A Rat In The Woodpile

Albert brought home a youngish rat this morning.
It managed to escape, into the woodpile, squeaking very very loudly as it did so.
Squeaking rodents are like illegal drugs to canines
That was well over two hours ago

Subsequently I've not needed to walk the dogs today.
The hot spell continues, so I've washed windows, cut the lawn, cooked a ham, made ice cream, dug out the valerian from the wall and cut back the honeysuckle.  I've weeded the front garden and cut roses, changed and washed bedding to dry in the afternoon warmth and oh and bleached the bog

And all four dogs were still at the woodpile digging for the rat when I had finished

Birth

No Comment Required

Several of you out there have picked up on a certain melancholy creeping into Going Gently recently. Perhaps it's been around for a few months now, as my husband and I have found ourselves at a crisis point which is in need of a resolution.
I'm not saying any more. It's a private matter and just for today I don't want any comments on this blog entry about it.
Perhaps I just wanted you to know it's a bit tough at the moment
Hey ho.

Cat Fud

I've just flung Albert licked cat food at a Lycra covered biker.
It's been the most exciting thing that's happened all day.
I'd made a chicken risotto and and was cleaning up when Albert walked up to me and swiped my legs wanting food.
Albert is always fed from a small enamel tin bowl on the kitchen window still ( the only place dog free) and when baby rabbits are growing up, he will demand his meat dinner several times a day.
He's a fussy cat and loves to lick every bit of gravy off his dinner leaving dry chucks of meat in the bowl. In hot weather the bowl can get quite high and so I've got into the habit of throwing the licked contents over the kitchen wall , and the lane beyond into the raised lawn of the old churchyard where two crows have got in the habit of waiting for their dinner.
Today I flung the cat food out over the flight path of a silent biker coming up the lane.
I apologised profusely without explaining exactly what I was doing ..

Open Wide

There's a joke here! But.....

My sister and I joined the popcorn brigade this evening and went to see Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom.
It was sweet if her as she doesn't really does Dino movies.
Ok, it was rubbish.....but entertaining rubbish, improved by the delectable Chris Pratt - who has a smile that could crack walnuts- with the body to match!
The movie was obviously a homage to the original and its first sequel as several scenes were literally recreated Moment to Moment and despite the narrative being allowed to gallop on without the time to  take advantage of tension and suspense , it's an entertaining old romp.
The big B lister cast Toby Jones , Raif Spall, Geraldine Chaplain ( WTF?) and James Cromwell do very little to make things better, but newcomers Daniella Pineda ( as a spunky tattooed vet) and English muppet Isabella Sermon as the obligatory small child in peril , do shine with the likeable leads ( The delicious Pratt  and  Bryce Dallas Howard )

We have seen this all before......and unfortunately dinosaurs running amok are yesterday's newspaper, but Just once I did catch myself holding my breath as the volcano explodes and the herds of dinosaurs race for safety on the edge of a cliff.....
7/10

My sister and I laughed at my previous effort at recreating the famous Chris Pratt pose to fend off three dinos

This is him

Pratt with dinos

Mr Gray with turkey , hen and Scottie 

With a much fatter arse! 

Under The Honeysuckle

I'm sat under the honeysuckle which shades the front door of the cottage.
I'm listening.
The buzz of bees on the flowers above my head dominate , but the bark of a dog over in the rectory, the thump of a faraway football and the faint tinkle of children playing far past the main road can be just made out over the chirp of the hedgesparrows.

Mixed Bag

An octogenarian , a young mum with a disabled daughter, a Welsh teacher, a retired nurse, a social worker, a lesbian with MS and her wife , a student, a yummy mummy, a bike riding grandad, a former nursing home manager, a housewife,
All volunteers
All at a sausage sizzle with quality sausages
Nice people all with the Samaritans cause in common
We had a nice evening

Gazumped

Taking place just a short while before our proposed " free" tea party will be a Church organised " tea dance" in the village hall. This more or less scuppers what we, the old Flower Show Committee, had planned as our thank you to the village...best laid plans and all that
I need to discuss it further of course and the " last supper meal" of the committee will obviously still take place on the evening of the tea party as it sort of signifies a sort of swan song to me as retiring Show secretary, but I think our tea party will now be cancelled.
Btw .....I rather like the analogy of the last supper as there are twelve of us having the meal with an empty chair free for Auntie Glad .
The old Flower Show committee recently voted on where our bank account monies will be going to once the group finally disbands and I was thrilled that £1000 will be donated to the local Samaritan centre. The rest on the money will be divided between the other village groups and organisations.

