Fanny-arsing

I'm watching the National Holocaust Memorial and cried buckets when the survivors of several world holocausts lit candles for the dead.
I've been pissed off on this day of reflection,
A day not to be selfishly pissed off I guess
I shouted at the irritating little man who uses his bad tempered husky type dogs pull him up the Dyserth Walkway on a skateboard.
As usual he made a big drama  play of telling them to be be good boys as they lunged to snarl at Mary and the crouching Dorothy and this morning I told him in no uncertain terms to
" Stop FANNY- ARSING ABOUT and move on!!" 
( For those that don't know, someone who is "fanny ars[e]ing about" is someone who is making a silly meal out of something)
The man started to argue but stopped when I waved him off with Benedict  Cumberbatch waft " Be off with you!!" 
What was I thinking?
I also had a bit of a falling out with my dog insurers on the phone and told two chattering women off in the cinema for talking......TWICE!!!
Like I said I've been out of sorts today.
I know why....but that's not for here

The film 1917 was an inspired choice of movie today.
A simple story of how two young soldiers infiltrate enemy lines in order to stop a foolhardy and suicidal British attack on the German forces was made into a first rate cinematic experience by its technical genius .
You will be simply blown away with the cinematography which gives the feel that the entire film was shot in just one long continuous take.
It's a revelation to watch Roger Deakins work on screen as at every step the soldiers make the camera is there swooping in and around the action with the agility of a hummingbird.
The visuals literally take your breath away.
From the visceral horror of no man's land, the audience " lives" the major set pieces with the actors. And so we are all trapped in an underground bunker,running scared in a burning and devastated Belgium town and are inserted into a crowd of soldiers who are listening to a melancholic prayer/song before they are sent over the top.

It's truly magnificent to watch.....and the wonderful cinematography is supported admirably by the film's editing by Lee Smith and its truly epic score by Thomas Newman
Go and see it on the big screen , you will be blown away
And don't fanny-arse around either!!!!!!

Sorry Wrong Number

It's been a quiet day.
Got up at 8 ish and walked the dogs, then we all went back to bed until 11...
Avocado on sourbread toast for breakfast
Then the beach with Dorothy and Mary.
Winnie is now too old for a sand walk
I didn't speak to anyone until 6 pm when I rang my friend Nigel for a natter
The village was dark and cold just now after Mary and I ventured out with a thank you letter to post
The letter was addressed to the manager of the building society who employed the wonderfully professional ( and heavily made up ) Leanne . The woman who after much pouting and computer effort sorted out my mortgage for me.
Her wonderful false eyelashes, which battered away like two pairs of butterfly wings always reminded me of Betty Boop's
She went beyond the usual hoops such works go to, in order for me to secure the cottage

I was reminded to send the thank you letter of praise after Friday morning's coffee and text break at work. Worrying that Dorothy was a bit loose in the bowel department I texted Paul , the sexy bearded dog walker with the following message

" Can you let me know if Dorothy has the shits today? She's already left a bloody skid mark on the bedsheets!" 

Only I didn't send the message to the " Hound"  hotel !!!
Oh nooooo..........
I sent it to Lianne at the Halifax  building society

Fair doos
Lianne was plucky enough to text me right back

" I will ask around the office for you but I don't think she will own up to anything as embarrassing!" 

How Lovely

Do you remember me telling you about the patient I " Ally mc Beal "danced with ?
Her relatives brought me in a gift organised by her today
Gin, proper tonic and a load of lovely fresh lemons with a covering hand written card

Dream Dinners

Yesterday I was sent a copy of a newspaper cutting from 1998
It was from the Sheffield Star 

What are your answers ??

Who would be on your guest list?

What would be your ideal venue?

What food would you serve?

What music would you play?

Who would you have doing the washing up?

Anyone you would not invite?

God I Looked young!

Damp

The cyclamens I planted out  atop the garden wall are struggling to bloom in their water soaked pots and everything outside looks a sad and wet brown/green
This winter has been consistently damp  and depressing and today's day off ( sandwiched between long work days) has found me pottering.
I had half arranged to catch up with Jason the affable despot at the pub, but what  I think I need more is some soup making, a long hot bath and a few telephone calls and so we've made a raincheck until the next pub quiz night.
From the kitchen window I can see Albert braving the drizzle as he sits quietly watching a mole hill growing in the graveyard.
He's got a thing about the moles since their recent and rather surprising arrival at St Michael's.
The evening mist shrouded the village in an anti social blanket as dusk fell
And the smell of spiced butternut squash filled the kitchen

Ally

A little while ago a patient asked me if I had a bucket list of my own

They died a day after our conversation 

" I want to have the confidence to be able to dance spontantiously in public" 

I told her

"Like they did on Ally McBeal" 

She replied

Understanding perfectly 

and we both did a version of this silly dance

In her sideroom

Me in my uniform and she in her pyjamas

Good Morning!

