Winnie’s Rose

I’m sat in my office. 

Perusing the cost of new washing machines.

I hadn’t factored the fact that my Samsung wasn’t immortal.

More juggling of finances are in order.

Hey ho.

The gravedigger arrived early today and drove through my field to access the new cemetery with his mini digger . Village Elder Islwyn was there too. He loaned the digger briefly to landscape some of the more uneven parts of my field . 

While I have been ill, he has taken it upon himself to clear the Glebe of rubbish and detritus, which was kind.

Islwyn loves a project.

I’ve missed some village news. The Village Community Association has started to clear the village pond and opened up their loaned chipper to the rest of the village over last weekend. I will walk up later to check on how much they’ve done , guilty a little that I wasn’t able to help. 

I also missed the soup lunch at the Hall on Saturday, 

Trefor’s had a one word review of it

Looking unhappy, all he said was “ humm Mushroom”

I day dreamed for a while, looking at the autumn/winter colours of the gorse and the trees on the top of The Gop.

Everything is a sad dull brown.

My back garden looks just as bland I thought, then I suddenly caught a flash of bright yellow tucked away in a far corner. 

Bored with washing machines , paperwork and bills ….I went to investigate.

My rose bush “Winifred” had bloomed far late in the season.

It was a rose given to me by a friend as a memorial to the old Queen Of Sheba, and I’d never seen it flower so late in the year.

I cut two of the blooms and brought them up to the office, making my desk look cheerful 

Bored

My Vietnamese Spring Rolls

The one thing most irritating thing about feeling unwell is that it’s boring

I’m on the third day of Pivmecillnam Antibiotic and although my urine is now a clear amber I still feel lethargic and not well and still have a backache.

I’ve done laundry, odd jobs and have moved things from one place in the cottage to another , which is a thing most of us do when we feel at a bit of a loss 

The dogs have been walked, Trefor’s dressing completed and I’ve made tasty Vietnamese spring rolls with   Rice wrappers I found in my sushi drawer. 

These non fried rolls I filled with vermicelli noodles, prawns and salmon, coriander and slivers of avocado ( I didn’t have lettuce ) the dipping sauce is a simple mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, chilli, a tiny bit of sugar and water

The 2014 memorial for the Honghkou Shanghai Jews

I then watched a documentary Harbor From The Holocaust which was a moving and fascinating account of how 18,000 German Jews survived the war in Japanese occupied Shanghai . This was followed by a gentle Argentinian gay film called Hawaii which was delightful as it had a happy ending.

I cleaned Mary’s ears with antibacterial fluid then cleaned Dorothy’s so she wouldn’t feel left out. 

And I tackled a few of the eight or so magazines, which I treated myself to yesterday when I went shopping.

The magazine thing was a bit of a blast from the past when on impulse I bought copies of Private Eye, The New Yorker, Empire, Total Film, The National Geographic, Antiques & Home and Hello Magazine

I ve just made myself a decaf coffee and took some paracetamol 

Chic Eleanor has just phoned, she and our friends Sara and Pask are coming here for dinner next Saturday 
I’ve checked the clock as the light seems to have changed over the field and I’ve seen Pippa from the Rectory in her leopard print Fez walk past the cottage towards home

It’s only quarter past three

Heyho

Stew, Dumplings and Soup

I’m on the second course of antibiotics. 

I was apparently resistant to the first.  

I was hoping to feel brighter today but don’t  , so after a dog walk. I went back to bed.

That was around 8.30 am

Just after 9am the phone went. It was the builder asking if he could give me a quote for the chimney to be relined. 

He came round almost immediately, a gorgeous big bearded hunk of a guy

I didn’t have the energy to even think of flirting even if I had wanted to.

I may do when he comes to do the job

I went back to bed as soon as he had gone.

Before 10 am my mobile rang. This time it was the vets’ receptionist reminding me to pick up Mary’s meds so wearily I got dressed and  drove the 26 mile round trip to Denbigh to pick them up.

When you live alone there’s no option of asking someone else to do all the mundane things.

On the way home I bought stewing steak and suet from a little shop in Trefnant 

I haven’t eaten anything but toast in the last 24 hours and thought stew and dumplings would be comforting , given my headache, backache and the crappy weather.

I walked the dogs again, put the stew ingredients into the slow cooker and made the dumplings from scratch. Then my phone alerted again. It reminded me to go and do Trefor’s eye dressing.

That didn’t take long. The nonagenarian wanted to be off to the soup and roll lunch at the village hall.

By 3 pm, I curled up on the couch with the dogs feeling a bit sorry for myself

when there was a knock on the door 

It was the velvet voiced Linda from Well Street with a tub of soup in hand

Just what the doctor ordered

Stew and dumplings 

Bonfire Night

 

The Fireworks have been very loud in Trelawnyd tonight.