Ralph, the gentleman farmer will pop in some hurdles today and has given me some tips for capturing Irene, who has recently enjoyed the company of several ponies in the livery sable's fields. He laughed at my previous group based efforts to capture her which he put down to " a right carry on"

Mrs Trellis and I had our first spat in 12 years yesterday when she disagreed with me taking the old dogs for their daily walk in the Churchyard.
I think she adheres to the maxim that says what the church says goes....
Pity their stance on gay marriage wasnt a bit more flexible me thinks!

I've been on my own for most of this week and The Prof is away again tonight, so a friend and I have been invited to what strangely has been termed a "sausage sizzle" at the home of our Samaritan director.
I'm presuming it's the Welsh version of a Wiener roast which sounds equally as bad ........a colleague said it felt like an invitation to a 1970 wife swap party.

Just wondering has anyone actually been invited to a wife swap party?
Answers on a postcard please.....

And Finally

A blog follower called Joan messaged me this photo ...
She said ( in her world kindly) that she thought if I was a dog, this is the dog I would be

Hey ho! 

Mama

This will break your heart

Beast

Jessie Buckey as Moll and Jonney Flynn as Pascal

I took myself off to theatr Clwyd last night and thankfully there were an actual film showing.
So I went to see the Film Beast -a debut slow burn thriller by British filmmaker Michael Pearce.

Set in a rather foreboding and moody Jersey we find twenty something Moll (Jessie Buckley) still living a claustrophobic life at home with her parents. Moll is the part time carer to her father who is suffering from Alzheimer's and is very much under the thumb of her mother (Geraldine James) who favours Moll's siblings in a controlled passive-aggressive kind of way.
After a disastrous birthday party Moll bumps into Pascal ( Jonney Flynn) a scruffy , uncouth poacher and petty criminal who strangely seems to understand the sadness within her  and the two embark on a relationship against the backdrop of fear and mistrust as the wider community copes with recent disappearance of murder of several Island teenage girls.

Pearce has crafted a complicated and rather clever narrative here. Very slowly we find out that Moll is not quite what she seems. Instead of just finding peace and a happiness from her icy family home within her new, rather sweet relationship, Moll's past (a moment of teenage violence) is uncovered and revisited and the story then descends into a much darker piece indeed.

As Pascal becomes one of the suspects in the local murders the couple's pasts come to haunt them both and what started as a haunting love story evolves into who is the real baddie here?  kind of thriller.

Buckley carries the film quite magnificently. With her delicate looks, and doe eyed expression that can morph from Victim to " villain" in a heartbeat , she captures perfectly, the ambiguous backstory within Moll and she dominates the film in a powerhouse performance.

It's a dark, moody piece, beautifully shot in an oppressive Jersey most would not recognise .

8/10

Wild Flowers

Winnie lay in full sun as I was collecting wild flowers .
There was shade in the garden but she just could not be arsed moving
Subsequently she overheated and became a little unresponsive and panting as old bulldogs can do.
I lifted all 26 kilos of her and lay her nippledown on the cold concrete of the back patio then doused her with cold water.
20 minutes later she had strength enough to eat a cold cocktail sausage 

A Blog Conversation

I was going to do a film review tonight but after washing my face, donning one of my neat birthday shirts and driving to Theatre Clwyd 
I found out that I'd got the date wrong and the place was silent except for a noisy kids production set up in a big inflatable globe!
I came home again and put on my pyjama bottoms
Hey ho

This is a subsequent blog conversation between three friends

John Gray5 June 2018 at 21:57

I once fell asleep on a bus with a mini pork pie in my mouth 

ReplyDelete

Replies

1. 
   Rachel Phillips5 June 2018 at 22:05

   If I'd been there I might have drawn a sketch of you. I have a sketch of a man asleep with his mouth open and a woman stuffing her face on a train. 
2. 
   Tom Stephenson5 June 2018 at 22:08

   I fell asleep whilst shagging once. The relationship didn't last very long.
3. 
   Rachel Phillips5 June 2018 at 22:10

   I read a book at the same time once. That one didn't last long either.

