Right Now

Everything is so immediate nowadays  .....don't you think?
Back in the day, I always thought it was rude to call someone on the phone after say 9 pm .
I think I still think like that for if the housephone rings after that time...I immediately think that there has been a death in the family.
How we have messenger  and whatsApp
24 hours a day you can see who is on line and who is listening
Is that a good thing...hummm probably...... yes
Last night heading towards midnight my sister messaged me about her dying cat.
I could support and advise and agree with her course of action, support in the wee small hours can only be a good thing, especially as houses sound and feel so quiet in the dark.

Toni confirmed she is delivering my logs moments after Bunty left  her barnstorming message of butch lesbian support. Both would have not rung me at ten pm, but they messaged me.
That can only be a good thing.

I am reminded here of my mother who spent many many hours on her own at night. She got drunk a lot and talked to herself . Sad moments where she would act out conversations and thoughts and worries without the benefit of an audience. How messenger  , or snapchat or Facebook or FaceTime would have made her life so less painful than it was.

I write a post and waiting just  a few seconds I know it's been read...or at least acknowledged .
I contacted Raymondo within a few seconds after being reminded of his disappearance from blog land and I know Nu will read my one word review of a movie I have just seen within a second of me posting .....

How lucky are we to live at such a time of communication plenty

So why are there lonely people in the world 

Blast From The Past

I've just got this message
Remember BUNTY the bulldyke Lesbian who bought my geese a few years ago?
She contacted me out of the blue this evening

"Just read your fucking  depressed blog! 

Jesus Jonno🤧

Get your fat arse into gear and meet me after work one night in Chester.- I've been transferred 👍🏼

We will do - a 👊gay bar and K'bab afterwards ---- I am such a classy dyke-----my treat you retired 🍒

Try to wear something fucking decent...not your usual shit wardrobe.I 'll bring Katy ( ngf)

She loves a bear with manners and she always drives :-)

Bxxxxxx" 

Breakfast

Emotionally it's been somewhat of a difficult week, saved really by keeping busy, a night out with Jason the affable despot and a few phone calls and messages from friends.

Just when I feel on top of things, a ball seems to hurtle out of left field and I'm back to feeling irritatingly insecure and somewhat  deflated.

I'll perk back up, I always do.

Mary and I went out for breakfast on the beach today

She shared a bacon buttie

I also had two coffees

And we people watched until she was bored of the game
Hey ho

Crazy Rich Asians

Years ago, for my 40th birthday, my husband booked me and all of my friends. a special showing of the romantic comedy My Best Friends Wedding.
If you haven't seen it....it's a lovely film 
I've just seen the 2018 equivalent, namely the recent American hit, Crazy Rich Asians.

Henry Golding swoon

Set amongst the super rich Chinese of Singapore we follow proud self made American Chinese academic Rachel Chu ( Constance Wu) as she visits her boyfriend's family during a friend's wedding. Her boyfriend ( The impossibly handsome Henry Golding) is part of the most elite and traditional of Chinese families and as the various over-the-top Chinese characters assemble for the celebrations Rachel is faced with impressing a disapproving family matriarch in the graceful ice cold shape of Michelle Yeoh.

Nothing new here, except that the cast is exclusively Asian ( or in Golding's case part Asian) a fact which seems to have taken the states strangely by storm even though at least 5 cast members speak with pure English accents). Crazy Rich Asians is not particularly original, it's a rom com directly taken from all of those flicks we remember from thirty years ago  and although at times quite sweet and amusing , it certainly doesn't challenge Julia Robert's " Best Friend's  doe eyed Julianne.

Michelle Yeoh excels in the Meryl Streep role, Constance Wu is adequate in the lead but for me the film is almost stolen by serene Brit Gemma Chan who crops up in a lumpy sub plot about a Rich relative dealing with her husband's infidelity.

Gemma Chan

I'm sure the movie has something to say about Chinese tradition versus the American Way....but for me, it is just an old fashioned comedy that has been given a twist that isn't quite as funny as it wants to be
7/10

I was the only person in the cinema 

Surprised?

The Women In My Life

They quietly watched me weed the garden for hours 

Life In A Vacuum

I'm having custody of the dogs and Albert
But lost the dyson!