I wanted a lie in today

No way

Now I want to get to sleep

Fat chance

Before that I burnt my tea

And after a promising start

Had A very busy day

And now, I just

Want to

Kill, kill kill them all........

Soot

I got the forehead soot off for choir but missed the moustache bit.
( no hot water until later..)
Gentleman farmer Peter told me I looked like ageing Welsh Hitler!!!!
It was great to be back at choir tonight we learned another Norwegian Reindeer clapping song
And Jamie ( with his 1940s RAF moustache ) had us stepping in time again which amused Hattie no end

Dirty day

Today has been a dirty day
Ive swept the chimney , threw my first pot and still covered in soot and clay am just about to go to choir
The interbet is down and the chimney is still smoking

Jojo Rabbit

A comedy where Jojo, a Nazi obsessed ten year old German boy (Roman Griffin Davis) and his invisible best friend Hitler (Taika Waititi) have to deal with the prospect of losing the war, a Jewish girl hiding in the attic, his mother's secret resistance work and the normal problems of growing up, doesn't sounds very likely but Waititi, who wrote and directed this odd little piece has crafted not only a very funny satire of every Nazi film ever filmed but has produced a gentle and an incredibly warm piece on growing up and the loss of innocence .
I am glad it was a comedy , for if filmed as a straight drama it would have lost buckets of charm as well as gaining an overload of trauma and misery.
The movie, at times is laugh-out-loud funny,
However when the reality of true horror of the story needs to be shown then Waititi shows them with such subtle power that those scenes literally rip your heart out

Johansson, a lovely turn

It took at least ten minutes for me to settle down after the quite amusing Hitler character charms himself into the action ( boy did this feel wrong) but after this the wonderful acting and sensitivity by Davis in the lead role and the performances from Scarlett Johansson and Thomasin McKensie ( as
Jojo's mother and the girl in the attic respectively) all drag you in to a story which is all about how a child sees his world .
I must also say something about the child actor Archie Yates who pops up as Jojo's overweight but relentless cheerful and pragmatic best friend. He almost steals the show. His final scene where he and Jojo experience the front line against the advancing Russsian forces is incredibly poignant especially as his character puts down his machine gun and admits that all he wants to do is to go home to cuddle him mother.

The delightful Archie Yates

Jojo Rabbit, like every satire of horrendous real events, has a great deal to say
But it also works as a simple story of a little boy growing up
And on both levels it succeeds in bucketloads .

Lazy Sunday Post

Rock'n Roll

I woke just before 4 pm
I had slept through the bun fight which was the arrival of the sexy bearded dog walker
And the dogs were lying in unconscious heaps in the kitchen when I sleepily came downstairs
I hadn't managed a shop so cooked gnocchi for tea
And prepared it simply with garlic and lashings of parmesan

I ate my tea, Amelie style at the kitchen table and read the previous posts' suggestions on paint and textures and light
I watched the final half hour of Cocoon and drank my usual bucket of coffee
A bath, ironing of the uniform, feeding the dogs and I'm off too to work

Not exactly rock n roll

Decorating On A Budget

I had just opened the first of a loaned mountain of Homes & Gardens magazines when the phone went.
I'm now working night shifts instead of day shifts over the weekend
Bang went my afternoon of decorating research.

I need to redecorate the cottage.
Psychologically that needs to be done
But physically that really needs to be done

A log burner maybe romantic and inviting when lit
( when you get home after a long shift and you have to light a mucky stove, romantic is the last friggin word that comes to mind)
But soot and dust and occasional smells take their toll in a tiny cottage
And everything looks a bit grubby, even in candlelight.

At the moment the living room is a gentle sage green, a plain background to my remaining original art, grandfather clock and furniture .
The paintwork is an old fashioned ivory cream and the ceiling and beams are painted white in traditional Welsh style.
Every surface is now slightly sooty and smoke stained.
The carpet is old and needs replacing.
It will have to be content with a good deep clean.

The master bedroom needs a total overhaul
The wallpaper remains a thirteen year old Laura Ashley rose print

I'm open to ideas on colours schemes
Send me your ideas

gifts

One of my colleagues in work gave me a gift today
It was the above framed map of Trelawnyd  with the caption "I'm staying in the village"
A small kindness but a thoughtful one/

I didn't get back home until 20.45 pm
Winnie's jagged wound is improving but she is still walking in boxing gloves, which strangely seems not to be bothering her too much

There was a bowl of macaroni cheese left carefully wrapped inside my mail box
thanks neighbours!

