WTF?

 It’s a hundred yards to Trendy Carol’s

Shes been going to a gym recently and looks gorg and svelte in pants reminiscent of Emma Peel’s from The Avengers. 

The dogs and I stopped to talk last night only to see Bun standing outside the cottage mewing loudly at us with some attitude and bad temper

“Bloody Hell is that yours?” Trendy Carol sung out and we both watched with interest as Bun bellowed out a shrill call of “ Fucking well come home” again

She’s been doing it a lot at the moment , a behaviour I can’t quite understand 

We hurried home and Bun danced in a circle for a second or two before storming into the cottage where she then ignored us all.

What’s that all about? 

I’m more a dog person than a cat, and Albert was such a simple soul, compared to these two personality challenged individuals.

Has anyone else seen this kind of behaviour?

Jumpers

 I’m not a saint. 

Far from it. But then you all know this fact, some more than others, I dare say.

I have been reminded of my lack of sartorial elegance by this morning’s annual troll through the jumpers initiative. 

It’s autumn and the jumpers and cardigans have been released from their shelves again, but this time it’s for my counselling day, where I need to look suitably professional but relaxed enough to trust. 

Finding a suitable jumper without the obligatory food stains down the front has proved to be a difficult task.

I’m annoyed by my own slutty behaviour! 

For even after washing several still have the ghosts of gravy and soup once enjoyed !

Eventually I found a rather nice blue arran, but alas, this had a doggy rip in the sleeve so I eventually settled for a Scandinavian number in blue

Bette Midler - Wind Beneath My Wings - Yankee Stadium 2001, a short Essay about bravery

The highlight of one of many trips to New York I’ve made was watching Bette Middler perform her one woman show at Radio City.

She was a typhoon of an act, funny, strong , exhausting, and genuine 

Her smiling and brave performance at the 9/11 memorial is a tour de force of smiling bravely . 

Watch her singing in video. 

No self pity 

No emotional romping

She grabs the song’s importance by the scruff of the neck and delivers it with the broadest of smiles

It’s the bravest performance I’ve ever seen. 

And it galvanised a nation and part of the world.

I see such bravery every day. 

The daughter of a patient who refuses to back down in her advocacy 

The friend who is facing cancer again who shoots out with a sassy comment with steel blue teary eyes

Another friend who sees their spouse fading, raising their chin to all observers 

A lonely person who joins a village group without self pity,

An old Welsh terrier, refusing to bow to semi blindness

Mr Posňan walking all the way to the village hall to check the building works despite the pain in his hips

A villager who has endured 100 eye injections without ever complaining to the internet audience

We all see such bravery every day

That urge and need to set one foot in front of another

To march on

Village Productions Present……..

This is the logo for our “ Village Production Presents “ team 

Things are moving along quite nicely for our premier production   

 

HBA1c

 I saw my practice nurse today, she’s my diabetic go to, and she is a bright sort of gal my own age.

My sugar levels are 42 ( down from 119) and are normal

She seemed more pleased than I was. 

She told me to lose more weight and to move quicker and then I will taken off my medication

I asked her if I could have a pair of new knees

She told me to dangle a carrot in front of me 

I may dangle a photo of king Filipe 

That may help

In a burst of energy I scrubbed the kitchen cabinet doors with cleaner after the consultation…..Roger has a terrible habit of rubbing his bum on them which is just as revolting as it sounds.  Village Elder Islwyn stopped to greet him , when I was scrubbing, and I could hear him chatter to Roge over the kitchen wall.

Mary only gets up if she hears a female voice.

Men tend to bore her.

It’s the village show meeting tonight at 6pm 

Tomorrow I’m meeting  Chic Eleanor for breakfast 

Yesterday I saw the Leonardo Di Caprio movie One Battle After Another. I liked it but it’s so complicated I can’t be arsed giving it a review. 

It was warm and sunny today after storm AMY, but tonight it feels autumnal 

Mary as a girl

 The autumn of 2018 wasn’t a happy time for me  but Facebook did remind me of one lovely memory 

Me and Mary looking at the view across the valley from the top of the Gop

It was cold and I had wrapped her in my jacket

They break your heart don’t they just?

Siegfried, Patricia Routledge, and thoughts about a lost dog and the Sound Of Music

 My first crush in literature was the vet Siegfried Farnon, the rather strict older brother of Tristan and boss of James Herriot. To me he wasn’t the bad tempered, somewhat old character played by Robert Hardy in the tv series but a late thirtyish batchelor with the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

Even then I had an empathy for him.

In the recent tv series , Siegfried is played quite wonderfully by Samuel West and boy have I been transported back to my teenage crush years , I can just see Samuel with a hole in his jumper.

The next video is a heartbreaker

A young dog went missing for a week and her distraught owners finally located her with a collection of wonderful strangers who sent drones up to find the frightened animal. 

The reunion is wonderfully uplifting 

Two days ago I watched the Sound Of Music for the first time as an adult. Most of the story I had forgotten, ( I was 6 or 7 when my mother took me and my sister Janet ) but I do remember that the film was overlong and I was bored.

As a 63 year old, who was overstimulated by a child by the LP  continually played by sister Ann, I had an open mind , but I really loved it . 

Julie Andrews was a revelation, she really dominated every scene she was in and only once was she out shadowed and that was when Mother Superior Peggy Wood belted out Climb Every Mountain from the shadows of her office. 

The children were delightful, Eleanor Parker proved to be a suitable sort of baddie, and the nuns knowing smiles made the movie for me .

It was gayer than any gay I have ever known 

Wonderful 

And lastly my other hero Patricia Routledge has died in her 90s . I first loved her as Victoria Wood’s Kitty in the 1980s but she has always been a firm favourite with middle England for her real life portrayal of a British spinster. Her performance of a sad, inconsequential character in Alan Bennett’s A Woman Of No Importance , broke your heart in its pathos and proved that the old gal was not only a talented comedian but an actress of worth

And finally storm Amy is almost over, we have been left with blustery winds still but the sunshine is back this morning and Bun and Weaver have gone back outside for the first time in two days

Dead Of Winter

 I was going to a leaving do this afternoon, but the trains to Llandudno had been cancelled, and I couldn’t face the replacement bus service 

So I went to Chester to see Dead Of Winter

Emma Thompson is an actress that convey pure emotion in a look of a single gesture. I am remembering her famous silent weeping scene in Love Actually or that single shriek of hope at the end of Sense and sensibility. 

In the thriller  Dead Of Winter she plays the recently widowed Barb. A gentle country woman who ran a bait and tackle business in rural Minnesota. The marriage ( which we see in brief flashbacks) is a happy one and clearly grieving, we watch with interest this sixty something heading out into a snowstorm to do some ice fishing. Here the drama takes a dark turn as Barb comes across an isolated cabin in which a teenage girl is being kept hostage, and without hesitation we see Barb morph into an unlikely hero, using her knowledge of country ways and the lake in winter in order to save the girl from a truly evil abductor couple ( Marc Menchaca and Judy Greer)

There is limited dialogue and plenty of action , as the likeable, polite and humble Barb, take on the bad guys. She’s not an infallible hero, but she is brave and resourceful and even as the action and the tension rises to a crescendo we always see the grief in Thompson’s face as she remembers happier times, and so we understand the reasons why she returned to the fishing lake at such an inhospitable time. It’s a great performance all told, with Thompson on great form, and her one and only gentle speech of hope to the teenage girl is a tour de force in the actress’ career