Last Will & Testament

I'm sat in the solicitors
Not my divorce solicitors
But another, more local one
I'm just about to amend my will

I'm working out who to leave my fortune to
The solicitor's clerk has just made me an Americano and offered me a Danish pastry

I feel strange

Thank You

Thank you to David Hastings who sent me this Walking Dead car sticker today
Thank you Nu for my London treats.
Thank you to Roscia for your theatre gift
And thank you to Chic Eleanor for more yellow roses, all wrapped up by a simple black ribbon
How lucky am I ?

The Walking Dead starts again next Monday
David's message that accompanied the sticker was only half washed away by Dennis' storm
"You're a funny sad git that man " it said.......
Lol
Got it in one!!!

To My Face

The sad death of Caroline Flack has galvanised the ongoing debate about trolls and social media.
There is, I think, an underlying truth about some people that patrol the internet
And that is they feel vindicated to say exactly what they like on line,
Words and phrases that they would never say to anyone face to face.
The internet buffer allowing a type led Tourette's to be unleashed and unchecked.

I last lost my temper a week ago.
I was in the gents toilet in Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre and had just washed my hands when three giggling young women boldly walked in and stood next to the one occupied cubicle.
In front of them stood six men all in the process of having a wee.
I went off like a fire cracker
" How DARE YOU COME IN HERE, HOW DARE YOU! Get OUT! GET OUT! A MAN WOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED INSIDE A WOMAN's TOILET GET OUT!!!!!!" 
You get the gist
I had the three of them scuttling for the exit like panicked chickens and before anyone of you jump to their defence at the poor provision of lady's bogs in theatreland compared with the average size of a woman's bladder..All I will say is that ....I DONT CARE!!!!
(Btw I did note that in the Albert Hall , all of the toilets are multisex)
Privacy is privacy and men deserve it just as much as women regardless of the fact they can effectively wee into a hole in the wall...

Like those women in the theatre, or the man that can't control his Huskey dogs on the railway walkway. I am quite capable to say my piece, but I shall always do that to their face.
This ability to speak my mind has improved the older I get, but immaturity and low confidence or low self esteem is no excuse for trolling insults.
Trolls feel they have the right to say anything they want
They feel that they have the moral right to speak their own truth and I guarantee that they would never speak the shit they do online to anyone's face.
I guarantee it...

I'm sat in my favourite cafe , the one with the bad tempered barista .
I've got some small jobs to do
I've collected Albert's "rustic " bowl from pottery
I have to buy a belated birthday gift for my brother in law ( Ive decieded on some fresh steak and trimmings)
And I want to visit my aunt who is home from hospital
I bumped into labradoodle guy,again this morning. I think he is gay but I've gone off him as I caught him chainsmoking in his car!
It's a shame really,
I really did like his bobble hat

Yellow

Flowers c/o Chic Eleanor, worried face c/o Dorothy

One of my favourite social media sites to follow is the Facebook postings of a lumpy, optimistic Pittsburgh singleton called Joe Bielecki. Now I sort of know Joe, for I stayed with him for a few weeks when I visited Pittsburgh in the early 1990s but I  follow his posts because they are mundane and ordinary , and to me , utterly interesting.
He always posts a photo of what he had for breakfast......
I love Rachel's posts too when she talks about cutting the lawn and having sardines for tea
I like to know what people get up to
I enjoy reading about pottering.
It was 1 pm before I realised that I hadn't eaten or drank anything all day.
I'd walked Dorothy and Mary along the old railway line and we met up with a chap with his labradoodle who I have bumped into several times.
He's my age and friendly and I wonder if he's gay.
He has a nice trendy bobble hat which I am coveting
Anyhow, I made a mound of eggs, avocado and sour dough bread which will last me the day.
I'll make soup this afternoon
Butternut and chilli soup
And I shall watch How Green Is My Valley later when I can sip it.
I've always had a thing for Walter Pidgeon

The tail end of Storm Dennis has arrived with more gales and rain and I watched from the lane window at the few members of the congregation as they scurried back along the Church path towards home.
I was watching them as Dorothy was watching me.
The little bulldog's anxiety of being separated from me has never wavered since she arrived.
I doubt it will improve now.
Like some humans she just naturally anxious.

I booked a babminton court for me and Gorgeous Dave to play tomorrow, made a couple of phonecalls, shampooed the living room carpet free of mouse entrails, and lit the fire
I'm listening to Coldplay now as I type
My Next job is bed changing

Yellow is my favourite colour

Come From Away

Yesterday was a pure treat. and a total surprise .
I have always wanted to go to the Royal Albert Hall and so after a rather swish lunch in a Kensington Brasserie Nuala took me there to see the latest performance spectacular by Cirque du Soleil, which was described as A Waking Dream Around Mexico.

