A Blogging Phenomenon

Much has been written about how  anonymity breeds trolling behaviour on the Internet. Like road rage which flourishes inside the confines of certain people's personal car spaces, bloggers who take shelter behind pseudonyms and fictional characters may often challenge, and bitch and argue and debate with their fellows where, if they met them socially, they would keep their mouths politely and very firmly shut.
It's an interesting phenomenon to be sure.
I've noticed certain bloggers seem to delight in sucking the life blood from any blog entry by consistently arguing the opposite point of view. You can almost set your watch by them .
Is it a case of familiarity breeding contempt ? Genuine irritation? or a sense of entitlement
I am not quite sure
Perhaps someone out there can enlighten me.
Part of the problem , I think, comes from the written word itself.  Like texts and particularly emails , it is easy to misconstrue the meanings and emotions behind a comment, especially one tapped out quickly three thousand miles away.
The answer, like most answers lie within a mash up of all of the points above.

I'll leave you with a morning photo of me and Mary..........

Auntie Glad Catch Up

Another miserable and depressing day of rain started with a mega downpour at 7 am. I was already soaked after walking the dogs, so I guess it didn't really matter me getting drenched again when some frantic honking from the geese got me racing over to the field with a torch.
It wasn't a fox that was bothering them but a collie dog, which I caught peeping through the goose house window. He ran off towards the livery stables after I yelled a sharp "getaway ! " 
The rest of the morning was filled with shopping, buying some adhesive to stick down the loose bath surround, meeting a sad work colleague for coffee and calling in to the feed wholesalers to buy layers pellets.
On the way home I called into see Auntie Glad.
One of the care home staff told me that she was " quite confused today " but I found her as sprightly and bright as ever even though she later insisted that her husband Bob Railway was still alive and in the next room .
Gladys told me that she had been booked to make her famous scones that afternoon, then waved her arms angrily at some of the other resident ladies who were sat, sleeping off their lunches in the day room. " They are a miserable lot, always complaining about the food!" She snapped " They make my blood boil "
The one thing Gladys hates above anything is ingratitude .

She took me to her neat little room, where I read out the Parish Magazine to her and she recounted recent visits from Christine (Chapel House), the vicar and from various members of the male voice choir before letting the conversation fade to old times and vague but happy days from years ago.

As she walked me back to the day room a cheerful young woman in an apron called her over to a table on which was sat a massive mixing bowl full of flour and sultanas " I told you I'm making scones this afternoon " Gladys chirped brightly " we shall be having them for tea!"

Take Me Home

It's Just before bedtime and as I've been listening to YouTube videos 

George tottered over and climbed into my lap, 

And rested his old face next to mine, 

His behaviour kind of went with this song 

A panacea to all the hate and disappointment of the day

Iago was right

It's a miserable morning on either side of the Atlantic today.
I won't bother discussing the new leader of the free world
The whole thing beggars belief.
But , hey...I don't live in America....

Today's Going Gently is about jealousy.
Jealousy in a relationship.

Occasionally I meet a friend in the village for lunch.
She makes homemade bread, or soup, or cake and I bring an hour of silliness  .
It's a good deal all round.
I have noticed, however, that every time we are sat at the kitchen table, the phone will go and her husband will there catching up with a snippet of news or a job that needs sorting.
Recently I casually asked if he was bothered that I occasionally popped in for a chat and my friend replied " oh no, he always rings me during the day"
Something in what she said and how she said it triggered a tiny alarm bell in my mind.
" Is he jealous? " I asked her
The grenade had its effect and the words tumbled out
Apparently her husband had always been jealous. He often sulked for days if my friend went out on an evening with friends, so much so that she no longer leaves the home without her husband on her arm. Male colleagues were often viewed with suspicion and bad mouthed constantly and often when my friend  was out working she felt obliged to call her husband to " check in" so to speak.
This all had been going on for many years.

I leaned my elbows on the kitchen table and uncharacteristically for me , I said very little  as my friend's conversation ran down like a clock. I think this was the first time she had shared this information .

