house horror movie Boys From County Hell at llandudno cineworld but they’re cancelled the showing due to “ lack of interest” ( obviously there is now a policy of cancelling poorly subscribed movies so that popular shite can be rescheduled instead ) so we went to see the awful Black Widow which is a dreadfully loud superhero thing. I knew it was a bad move because even my nephew Leo texted me that it was rubbish and he adores anything Marvel

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow

Gorgeous Dave as Gorgeous  Dave 

It was nice to catch up with Dave though,  who has agreed to accompany me to see Nigella Lawson later in the year

He giggled in the cinema when I said I would only go with a straight friend to see her in her one woman show…….she Is definitely one of his cougar crushes…every straight man I know fancies Nigella 

Today I’m meeting with village leader Ian regarding a plan of action regarding the Church

Like I told u I’m back on nights tonight 

Hey ho

Udder Cream

 

A local read all about Dorothy’s bite the other day and popped around with some magic cream which she said would help the wound enormously .

The cream, she said, was used by farmers to treat sore udders in cattle so I thought nothing ventured nothing gained and took a large spoonful of the ointment 

Within a couple of days the would improved much more than I expected and now, a week after the attack her wounds have healed and the skin is pink and clean and painless.

Lol for the past four days I’ve rubbed a little udder cream on the tiny spots of psoriasis on my knees

And voila! I now have knees of a 40 year old!  

Pride And Prejudice

 

What a delightful evening 

A Thai meal followed by a camp production of Pride And Prejudice in the Grosvenor Park open air theatre

Where everything felt right including a bearded rotund Howard Chadwick gliding on stage as Lady Catherine De Bourge. 

The romantic and lovely drama was turned into a gentle comedy of manners and relationships and it was lovely to laugh and be moved by the words of Austen even when they were played sweetly and with humour

A Tree Called Nigel

 

One of the smaller goals in my days is to be able to name all of the trees I see.

Apart from some of the old favourites, I am woefully bad at recognising species, and so every morning when we are out for our “ big” walk when I see a tree I don’t recognise I will grab a leaf from it and take it home to pour over google or as a last resort use the free Woodlands Trust Name a Tree App in order to name that tree.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/tree-id-app/

This morning as I was snapping a few leaves from a tree just off the path, I caught the eye of a passing dog Walker and felt the need to explain what I was doing.

“ I’m trying to name all the trees down the walkway” I told him

And the man nodded and smiled politely and walked on.

Much later as we ambled back to Bluebell, limp leaves in hand we passed the man again,

He pointed to a large Beech tree in the corner of a nearby field “ Do you know this one’s name? “

I was about to show off with the answer  , albeit with the humility of “ I think” preceding it  when he beat me to the punch

“ He’s called Nigel” the man said with a chuckle

Mike Kilner

 I caught  the up with my friend Jane for a silly video meet tonight. After that I met up with sheffield Mike on what’s app 

It was his birthday today 

 Here is Mike well out of his sheffield comfort zone 

He came to visit me here in wales and this is him with Boris my pet turkey

I miss him 

We hope to go away for a few days together very soon

Happy Birthday pal xx

Thistle down

 

After  a balanced food shop ( and a purchase of extra hard pigs ears for the dogs) I’ve opened the cottage windows wide to a strong warm and rather welcoming breeze.

The wind is just strong enough to keep the butterflies off the buddleia and the thistle down from my field is blowing from west to east in bursts like snow.

The breeze is whisking away the construction noise from behind the cottage and all I can hear is the wind in the Elms and the faint contented sound of dog chewing.

Borborygmi

 Borborygmi is one of my favourite words

It’s a medical term for the gurgling noise bowels make when they are working normally.

It made a wonderful round in tv’s Call My Bluff when the effete Arthur Marshall and Frank Muir battled it’s true meaning out, but I learned it back in 1983 in my first year of nursing school.

It’s one of those words like follow you , just underneath the surface of memory 

Like mendacity, autonomic dysreflexia, and El- ahrairah ( who was a rabbit God in Watership Down)

I informed my colleague that a patient of ours had no borborygmi

She wasn’t impressed …

I need some company with whom I can talk shite with. It’s a product of being on four nights shifts in a row and needing some frivolity. 

I search messenger for signs of friends on line , but it’s 2 am and all is quiet as it is here. Everyone is safely asleep except me.

One of my patients reminds me of DaVinci ‘s Ginevra De Benci

We studied her in one of my city lit groups…the general consensus suggested that she was unwell, just sixteen and plagued with expectations of total fidelity 

No wonder she looked pissed off.

Tomorrow nights it’s Film Noir again. After that I’ve arranged a what’s app video meet with a friend

With the strict instructions we talk shite over a large gin