Garlic

 Does anyone else feel as though they are on catch up all of the time?

At times I can be almost overwhelmed by the size my to do list

And my life is nothing special 

Today I’ve taken the dogs out for a long walk, picked wild garlic flowers which resemble little fireworks of white and ordered logs and shopped. 

I’ve also called around to  Meirion Jones’ neat little bungalow to sweet talk him into being our flower Judge this year. He has the best garden in the village.

The flower show returns to Trelawnyd on August 5 th 

So back to today

It’s just past 10 am and I have a workbook for university to finish and share with my tutor on line. That has to be completed this afternoon.

I have certificates to sort for the Hall window sponsorship, they need printing out, hand finishing and posting

There are Carpets to clean after Albert’s nocturnal bladder emptying 

Dorothy to shower ( gawd don’t ask why all I will say that it rhymes with Manny) and it’s bugging me that my new outside solar lights haven’t had their little paper lanterns slipped over their cages.

The floor needs mopping, the chimney sweep needs re booking and I need to sort my repeat prescription for antibiotics out with the pharmacy. 

Oh and I got to sort out more vendors and posters for the vintage table stop sale a week on Saturday .

My to do list is written and I think I need another bucket of coffee

Thought For The Day and The Blue Caftan

I’m in the Storyhouse library/ cafe with my paper bucket of coffee. I’m completing my final entries for my college workbook and journal. In an hour and a half I will go and watch a movie here before heading home. The movie is Moroccan and is titled The Blue Caftan .

I will review it later

I have just written 1000 words or so on the art of Demonstrating acceptance

The following video says it way better than I could ever do

His dry honesty is incredibly moving

 

The Blue Caftan is a gem of a film.

It’s a precise, gently unfolding drama set in the claustrophobic back streets of a Moroccan town where tailor Halim ( Salah Bakri) and his wife Mina ( Lubna Azabel ) forge a difficult existence producing beautifully crafted items of women’s clothing mainly for weddings . The couple are devoted and loving but exist with the unspoken truth that Halim is gay and occasionally visits a local hamman to meet his sexual needs. 

When a young apprentice Yosef. (Ayouboui Massi)  joins the shop, Mina’s unspoken fears are unearthed as she realises her husbands attraction to the younger man.

All this is done at such a gentle pace in just three claustrophobic and dimly lit places, the couple’s flat, shop and the hamman and as deftly as Halim’s beautiful sewing the threads of the three characters come together as Mina’s health fails her and she comes to face her own mortality and the potentially happy future her husband may have with Yousef

In one slow and beautiful scene the dying Mina apologies to Yousef for being so hard on him and with a few gentle glances she effectively weaves the young man into the couple’s life with an acceptance and love which is heartbreaking to watch .

The Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani has crafted a nuanced, brave and important film in The Blue Caftan.

A film bursting with hope and love and the goodness of people.

Beautiful 

Hungover and Hangover gone

 Ooooooh, I’ve got a bit of a sore head this morning

A case of too many peroni beers last night.

I felt rough as a bears arse.

Ruth and I took the dogs for a long walk and stopped at Y Shed for a restorative coffee and bacon baguette

Then it was back to the hall to clean up which didn’t take long as 8 volunteers turned up to help.

I’m drinking Diet Coke and am having a mooch on the couch covered in dogs

I’m too old for hangovers.

As it happened I took myself off to bed at midday. 

I got up at 5.45 pm with Dorothy gently occluding my airway with her chin ( she does this most mornings when she wants her first pee of the day) 

I drank a litre of Diet Coke and ate three bananas and now feel human 

   

Albert has not been around  and has been under the spare bed all day 😒

I only know that because Roger has been standing guard over him

Eurovision

I’m Fairly indifferent to the music 

But with my old friend Ruth in tow, we manned the door and counted in seventy odd souls from Trelawnyd to enjoy the night. 

I faded around eleven after night shift, but left enough dancing away

It was lovely to have the 2 village Ukrainian Families cater for us all with real Ukrainian finger food 

They were our special guests 

My star of Eurovision ? Amazing Hannah Waddingham

Ruth and Mary who has just been diagnosed as deaf 

Stars

In the mid 1980s I went to see Les Miserables on my own in London.

I was twenty three or so

A very gauche and young twenty three.

I saw the production with the original cast.  Colm Wilkinson, Patti LuPone, Michael Ball, Frances Ruffelle but non affected me more than the chocolate voiced Roger Allam as the policeman Javert.

His performance and voice was captivating.

In a couple of weeks time I’m taking Janet to see the Les Mis revival at the Sondheim. 

It’s for our birthday

We’ve hopefully squeezed it in between rail strikes and fuck me I managed to get us two rooms at the lovely Mimi Hotel in Soho. 

I had cocktails there with Nu a while ago

A Stuart Clarke is apparently playing Javert at the moment

He looks about 12

Vigils

 

I’ve seen hundreds of vigils in my time

Perhaps even a thousand .

One sticks in my mind more than any other and it was in Sheffield in the 1990s 

It was with a young man in his twenties. 

A slight, Bonny lad with pink cheeks and brown hair. 

He was unconscious and sadly brain dead and he had a mother and many brothers who were sitting with him in shifts.

I was working nights and it was very dark and very cold  as Sheffield winters often are,

And he was in a dark side room with his mother who was sat in a chair and a younger brother who was asleep on a mattress on the floor. 

Now, because the mother hadn’t slept, one of the sons had fashioned a paper shade cover over each lens of her spare glasses, so by slipping them on she could effectively shut out the light of my inquiring pen torch when I came to assess her son in the middle of the night.

What we hadn’t factored in however was the youngest son’s sense of humour ,as unbeknownst to all, he had drawn two massive staring eyes on the paper with a felt pen. So when I shone my pen torch over at the woman in the chair, two massive bloodshot eyes were staring out at me in the dark!!!

My scream and subsequent swearing woke mother and son, and most of the ward up 

Thursday Morning

 

Night shifts have come around awfully quickly this week. 

Back tonight.

I finish Saturday morning which will mean I can watch Eurovision in the Hall Saturday night.

Bluebell needs more work this morning, but that’s the only big job of the day to sort.

I’ve already given the dogs their big walk and mown the lawn. 

My sister is due to do the garden but is snowed under by bookings

The garden will be transformed in a week or so when the alliums bloom. At the moment the aquilegia and forget me nots are. Filling the borders with their gentle colour

And the cheerful Welsh poppies are poking their yellow heads in the few gaps left

Sushi

 I am consistently amazed that such in innocuous blog such as Going Gently can rile some readers into such apoplexy and anger. 

It baffles me, as does a comment from last night which admitted that my blog is bad for a certain reader’s mental health. 

Gawd help us, if that’s the case, I hope that reader contacts MIND immediately before never reading Going Gently again.

There’s a lot to be said for self help.

Anyhow I went shopping today.

I’m not a big shopper, but I heard that a new sushi bar had opened up in the town of Mold which is located around 17 miles east of Trelawnyd, so I thought I’d treat myself.

Mold’s Welsh name is Yr Wyddgrug ( Mound in English) and it is a pretty market town overlooked by Theatre Clwyd which situated a mile or so out of town.

I was impressed with the bespoke shops as well as the sushi and as well as buying myself some Japanese tea, I bought some French bacon twists from a bone fide French baker, some books at in independent bookshop and some bespoke birthday cards from an art shop