" I know....you make the life you live " she said finally
And I nodded taking a final sip of my coffee

Changing The Subject

Changing the subject

The Prof has always wanted me to be able to dance with him

I have two left feet

I wish I hadn't 

I am very aware he used to be a professional dancer in his youth

But I am sure that One day we will dance together like Fred & Ginger

Just the once

Bad Mothers

I only posted this photo as it pleases me

There are rules in society ......one of which is that you don't swear at parent in front of their child.
I broke that rule today
I was driving in Prestatyn and was turning into Princess Avenue from Ffordisa at around 1pm when a small child on a very small bike shot across the road in front of me. He appeared out of the school gates of ysgol y Llys and a woman on a mobile phone was following him and as I stopped suddenly she ran forward grabbed him and waved a hand at me in a kind of acknowledgement.
I wound down the window and yelled angrily  " I could have killed that child !.. What were you doing? "
The woman glared at me, shook her head and told me to " fuck right off!" before starting after her son. She never once put down her phone!
My blood pressure went well over 200 mm of mercury in 1 second flat
And what did I do, whilst stopped in the junction of a busy Welsh Street?.......I'll tell you, I did what I normally do in such circumstances
I resorted to abuse.

" YOU'RE A BAD MOTHER WITH FUCKING CHEAP SHOES"  I yelled after her with some gusto

Monday Night

Autumn is here.

The fire is lit,

Mary is licking the insides of Winnie's ears and has been for an age

I'm Waiting for The Walking Dead

Mrs Trellis bought me a homemade scotch egg this afternoon,

Just the one wrapped in foil

I'm sorry to say it was bloody awful 

No one tell her.

The Queen Mary's Hooter

The Prof is away most of the week again and I am presently clearing out the crap from the kitchen cupboards. It's a day to be alone.
Yesterday I made a massive pan of pea and ham soup.
Both the Prof and I are paying for this today!
We had three bowls each for supper
I ventured outside this morning to round up the bantams who had spent most of the morning in the front garden in a successful effort to keep out of the way of the feral cat stalking them in the Ukrainian village. I left George to chase away the cat when I shooed the birds back. Every time I bent over I let out a pea smelling fart which could of put the Queen Mary's hooter to shame.
" it's cold today!" I called over to neighbour Mike who was trimming his shrubbery
" aye.." He said with a deadpan face " and a bit windy too!"

News

Mary watching the Prof eating fruit cake

The Church Bell which heralds Sunday service woke me up approaching eleven.
The dogs and Albert were all waiting patiently on the bed for me to get up.
I swear I'm going to climb up on the Church roof one day and stuff an old pillow around the clacker

I have not seen Gaynor the mad organist for a while, I thought this as we passed the lytchgate where I could hear a dozen reedy voices singing the hymn. I think I shall buy one of those snakes made from coiled springs( the ones that you can cram into a small box to scare kids with) and when I am next cleaning the church I shall put in under the organ key cover.
I shall look on eBay presently.
 Click on Snake-Trick-Joke-Gag-Ebay

Mr Jones is home after his stroke and waved from his window when I passed, and I had a bit of a turn when a smart man who looked remarkably like an undertaker passed me in the street and walked through old Islwyn Thomas' front door which was open.
Apparently he was one of the congregation from the Welsh chapel service and not an undertaker!
Islwyn remains very much alive.

The Memorial Hall's new caretaker is Sandra S, who, I heard,  is getting on great guns with the village Christmas Fayre to raise funds for it's redecoration.

Gay Gordon is spending most of his day asleep, Stan told me as he was cutting back his berburis, it's something to do with his diabetes!

Mary is excited, and has been most of the week. She has not seen autumn leaves before, and chases them at every given moment. I'll have to watch her with traffic on the main road .

Chinese takeaway for lunch!

4.04am

i'm posting this in lieu of something more substantial
Am on break at work
Hey ho

15 Minute Post

Just enough to drink a lovely cup of coffee and type today's blog!

At 10 am I am taking Mrs Jones shopping. I was passing her house on Wednesday and with a worried face she called me in. Her husband had fallen in the kitchen. 

" I was going to phone you " she said but luckily for him she had rang for an ambulance and it was already on the way, so I tied the dogs to her fence and went in to help. 

FAST is the acronym to use with a suspected stroke (facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties and time) and I suspected a small stroke after her husband stated he had slurred his words a minute or so earlier....luckily the paramedics arrived minutes later and seemed cheerful enough as they negotiated Winnie on the garden path.

