Feather Boas, Welsh Terrier Sex and Trefor’s Two Mile Hike

 

It’s been a funny old day all told.

I went to a funeral this afternoon where all the pall bearers ( male and female ) were wearing fluffy pink boas

The coffin was carried out of the church to the graveside to the tune of  Big Spender By Shirley Bassey

It really suited the character of the guy who had died so that was cool .

During the service my colleague , who must have thought I needed a tissue delved into her handbag and offered me a sanitary pad, which flummoxed me just a little.

What would Thora Hird do in such a situation ? I thought quickly

And didn’t burst into my usual go to of schoolboy chuckling

Yes it’s been a funny afternoon all told.

I’ve just been talking to my neighbour old Trefor , who was out for his daily walk.

He’s 97 so “ old” seems somewhat of an understatement , but he’s still going strong and had just walked 2 miles up and around the Gop without stopping. 

As we chatted over the garden gate another villager passed and stopped his car. He has a welsh terrier and after the hellos were done and on the spur of the moment I asked if he would be interested in introducing his young male to Mary next time she was in season . He said he would especially as your average Welsh terrier now costs up to and beyond two grand.

I’m quite giddy at the thought of puppies in the cottage.

Photo Shoot

 

The reporter from The Daily Post was lovely and very balanced and professional . He’s hopefully going to run a story about the Church and Trelawnyd’s general wishes for it’s change of status.

It’s an interesting story, he said after a good hour on the phone.

I promised to take a few photos of the Church for him to use and he sneaked in with a request.

Could I be in the photo too? ….

I went cold.

I hate my photo being taken at the best of times, let alone have it splashed to the great and the good of North Wales but needs must and when I bumped into Meirion out for his daily constitutional I conscripted him as my official photographer 

I was like Edina out of Absolutely Fabulous during the shoot ….his nerves must have been shredded 

Lol

The Day A Crapping Dog Stopped The Traffic

Cro’s recent post Dogs Have No Shame  http://magnonsmeanderings.blogspot.com/2021/10/dogs-have-no-shame.html reminded me of a post I wrote several years ago. 

Incidentally it is Affable Despot Jason’s favourite post from Going Gently

Lazy blogging, but, like Fawlty Towers  it’s worth a repeat

We have only one zebra crossing in the village, and this as you would expect is located in front of the school. Given the amount of speeders on London Road, I always make for the zebra crossing when out with the dogs and will often launch myself ( keeping the dogs safely behind me) onto the first " stripe" in order to bring the speeding cars screeching to a halt, often just inches away from me!( readers of going Gently from years ago..may remember I had an altercation with a man in a pick up van at the very crossing which resulted at me throwing a bag of poo into his open boot!)
Today, I tend to use the crossing more because both Meg and George prefer to amble rather than gallop when out for their walk
This morning I used my tried and tested, " foot on the first stripe" challenge to an overly fast thornhill skip driver, who had to break so hard his mobile phone slithered off his dashboard.
The driver gave me a withering look but waited for several cars to come to a halt from the opposite direction before I marshaled the dogs in order to cross the road.
Now when four cars and one lorry are waiting for you to cross the road, what you don't want is a 26 kilo bulldog to stop dead in the centre of a zebra crossing, but stop dead she did and without a hint of embarrassment , Winifred brought the dog convoy to a scrum, squatted with a loud grunt and started to push out one of the largest and wettest turds in modern day history, right in the centre of a wide white stripe.
The lorry driver rolled his eyes, and I could see a woman in the car behind craning her neck to see what the hold up was.
When bulldogs poo.....they cannot and will not be rushed!
I smiled apologetically at the traffic and tried to pull Winnie onto the pavement, but she wasn't for pulling, so I made a show of retrieving a doggy poo bag from my pocket to show just how responsible I am as a dog owner.
Yes, you've guessed it
I had run out of doggy bags!
Mind you, by the look of Winnie's offering as it slowly and surely arrived, I really was in need of a large black bin bag rather than a dainty pooper scooper bag.
So there I was, standing in the road with three dogs in one hand and a bulldog squeezing out a turd the size of a small child in the other!..... No bags......and a captive audience of increasingly irritated drivers watching every move.
Finally, Winnie finished the caramel coloured " mr whippy" and red faced I had to mouth to the lorry driver a rather lame " sorry no bags" to which he mouthed out a reply something on the lines of " fucking disgusting "
I dragged the dogs to the curb as the lorry and the first car on the opposite side of the road moved forward. The woman driving the car was shaking her head at me as she swerved around the turd, the massive wet turd which was then flattened with a sickening squelch a second later as the car behind hers smacked into it.
Oh the shame

The Girl At The Desk in The Window

 

My darkest time of lockdown was last winter

I was on months of nights and like many of us, was physically and mentally isolated from the real world

All I saw was work, death, colleagues and bed.

