I Love BBC Radio 4

 If you can,  listen to this, either live  or on podcast.

It’s an often hilarious conversation between two bright Irish women. The author Marian Keyes and actress/ writer Tara Flynn

Simple, engaging, and warm 

Real autumn fodder Radio four does so well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09zgv36

Catch Up

 Not the best photo , but you get the gist .

Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, which was tasty and filling and the whisky cake was a bit of a winner especially as I cheated with squirty cream. 

We hadn’t got together since well before the Queen’s demise, so there were lots of opinions flying about

A Nice, relaxed evening

Charity Begins At Home

 I’ve been pottering around in the kitchen all day.

Nothing stressful , just all rather mindful 

Dinner is more or less ready. Just candles to put on the cake.

It was my sister in law’s birthday yesterday.

From the kitchen window, I could see Islwyn beavering away by the Church , so I took the dogs up the lane for a walk to see what he was up to. 

He had cleared the Church path of weeds and moss and had uncovered many of the old gravestones that had been lain flat in the 1980s. 

The covid snake stones, he had collected up neatly to be rearranged again, whilst another villager Mr Morgan finished varnishing the lytchgate. Mr Morgan Islwyn told me had financed the work himself.

I asked Islwyn why he working on the graveyard after the Church had been closed but I already sort of knew what his answer would be. 

“ I was a bad man my youth” Islwyn chucked “Now I’m earning myself some brownie points” 

Bunches of cyclamen planted by the Church gate by one of the members of the community association .

I haven’t got much else to do ( hence the blog entry) just wine glasses to polish, pudding to make.

Shit I’ve missed out an ingredient for the main course…time to sort it out

Buteo Buteo

 I was content to let the previous, rather lazy post suffice for the day.

Nothing has much happened, so there’s nothing to report.

But I’ve just been for a walk with Mary, who has been a little under the weather today, and I needed to share something, like you do when something quite profound, or beautiful or both has just happened.

We walked down the lane to Graham The Shepherd’s gate. His fields lead off to the West and the dusk sky was still clear against the silhouettes of the hawthorn hedges and trees and fences. 

It was cold and fresh and sat at the very top of the dead Ash tree , the one that always dominates the skyline sat a lone buzzard. 

He was crying out like buzzards do.

A strange mixture of cat call mew and squawk…a keey ya! 

Sharp and plaintive 

A lonely call in the darkening dusk.

I picked Mary up and she rested her feet on the top rung of the gate and she watched and listened as Welsh Terriers do and I could feel the thump of her heart against my chest as it raced to the cry of the buzzard as  it continued to call in the dark.

A moving rather  beautiful and simple little moment,

Caught by accident on a Friday evening

Rainy Day

 Dreadful weather today. Torrential rain 

Three dogs on the couch day 

Watched Amélie, Airport 77 and ate fish pie

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris

 

Towards the end of this movie the gentle hearted Mrs Harris ( Lesley Manville) turns to the finance director of the Dior fashion franchise ( Lucas Bravo) in the street and says “ We all need to dream , especially at this time” 

Suddenly we are not in a story set in 1957 Paris. 

Suddenly the titular Mrs Harris, a sixty something working class woman, is speaking for all of us in our post lockdown society of uncertainty, war and isolation. 

We all need a dream.

And this film celebrates dreams with gusto.

For Mrs Harris , it’s the dream prospect of owning a bespoke Dior  dress, and with a plucky positivism she wins over the elite Parisian fashion house staff in a rather sweet story about how easy it is to become invisible in later years. 

Lesley Manville breaks your heart as Mrs Harris and it’s nice to see her and Isabelle Huppert, as the Dior snobby manager taking the leads roles as women in their sixties. 

I can’t recommend the movie enough

It has a sweetness we all need so very much at the moment .

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.