She was blowing kisses at both as they squeezed past with their backpacks

Today, I promised to take her shopping as she didn't want to be gone from the village for the length of time the two buses take to go to town and back. 

Having no transport is a shitter when you are old and poorly.

I'll leave you a photograph my twin sister has been banding around on social media......it took me a while to realise that it wasn't her! 

See I havent changed much

I still remain very round and very pink to this day! 

Acts Of Violence

Mary A3:01 am

"I was a third year teacher when one of the student's parent came into the classroom high on drugs. Without saying a thing he shot me once in the chest. I remember ordering the children to run out of the room. Next thing my grandmother and my grandfather who I never got to meet, were telling me that I have to go back. There were things I needed to do. I remember not wanting to go back but I'm glad I did. I married and raised two children."

This comment from yesterday's blog literally took my breath away.
It described an act of violence in such a conversational way that it almost hurt reading it.
It shows a huge capacity in coping.
Thankfully acts of true violence are rare.

Apart from having to deal with paranoid and combative patients on intensive care, I have never really been party to a violent situation. When patient's kick off, my psychiatric training will often kick in, so remembering the mantra " keep close and keep in control" I have often used my fuller figure to my advantage to quash  any violent situations with a hefty fat arse! well until the time the doctor with the sedation can swing in to the rescue.

One study in the US found that up to 22% of nurses showed symptoms of PTSD
I thought this statistic as interesting as it worrying. So I won't apologise for another of Going Gently's straw polls! 
Has anyone out there suffered from PTSD ?
Or did the violence managed to pass you by?

The Point Of Death

Has anyone out there ever had a near death experience ?
I'm interested to know.
This morning I talked to Mrs Trellis about a patient of hers that nearly died giving birth.
After the emergency was all over, the woman recounted that she had seen " a light" during the worst time of her collapse , a light which was surrounded by relatives and friends long dead and gone.
It's a stereotypical account of the near death experience I think.

The Prof nearly died when in his twenties. He was gassed by carbon monoxide. He experienced no weird sensory event or spiritual enlightenment at the time , just a bad headache and a nicely pink face so typical of an over abundance of  the gas.
I nearly drowned when I was 10. It was in a swimming pool in Loret del Mar in 1972. I remember little of the event except being very calm with my arm thrusting out of the water above my head. A passing man pulled me out of the pool and left me sitting by myself on the hot tile surround.
The only emotion I had at the time was of embarrassment.

I have dealt with many seriously ill people who have eventually survived a near death event, but I have have never heard one admit that something spiritual happened to them at that crucial point where life and death mingle.

So has anyone out there know of such experiences?
Please share them with the group
I would be interested to know

Making Money

Half of the Trelawnyd Flower Show Committee

After much, MUCH debate the Flower Show Committee have finally agreed what we're are going spend our monies on this year.

• We will pay for the coach for the village Friendship Group's Christmas outing! 
• We shall cover the cost for new linens for St Michael's Church
• We shall contribute £250.00 to the village conservation group for Summer plants
• We shall buy a new clock for the Memorial Hall and will offer to replace the existing water geyser in the kitchen which is knackered
• We shall also offer to purchase new crockery for the hall

I love our committee, they may have taken bleeding hours to make a decision about spending money but when I told them that Sandra C from the village needed help with her fund raising Christmas Fayre, to a man they volunteered to run the refreshment table. 

Mind The Gap

I have just experienced a rather embarrassing incident in Marks and Spencers

Had just collected some items ( small packet of cocktail sausages, one packet of crab sticks, a reduced calorie pasta bake in tomato sauce  and a small loaf) and was approaching the self service tills when I had to negotiate a man in a wheelchair who was part blocking the entrance.
The man ( who was a bilateral amputee) was arranging some his shopping on his stumps as his wife bagged up the rest, so thinking I was slinkier than I am, I squeezed past to go to the free till beyond.
However ( and there's always a fucking however) the pocket of my trackie bottoms caught on the right handle of his wheelchair and as I swept past I spun him around like baby in one of those walkers on wheels.
Now bilateral amputees by very nature of their surgery remain rather top heavy, so it was only by pure luck that his wife managed to catch him as he almost bounced over the side of the chair, dropping a box of eclairs and various "meal deal for 10  pounds items" onto the floor.
Still attached to the wheelchair, I did that strange half hopping,half falling thing,as rather too much arse buttock was revealed to the good shoppers of Prestatyn before my elasticated waist twanged back into place with a loud " SNAP" and I shouted out a rather strange expletive of " Hell's Teeth"

The apologies were just about as embarrassing as the event

Halloween is over, the animals race to eat the pumpkin's insides

The Walking Dead Episode 2

A new leader who is doing better than our Rick! 

