Normal Day

 Our corner of Trelawnyd seems a bit busier than on late. Three men, including the ubiquitous Islwyn  are working of the Church Gates. 

“They’re fixing the hinges” Mrs Trellis informed me as she and Blue trotted down the lane.

And by the look of the ladder, one of them is giving the Lytchgate a spruce up.

Sailor John is walking around my old field photographing wild flowers.

Mrs X rang me up and asked if I could vouch for her again regarding her shotgun licence.

I’ve bought some cheap solar lights and have lined the back garden path with them in readiness for Saturday night. Mr Poznân thinks that they are an excellent idea for stopping accidents 

He also told me my gate needed a lick of paint.

The yappy dogs are still at it next door. 

I’m playing radio 2 a bit louder than I should to compensate.

Depeche Mode Everything Counts 

Operation Dog Snot Removal

 

Typical of most families, mine tends to meet around the matriarch’s home for family meals , birthdays and Christmas . 

It’s what people do.

We congregate around the queen, sometimes the King.

For a change I’m having my sisters, their husbands and my sister in law to dinner on Saturday .My nephew is invited too but he has a social life busier than mine so we will see if he turns up

After covid and my divorce , it will be the first family meal that I’ve hosted 

So there’s a significance here that’s left mostly unsaid , but which screams of emotional importance.

I’m making it easy on myself and going simple 

Aioli and warm Spanish style bread, 

A one pot chicken, rice and chorizo bake, baby lamb chops, soaked in garlic yogurt before cooking , 

Glazed long green beans and “homemade” Spanish ice cream whisky cake

A typical Sitges meal.

Tomorrow I’m initiating Operation Dog Snot Removal like the exercise I used to indulge in , in the days I had in laws to stay.

Study Day

 

Tuesdays used to be choir days. 

For the next nine months they are now my study day.

Tonight until nine, I have my lectures.

Before that this afternoon, I’m having special help by the IT department in order to get my head around Google classroom. 

This morning and early afternoon , I’m studying.

I miss choir, but have solace in the understanding that I will be returning 

So it’s study day today, work tomorrow and Mrs Harris Goes To Paris on Thursday.

Saturday I’m cooking dinner for my family 

My first supper party for them for over four years.

The Storm of 2017

 

This is my favourite photograph taken by the boffin Cameron .

It’s a real stunner

It is of my Soay Ewe Irene during the harsh snowy winter five years ago.

She was hardly bothered by the weather.

Irene was a particularly difficult Ewe. After her mother Sylvia died ( and yes I did name both sheep after the flower show matriarchs ) Irene spent most of her days in the livery stables fields, shunning any attempt to be caught and moved, and there she lived with the horses until her peaceful death today 

Her face lying straight on the grass facing the ponies in the top field 

Don’t anyone say they are sorry. She wasn’t my ewe for nearly a decade, so I had no real investment in her care.

But I kind of respected her chutzpah at choosing where she was going to live.

Thank you to Rachel who runs the livery for allowing her to stay for so many years 

The final series

 

Apart from theatre tickets, oh and a new carpet washer, my only real indulgence  is my subscription to Disney +.

This will come to an end in eight weeks or so with the final airing of the last season of The Walking Dead.

I will be sad to see it go, but it’s time it did.

The last season has now morphed into a war film, with our multicultural and predominantly female “ family” set up as the French Resistance in WW2 

The zombies are only a side threat. Revolting set decorations. 

Halloween miss en scene 

I’ve followed the series from Frank Darabont’s seminal first episodes and carried on watching this morning with my bucket of coffee and Roger cocking his head at all of the zombie grunting

Like all good friends, I will stay to the end

A Face Only A Mother Could Love

 I didn’t have time to reply to yesterday’s post comments . 

It was past ten when I finally sat down after working all day.

I’d been on my feet most of that time and before bed, Dorothy gleefully licked my rancid feet until they shone like my chilblains used to when I was eleven and walking home in the snow.

Does anyone suffer from chilblains any more? 

With global warming I doubt it.

I was never cut out to be a buff hero

As a child I had chilblains, a mild stutter and warts on my left hand 

Later on I suffered from prickly heat , late diagnosed dyspraxia and vikings finger

Now I have the bladder of woman that might of borne a dozen children and the kidneys of  an old cat who has licked antifreeze

Oh….And stress psoriasis worthy of an exploded cereal packet in a confined space 

I’m not a catch for sure, but I’m writing this with a bucket of coffee 

At 5.45 am 

Before work on a Sunday morning

Ps I’m colourblind too

The Heat Is On

 I’ve just sent in my electricity reading on line. Trelawnyd has no piped gas, so heating is generally oil fired or from gas cylinders. As you all know my central heating and thermal store is fuelled by kiln dried logs and prices for these haven’t risen drastically as yet. 

The Community Association has a fuel expert on its committee in the shape of Gwawr . I have a feeling her ear is going to be bent double in the months to come.

When did central heating become standard ? I suspect it was the early 1970s after the fuel strikes and power cuts ? Am I right? 

Only last week I had a conversation with a young nurse about the downsides of no central heating. She couldn’t quite get her head around how freezing it was behind the couch once the front had been heated by the coal fire 

Hot water bottles and eiderdowns so heavy you almost struggled to breathe underneath them were the norm, and thickly cut white bread with strawberry jam was a treat after it was toasted in the fire with a long fork. 

I wore a vest then 

With baggy bottoms 

And bathrooms were small then too, and filled with great clouds of immersion heated water and steam , overseen with a cosmic zeal by a father who paid the bills. 

Bwthyn y llan has 18 inch walls of limestone which finally keep the heat in once the place is eventually heated up ( which takes an age) and the new windows I had put in  are double glazed and draught proof . My only extravagance being my new electric shower…blissful and glorious on a cold winters morning

I’m ready for winter

Ps….last night just before bed the “unthinkable “ happened

Dorothy cuddled up to Roger in front of the fire

Thank fuck for that

The silent war is over

idiopathic vestibular disease

 

Albert looked drunk last night. He staggered and slipped on the back of the trendy blue sofa, so much so that the dogs jumped up in panicked attack mode. 

It’s a hard fact of life that when an animal acts outside it’s normal behaviour it is ganged up upon and often attacked by its peers. 

I have seen such behaviour in hens and ducks and turkeys and dogs .

I scooped Albert up and he sat quietly on my knee for a while, before I placed him in a dark corner of the living room where he settled and slept

Today he looks his normal self 

I cleaned the carpet in the living room this morning too

And before I could put away the cleaner Roger had chewed the plug off it. 

The weather is atrocious today

Wild