The Gayest Film Of All Time

I've Just Sat Through 

Magnificent Obsession

I've never seen it before

"May I get excited Tomorrow?"

Your Advocate, your mentor

No matter just how old you are, we all need an advocate of our own
If you are lucky, those mentors will be your parents and in some fortunate cases a healthy parent in their eighties can still parent a son or daughter who are approaching their sixties.
My mother died not long after the millennium, my father back in the late 1980s, so since then and to be honest since I was a child, my mentor and advocate has always been my elder sister, Ann

No matter just how old you are, its nice to have a protector
I remember when I was in my thirties and I brought my husband to be home for the first time my sister was gracious and welcoming and warm and funny
It was at a family meal and as we got into the car to leave she followed us to the road to say goodbye.
There was lots of  cheek kissing and hugs at that farewell and just before we drove away my sister leaned through the passenger window at my husband to be and smiled sweetly
"Don't you ever mess him around" she warned not unkindly but the subtext was clear to all of us
"For if you do, You 'll have me to deal with!"

who is your advocate?

A Little Fat Horse

Well I think I have found a hidden talent

My sisters and I went to our first pottery class today and we started off with my request at potting my own little fat horse

So here is my very first little fat horse

not bad for a first attempt

Next week we are being taught how to throw and centre our clay on the potting wheel!

My sisters in full concentration mode

When I was busy potting , Winnie was opening up her wound with her strong back claws so I's missing choir in order to watch her after bandaging her back foot in a boxing glove

Tits Up

I never got to see Little Women at lunchtime
I found a rather nasty self scratched wound on Winnie's neck folds this morning which needed assessing so found myself sitting in the vet's waiting room instead of the warmth of the Prestatyn's Scala Cinema orange plush seats.
Winnie always makes a vet visit a bit of a joy even if she is not quite 100% when there.
She loves to sit by the door as we wait to be called, a position she likes as she is able to greet any dog or human as they wander in.
She reminds me of a rotund 1930s matron greeting her guests at a fashionable cocktail party.
The new Eastern European vet snorted when I all told her that I need not hold winnie's head for her to give the standard painkilling injections and antibiotics
and true to form Winnie started to blow kisses at the vet as the first injection plunged in
The wound looked nasty
and so did the 100£ bill
These dogs will be the death of me.

The weather is atrocious and with Storm Brendan in full flow I bought Winnie a Ginster's Pasty
then went on spec to the multiplex cinema in Llandudno.
There I saw the excellent and typically Guy Ritchie-esque The Gentlemen as Winnie slept after enjoying the aforementioned pasty and several handfuls of miniature cocktail sausages!

Hugh Grant his best performance to date

 

I wont go into any of the plot of the movie as it is simply just too complicated to make a stab at, suffice to say it has Mathew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam , Michelle Dockery and Colin Farrell all playing London based gangsters who are involved around the battle for topdog status in the production and supply of high grade marijuana

Who would have imagined that Lady Mary was such a good shot

In typical Ritchie style the film is very darkly funny with the whole cast looking like they had the time of their lives during its production, and uniformly they give some very impressive performances indeed, performances that are just overshadowed in a scene stealing turn by Hugh Grant who turns up as a sleazy gay, camp Michael Caine sounding private eye
I loved watching him in this movie, which is a true compliment as I don't rate him much as an actor.
I bet he wins a BAFTA for best supporting actor!

I'm home now and have just dressed Winnie's wound carefully as she sat on the kitchen table happily munching a slice of pizza
I love that old dog
She has more Chutzpah than Miriam Margolyes

Two Days Off

Nurses are notorious for not recharging their batteries.

I am presently trying to bring in a slightly more structured way of debriefing and discussing situations that challenge them in clinical every day work

It's bread and butter within Samaritain work

But still not quite normal practice in nursing.

Younger nurses still, I think, work hard and play hard. 

Lots of late nights, alcohol and buckets of fun

It has always been so

Today I find it's getting the most out of days off.

And days off mean , wherever possible two days off together!

This week I have three days off together.

Yesterday was a bust after night shifts. It was a day of scrubbing the kitchen floor free of bulldog separation urine, dog walks, shopping and cottage cleaning

The next couple of days are earmarked for some downtime

Today it's Little Women, A lunch date, dog walks and a hospital visit

Tomorrow it's Pottery Class, choir and badminton with Gorgeous Dave

Many of us are not very good at giving ourselves permission to relax.

We use words as should and Need too many times 

The next couple of days, all I am allowing myself to say 

" I'd like to..."

Matt Alber

The penis post was a cheap shot
I admit it.
Penises will always grab the attention, and I was tired
Anyway posts can get forgiven for they are seldom long to read
Videos posts are lazy posts too
but this one is at least pretty to look at.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o8uocNOr7aY