Chatty Cathy

Bluebell tells be its 95 degrees in old money 

Which is too hot by anyone’s money

Constance

It’s been almost 30 degrees here yesterday and just too hot for bulldogs outside.

This will be a “ Chatty Cathy” kind of blog today.

I took the dogs for an early walk and that will be it until tonight after dusk.

For those that remember Constance ( my first rescue bulldog) they may recall that she died walking on only a mildly warm day. She was an old dog, who had health issues , but the heat could well have been a factor in her death and I will never take that chance again, never

https://disasterfilm.blogspot.com/2011/08/you-give-your-heart-to-dog-to-tear.html

I couldn’t get off to sleep so found a Valium tablet left over from my husband’s  nervous flyer days in the medicine box and slept the sleep of the dead until it was ready for work. I  took magnum ice creams in for day and night staff when I came on duty as a bit of a morale booster and as the hospice has no air con in the patient areas we have set up fans throughout the building corridors which now has a cooling rush of breeze about them.

I am reminded of the convent in Black Narcissus 

It’s all very comfortable if a little breezy.

I was due to collect Roger tomorrow , but it is a long drive to Alfreton and I just knew his breeder would cancel because of the heat . I’ve provisionally rearranged for the 1st of August. She describes him as “ Smart but cuddly”

Now I have five days off……part time status is hitting home just a little. 

Whooooo hooooo

I’ve enrolled in the counselling course which starts in September and have sent all the paperwork off as well as the fees so that’s another box ticked. 

The rest of the week has been organised with my typical and no doubt irritating detail

Choir returns tomorrow , Wednesday it’s Ness Gardens for a mooch and lunch with a friend and Thursday Ive got tickets to the filmed version of Jodie Comer’s hit play Prima Facie 

Friday my sister and I are going to the Grovensor Park Open Air Theatre to see Little Women which will be frothy fun all told.

Check Out

 I get very exasperated at supermarket check outs

I always have.

Women tend to wind me up the most, as it is common for them not to have their payment cards ready when the cashier states the cost of a shop. 

We then have to suffer the whole rigmarole of the where’s my handbag ? face.

The unzipping of the bag, the fishing for the purse and the shuffling for the cards go next and before we can proceed the whole procedure has to bet into reverse before they can start loading bags into trolleys.

I try to look away before any of the dithering starts 

But it’s like a car crash, 

You can’t look away.

Yesterday, I was stood behind an older couple ( 65 perhaps) where she verbalised to her henpecked hubby where every item was to be placed and in which bag. To be honest I only noticed when I caught the cashier’s gaze, who was desperately trying not to smile and conspiratorially we watched the drama unfold until the husband finally offered the wrong bag up for filling and his wife slapped the bag away with her hand

In a fit of pique, the husband waved his arms above his head and stormed off snapping “You cow” leaving the wife to do the where’s my handbag? thing as well as proclaiming I don’t know what’s that all about.

I didn’t look at the cashier until the woman was walking away and we then both burst into giggles 

“ I’m very tired “ the cashier said in way of explanation. “ But that poor man”

We giggled some more.

I tell you this small tale on the back of a now deleted post by Rachel Philips who shared a funny and well written post about how singletons can inflate health worries to Diva- esque levels when they are alone in the house without the constraints and common sense sense of a companion. 

The cashier was the only person I had spoken to all day. 

And therefore the joke, the shared humanity of the altercation 

Was even more important and significant.

The scene between us, a wonderfully timed conspiratorial bit of fun. 

Butterflies

 My sister called yesterday to bash the garden into shape.

We discussed the total absence of honey bees and butterflies on the buddliea bushes in the garden which have just burst into bloom.

I checked each of the three bushes in turn.

Not one pollinator could be seen. 

Their absence has worried me for days now.

Perhaps it’s because today seems warmer, a precursor to the proclaimed horror temperature due on Monday, but this afternoon the bees were back in good numbers and the butterflies, noticeable in ones and twos rather than the dozens I was used to last year.

The back garden buddliea 

At least they’ve started to return. 

I cooked stir fry vegetables and mixed them with udon noodles and hot Korean sauce for supper.

I’m back on nights tonight.

