Fancy A Chat?

 

Hello, 

Let’s have a chat.

I’ve been out for a long walk hoping for a chat but strange as it may seem, I didn’t bump into anyone I knew. 

The walk was so long that half way through Dorothy had a mini gay-man’s flounce and sat miserably  at the back door of a parked car in the blind hope that it was Bluebell.

She’s only just forgiven me now, and that was after the fact I let her lick the eggy bits from my Brunch plate.

Yes people as part of my diet I only have Brunch and Dinner now and alongside a reduction of alcohol and eating crap after 6 pm at night. It seems to be working

Well....I had to do something , my underwear drawer needed a mercy killing initiative.

Stretched to buggery and with too many holes.

Thank god for Amazon. 

As Mrs Doubtfire  would say

So in these final moments of lockdown I am polishing those tarnished bits of me, I missed when pulling up my bra straps over the last year. Something, I think we all do, when there is a whiff of spring in the air and the weak sun, warms your bones when out with the dogs.

Takes a long sip of coffee from my trusty bucket

I’m feeling happy today. Happy with my new resolve. I’ve started to read the 20 books collected and stacked on my new ( ultra trendy John Lewis) side table and I’ve started the first of my on line courses which remind me I still have a brain and the capacity to debate. 

............phone rings ...I answer

I’ve returned after a long phonecall from Nu which was as invigorating as an icy plunge in the sea. We haven’t physically met for a year and we are now making tentative plans what we will do when we can...more adventures afoot more laughter ahead.

Blogland has settled down too, with less troll activity spoiling the chatter and it’s nice to feel more kindness and less game playing around........oh and as I’m talking about blogs .....

Go visit Libby at 

https://libbysaidok.blogspot.com/ her new blog needs a few virtual hugs of welcome

I’ve just video called my friend John in Sheffield. We discuss Hitchcock at length, it’s one of those conversations we used to have over too much red wine in All Bar One. 

I miss him

Time for a coffee refill

Bloody hell it’s 2pm ....I’m working the next three days so I have jobs to do. 

Operation dog snot removal, more sooty cobwebs  to scoop up, ones I missed last week.

I’m glad We’ve had this chat.

I will leave you with a photo of the primroses I planted by the front door.

They are optimistic and cheerful and mirror my mood

Enjoy them 

Hitchcock

 

Had my first lecture from the The City Literary Institute tonight on The Master of Suspense:Alfred  Hitchcock’s Spy Thrillers. It’s an eight week course which, from my first experience , seemed very interesting and stimulating 

It’s nice learning stuff just for my interest only and not something confined to work it’s a bit like pampering yourself with a long bubble bath and a facial 

It’s the BIG GAY QUIZ tomorrow night 

At this rate I’m going to be all zoomed out! 

Sunset Phonecall

Was it five years ago? 

I think it was. 

Sunset on a summers’ night and a phone call from a stranger.

He was sat in a car, near a beach and it was clear he had been crying.

I could tell he was young, perhaps thirty.

He had a clear English accent almost devoid of local lilt or twang.

He told me he was a teacher but refused to give me his name.

I worked so hard on that phone call. 

I kept him engaged and I listened. 

And he talked so sadly about how he felt and how much he wanted to die.

His class had scored poor marks in their A levels and he felt a failure.

He had felt a failure all of his life.

For an hour he talked and he even laughed when I asked him to share with me what music he had listened to in the car. 

He didn’t know that I was sensing I was losing him and that I was playing every trick in the book to keep him talking.

I heard him open the blister pack of tablets and he admitted he was piling them on the passenger seat

My colleague mouthed are you ok from her booth and I shook my head. She came over to listen on the spare headset and jotted down ideas to help.

They helped, the man talked a little more.

We talked about the nice things in his life, his friends, his family but he grew sad when the sunset finished and he told me it was almost dark.

I asked if we could call him at another time , to support him, to listen, but he refused politely

I listened as he took a few of the pills.