Dum, Ba, dum, dum, dum..............

I had trouble with him my dum dums last night

But after a bit of struggle ( and some shameless copying of the lead Bass) I got there in the end.

Choir practice is not easy, but I'm getting there.

There is no music to follow, no elderly matron playing the piano in the corner, there is just the slightly manic choir master who sings your bit briefly showing you the note with his flat hand, and off you go. 

My favourite song we performed was Soul Wind an African American song from the Deep South. 

I loved it....here is another amateur choir singing it ( a video I've been practicing to this morning) and I must say that  our version wasn't too far from this performance, but perhaps that was down to the acoustics of the village hall.

You forget everything when you're singing.
You're not yourself either....as you are one of many
And even if you are dum dumming at the back
You're a vital part of the group!
And that's nice.

What was the last song you sang?

And to end......

Thank you all for sponsoring me and Ann for our zip Wire Challenge which is booked for the 26th
I have finally reached my goal of raising over £4000.00 for Rhyl Samaritans, which is a phenomenal amount of money, especially given the fact that my original goal was just £300.00
I am very proud and humbled by the support given 

Growing Up

There are moments in life when lightening strikes and you suddenly grow up into being and more importantly understanding what it is to be a real adult.
I remember one such moment today
I was a young 27 year old nurse, who worked hard and played hard
I had just started my career on the spinal Injury unit and found myself working on the readmission Ward which catered mainly for patients who suffered from the complications of long term paralysis, namely skin problems , urological dysfunctions and carer issues.
There I became friends with a big gentle bear of a chap called Noel.
Injured in a car accident two decades earlier , Noel lived with his family in a small rural Norfolk community . He was paralysed from the neck down and required full time care even though he could drive a car and had attended a local university.
He was a strangely sanguine man, with a calm good natured dignity to him.
I liked him immediately ,
On reflection I fell for him immediately.
Noel was on bedrest due to skin problems but his enforced captivity never seemed to get him down , indeed rather conspiratorially he suggested that I lay down next to him one morning when I was suffering from a dreadful Leadmill nightclub induced hangover.
We became firm friends.
A year later, after Noel's skin issues had healed and long after he had returned home ,I caught up with him for tea, when I was on a flying visit to see another friend who lived in Cambridge
Noel was his usual gentle natured self.
His health wasn't good , but he blossomed with the care his sister and her family gave him, and when we sipped our tea, she and his grown up niece disappeared off to do some shopping.
" She's not my real sister " , Noel eventually told me as we chatted  and caught up "they are not my real family.....my family abandoned me after my accident"
He then told me the whole painful story of a dysfunctional family who had turned their back on a newly disabled boy of twenty who had been confined to a wheelchair .
Almost from nowhere a local family with two small children offered to give Noel a home and when Noel was 25 they officially adopted him into their family without any fanfare or ceremony.

" They saved my life" I remember Noel saying in his usual calm and reasonable way
"They didn't have do it ........I wonder to this day why they did!"
And As I watched him struggle a little with his emotions , I realised just why they had done it
This gentle sweet man had given them as much happiness as they had given him
I held his hand briefly even though I knew he couldn't feel it.

And as we drank our tea outside a tearoom in Bury St Edmunds, I grew a little older......and wiser

Shitting Myself

my friend Jane  doing the wire

There was a small collection of cards waiting for me in our Samaritan centre last night
All but one had foreign post marks....
More cheques and money sent directly to us from blog readers
So a big big thank you to S Vercoe, Alma, The Pattersons , jenny O and Jerry

I cannot underline enough just how frightened I am of heights
It's an inherited fear, passed down to me by my mother who was famous for negiotiating any hillside walk on her hands and knees, and for years it has crippled me from doing many things which is strange given the fact my favourite movie of all time is The Towering Inferno.
When my sister and I were eight were went on our first ( and indeed last) foreign holiday with my mother and Auntue Greta. Loret del Mar in the 1970s was a place full of high rise cheap hotels that seemed full of beige furnishing ants and straw donkeys. Our hotel rooms were on the tenth floor and it was easy for an eight year old to lock himself and his mother out of their room.
The maid suggested to my mother that I was small enough to climb from my aunts adjoining room to ours across the balcony in order to unlock the door and the bloody woman ( probably fired up by the local gin) totally agreed!
AGREED!!!
Thank god I was an assertive little sod even then... though my impassioned arguement that an appropriate adult negiotiated the 150 foot drop rather than a knock kneed geeky child with a big head did fall on unimpressed ears....common sense prevailed

