Pond and Mincemeat.
I wanted to do something restful today
I’ve just worked two twelve hour shifts and am about to do two more.
Today I wanted to mooch…quietly
I should have helped the community Association volunteers in their planting out of the newly reconstructed village pond but I went to the cinema instead.
This may have rested my sore neck ( my work physio almost pulled my head off during a somewhat energetic therapy session) but resting in the cinema wasnt really therapy as the film wasn’t as good as I expected …hey ho.
I went up to the pond later on to survey their work and I was impressed.
Not only has the pond been dredged of silt and mud. Aquatic plants and reeds have been planted on its borders with shrubs, annuals and woodland plants framing it nicely
The movie was Operation Mincemeat, a true wartime story of MI5s efforts to try to deceive the Germans by posing the body of Welsh tramp as a British Officer with forged top secret instructions outlining the allied invasion of Greece instead of the intended target of Sicily. It’s a story that was filmed more successfully back in 1956 in The Man That Never Was.
This version has a cast to die for . Mathew Macfadyen, Colin Firth, Penelope Wilton, Jason Issacs, Mark Gatiss, and Kelly MacDonald, but Firth was miscast as the lead role and the whole thing I found somewhat dreary.
Hot Air
The hospice is located just right of those houses
I have always loved that first blast of hot, dry air you get when exiting an aircraft in a Mediterranean airport.
That faint blast of hot tarmac, sunshine and aircraft fumes
Mixed together with waft of bougainvillaea, beaches and distant sewerage.
Conversely I also love leaving work and feeling the cool evening Welsh air on my face as I stand for a moment in the hospice car park
Air, cooled by the Irish Sea blowing over and down the Orme
The grand peninsula overlooking Llandudno
An island of limestone dotted with the goats made famous from lockdown.
Whereas the Spanish and Greek blast almost takes your breath away.
The Welsh breeze rejuvenates and cools.
Tonight, I needed a bit more Welsh breeze.
I needed to blow the day away.
I took the girls down the lane when I got home
And in the dark, with common pipistrelle bats flashing under the fairly lights at Trendy Carol’s, we stand at Graham the shepherd’s field gate with our heads to the sky feeling the faint cooling, sea smelling wind from the South hills.
It felt good
A Sausage Apology
No doubt I’m in store of some sort of internet backlash but I admit I locked the dogs inside the cottage by mistake this morning.
I only knew my mistake when I ventured a quick glance at my phone messages on my break at 11.30 am .
It was a earlier message from Trendy Carol I noticed first
“ I can’t get in ! “ it said plaintively
I had double locked the back door
The dogs are never left home alone more than four hours when I’m at work. Today they were left nearly fourteen.
I felt like a right heel
Now if my mistake had occurred when Winnifred was alive, I would have faced a sulk worthy of Mariah Carey who had not been presented with her usual dressing room full of puppies and kittens but after being released from the cottage , Mary & Dorothy bounced forward like a pair of Bonnie Langfords on acid.
Ive just taken them for a long walk, then cleaned the kitchen of bodily fluids before treating both girls with the nectar of the terriers
Cheap, plastic looking hot dog sausages
They adore them with a passion .
Even Winnie would have been won over if I had waved one Gayly in her direction ….
It’s been a busy day at work …but a productive one
I will be cutting my hours from 150 a month to 96 on the First of July
Cockerel On Time
Where has the day gone?
It’s 6.30 and the bantam rooster has just tapped on the window for his supper.
I’m not going to choir
It’s been cancelled again
More covid.
Sigh.
Greg, my little bathroom man came this morning and has arranged to start work, the week after next .
His quote is well under what I expected
His electrician will repair the faulty cooker extractor fan too.
We talked a lot about dogs.
He also suggested that I book a skip.
I went to see our work counsellor this afternoon.
She will support my counselling course and will supervise me in practice
Everything seems to be slipping into place
Pottery Results
The “ landscape” letter rack turned out a bit lurid
But my fat camel looked pretty sweet
As did the octopus
My salt spoon looked as though a five year old had made it lol
Gongs and Bhajis
It’s 14 degrees, warmish, slightly overcast with a breeze from the south East. The cattle in the fields West of the village are all sat with their faces to the weak sun . Their backs to the wind.
The cottage smells of turmeric and mild curry powder.
I’m making low fat vegetable bhajis.
I’ve decided that the tulips I bought will last another week if I’m lucky, a Walker in the lane commented only last week that he always like the fact I have flowers in a vase in the lane window.
He mentioned that my wisteria had started to sprout on the garden arch.
I hadn’t noticed.
Last night I watched the Olivier Awards.
The compare Jason Manford set the tone straight away by joking with the audience that “ This is an evening of back-slapping, not face-slapping!”
I think everyone seemed to appreciate the comment.
Lovely to see Sheffield’s own Life Of Pi do so well and I was made up to see the four leading actors in Cabaret winning a gong too….especially Elliot Levy and Lisa Sadovy the old German couple who find love in the twilight of their lives.
The bhajis have turned out exceptionally well.
So much so that I will post the recipe
One large onion, thinly sliced
One large sweet potato grated
One large carrot, grated
2 cm fresh ginger grated
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
50 g of chick pea flour
Zest and juice of a lime
1 red chilli chopped
Mix ingredients into patties
Cook in hot oven 200 for half an hour
Serve with soya yogurt flavoured with mango chutney
It’s the half season finale for The Walking Dead later
Mindfullness
I remembered a nurse called Olga today .
I’m sure she has died by now.
She was an older woman when I worked with her many moons ago
I didn’t like Olga.
She was brusque and prickly and she never really liked the patients she cared for.
Having said that,
She never really liked her co workers either.
However Olga liked flowers.
She would bring bunches in from her garden at home, or would send the more biddable patients out when the daffodils filled the hospital flower beds and would cram a myriad of glass vases with blooms , placing displays on window ledges and on tables and anywhere they could be seen .
Weekly she would empty each vase and would hand wash them with hot soapy water in the ward sluice
It was a ritual she always completed on her own
Hot soapy water
Cleaning the glass inside and out
Then rinsing each vase before leaving them to air dry
“ It’s my restful time “she explained once “my time”
A woman who didn’t really like people enjoying a mindless , repetitive job
I thought of Olga today as I cleaned my collection of Burleigh Ware Art Deco crockery.
I had placed it all on top of my kitchen cabinets five years ago where it has become greasy and dirty with cooking and dust and soot from the fire and slowly and deliberately I have soaked each piece and cleaned away the dirt until my fingers wrinkled from the soaking and the bleach.
It’s been a mindful afternoon with the ticking of the kitchen clock and the sound of bird sound from the garden my only company.
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