And he cried a bit more 

Before gently ending the call with a click.

My colleague blocked all further calls and brought me a coffee and a hankie and 

I ate some chocolate digestives and I cried a little

Cried in frustration and for the futility and waste of it all.

I will always remember that call

Loyalty

There is one thing you have to know about me and that is the fact that  I am always very loyal .

Totally so.......

Loyal to romances 

Loyal to friends, to my family 

And loyal to my obsessions 

The Walking Dead returns this month for a final flourish ! 

I’m so excited 

I’m wearing my fifth  best Walking Dead  T shirt tonight in anticipation 

It has soup dripped down the front

In true form 

Carol and Daryl have almost made it to the end ....

Who would have thought?

Heaven Knows

I had my first ordinary flu jab yesterday evening and had a surprising reaction to it ( I had never had one previously) 

Last night I felt rather poorly, lots of aches and pains and a banging headache.

I had a lie in, took paracetamol and am feeling more human today.

John Huston’s  Heaven Knows Mr Allison is playing on TCM with Mr Mitchum at his sexy masculine best

One Is Fun

 Back in the 1980s my mother, thinking she was kind, bought me a copy of Delia Smith’s One is Fun cookbook.

I was mortified .

She might as well have accused me of being the last spinster in the parish 

How sad I felt.

Tonight I decided to support the village pub with their takeaway initiative and ordered myself a minted lamb burger with a side of macaroni cheese. 

“ Is that the order in full?” I was asked professionally 

“ Yes it’s just me “ I replied suddenly feeling like a right sad sack 

Another singleton of the parish.

Do you remember that episode of Sex And The City when single Miranda felt judged by the Chinese takeaway lady? 

I was reminded of that today

The meal was expensive for a treat for one, but it was a treat and I’ve got enough macaroni for supper tomorrow .

The food was bloody delicious 

But I did feel a bit like a sad sack 

Cobwebs and kindness

 

I’ve only just finished sucking up the sooty Miss Haversham cobwebs from the beams in the living room.

Smoke leaves everything foul smelling and grimy. 

My chimney sweep turned up today to help sort my mini crisis out. 

It was his day off but he troubleshot the problem and kindly worked out that there is a kink in the lining of my chimney which has been constricted by tar.

He cleaned the chimney yet again and I’ve set up special cleaning logs to loosen the residue.

As he beavered away and I cleaned everything in sight my sister turned up and tidied up the front garden. She’s wavered her fee asking me to put it towards my speeding ticket charge which arrived today 

200£ 

Bollocks for the ticket but big thanks to her and again big thanks to the chimney sweep who helped on his day off

I met Chic Eleanor for a walk , she started to teach me mindfulness 

 

 

Smoke

My chimney blocked again tonight

Yeah right..........just after I got home after a long day and I lit the log burner!!!

As the cottage filled with smoke 

I opened the door and windows to let out the fumes and went into the kitchen to hide as the temperature dropped to just above zero 

I sat in the reading chair, with the dogs and Albert jammed all together on my knee and I covered us all with a wool throw as we listened to radio 4

My family

A feisty Welsh terrier, a sad bulldog with issues and a wide eyed black cat with a deformed leg

And we sat together in the warmth of my reading chair 

Four souls 

Together

Near Miss

 I got off shift early yesterday and took some time owing 

I rang the vets before I left work and organised they leave me some medicated shampoo for Mary .

The weather has been extraordinary wet of late and I drove up through unfamiliar roads to the country practice and hit a flooded piece of road along a deserted stretch .

Bluebell aquaplaned on the slick road and veered across the road with her backside into oncoming traffic and we slid for what seeming like an age before sliding the other way and eventually stopping on the drivers’ side verge with a loud bump.

I checked for damage and could only find a few strands of grass sandwiched into the bumper 

I was still shaking by the time I got home twenty five minutes later and I’d only just walked into the cottage when there was a knock at the door

It was my neighbour Mandy with cake wrapped in silver foil .