Heights continued to terrify me.
I've blogged before about being led off the observation deck of Seattle's space needle by an elderly Japanese tourist during a thunderstorm ( my knuckles were totally white and totally cramped)

I was 40 then
And on a trip up St Paul's I farted so nervously on the dome staircase an American  woman had to gasp a " Dear God in heaven " comment behind me.

When painting the back of the cottage ( 9 feet above the ground) I got so nervous I had to ring my brother for help.....he and my neighbour Sailor John thought I was a pussy.

So I hope I have illustrated just how hard the Zip Wire Challenge shall be for me
Ann and I do it on the 26th and would love a bit more sponsorship to seal the deal
So I hope you don't mind that I repeat that my donate page can be found at

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/johngray1

You can also donate directly at PayPal ( jgsheffield@hotmail.com)

Or by cheque to the Rhyl & SE Wales Samaritans,
23 Bedford Street , Rhyl, Denbighshire North Wales LL18 1SY

Thank you soooo much my friends ..we are up to ( with gift aid etc) 3,700£+.let's reach 4,000£

Good Mornin'

I'm boring the tits off myself with negative posts , so god knows what you lot feel...
A friend said this today
"If there is a lesson to be learnt here, it is that most feelings of hopeless melancholy serve no useful purpose other than to ruin your evening"

He's right so Have a bit of Gene and Donald and the fabulous Debbie
Enjoy

Cake Tin

This flamingo was a recent gift from Florida.
It reminds me of our lurid pink flamingo Christmas lights carefully packed away in a box in the bookshelf.
I wonder if those will stay with me or go with The Prof when their time comes.
Another thing yet to sort.
It's the small things that pain.
The objects that transport you to another time, another place and another country when you look, feel and experience them.
Conduits of memory.
A few weeks ago I collected all of the special Christmas decorations the Prof has amassed over the years, from London and Sydney and New York and SanFrancisco and placed them in a cake tin labelling it unsurprisingly Xmas decs. 
Ready to go.

Hattie

I felt I was in one of those nice , middle class wartime films this morning. I was sat at a table of the Trelawnyd Community Assiciation's Book swap Coffee morning with Heulwen and Hattie..
Now Hattie is the new girl in the village.
She's in her twenties, is painfully pretty and has a bubbly charm of Lily James' Character in The Guernsey Literary and potato pie Society .
She also wants to meet her fellow villagers, with a eagerness which is as sweet as it is genuine .
After a slow start the Saturday coffee mornings seem to have taken off well.
There is no pressure on people to attend at a fixed time , so people pop in when they want have a mooch through the large array of books, grab a coffee and a cake, read the paper or chat to their neighbours .
All the tables were in use when William and I went in.
I pointed out the characters to Hattie as they came in .Hubert the old village baker, Boffin Cameron's mum and dad, velvet voiced Linda, sailor John, Daphne and Meirion from the flower Show committee ..Mrs Trellis
Hattie darted off to introduce herself to Margaret Walker and Heulwen and I smiled at each other like extras from that wartime film
" she's a nice girl" we said together

Clearing The Decks, The Escape

The Dogs, Albert, The Ponies and Irene spent the afternoon watching me build the field bonfire out of destroyed hen houses

Albert was behind me

Tonight I went to see a piss boring movie The Escape with Gemma Arterton.....I walked out after an hour.
Tomorrow .....what exciting things are afoot ?
Morning coffee morning and book and veg swap at the village Hall......then lunch with a friend and a joint walk with Mary then a takeaway at my sister's and Strictly !

I'm a mad f*#+ing bitch!!!

