Operation Dog Snot Removal

Mother-in-law ( to be) arrives tomorrow. I am working night shift tonight, so as regular readers will remember only too well, today is " dog snot removal day"

The cottage windows have been left wide,  glass has been polished, I have retrieved my bottle of " fabreeze" from the church cupboard where I had left it and have squirted every inch of the  cottage where dog arse touches fabric

Garden has been weeded, lawn has been cut

Front and back

Cupcakes have been made

Am I or am I not the gay version of  friggin Jane Asher?

Thanks Flo

Arrhhh the power of the internet rears it's head today.
Postcard dealer Florence McCarthy from down in Eastbourne has just emailed me this old view of the village. (The old Black Boy pub can be seen quite clearly on the left hand side of High Street ( now the site of the pensioner bungalows))
She bought the postcard thinking it was a scene from Ireland.
I suspect it is a rare postcard from  the turn of the century.

Boring but practical

Calling all Trelawnyd Residents

Has anyone got any spare egg boxes.?

I'll collect

X

Meg

Do you know what?......I found yesterday's funeral terribly effing depressing
There are many reasons for this....
and non need to be thrashed out just at the moment.
I just can't  be arsed navel gazing.....well not today anyway.

Suffice to say when I got home,  I could have done with half an hour laughing at something mindless...
In the end, it was two incredibly simple things that brightened my day.
The first was a newsy and chatty phone call  with best friend Nu

The second occurred as I was cutting mushrooms for tea.

After the third bout of chopping, I noticed a disturbance in the back garden through the kitchen window..
Thinking that Albert was chasing sparrows , I ambled outside, wiping my hands on a tea towel as I went and as I looked over the garden wall I shouted a usual " leave the poor bugger alone" shout.

Albert was there, to be sure, but instead of bouncing around after a small skinny bird, he was playing gently and rather surprisingly with Meg.
Now Meg is an old girl. She is a neurotic nine year old terrier , with milky eyes and a bad temper, but in the afternoon  sun,and in the privacy of our back garden, she careered around the garden path, all goggle eyed and vacant...... chased affectionately by a fat black cat with a wonky leg like a puppy with it's silly head on.
I couldn't have wished for a better panacea to the funeral blues...........and watched misty eyed
as our cranky old bitch dropping infront of a wide eyed Albert like a loon
.

Look closely

Albert's wide eyes are just behind 

The Parry's of Prestatyn

Today an old lady from Prestatyn will be buried in the graveyard of the town's parish Church. She will join her husband and her son in the family grave, after journeying from the South Coast of England where she has lived for over two decades.
It was a tragedy that her son died twenty five years ago when he was only 24 for he was one of those intelligent bright spark entrepreneurs that were all the rage in the 1980s.
Ian parry was a good friend. I knew him when he was a slightly overweight, slightly gauche teenager and I knew him after he had blossomed into a fearless, hugely ambitious newspaper photographer.
When all of his friends were battling through University ( or in my case nurse training) he had already moved to London, bought a flat in an upcoming part of the city and made a name for himself amid the cut throat world of hacks and celebrity.
He was always destined for bigger and better things.
Unfortunately with rolls of film in his pockets and his cameras slung around his neck, he was killed escaping from the uprising against Ceausescu in Romania in '89.....
He died only a few days before my father.

So today, my sister and I will be paying our respects at Ian's Mother's funeral.
We will be doing it for Ian.
As another old friend confided in me a day or so ago" it marks an end of an era"

Like so many friends and family who died a long time ago, it's sometimes difficult to picture them clearly, or to hear their voice as you once heard it.
Time plays that awful trick on a person.
Does it not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Parry

http://www.ianparry.org

PostScript
Just arrived home after the service. and I could tell that my sister felt as uncomfortable as I did.
I am glad we went, but the memories that same place/ same reason  funerals bring forth, are not particularly pleasant ones 

The Kitchen Table

It's going on three o'clock and I am sat at the kitchen table
after picking over the carcass of a roast chicken

One bowl of chicken bits is destined for tomorrow's lunch

The rest will be shared between the dogs and the field birds.

We have just finished lunch

and Chris has gone to Church,

I think he's ringing the bell today. 

It's tolling rather quickly.

The cottage is silent apart from the sound of a bulldog and three terriers licking chicken fat

from some foil bowls outside the back door.

Albert is asleep on the couch, he hasn't smelt the chicken as yet.

I continue with my mindless job.

Kitchen tables are a place for mindless activity.

Shelling peas,

Baking,

Making idle lists on the back of envelopes.

Squeezing dog's anal glands

Polishing silver.

I have a load of washing up to do, the dogs to walk,

the broody hens all need turfing off their eggs for a quick feed

and I still have to deliver eggs to Michelle up the Marian

But I can't be arsed moving,

So I will sit at the kitchen table a while longer,

and continue with some mindless activity

ie. blog writing.

Hey ho

Afternoon Drinks

If I lived in Rachel's World this blog would be entitled Saturday and it's white wine Afternoon....we were due to travel over to Sheffield to celebrate an old friend's 50th birthday celebrations but were let down by a dog sitter, so in a fit of sulking we dusted ourselves off and took the trailer trash train to Llandudno for a spot of lunch at Osborne House
After a bottle of wine each we sorted out some of the wedding plans, spoke to the maître d' about the wedding meal and got into the spirit of things.

Giddy as a kipper ....Chris in the tart's boudoir that is  the Osborne house cafe

I had a nice sleep on the train home .....

Group Hug

Sometime in the near future, I am accompanying Chris to a conference in Denmark. On our way to the train station this morning , he started to bang on about booking me on one of the guided tours that have been organised especially for partners, when their academic loved ones are thrashing out their research papers.
Picture the scene
Two local guides ( in traditional " native dress")' a confined and claustrophobic coach, and a captive audience that are strangers to one another.
To me Hell looks more attractive.
Now, I have to say in my defence, that the older I get, the more sociable I have become, but it has to be made known that the thought of organised group activities drag me back to a time when I was a slightly awkward , socially shy youngster who blushed a great deal.
If it was a choice between forcing out a " my names's John, what's your name?" Small talk and sticking needles into my eyes........the needles would win every time.

" I'm sure all the other partners will be going on the trip" Chris told me this morning.. Trying very hard to sell it." There is even a trip to a local museum and a famous stadium!"

I gave him one of those after all this time together, do you really need to ask looks.

" I'll bring some books" I informed him shortly.

Ps.....duh...we're actually going to Stockholm