It was a wonderful experience to watch top notch acrobats perform in a score of surreal and enchanting tableaux themed by the music and culture of Mexico
It was beautiful and entertaining and so different from anything I have ever seen before.
I was blown away by the sheer skill of it all.
A wonderful afternoon.

We ate supper in a lovely modern Indian restaurant in Ealing and we talked all night.
Nu told me she could see a change in me on this visit and told me how proud she was of me for surviving a divorce which has ripped my guts out of me 18 months ago.
Her pride meant more to me than anything else has done recently.

Today amid fears of Storm Dennis I left Nu at Marble Arch and took a tube to Charring Cross Road to see the musical Come From Away.
I loved this musical .
Set in the Newfoundland town of Gander, it chronicles several stories around the phenomenon of 9/11 when 38 international planes had to make an emergency landing at the isolated community numbering just 9 thousand souls .
Over 7 thousand people had to be fed ,watered and housed amid the plucky, Celtic community and the musical explores several themes, mostly of kindness and utopia between passengers and the locals  against the background of the largest terror attack on earth.

It's a beautifully simple and effective piece of theatre and I loved it

Yesterday

Have A Good One .... I'm Off To London

Through Others' Eyes We See Ourselves

The title of today's post is a bastardising of Lev Vygotsky's famous
Through others we become Ourselves quote.
I was thinking about him on Tuesday on the way home from Sheffield.
He was a hot looking Russian psychologist who was photographed with a wonky shirt collar
I like to think he was my kind of guy.

Last night I bathed Mary.
I didn't really have time to do it.
Night shifts mean that there is a quick turn around of eat, shit, sleep and brush teeth before you do the same again, but her skin has been playing up of late and she needed some pamper time without the more ebullient Dorothy bouncing around in the foreground like a loon.

Mary watched me with somber brown eyes as I washed her
Welsh terriers watch you.
They sit and watch everything and all of mine have loved a hot bath where all they have to do is to stand and be pampered.

They watch you slightly worried that the stroking and the warmth and suds and happiness is going to stop and their eyes never leave yours.

It's the nearest moment I will ever to have to having a baby of my own

I met my friend John on Tuesday morning. He has been ill and now really doesn't " do" the more old fashioned Wine glasses into the wee small hours thing that we used to do.
But he looks well, and fit and as always, was dressed to impress
We have evolved as friends and now often meet for a long breakfast , with sausages and eggs and toast and tea ( coffee in my case) 
He hasn't the look of a Welsh terrier but like Joan Crawford's wisecracking best friend Ida in Mildred Pierce,
he misses nothing

I saw myself through his eyes on Tuesday.
It wasn't a rebuke, it was a reminder.
I was reminded just how nice my life is now.
My friends and family, my "new " career and new friends and colleagues . My home, my village, my theatre going, my choir......my life.........and... my health

Vygotsky's main work was in child development but his Through others we become ourselves quote rings true on so many levels
When John and I got up to go from the wine bar which now does fancy breakfasts for business folk, and as the snow fell on a grey but welcoming Sheffield City centre,
John turned to me with some exasperated affection and said
" You have tomato sauce down your front!" 

Hallelujah

This is the first recording of our choir last week when we tried this version of the Leonard Cohen song and It's not a bad first stab at it despite a few wobbly key changes.
I missed choir last tonight as I was rostered to work night shift

Best Of Days

Monday night....sheffield...
Brilliant musical ( I cried buckets)
Drinks with a couple of old friends ( Mike and Jane)
Then.....a few more drinks and dancing in a salsa club until just after midnight
How good was that!!
I danced IN PUBLIC!!!!

Up at 9 am and just managed to fit in a two hour breakfast with the ever arch John H ( Eve Arden in nice shoes!!)

Then caught the 11.11 for home xx

Hey ho

I had sex the other day
No big deal, but I thought I'd share the fact with you.
It involved someone I have known a while and been friends with for a time now
We made each over laugh and although neither of us are looking for a relationship with the other
It was fun to giggle and laugh and feel nice that someone actually finds you attractive and likes you for who you are
( and visa versa of course)
We are friends so we will meet up again

I'm now on the train to Sheffield .
It s a quick night out in between shifts when I will meet up with an old friend, have supper , see a musical ( Theres something about Jamie) and relax.
And no it's not the same friend before you ask.