Playing To An Audience

I shared some nursing stories from over 36 years with a friend yesterday..the funny ones made them laugh...it was nice to giggle along

• I've been assaulted several times over the years ranging from slaps and bites, one black eyed punch, one wet turd flung at the back of my head, being hit with a bag of urine which burst on impact and I've had at least 6 pairs of specs broken.
• I've crashed a drunken paraplegic into a ditch in his wheelchair during a panicked push back to the rehab unit from the pub during a snow storm
• Ive employed a buxom nurses breasts as a diversion to a male patient who had a particular painful dressing
• As part of a course I was on I managed to organise a work experience placement at a series of Pittsburgh hospitals 
• I've seen 5 babies born including one that was christened Harley Davison
• I was taught to dance the veleta in 1983 in order to partner long term psychiatric patients at their Christmas do
• I have witnessed open heart cardiac massage twice, held 4 severed fingers in a vomit bowl and witnessed someone bleed to death in a few seconds from ruptured oesophageal varices.
• I was reported by a patient in the community for saying I was working for the gas board 
• I have dated one patient after I had nursed him
• I've dated 5 nurses ( 4 women 1 man)
• I 've shagged one doctor 
• I've played myself on a tv medical documentary ( you only saw my arse)
• I have helped at least 6 couples conceive babies
• I have sat with dying patients too numerous to mention , laying them out with well practiced dignity afterwards
• I have attended perhaps a dozen funerals in and without uniform
• I have put a visitor with learning difficulties to bed ! After undressing him and putting him into pyjamas
• I have helped scores of Spinally injured men achieve an erection
• I ( and my ward) have won two quality prizes for our work
• I have sat a course for looking after the newborn baby and got told off for cleaning a baby's arse under a mixer tap
• I have dropped a psychiatric patient down a fire escape
• I have cried a hundred times in a sluice, in a clinical side room or at home over a bad day
• I once kissed a policeman when I was on night duty ( 1988)
• I once shared a bed briefly with a quadraplegic when I was hungover
• I have danced on the roof of a main hospital in sheffield
• I have mentored scores of junior nurses and still keep in touch with many of them
• I created a whole balcony garden , complete with trees in massive planters for my bedrest patients 
• I once got my arse stuck in the window of the changing room at lodge moor hospital 
• I have never fainted at work but I did vomit once after a patient threw up in my mouth during CPR ( in the old days) 
• I have loved many many many special people and been loved by a few back
• A previous wirkmate has just added" Miss you John Gray you did forget to mention your amazing neck massages and ability to hug me and/ or scape me off the ceiling xxxoh and fit arse!" ..thank you Shelly

With one of my awards

Obviously not for the best well dressed nurse 

Nice

Autumn is here and Bake off is back with another twelve eclectic characters who have, I suspect been auditioned within an inch of their lives in order to reach the short list.
The line up could be the cast of a 1970's disaster movie.
The sassy Gran, the diffident scientist, the bubbly mom......cardboard characters at first that are suddenly fleshed out with lifestyle clips that could have been pulled directly from Facebook, Bake Off  offers us a glimpse into peoples' lives that seem normal and cozy and nice.
The gay dad who never has enough time to bake because of demand of his kids, the quirky mental health worker who looks every inch a mental Heath worker and a dippy Anglo Asian, Amy Winehouse with a smart mouth, there is much to choose from where favourites are concerned, and the audience, Who understands that they are being manipulated, just goes along for the nice ride

Bironey cried a lot and laughed at herself, then cried again. Mannon cried too and was immediately comforted by the geek looking PhD Rahul who couldn't look more uncomfortable on a 1:1 than any 14 year old schoolboy sporting his first erection.

Bake off is off to a great start...
Watching nice people, doing nice things being nice........is addictive

Divas HATE being told off!

Finally..... a bit of levity.
I guess it was my fault, but I left the meagre detritus of my egg breakfast on the kitchen table just after 9pm.
At eleven I walked back in to see what only can be described as a bulldog disaster
Winnie sat guiltily on top of the table , all 30 kg of her balanced precariously on one delicate corner.
The chair which she had hauled herself up on was lying on the floor and everything, table chair and floor was covered in water, from an upturned flower vase....
William's and George's paw prints peppered my newly scrubbed kitchen floor.
To add insult to injury all of my paperwork , bills and correspondence had been knocked onto the soaked Lino, like sad confetti .
I hauled Winnie off the table with an over-the-top- cry of " you fat bastard!!!" And smartly smacked her bottom, something you just don't do with bulldogs, for moments later she had flounced into the living room with all of the umbrage of Bette Davis in All About Eve where she jammed her grim face into the darkness between an arm chair and the wall.
And there she stayed sulking for well over an hour and a half

You gotta laugh

The Waiting Room

Do you remember Tom Hank's character in The Green Mile? 
He was the one plagued by recurrent urine infections that were eventually cured by the saintly John Coffey 
My John Coffee is a box of trimethoprim antibiotics.
And after a second dose my abdominal pain and nausea has started to subside.
I can't tell you just how ill these infections leave a a person.

