Going Gently

Stew, Dumplings and Soup

I’m on the second course of antibiotics.

I was apparently resistant to the first.

I was hoping to feel brighter today but don’t , so after a dog walk. I went back to bed.

That was around 8.30 am

Just after 9am the phone went. It was the builder asking if he could give me a quote for the chimney to be relined.

He came round almost immediately, a gorgeous big bearded hunk of a guy

I didn’t have the energy to even think of flirting even if I had wanted to.

I may do when he comes to do the job

I went back to bed as soon as he had gone.

Before 10 am my mobile rang. This time it was the vets’ receptionist reminding me to pick up Mary’s meds so wearily I got dressed and drove the 26 mile round trip to Denbigh to pick them up.

When you live alone there’s no option of asking someone else to do all the mundane things.

On the way home I bought stewing steak and suet from a little shop in Trefnant

I haven’t eaten anything but toast in the last 24 hours and thought stew and dumplings would be comforting , given my headache, backache and the crappy weather.

I walked the dogs again, put the stew ingredients into the slow cooker and made the dumplings from scratch. Then my phone alerted again. It reminded me to go and do Trefor’s eye dressing.

That didn’t take long. The nonagenarian wanted to be off to the soup and roll lunch at the village hall.

By 3 pm, I curled up on the couch with the dogs feeling a bit sorry for myself

when there was a knock on the door

It was the velvet voiced Linda from Well Street with a tub of soup in hand

Just what the doctor ordered

Stew and dumplings

Bonfire Night

The Fireworks have been very loud in Trelawnyd tonight.

The village lies within a circle of hills so the bangs flash back and forth and echo dreadfully

The girls and I are still sat on cushions in the upstairs hallway in the warmth and darkness  of the open airing cupboard.

albert is here too, he’s not stressed, he just doesn’t want to miss out .  I’m watching an Extra slice of Bake Off on the ipad wrapped in a duvet

Dorothy has needed a quarter of Valium and has only hyperventilated once. Mary is sleeping fitfully 

I feel bloody rough

The Smell of New York and The Healing Darkness of The Theatre

My last post wasn’t a sad one.

I was just struck by the fact that I looked so happy and rather suddenly I was transported to that hot day in New York where the air quality gave the city a smell and a feel all of its very own.

A strange, airless, slightly industrial typically New York type of atmosphere

I remember thinking that as I stopped for a moment on the High Line and squinted into the sun high over the Hudson River.

A moment and a feeling I will always remember.

Anyhow I’ve been busy today.

I was up early with the dogs then took Bluebell to the hand wash and gave her a good seeing to with the shampoo Lance which is an incredibly therapeutic experience. I waxed her until she shone like a cornflower and vacuumed her insides until the heady stench of wet bulldog was camouflaged with the scent of lemon and antiseptic.

I picked up a coffee at the drive through then drove to the picture framers in St Asaph to pick up two “vintage” posters I had framed. The posters I bought when I went to Sitges ages ago and I found them in their cardboard roll a couple of weeks ago when I clearing the decks.

The prints are straightforward, Japanese exhibition posters that pleased me with their simplicity.

They will govern the change of decoration in my office

At midday I popped over to Trefor’s bungalow to check on his eye dressing ( which is doing very nicely thank you!) and after that I met a friend at Theatre Clwyd , for an afternoon performance of the play Isla.

My friend is still deeply in grief and is finding socialising difficult so after a few aborted plans to meet up, I suggested we met at the theatre where she could “lose” herself in the darkness and not feel obliged to say anything.

Theatre and cinema darkness has always been a friend to me when I’ve felt brittle or lost.

Mark Lambert as Roger and Lisa Zahra as his daughter Erin

Isla promotes an interesting idea. Soon there will me more virtual assistants crooning their hushed female tones through wify, speakers, laptop and iPad than people. Lonely Roger ( Mark Lambert) is bought virtual helper Isla by his daughter Erin for him to keep occupied and busy and a strange sort of relationship is forged between man and machine as Roger’s life is complicated by an all consuming technology, lockdown isolation, and a sad loneliness that results in his frustrations being taken out with causal misogyny against his “female” companion with disastrous results

Catrin Aaron

This co production between London’s Royal Court and Theatr Clwyd is an interesting one. Tightly directed by the theatre’s artistic lead Tamara Harvey and wonderfully acted by Lambert and by Catrin Aaron in a small but effective role as an officious policewoman, this production shows that North Wales’ lead theatre has hit the ground running.

It’s a thoughtful, incredibly funny and occasionally poignant piece of theatre which could stand its own in the west end .

New York

Facebook reminds you of memories

I’ve disabled the facility today

This photo was taken exactly four years ago today

It was 75 degrees in New York City in NOVEMBER

hey ho

Last Night In Soho, Maryland and Albert Snogs Dorothy

Polanski’s Repulsion

It’s been a corn beef hash of a day today

A right mixture.

This evening I’ve not felt 100% ( my bladder is playing up) so Ive missed choir and rescheduled a badminton game with Gorgeous Dave until Monday.

Don’t worry, it’s not covid, I got my negative PCR test result back early this morning.

Soon after that I took myself to the cinema then to the theatre to see a short rehearsed read through . The cinema ticket was complementary . The theatre ticket was free.

Before I went out, I popped to Old Trefor next door to change his recent minor surgery dressings. He rang up last night asking for some help. I’ve told him I’ll pop in each day to change them.

The film I went to see was described as a psychological horror movie. Last Night In Soho , as it turned out was really a sort of remake of Roman Polanski’s 1965 study chronicling the decent into a psychotic illness of a shy Belgian woman living in 1960s London.

The Polanski film was a chilling and truly terrifying piece….stark and almost documentary in its style, whereas the Edgar Wright film is a vibrant, loud evocative mixture of 1960s music, Hollywood slasher movie and indie drama with an excellent performance by the lead Thomasin McKensie as a mentally fragile fashion student who becomes obsessed with dreams and visions of a 1960 cabaret starlet (Anya Taylor Joy) who apparently was stabbed by an abusive pimp in the bed sit bedroom they both shared albeit it fifty years apart.

Wright’s movie uses the ambiguity of mental illness versus psychic visionary to its hilt and uses clever cinematography and vibrant colour to reenact a Soho 1965 rather impressively

I’m not a lover of horror films , but this one has some style,and class and I loved the fact that Wright featured three 1960s icons in the supportive roles, namely Rita Tushinghan, Terrence Stamp and the glorious Diana Rigg in what was her final film.

After this I went to Theatre Clwyd watch the rehearsed read through of the controversial Maryland by Lucy Kirkwood which had recently caused such a stir at the Royal Court In London.

This is an extraordinary piece of writing and theatre , written quickly and in anger beyond anything any man can truly understand

Maryland features the meeting of two women who have been sexually assaulted and watching this 30 minute essay piece of theatre provoked and upset me more than anything I have ever watched in the cinema in a while

The theatre asked all patrons send a donation to https://rapecrisis.org.uk/ in Lieu of a ticket charge

Watching Bake off now with a gin and paracetamol

Love Noel’s description of Lizzie

“Princess Leia dressed as a children's bullfighter“