How I Hated Josh

 

I enrolled in a day’s seminar/study on PTSD today. 

It was in Liverpool and most of the group were counsellors, and health care professionals with varying degrees of experience. 

For most of the day we were split up into working groups , each with a facilitator. 

My group’s facilitator I shall call Josh and he was exhaustingly and successfully gay. 

Not only did we find out that he was in a wonderfully supportive relationship with his long term boyfriend, Juan- Luca, Josh also managed to shoehorn personal and self validating facts about the pair of them at every given chance. 

I quickly started to hate Josh

I hated his smugness, and his neediness and his showing off about how lovely his two pugs were with their daddies.

I hated his 34 inch waist , and his neatly ironed designer shirt,

I hated just how white his teeth were and how his hair didn’t move an inch as he flounced around.

I hated that he reminded me I was single and sometimes lonely

And I hated the fact that I disagreed with one valid clinical observation he made just because he got on my nerves.

As part of a wind down debrief, we all shared what we were going to do with the rest of the day, and Josh preened that he was going to cook his hubby a delicious steak with asparagus on their new patio barbecue as said hubby opened a chilled bottle of something expensive 

When it came around to my debrief , I just about stopped with the comment “ I hope it chokes you both” and smiled a tired smile before sharing a slightly ironic “ I think I will lie down in a darkened room with a cool face flannel over my eyes” 

I’m only human, I thought darkly

Ps weaver has disappeared again 🐈‍⬛

 

Wave The Flag eh?

 I was heartened by the good residents of Brighton for running off the racist right wing demonstrators in their city recently. It was not only the right thing to do, it was a kind thing to do. It was a kindness to all the people of Britain who are not Caucasian white. 

It was a hand hold, a hug, a nod and reminder to those frightened and often disadvantaged right wing supporters that not everyone think that they are right 

During the First World War some 4,500 Belgium refugees were given sanctuary in North East Wales. And even Trelawnyd billeted families at the Village Hall. Not bad for a predominately isolated Welsh village.

I was only thinking about this yesterday when I drove up to the village, and just before entering Trelawnyd I noticed a small holding on the right which sported a flag at its gate. 

The Palestinian Flag

 The lisping choir does Aida, rather well as it happens .

I liked it.

I’ve just got home after another very busy day, and Mary thoughtfully licked my swollen feet as Bun then Weaver walked into the living room, as I was sipping my emergency gin and tonic. 

They walked in like Kevin & Perry

I’m sure Weaver stuck two claws up at me! 

She made a show of ignoring me too, 

I’d love to know where she’s been the past four days.

I once had a cat called Betty who was shy and standoffish too, who also disappeared from my home in Sheffield . 

She left for three months 

Weaver ate her tea , then jumped onto my desk and knocked an early Victorian flat back greyhound onto the floor on purpose before stalking out of the open window .

It’s like she’s doing me a favour at returning I thought

Don’t bother coming home !  I half heartedly called after her ( not really meaning it)

But she didn’t look back once at the call as she stalked out over the fields to the south of Trelawnyd 

With obviously a place to go

A winner and a loser

 

There was the first village dog show today and Roger was robbed. He was only really eligible for one class and flunked out to a blind Mongrel with an I am Blind coat on 

Sophia with Rocky her French bulldog 

Isit only a couple of years since the male voice choir sang to her

We got home mid afternoon, only to find Weaver asleep on the couch. She heard my effusive hello , of that  I was sure, as she opened one eye then closed it again with an attitude of distain bordering on contempt 

Rainbow light

 I’m so tired. Just two trained staff at the hospice today and eight complex patients. I got home late , ate a scotch egg in the car before getting out, still in my uniform and then had a mooch around the houses of Cwm Road to see if I could locate Weaver . 

A big yowl rang out ,but it was a lonely Bun welcoming me home not Weaver . She looks stressed and on edge without her sister but came into the cottage to feed. She even let Roger sniff her bottom ( a favourite pastimes of Welsh terrier dogs as I recall) so distracted she is . 

Last night she curled up on my fat left foot 

I found a rainbow light by my front door …..another late birthday gift from sister Janet . 

It looks lovely but she apologised as instead of the Gay Rainbow flag I presumed it represented she worried I’d thought she was referring to the rainbow Bridge over which all pets walkover on their last journey . 

I hope Weaver has voted with her feet, and found a loving new home who puts up with antisocial behaviours . 

But sadly I really do think she’s dead

Weaver

Weaver has gone missing

I’m not too sure , but I think she’s been gone at least two days if not three.

I’ve had a niggling doubt for 24 hours but with two cats that are identical in size, colour

and tail length, and one with a habit of hiding away in her own bedroom, it wasn’t easy to work out , 

but now I’m sure. 

I’ve searched the surrounding streets, church and lane and have put a plea on the village 

Facebook site

 

Disclosure Day

 Spoilers ! 

Steven Spielberg at 78 has returned to his Close Encounters days with this Hitchcockian conspiracy theory romp which revisits every alien abduction story since the 1947 Roswell Incident

I won’t bother you with the convoluted and silly plot, suffice to say Brits Emily Blunt ( as weather gal Margaret Fairchild ) and Josh O’Connor (as maths analyst Danial Kellner) are two strangers that come together very much like the Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon characters in Close Encounters to save the planet from its own introspection death wish. 

As it turns out all the alien visitation theories were right and after much convoluted chasing Blunt and O’Connor revisit their childhoods ( a Spielberg theme) to do the right thing in sharing the information . 

You can see quite clearly that Spielberg had fun with this movie . Echo's of North by Northwest, Close Encounters, and ET , come to mind, with signature  background music by John Williams completing the nostalgia ( I can’t believe he’s in his nineties! ) 

Blunt couldn’t be better here, she really is a versatile actress and will be a national treasure rather soon! and the set pieces ( The train sequence especially) is pure Spielberg . But as a whole movie , I was slightly disappointed . 

As Janet and I left an old man behind me summed up his feelings 

“ Independence Day was better”

Bitch Slapped

Yesterday,  Beautiful New York Lee talked about the three men and one woman she bitch slapped in a long rather exciting life. Now while we all don’t condone physical violence, sometimes I think we have all been pushed into physical confrontations sometimes in our lives. 

After all we are all bloody human . 

I have slapped one man in my life. I sucker punched another. The punch was a result of a previous partner pulling a knife at me during a drunken rage ( fuck that! I flattened the fucker ) the other was a slap I regret but I was provoked

On reflection I have only slapped one woman in anger. It was in 1987 in York and I was drunk at the bar in Roxy’s nightclub ….a rather inebriated trans drag queen poked me then slapped me to move and I looked at her and said “ sorry mum” ( she did look like my mother complete with facial hair ) 

I slapped her back , and in the afterglow got bitch slapped again for my trouble .

I woke up with a black eye and a fat lip, lol, she was a tough old bird