As I drove into work, in the dark, I always drove through the slightly less salubrious suburbs of Llandudno.

It was the ordinary people’s Llandudno. Not the small hotels, and genteel Victorian flats of the Promenade and Mostyn Street, but the flats of the working people and the smaller terraced houses of the older locals.

Ordinary land.

It was then I generally spied the girl.

She always sat very upright at a table or desk in the window of her first floor apartment ( I use the word apartment because I’ve already overused the word flat)

The lights were dim in the room but she was always illuminated by a pink desk lamp, either with her head down , presumably writing or reading or looking forward , seemingly ,in thought.

She looked around 35, so was hardly a girl and with her hair pulled back into a ponytail , she always looked plain, and studious and thoughtful.

I never saw anyone else in the flat

Every night I came into work, she was there , and every night I came into work I looked for her.

She was a constant in a dark and depressing lockdown winter.

Reading or working or thinking in her window, next to the pink light.

I contemplated waving as I passed, but that would have been strange as I’m sure she never noticed the blue Aquila with the empty bike rack on the back, passing her window at 7.20 pm every night.

But she intrigued me, as things do to people who have a small ordered life with very  little interest or drama in it.

Last night I came into work and I saw her again. 

It was dark and she was at her desk again. Upright and still serious and

I was reminded of those dark lockdown nights of last year and breaking the spell I waved my hand and smiled as I passed

But she didn’t look out of the window 

……………………………………………………………….

It’s soup time. 

Overnight on Friday I left butternut squash and sweet potatoes in the slow cooker with garlic and chilli

And Saturday morning , as I opened the door, the cottage was filled with the spiced scent of the most delicious soup.

Saturday night I’ve left mushrooms cook down with ginger, garlic and potato and that will be ready for my Sunday morning breakfast.

The weather is atrocious and I’m glad I have only two weeks night shifts before returning to days.

And the land of the living

The Stranger

 

My gargoyle had a fall in the garden yesterday

He was decapitated 

I managed to reattach his head with the help of some extra strong glue and he lay forlorn  in the supportive  

recesses  of Dorothy’s favourite blanket on the sideboard all day.

Irritated by his presence Dorothy has checked on the “ stranger” every half hour with an angry snort each time she realised that he was still there

A Kiss

 I will leave you today with these rather sweet videos. The cute barber asked his customers to turn their heads to presumably sniff his aftershave . As they turn he kisses each one and the reaction from them

Is priceless and rather charming 

Chumaki

 

I’m back on nights tonight.

And so I wanted to plan something interesting to do today.

Weigh in , takes 2 minutes ( I’ve lost over 32 lbs!!!!!)

Pony sniffing only lasts for ten minutes or so.

Dog walking another hour.

And I’ve finished a couple of chapters of Miriam Margolyes’ autobiography This Much Is True lying in bed with a bulldog chipping away at my last remaining kneecap psoriasis scab 

I contemplated watching the new James Bond but the tickets are selling so fast I didn’t fancy dealing with a full cinema.

And so I decided to tick another small wish off my bucket list

I made sushi from scratch.

I chose to make two types of  Chumaki sushi rolls

Ones filled with salmon, wasabi and garlic and the others filled with strips of avocado dipped in lemon, cream cheese and onion.

Preparing the ingredients was therapy in itself.

Cutting the  avocado and salmon into strips , washing the rice free of excess starch it all slows you down quite nicely

And the results, rather surprisingly were rather pleasing 

The Ponies

At least once a day I go and visit the ponies

I go nose to nose with each one in turn, and blow gently.

They always respond the same way

They inhale and watch with calm brown eyes.