Here are two videos about the Apple Festival today by Kelda whose mum and Dad are the infamous Manleys!
Apples
Saturday morning and I’m approaching the end of my second night shift.
It’s been a busy enough night for the thirty something support worker to be tired.
I look like a slapped arse
No sleep for me until late morning as I’m helping out Debbie ( my flower show judge) to mark the “apple” classes (?)
There is a cold nip in the air and the skies all week, have featured that weak watery blue of winter.
Horsewomen walking down Trelawnyd high street this week
An Apple press that could be used by visitors
Affable despot jason , Gill from choir, Animal helper Pat, velvet voiced Linda, Village leaders Ian and Helen, Boffin Cameron , Glam Malinka Levey, , everyone seemed to be there sipping gin and or cider or helping and talking. I sat with Roger at a table and ate my lunch/ breakfast, he was beautifully behaved and so I bought him and Mary a dog bandana each
Humour
The postman only visits once a week now.
I think the Post Office think I don’t notice but I DO!
For every Thursday or Friday I get a Couple of junk letters, a few flyers and perhaps two regular letters.
Bastards !
Yesterday there was a card, handwritten and stamped ( a rarity I thought)
After 38 years I even recognised the writing, it was a card from Tracey my old psychiatric nurse mukker from the 80s.
We have been corresponding on line for a little while now, and it’s been interesting to explore just why we were friends in the first place .
It was all down to humour.
Most of my friends possess a good sense of humour.
Nu, is the most notable as she and perhaps Tracey possess the most overt and infectious types of humour. They light up a room with it upon entering
And that is a skill I envy.
I say this, knowing full well that my humour is an asset, it is an icebreaker, defence mechanism, friend maker and friend. From an early age, I found it fended off bullies and helped me get by in school and at home, and although not honed in those salad days of psychiatry I learned quickly how to use it to my advantage.
People without any humour and warmth baffle me.
Admittedly they are few and far between, but they do exist.
More commonly the humour is leeched out of them by sadness , circumstance or lack of use, but I like to think that grains of it remain, just waiting for someone or something to ignite it .
I remember a patient of mine , who was mute, laugh loudly and strongly when a bad boy in his hospital ward got knocked on the head by a vase, held by another mute patient.
Just something in that odd moment hit that chuckle muscle and off he went like a bottle of champagne
Little Korea
In an old post I bemoaned the much maligned phenomenon of the dinner party.
It still exists I guess, outside the old formalities, but now it’s called “ supper with friends” or some other dumbed down event epithet.
Yesterday my friend Ruth and I went to dinner with our friend Ben and his wife Sokyo in their charming cottage along the coast. Ben and Sokyo have just returned from a three year visit to Sokyo’s home in South Korea, and Ben is returning to his old job as nurse at my hospice.
It will lovely to have him back, for he has a warmth and a humour I adore and feed off. ( warmth and humour is something which has been sadly lacking in blogland recently I must say)
Ben also looks like an unmade bed, a look I have made a lifetime perfecting, so I always feel at home in his company.
Ruth and I had planned to visit them in their trendy 1960’s Seoul a year or so ago but circumstances and events put paid to our plans.
Yesterday was catch up. A full Korean dinner with sizzling beef, and kimchi and pickles and miso soup, noodles and rice , all served in tiny bowls at a pretty table.
The effort of the event was clear and much appreciated.
This is what I miss by talking about the dinner party.
I also miss talking and laughing in a group.
I’m a good guest, I know that, but I’m a good guest because I enjoy not only talking but listening.
Sokyo had a fascinating take on her own culture and how it has evolved so quickly over recent years but she is also an artist who has been trained in Japanese flower arranging ( something I would adore to do)
It was a lovely afternoon and I could tell by osmosis that everyone thought the same.
Wonderful.
Tonight I’m working, so today is a mindful day.
I’m mindful of my friends and readers in the southern states who are and have taken a battering in the storms
Be safe
Be kind
Growing Up
It’s raining and I’m taking the dogs over to Pen y Bont for lunch at my friends’ home soon.
The twins, of course have the run of the cottage, and photographing them is almost impossible as they resemble minnows in a fast stream. The best you can get is an arse here and a leg there.
The way of kittens.
I’ve had them nearly three months now and their personalities are starting to show.
Weaver is bigger than her sister, more robust but emotionally is shy and is not a big one for physical affection. Bun is smaller, feisty, likes strokes when the lights are off and is playful with the terriers, though the terriers have no idea what is play and what is kitten aggression .
Both have allocated themselves to a small yellow chair in the back of the living room. It a spot they can survey their world safely.
The cottage looks permanently untidy as a thousand times a day these two little thugs, promenade around knocking over things, just like a motorcycle gang of the 1960s would do around Woolworths.
Roger is perplexed by their behaviour and will often shadow them from afar , looking back at me in a shocked way when another pot plant is moved or ornament battered.
Chatwins
Im early for my own counselling today and so have popped in to Chatwins for a coffee. The staff are cheerful and serve good food. Ruthin is a pretty and busy market town.
I took my great nephew to college this morning and we had a conversation, Ive nothing much in common with 16 year olds save for The Walking Dead, but he chatted all way which was nice.
I couldnt find my specs so was wearing my mr Motto spares.
He didnt notice.
My counsellor wont notice my glasses also, not important. I cried for half an hour after the last session and slept in a layby for over half an hour afterwards. I was exhausted
I felt words were like fies,spewed out of the mouth of john Coffey in The Green Mile
Tomorrow Ruth and I are having a tradional home made Korean meal with friends Ben and Sokyo, friends roll on
I finish my coffee and outside it's started to rain.
The tudor houses nearby melt as the cafe windows get wet and a pretty schoolgirl with a welsh look came in to buy cakes.
How the road meanders when you think of what brought you here.
.
More Plans
I've taken my eye off the ball when it comes to planning nice things to do and experience. Everything feels as though its a tad serious and work orientated, which it is.
I work two full days a week, am counselling one full day and and in college another, so by the time the litter tray has been emptied (oh God that's an awful job) and I've watched Call My Bluff on a Monday night, the week is suddenly over.
Jesus how effin boring.
The remaining arse end of October I have booked tickets for my sister and I to see the English National Ballet's version of Giselle in Liverpool and got the very last ticket (and I'm not joking) to Holst The Planets at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall.
November I am popping up to Sheffield for a day and a half. The Rocky Horror Picture Show with my friend Jane and a leisurely Sunday lunch with friends Mike and Bev.
I've even toyed with a post Christmas weekend to Madrid to see my ( "My" choir!!) but couldn't quite make the numbers work for me.
so I've booked five days in Rome in March
bosh!!!
all this, is a challenge to the approaching winter.
a panacea to ward away low moods
I'm writing this on my break at work, its 5 am and light rain is falling on the Hospice. I've just listened to a podcast of Rob Delaney's Desert Island Disc choices. It is a sobering and incredibly moving piece of Radio, where Delaney talks eloquently about the death of his baby son. Like Lauren Lavern I was moved into silence by his emotional honesty.
its the village Apple festival on Saturday, I'm helping with the judging
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