Yesterday I could only walk Mary for twenty minutes or so before a toilet visit was in a order, so bumping into Jenny the old post mistress proved to be a bit of trial of cross leggedness so to speak.
She was anxiously waiting outside the house of her daughter in law waiting to hear if her grandchild had been born.
" The birthing pool has been delivered " she said excitedly
I haven't been quite well enough today to check on what happened ....a baby born in the village....how wonderful is that ?

I missed choir practise last night which was a real shame,, but I knew I needed antibiotics so a visit to the GP out of hours had to be organised.
Now in our neck of the woods you talk to a nurse on the phone who completes her algorithm of information you provide. If she thinks it necessary, then you are given an appointment with a doctor based at the local hospital's ER department . You sit with all of the other people waiting their long turn in casualty but you are seen at the time of your appointment .
It's a good system.

I almost passed out sat in the waiting room. I was hot and it was hot and I'd just peed ground glass in the the loo. I must have looked rough because the receptionist mouthed " are you ok?" From inside her booth....
I mouthed back " I'm ok" and crossed my legs.

I only had to wait a further few minutes before I was called . In that time I watched a couple in front of me as they waited for the triage nurse. He was the attentive one, going to the desk, collecting a cup of water, helping his wife to stand up on her swollen fat feet,
And I found myself envying that attention as I sat there by myself .
Being alone and unwell
Isn't nice.

Ursula

Bwthyn-y-llan, 

Wales.

Dear Ursula,

We need to have a little chat you and I
It will be the very last chat we will indeed have.
This chat does not need or indeed elicit a response . It is for you to read and no doubt rant about on your own blog which lies in a somewhat quieter part of the internet.
It for everyone to read too....for I've found just writing something pithy in my comment box invariable fails to get through to you.
Perhaps in the future others can explain my comments,
That's if they can be arsed.

You have been what my dear rancid old mother would call " a mixer"
From the get go, you have felt almost a divine right to argue the point almost on every blog you visit
You enjoy throwing written grenades into the blog mix. You enjoy being the devil' advocate and you enjoy the thrill of the arguement.
Now I understand some of where you are coming from. Indeed, there is no one better than me who understands the joy of prodding someone in the ribs, especially if they are pious, or pompous.
But, hell Ursula you take it to the limit.
Every point has to be examined, discussed or disagreed about, and a better solution suggested as if we are all really bothered.
You've thrown your baby out with the bath water !
By over egging the pudding.
You just cannot rein yourself in like any normal person can do...you have no off button
You just don't know what's best for everyone

You have insulted me and my friends on the web, then you have waited a while for the dust to settle before reappearing like a long lost old buddy.
But you are not my buddy, I really do think that you are no one's buddy

I have enough buds of my own
And so...publicly and for the last time you have been told the truth as I see it.
If you return to bleat, to defend, to argue or to troll, I shall photoshop you, then delete you and finally I shall report you.
You have been warned
There, I have put an end to your silly ways here....with one letter... no threats of shoving  a scotch egg where the sun don't shine, no quips about " cheap shoes" ....just a final two words

Grow up.

Yours,

John Gray

Pee

I'm pissed off with piss today

Yesterday, I caught a somewhat disoriented William weeing all over my duvet and pillows.
He'd obviously had done it before and obviously had a bladder the size of an average water melon. It took an absolute age to had wash everything and make good the smell.

Today I've got an unrelated urine infection
I get them from time to time and the pain, discomfort and inconvienience can lay you low for a few days.
My psoriasis is worse too, so I suspect my reserves are a little low at the moment

I'm off to get some antibiotics and hope I'll be ok for choir practice later.