Early Morning photos

The photo of the mini daffodil is ever so slightly out of focus, but it looks pretty enough. The lane outside the cottage is lethal and as usual has never been gritted ( or will ever!)

but looks pretty.

William has seemed to have left some of his annoying puppy behaviours in the past, and is slowly developing some of his own personality traits. Caught him this morning curled up with his nemisis George in the kitchen basket

San Fairy Ann

I am sat at my dining table in the cold early morning thinking of family phrases that are handed down throughtout the generations. These "sayings" unfortunately often die away when individuals pass on, and I think that is such a sad thing when the phrase is indicative of an era or place in time.
My Grandmother and mother always used the phrase San Fairy Ann when referring to something of no consequance. It was always used in a rather dissmissive way and I wondered this morning ( when giving the hens some cooked pasta and special K as a treat against the cold) where it actually came from.
Thank god for the internet, for,after two minutes of google-ing I found the following:-

[A] When the British Tommy arrived in France to fight in the First World War, he was presented with a language he struggled to make sense of. What he did to the pronunciation of French and Belgian place names is a wonder, such as turning Ypres into Wipers. He picked up a lot of French expressions, but he changed them into something that sounded English. This was the fate of ça ne fait rien, “it does not matter”, which became a British Army catchphrase in that war as an expression of resigned — or cynical — acceptance of some state of affairs, usually brought about by bungling officers. One English version of it was the one you quote, others were san fairy anna and even send for Mary Ann, though perhaps san fairy ann was the most common. It largely fell out of use after the War, and seems not to have been taken up by servicemen in the Second World War.

I wondered if Gran's nickname of "Scalabine" could be found on google, but apart from one chaps surname I could not find a thing.
Listening to Steve Allen on LBC this morning, I heard him say another of my mother's waspish comments
"I want I want!...doesn't get!" he was shouting, berating the modern culture of getting everything that you see in the shops. My mother always used it when we were asking for sweets in the 1960's. Not one her nicer phrases

We are going out to dinner later with Janet, Ned and Ned's son, so I will ask her if she remembers any "family sayings"

Hello to Aunt Judy's sister

My blog has another fan! in the shape of my Aunt's sister! I think loggers on may be approaching double figures by now! I am very honoured as very little of note happens here!
Apparantly my latest fan likes it when I swear and rant about things.
so all I can say to that is " P*ss off!!!!!!!!"

Thanks to Jeni Barnett

Thanks to new LBC presenter Jeni Barnett we now have a usable dining table.
I was listening to her the other day banging on about nothing too important, when her hysterical laughing caught my attention. Actually, I had to stop what I was doing (humping black bin bags of rubbish to be precise) to listen to her phone in about Londoners' embarrassing stories. The one about a stewardess mistaking Cofe Annan for Morgan Freeman sent her into lengthy cackles, and her obvious enjoyment of the subject matter warmed me to her. Anyhow I digress. This in turn made me listen to her later phone in about the importance of eating at a family table, and she was so passionate about it, I was inspired to clear our own table of clutter (which included seed potatos,coats,paperwork,allotment books a battery charger and various vegetable catalogues).
Before taking Chris to the station this morning, I caught him sitting at the table with a cup of tea, enjoying the feeling of fomality, a table gives you! I am at this moment enjoying the same sensation, but with a filter coffee and a bagel!


The photo on the right is the nearly completed Church wall, at the back of my field. The first of the fence posts are going in (you can just see it lying against the stone wall) and I can almost "taste" my boundary fence being finished . For those remotely bothered about such things, the churchyard is open to the back of my field, so when the odd chicken escapes (generally it is Stanley) they wander freely amongst the gravestones.
When the boundary goes in, another hundred square yards of "pasture" will be free for me to use.

Bert and the first snow storm!

It's strange how history repeats itself. Called in to wish Uncle Bert a happy 80th Birthday with a card and flowers and found myself photographing him in exactly the same place and pose as my grandmother ( his mother) did some 30 years ago.I still have the poleroid of her somewhere in a box and the similarity between her and Bert is striking.

Bert and his wife Margaret are two of the oldest surviving members of the Gray family ( Judy being the other), and he is the middle son of three boys with my father being older and Tom being the baby.Strange to think that I remember my mother saying that she and Bert went to see King Kong together (THE ORIGINAL!!) in Prestatyn Scala.....so many years ago!

The weather has been bitterly cold today and some of the older hens like Robina have not even left the warmth of the coops. To keep my hands warm, there is nothing better than wrapping them around a newly laid egg-an organic hotwaterbottle! We have had snow, blusterly winds and rain, and the hills near Caerwys (5 miles away) and Denbigh (8 miles or so) are dusted with snow this evening, as is the field (see pic)

My bean closhes have been whisked away by the winds this morning. Pippa (The Doctor's wife) brought back one from the vicarage gardens, but the other two have dissapeared
With the weather so bad, I have spent a gay old day shopping,and rearranging the kitchen. The dogs have had their usual run on the beach with Janet's Ruby, but I think I will limit Meg's participation as Ruby bullies her terribly. Taking William to a dog training class on monday with Janet and an overactive Ruby which should be fun.

5.45am storm

This blog will still show on yesterday's date ( why is that? are we on American time?) but it is ,in fact 5.45 am! Gale force winds and rain woke me first thing, so muttering like an old psychi patient I donned a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old jumper and dragged the dogs out into the storm for poos and pees.

The weather IS awful!

A quick trot down the lane and we are all soaked to the skin, at least the hens seemed to be ok, as I can just hear Duncan crowing against the howl of the wind.

I am now tucked up in bed with a coffee and blog ( I cannot believe I am blogging at this time!)

hey ho

Teaching

I went into work today ( Yes it IS my day off) to give a teaching session to the intensive care staff about the moving and handling of acute spinal injury patients. Not many people turned up for the session but the ones that did participate seemed to have really enjoyed and benefited from the experience. It was nice for me also,as they all gave me great feedback and it is sad that through one reason and another, teaching on the unit has been sparse and not seen as a priority.

I am not fickle ( well not that fickle!) enough to be upset the behaviour of colleagues, but I did notice wryly that not one of the three senior nurses on duty today, thanked me for a) organising the teaching session without being asked to. b) coming in to run it in my own time. and I think that this sums up the morale issues I personally feel have invaded some clinical areas of the nhs.

Going home today, I was happy I had made the effort to do something I know I am good at, but more importantly, the whole experience reinforced that my recent application for another job OUT of nursing has been the right move.

I will blog details of this as and when.......................................

7.00 pm peace

Chris is away again tonight, (somewhere in South Wales) so it's a quiet evening in with the dogs. I don't mind that much as with him away I can relax and listen to the 7.00pm Archers without chatty interruptions. Chris and I have been together since the year 2000, I have been an avid fan of the Archers since the mid 1990's AND STILL, Chris insists on initiating conversations at the very moment Brian Aldridge is embarking on one of his affairs or Pat Archer is worrying about her organic cheese. !!!!!!

So tonight it was lovely to concentrate on a simply effective dialogue between two middle class, slightly world weary matrons of Ambridge. Jennifer Aldridge (Angela Piper ) and her ditsy sister Lilian Bellamy (Sunny Ormonde pic) were discussing Lillian's catastrophic love life with philanderer Matt "tiger" Crawford. The very ordinary conversation of fears,,hopes and regrets mixed together with the mundane (getting coffee,laughing about a family joke) reminds me of just why this soap has lasted since the 1950's. Performances, like the refreshing zip and depth Sunny Ormonde gives to her slightly tragic Lillian, make the show what it is.................classic