“Thought you could use some” 

She said 

And I said I really could 

I ate the cake with a coffee , in a silent cottage

We are all a fraction away from that accident which could change our lives forever I thought 

to myself  as I ate the cake whilst still in my coat.

Sat Night

This kind of warmed and broke my heart all together 

 

Hotel Mumbai

 

It’s bucket of coffee time before a 12 hour shift and I didn’t sleep well.

It’s a while since a film has given me nightmares ( United 93 was the last) so I should not have been so surprised to find out that Hotel Mumbai had done the same.

For those that don’t know Hotel Mumbai is a fictional depiction of the Islamic terrorist attack on the prestigious Raj Hotel in Mumbai in 2009. The hotel was effectively put into a siege by six heavily armed terrorists and for days those terrorists systematically killed as many guests and staff members as they could before being defeated by special forces flown in from the capital.

This film isn’t an exhilarating Romp Die Hard style.

It is a visceral, very real cat and mouse drama where the protagonists spend most of their time hiding under tables and in cupboards until their captors corner them. 

In once scene an elderly house maid is shot sat on the lavatory in the bathroom where she is hiding whilst in another the hotel receptionists are forced to ring the guests in their rooms telling them to come out to be saved by police who are not there.

The film depicts the courage of many of the Hotel staff who stayed behind to protect their guests, but it’s a real and downbeat film which underlines the savagery of the indoctrinated.    

It game me nightmares ..... hey ho...off to work 

Trim

 

Needs must.

Mary had a haircut this morning. She will also have a shampoo once the knots and clingons have been removed.

Mrs Trellis spied her through the lane window and mouthed that she was going quite mad due to lockdown. 

I’ve made spiced butternut soup ( before the clingon removal ) and this afternoon will watch the movie Hotel Mumbai 

Tonight it’s the big gay quiz and I’m working all weekend 

So that’s my itinerary 

Bra

 The Ghost stories of followers have yet again proved more interesting than my original post. I’ve read most at lunchtime at work and shared some with my workmates who found them highly entertaining .

I finished work at 8 pm 

When I’m on day shifts I don’t get home much before a quarter to nine. By the time I’ve collected the dogs from Trendy Carol, fed and walked them, fuelled Albert and lit the fire, I don’t get to sit down until 9.30pm or so. 

It was a bit after that tonight because Dorothy didn’t want to leave the warmth of Trendy Carol’s trendy sofa.

That upset me

As I sat down my phone beeped cheerfully 

It was a co worker from today 

She is my age 

The message simply read

“ I’ve found my first bunion, I’ve ran out of Bacardi  and my bra is now a dirty grey...I’m too old for this shit!”

The Fast Ghost

I didn’t tell you all but I think I saw a ghost the other week.

I wasn’t shocked or frightened, just rather intrigued. 

I was at work. 

It was around four am in the morning and I just told my colleagues that I was going to pop out to my car to collect some paperwork. 

When I got up, so did they for when I returned we had a succession of turns and syringe driver checks to do, and as I exited the unit through the electric doors I felt and sort of saw Ruth , my fellow nurse,  move very quickly behind me to enter a patient’s room immediately to my right. 

I collected the paperwork from my car, and as I returned to the hospice , I felt strangely unsettled by the “ quickness “ of Ruth’s movement, so much so that I asked if she had indeed entered the patient’s room so rapidly. 

She denied that she had. Nor indeed had our fellow fellow support worker, the only other able bodied person inside the unit .

But I knew what I felt.

I felt and half saw a figure move behind me into the patients room with some gusto.

Last week I worked nights again but this time with another nurse. This nurse is well known for her spiritual experiences and comically is referred to by her colleagues being a bit of a white witch. 

She is also one of the most pragmatic and talented hospice nurses I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

I asked her about her experiences on nights without explaining any details of my own “ visitation’  and 

she told me that knew only of two recent ‘visitors’ . 