Arsehole

I was too busy listening to this piece of music yesterday and almost got knocked off my feet by a woman riding her bike down Lower Bridge Street in Chester .
She called me an arsehole
( well I lip read that she called me an arsehole)
Arsehole is a great put down
Especially when uttered in an English accent
Arrrrrssssssseeeeeee.............hoooooooollllllll

By The River Dee

I am sat by the River Dee in Chester.  It' a glorious afternoon. In half an hour I shall meet up with an old friend. He has organised a detour on his way home to Manchester to meet me.
Recently my old friends have been a godsend. You touch base with them and years of love and friendship and mutual support rekindle and all becomes right in the world even though it isn' t really alright at all.
I'm lucky. I have a lot of friends
Human bubblewrap 

Daily Dog Protest

I was sat in the Churchyard on the bench by the Porch door when I fell into conversation with a very Welsh couple from Babell.
I explained just why Winnie and Mary was with me and informed them that like minded Trelawnyd-ites were going to bring their dogs to the churchyard in protest to the new signage..they nodded in that solemn way many older Welsh people do when they are being polite but uninterested .
They wanted to know who looked after the new cemetery as it was so tidy and as they droned on a memory popped into my mind out of nowhere.
A silly memory of a childhood pet tortoise called Achilles.
You could buy tortoises from pet shops then when I was eleven
And I bought a lovely one with black button eyes
I'd only had it for 24 hours when our fat family Dalmatian called Tina, who had taken a sudden dislike of everything reptilian, ripped its head off after a prolonged bout of chewing.
My father, who was incredibly weak where gore was involved, came across Achilles' corpse whilst out with the petrol mower and the whole bloody mess was too much for him and he fainted clean away .
My mother found him slumped next to Achilles' body when she went out to investigate why the mower was roaring away in the privet hedge.

Funny what you remember

Just Before Bed

All the neighbour's lights have come on .

Walked bulldog in bare feet for last walk of the night. Stepped on frog

Frog screamed

I screamed even louder

Bulldog then swallowed frog

I then screamed again

Off to lie down in a darkened room

A New Set Of Characters

The new Trelawnyd community Association had their open afternoon today in the village hall and it was nice to see a new set of characters coming into the spotlight as we , the committee from the Flower Show step back into the shadows .
Information from the friendship group and choir stood alongside the flyers for the folk music concerts, newly proposed youth club, art and craft group, women's institute and environmental society and even the local archery club brought a full scale target in the shape of a wild boar to advertise their presence .
One wag who stopped by my table ( I was bigging up the village afternoon tea party event in July btw ) suggested that we use the archery club to remove Irene from the church field!

This will divide things

Trelawnyd Church has a shiny new notice on the gates...Now I am the first one to argue all dogs should be well behaved and under their owners control at all times but I think this decision is heavy handed especially as the old churchyard cemetary is overseen by flintshire county council. Interestingly on the council website it is stated that dogs are " always welcome in cemeteries as long as they are on a lead"I understand that the sign was put up by the church council after village elder Islwyn was accidentally head butted by a local Labrador

So I for one will be enjoying the old graveyard with old Winnie in tow for a good while longer

56 .....50 fucking 6

I am 56 today
I know my own mind, I know myself, I know what I like.
I know what I don't like..I'm not a silly young queen.......never had been
It's my birthday though.....
Later I will tell you about my " No dogs in the churchyard" debacle

But for now this is how I feel about my birthday.....and how I will celebrate it......
ITS A quiet affair
Hey ho