A Pretty Shitty Love

 I am glad and thankful that I have no hang ups about going to the theatre on my own. 

Tonight, I grabbed a cheap 10£ ticket for Theatre Clwyd ‘s production of A Pretty Shitty Love by Katherine Chandler and again I was stunned by an innovative, provocative and intensely moving piece of Theatre. 

A two handed piece set in working South Wales we are introduced to a cheerful but damaged Hayley ( Danielle Bird) abandoned by an alcoholic father as a child and desperate for love. The object of her affection is the taciturn and damaged soul Carl ( Daniel Hawksworth) the product of a drug induced death mother as a teen. The couple’s tragic love affair is cleverly portrayed in and around a Perspex set full of photos and words from Hayley’s prison letters to Carl and although the physical violence of the abuse between perpetrator and victim is only alluded to the true horror of the violence is underlined by one, clever but truly horrid scene when Hayley s left for dead and buried on a Sandy beach.

Domestic Violence has been depicted many times in stage and screen as we all know but this production, which depicts a true story, brings a new terrible light to an age old abuse problem.

No News

Ive nothing to say this morning. 

Off to the theatre later

Evening Stroll

Walk a few steps past the ponies and this is my view of the valley to the South West. 

I forget sometimes just how beautiful it can be. 

The dogs, Albert and I walked to look at the view this evening. 

A peaceful walk. 

Roger arrives next week so things will be fraught for a while . 

Puppies can be exhausting if you let them be .

I know, I’ve had enough of them 

I’ve painted the upstairs doors a gloss white today, 

Another necessary job to do before a puppy arrives.

Wipe clean surfaces are the order of the day. 

I’ve sorted out my sister’s birthday trip on the 27th. I’ve rebooked trains for the day before the strike and booked us another hotel room for the night. Not the boutique Z Hotel in Covent Garden , that was full, but a travel lodge on Drury Lane. 

I hear there are more rail strikes for the weekend of the 30th

Thank fuck I’m working that weekend.

Crossing the Bar

I had bought my friend Ruth a ticket to her favourite chorale group The Spooky Men for her birthday . With her all communed up in Scotland I was in two minds driving a hour West to see them last night, but having managed to get a work friend Steve to take the spare ticket I went. 

It was a great concert, set in the historic Capel Jerusalem in Bethesda. 

Funny, innovative, odd and at times incredibly moving , The Spooky Men , perform their own songs about such varied subjects of sad audience members, eyebrows, Men’s Groups and politics ( Vote The Bastards Out being a highlight) 

But they peppered the humour with some truly beautiful singing , with a couple of Ukrainian folk songs and the sublime Crossing The Bar being true standouts.

I could hear several of our choir members singing in the audience as like me, they went to support Conductor Jamie ( sans his RAF moustache ) who is a guest choir member on The Spooky men’s Uk tour.

Jamie is on the far left

Ps . Remember that I’m taking Janet my sister to London for her birthday treat? 

Well the RMT has decided to strike that day ! 

Heyho

1970s Holidays

 I never went abroad as a child with the exception of my near fatal visit to Lloret de mar with my sister, Mother and Aunt Greta when I was a ten year old.

My memories, apart from the drowning centre mainly around large ants, the smell of leather goods in the thousands of shops my mother dragged us into and fields of hotel filled flooring.

The rest of the very few family holidays we had were in a beige caravan in Scotland, complete with orange melamine cups, midges, and family arguments.

Holidays were never happy affairs when we were children. 

A thing that changed considerably when, as older teenagers, we were invited away with my elder sister and her family to Spain, where we sat at restaurant tables, were allowed to drink and were treated as adults for the first time in our lives.

My parents were not bad people, they were just a little sad and unable parent very well, but that did not mean that they did not want to, for I remember after my father had uncharacteristically made my sister and I laugh as we sat in the back of the car and only after he had got out to do something, my mother made a pointed comment that he wasn’t all bad. 

Another dampener in another rain covered lay-by near Drumnadrochit.

Next week,(easyJet permitting) my family will be meeting up in Sitges at The Santa Maria. 

I’m only popping over for three days but it will be enough to remind me of those first teenage holidays where we’re had fun for the first time and learned how to be adults