One she described as a man , who stands quietly on one corner of the hospice away from any other activity 

“ And the other? “ I pressed her

“ oh the other is an odd bod” she said cheerfully “ it’s a figure that moves from this corridor into the first of the  patient bedrooms” she pointed to where I had seen my “ ghost” 

“ she really IS  a odd bod too ,” my colleague added

“ why’s that? “ I asked gingerly 

“She always moves very fast like a bullet ...always from right to left” she told me with a gentle smile

This used to scare me shitless as a child 

Shame

 

The exceptional Russell T Davies series It’s a sin, has brought back many old memories of the gay world from the 1980s. 

I wasn’t officially gay then .

No, the hatred and misinformed ideas of gay plagues and gay lifestyles shamed me into the closet so deep that not even my emotional intelligence could reach it.

This was the story of many young gay men of my generation .

We would be destined to come out later when the 1980s gave way to a more enlightened 1990s.

There was no internet then, no phones no apps ......if you were confident and ‘serious’ in having a relationship you met another man in a gay bar or from adds in the newspapers. If you weren’t you trolled around the same gay bars or else ambled around the parks after dusk.

I met my first proper boyfriend through the Sheffield Star.

He was closeted and angry and was generous and exciting and the relationship was a real abuse disaster waiting to happen. 

The abuse did happen and a couple of years I walked away with my head kind of held high and my mind firmly fixed about what I would and would not accept from a relationship with a man. 

I would never again accept that it was alright to be denied, to be hidden away, to be lied about.

I deserved better than that.

Before I met my husband, I dated a guy from chesterfield . He was a lovely, big teddy bear of a man, a broad country speaking animal feed wholesaler who worked through the Pennines and for several months we were happy with me visiting him , mainly at weekends or visa versa. One week day he unexpectedly found himself working in Sheffield and we met up for coffee and before we sat down I saw the wedding ring on his finger.

It wasn’t one of those he’s married kind of scenarios  at all

But it was a case of him wearing a wedding ring to pretend he was straight in the eyes of his colleagues and his customers. 

I reluctantly walked away from the relationship and didn’t look back 

Shame has no place in being gay

Shame has no place in being anything

Three Hours later x

 Three hours on zoom and messenger 

And I’m back to some sort of supported normality 

My friends ........the gold bars of covid 

Typical Lockdown Day

 

“Oh Darling John, I am now invigorated for the day!”

Chic Eleanor was on good form this morning.

We met in McDonald’s car park and drank our coffee in our respective cars 

No pashmina but in place was looped a long dark green woollen scarf.

Her hair looked glorious

Later Ive seen The German Lady and The Uber Couple out on my walk and said hello to all 

At home I’ve made vegetable soup spiced up with horseradish 

And I’ve lit the fire early, it’s cold and wet and miserable 

I will go to zoom choir tonight, I haven’t been for over a month 

I’m a bit lonely today

It’s a Sin

 It’s a sin

The reality of this 1980 s based Russell T Davis  tv Drama  set in the gay world during the aids crisis wasn’t part of my world and indeed of my history but boy is it a powerfully emotional glimpse into a piece of history where a whole generation of men were failed

A wonderfully evocative, moving and important piece of filmmaking 

I sort of recognised myself in the characters but boy did I recognise Nu 

Rubber Chicken Abuse

Somehow Mary has gotten hold of Winnie’s rubber chicken

For the last 65 minutes she has been attempting to kill it in the East Wing upstairs

The calm of the evening is lost forever 

Negativity

 I love this photograph 

The character in the blue could be anything...it could be covid, a toxic relationship or just life at its very worst, but we have all, at one time or another, felt it’s pull and experienced it’s draining feeling.

“ She could suck the lifeblood from out of a lemon” was a saying my mother would employ about a negative and chronically pessimistic friend oblivious that she would act the same with confines of her own family

What do you think of when you look at the photograph 

Answers on a postcard please