At last The Walking Dead had a balanced and pragmatic leader of souls . Ezekiel (Kahary Payton) is an actor, and a former zoo keeper who parades a tiger like a pet and speaks in Shakespearean tones in way of providing a larger than life persona ........but he really seems in charge of a post apocalyptic community with some sense and balance and insight which bloody well makes a change! . Our heroes Morgan and the ever wonderful Carol have taken refuge in Kingdom, and Ezekiel has the clear measure of both.
I thought I would hate the new community storylines.....but in fact I am loving them .
My favourite episode so far

Fox Chapel District

It's Halloween and so I should dig deep and share a ghost story should I not?
Well I have not ghost story to share but I do have an odd little tale of coincidence
I love a story of coincidence.

Around 26 years ago I found myself on a specialist six month work course at the Spinal Injury Unit in Southport. It was expected that for part of that course, I  was to organise an elective placement somewhere else and after weeks of organising I was lucky enough to wangle work experience in  the US, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be precise. Much of my experience centred upon the spinal injury rehabilitation hospital in Harmarville.
Like many rehab facilities, Harmarville was located out in the sticks, so to get to and from my lodgings which were back in the City, I was provided with a volunteer driver, who happened to be a very elderly black guy called Norm. Norm insisted that I sit in the back of his large black car, and so I( and many others)  was reminded of the movie Driving Miss Daisy when we turned up at any event. The film had only just opened in cinemas that summer.
Anyhow I digress.

Fast forward a decade or so to rural Lincolnshire, to an antiques emporium at a former RAF station to be precise. In a dusty, junk filled room, I spied an old map with art deco writing in a battered frame and on a whim bought it. It looked American, in period with the look of our former house , and it filled a spot in the hall.

The map travelled with us to Trelawnyd and until recently it has graced the wall on the upstairs landing, more or less unseen by all.

You may recall that recently I painted the living room, hallway and landing, and after this, I rearranged the paintings in the cottage and moved the map to it's present position by the front door.
There , I looked at it again with fresh eyes.

The map, I noticed , had small illustrations on it. A golfer in plus fours, a hunting hound, a whole series of huntsmen and women  in full livery, and written in the right hand margin in faint deco script was the name Harmarville.

I looked closer, and spied a road called Fox Chapel Road and I suddenly recognised where the map was of. Of all of the places in the world that  a 1930s map could have been from, I had bought an old map of the very place I had worked two decades before!
The map was of one very small far suburb of the city of Pittsburgh. A suburb where the Harmarville Rehab unit was to be built some fifty years later.

The Face At The Window

The Prof is asleep under a warm blanket on the couch

I have just hollowed out a pumpkin

Transvestite Vampires

Our vicar covers three parishes. Trelawnyd, the much larger village of Dyserth and the tiny hamlet of Cwm ( Pronounced " Come")
Every year, to raise funds for Cwm's minuscule village hall  a local woman ( who happens to be the daughter in law of Sylvia our previous Flower Judge secretary ) holds a murder mystery supper night. 
The format is sort of full proof. Eight locals ( including the vicar!) play the parts of the cast and read out their lines with varying amounts of skill and acting ability. Clues are given to who is the murderer, as the paying guests ( some fifty of us) make notes, buy raffle tickets drink varying amounts of wine and have supper.
It's old fashioned and hokey but rather good fun, so on Friday we invited my sister and her husband to come with us this year and the evening started as it meant to go on by the appearance of an elderly man who was smothered in lipstick , dressed as a vampire and who was carrying a woman's handbag.
You have to be there to understand the gist of it all.
Anyhow it turned out that a rather dreadful actress who went by the character name of Ellie Gant ( elegant....... geddit?) was the killer and I won a bottle a putrid aftershave in the raffle.

I am going to approach Jason the affable despot , to see if we could hold something similar in our village hall....he likes murders, and serial killing....oh and he's a good little actor!

I'm Carving our Halloween pumpkin today! 

Thought of the day