Hey ho xx

Separate Tables

Separate Tables is a 1950s movie version of two of Terrence Rattigan one act plays of the same title.
It is essentially a study of nine different types of loneliness and centres its story among the singletons that frequent a small genteel English hotel following the war.
It's a powerful film of a powerful play and the cast Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster, David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Wendy Hiller all play at the very top of their game
The main storyline has a retired and lonely major ( Niven) outed as a fraud and a fairly unsuccessful dirty old man. The other guests are reluctantly organised into agreeing with a bitter old widow (an odious  Gladys Cooper) that the major should be asked to leave the hotel but before he is about to go, the Major has to run the gauntlet of the breakfast dining room where the residents are gathered at their own, particular isolated separate Tables.
After one of the party breaks ranks and greets the shamed Major, gradually the others , including Cooper's neurotic daughter Sybil ( Deborah Kerr) join in, and film is left with the gentle optimism  of the kindness of ordinary people.
It's a lovely ending to a rather sad film

A Scotch Egg .......lost

The expected storm has hit Trelawnyd hard in the night.
So hard that the graveyard cockerels haven't crowed this morning,
They are struggling to keep their feet in the Church yew
I have slept badly
It's 5.45 am and I'm going to work soon
I went to see my aunt Judy yesterday
She gets discharged next week
She remains slightly dysphasic after her stroke
But laughed a little in between the more serious conversations .
The lady in the next bed was from Trelawnyd
And Judy pointed the fact out before I sat down
I have a lot of time for this lady, my aunt's neighbour, as she once made one huge glorious scotch egg which she entered and won in the one and only scotch egg class in the cookery section.
It looked like a magnificent grenade of a scotch egg
It was so big that it had to be lifted with two hands!
The cookery judge said she had NEVER seen anything quite like it EVER
IT WAS HEAVEN IN BREADCRUMBS!!! It was a monster....it was fantastic!!!
And I never got over the fact that the lady involved took her scotch egg home with her!!!!
And I never got to taste it!!!!!

An Italian In His Undercrackers

Look closely at the diners 

I was worried about the food.
After all Chic Eleanor is a fine diner and sara and her Italian Professor have lived their former lives in France and Italy where good food is as normal as breathing
I kept things simple with homemade soup and sourdough bread I baked yesterday morning, I then chose an all in one chicken,chorizo and veg dish smothered in garlic and herbs which impressed everyone and things were going swimingly until Eleanor jumped at the touch of hot dish of buttered beans and unexpectedly  flung them into the Italian Professor's lap
Things then got all a bit blurry with guests leaping and swearing in foreign tongues and with much
 shouting and trousers being pulled off!
Chic Eleanor maintained her composure throughout and sipping her wine said quietly
" I have appeared to have caused a calamity" as my other guests ran up to the bathroom to tend to a groin of third degree butter burns.
But things soon calmed down as everyone returned to finish their main courses. The Italian Professor sitting quite unconcerned in his underpants for the rest of the night.
I laughed until I cried.
A lovely night

Dear Philip

Philip Schofield, tv presenter comes out gay after thirty years of marriage

Dear Philip,

You came out on tv this morning.
You were brave and anguished and obviously felt that a pubic announcement was the way to go.
I send you my best wishes.
I send you my support.
It was obvious that you have discussed this at length with your immediate family.
Your concern for them was palpable and I hope the new definition of yourself will be easy on them all.....sometimes it's not only the news you have to share that is the important thing, it's the way you share it is vital.
It seems to me that you have shared your news with integrity...but
Being gay is just a tiny part of you
In many cases it's the least interesting thing to explain
Your family will continue to love you
Your friends will too.

For the most part, in this complicated, angry little world, being gay is no big deal anymore.
And I thank goodness for that.

Chin up
Tits out
And best wishes

John Gray
Trelawnyd

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm having a gentle sort of day today.
My rib fracture seems to be more of a set of pulled muscles ( I know drama queen) but the pain is just as bad, so I'm dosed up on painkillers as operation dog snot removal is underway.
Trendy Carol ( sporting a lovely mustard coloured winter coat and matching hat)  called around with an unexpected gift and Polish Monika knocked on the lane window to see if I wanted her to walk the dogs....
I've made spiced butternut soup and baked a sourbread loaf

I'll leave you with this shot of Just how well  the French Fire Service protests against cuts to their pension ....

Extravagances

With a new mortgage and all of the household and animal bills to cover ( as well as a divorce solicitor to pay as soon as she scratches her nose) my finances have been a constant worry over the past year.

I don't waste money on much.

I don't buy flash clothes. 

I drive a tiny economical car 

And over the months I now pay smaller direct debits than ever before

But I must admit that my one and only real extravagance is theatre

Like it's more easy accessible brother of Cinema , theatre has proved to be somewhat of a lifeline to me and with a nationally renown theatre just 20 minutes away, I have made every effort to see as many different productions as I can safely afford. 

The more experimental the production often means the Cheaper the ticket, and so, with the more "off piste" productions I can usually afford a couple of tickets and therefore can have company on a night out ( my poor friend Naomi must get a mention here as I have dragged her to some several truly dreadful nights out over the past year!!) 

I've also coupled theatre going with the catch up with friends, and so when I meet up with my Sheffield friends next week, we will also factor in the Sheffield based musical There's something about Jamie at the Lyceum and when I see Nu next in London , I booked a cheap as chips ticket to see a matinée of the wonderfully reviewed Come From Away!

Theatre feeds the soul ....like my choir, cinema and friendships

Tonight, full of painkillers, I went to see a fringe dystopian production American Nightmare at Theatre Clwyd with no more than 28 other theatre goers. 

I enjoyed it, it was interesting and provocative and I wanted to discuss it with someone when it was finished.

But of course I didn't ....

Thats the downside of going by yourself 😥 

The Dinner Party

I think I cracked a rib in yesterday 's fall.
Last night I spent a good hour in a hot bath in order to relieve the pain then had an awful battle getting out again so severe it became.
Luckily one of the villagers I know well is on strong painkillers, so after a minute's phone call and a brief walk in my pyjamas, I dosed myself up with some dihydrocodene  and then went to bed
Dorothy slept a millimetre away, with one guilty eye open on me  all night.

I still feel bloody sore this morning, but forced myself to go out dogwalking which was fortunate as
I bumped into Bernard-the -German who lives on Maes Offa
I say fortunate as on Friday I am hosting my first dinner party ( my first as a single person) and am in desperate need of professional cooking advice.
Bernard- the-German is a talented self taught cook who will share a full recipe anytime and anyplace and so in just two minutes flat I had been given a robust Spanish recipe for a chorizo chicken type casserole and was offered a black pudding alternative before I gave my excuses and moved on.
( he approved of my starter of homemade chilli squash soup with homemade sourdough)

The dinner party is in fact more of an evening supper for friends but this small event signifies something quite subtly important in my journey back into the singleton world.
It's a large step back into normality.
My guests are a gentle Italian academic and his warm and interesting wife and Chic Eleanor from the other side of the village,  so I'm in good, warm loving  hands.
Chic Eleanor texted me yesterday " Darling John , I can't wait to see you!" 
She's a sweetie!
I'm looking forward to see her and my other friends too....

Today is operation dog snot removal
Hey ho

Aches &'Pains

I took a tumble today.
Dorothy ran in to me on the beach and next thing I remembered I was face down on the sand smelling of shite.
The dog poo bag in my pocket had burst in the fall and I was winded
Bless she did look concerned

That was six hours ago and I'm home and now aching like a tart at the end of her shift
I can hardly get out of the armchair which is next to the fire.
I've read all afternoon though
A real rare luxury for me.

Hallelujah, The Fat Pony and open flies.......

I've had a lovely day.
First off came the chimney sweep.
I had swept the chimney myself but it had continued to smoke, so I got a little chap in to finish the job properly.
He came a year ago and fell in love with Winnie then, so it was lovely to see her lying next to him with her sleepy big head resting on the calf of his boiler suit as he beavered away.
I met a friend for brunch ( a glorious corned beef hash at "y Shed " ) then left him in a rush in order to meet my sister's at pottery class.
My pony was fired and glazed and looked mighty fine with his proud head, so I made Albert a selection of painted food bowls as Janet glazed her pieces and Ann threw some more pots on her wheel.
We've all loved our time with clay.

Tonight was choir and for an hour we all grappled manfully with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah as Jamie ( sadly sans his 1940's RAF moustache )bounced around with his flies open.
I did notice at first, but soon forgot, ( I got lost in the practise and anyway didn't want to be accused as being a crotch watcher!!) Thank goodness for the quick thinking Hattie who had the prescience of mind of sending his music iPad the needed " your flies are open!!" message

I saw Trendy Carol too.....she thanks everyone for their kind wishes in the previous post!
"They were kind and they helped" ...she said 

Seren

At teatime there was a gentle knock on the lane window
It was Trendy Carol and her face had crumpled up like old newspaper
Her poorly Welsh Terrier Seren was no better and she had just been asked to make the decision all pets owners dread
It was time to say goodbye.
Carol had that faraway lost look of the shocked
So I suggested that I take her and her husband to the vets ten miles away.
I am glad I did as the waiting room was filled with bright eyed and yappy  patients which were too much for Carol to bare. I waited in line for the appointment to come
Whilst carol and her husband waited outside .
They didn't have to wait long.

A dog's death has a special power about it.
There is something quite special about just how, once owner and dog are reunited, a certain peace descends .
All the dog can see and feel is the presence of the pack .
The alpha is back in charge.
The immediacy of the moment taking over .
It's lovely but heartbreaking to watch as the dog has no real concept of the reality of the moment.
And so minutes after we arrived
Poorly Seren gently folded into Carol's lap little a sleepy toddler would do at the end of a busy day and all Carol could feel was the oh-so-familiar warmth of a Black and Tan body on her own