The village lies within a circle of hills so the bangs flash back and forth and echo dreadfully

The girls and I are still sat on cushions in the upstairs hallway in the warmth and darkness of the open airing cupboard.

albert is here too, he’s not stressed, he just doesn’t want to miss out . I’m watching an Extra slice of Bake Off on the ipad wrapped in a duvet

Dorothy has needed a quarter of Valium and has only hyperventilated once. Mary is sleeping fitfully

I feel bloody rough

(Sic)

I’m Laid low with a kidney infection

 

Abba

The Smell of New York and The Healing Darkness of The Theatre

 My last post wasn’t a sad one.

I was just struck by the fact that I looked so happy and rather suddenly I was transported to that hot day in New York where the air quality gave the city a smell and a feel all of its very own.

A strange, airless, slightly industrial typically New York type of atmosphere

I remember thinking that as I stopped for a moment on the High Line and squinted into the sun high over the Hudson River.

A moment and a feeling I will always remember.

Anyhow I’ve been busy today. 

I was up early with the dogs then took Bluebell to the hand wash and gave her a good seeing to with the shampoo Lance which is an incredibly therapeutic experience. I waxed her until she shone like a cornflower and vacuumed her insides until the heady stench of wet bulldog was camouflaged with the scent of lemon and antiseptic.

I picked up a coffee at the drive through then drove to the picture framers in St Asaph to pick up two “vintage” posters I had framed. The posters I bought when I went to Sitges ages ago and I found them in  their cardboard roll a couple of weeks ago when I clearing the decks.

The prints are straightforward, Japanese exhibition posters that pleased me with their simplicity.

They will govern the change of decoration in my office 

At midday I popped over to Trefor’s bungalow to check on his eye dressing ( which is doing very nicely thank you!) and after that I met a friend at Theatre Clwyd , for an afternoon performance of the play Isla. 

My friend is still deeply in grief and is finding socialising difficult so after a few aborted plans to meet up, I suggested we met at the theatre where she could “lose” herself  in the darkness and not feel obliged to say anything. 

Theatre and cinema darkness has always been a friend to me when I’ve felt brittle or lost.

Mark Lambert as Roger and Lisa Zahra as his daughter Erin

Isla promotes an interesting idea. Soon there will me more virtual assistants crooning their hushed female tones through wify, speakers, laptop and iPad than people. Lonely Roger ( Mark Lambert) is bought virtual helper Isla by his daughter Erin for him to keep occupied and busy and a strange sort of relationship is forged between man and machine as Roger’s life is complicated by an all consuming technology, lockdown isolation, and a sad loneliness that results in his frustrations being taken out with causal misogyny against his “female” companion with disastrous results  

Catrin Aaron

This co production between London’s Royal Court and Theatr Clwyd is an interesting one. Tightly directed by the theatre’s artistic lead Tamara Harvey and wonderfully acted by Lambert and by Catrin Aaron in a small but effective role as an officious policewoman, this production shows that North Wales’ lead theatre has hit the ground running.

It’s a thoughtful, incredibly funny and occasionally poignant piece of theatre which could stand its own in the west end .

New York

 Facebook reminds you of memories 

I’ve disabled the facility today 

This photo was taken exactly four years ago today

It was 75 degrees in New York City in NOVEMBER

hey ho

Last Night In Soho, Maryland and Albert Snogs Dorothy

 

Polanski’s Repulsion 

It’s been a corn beef hash of a day today

A right mixture.

This evening I’ve not felt 100% ( my bladder is playing up)  so Ive missed choir and rescheduled a badminton game with Gorgeous  Dave until Monday.

Don’t worry, it’s not covid, I got my negative PCR test result back early this morning.

Soon after that I took myself to the cinema then to the theatre to see a short rehearsed read through . The cinema ticket was complementary . The theatre ticket was free.

Before I went out, I popped to Old Trefor next door to change his recent minor surgery dressings. He rang up last night asking for some help. I’ve told him I’ll pop in each day to change them.

The film I went to see was described as a psychological horror movie. Last Night In Soho , as it turned out was really a sort of remake of Roman Polanski’s 1965 study chronicling the decent into a psychotic illness of a shy Belgian woman living in 1960s London.

The Polanski film was a chilling and truly terrifying piece….stark and almost documentary in its style, whereas the Edgar Wright film is a vibrant, loud evocative mixture of 1960s music, Hollywood slasher movie and indie drama with an excellent performance by the lead Thomasin McKensie as a mentally fragile fashion student who becomes obsessed with dreams and visions of a 1960 cabaret starlet (Anya Taylor Joy) who apparently was stabbed by an abusive pimp in the bed sit bedroom they both shared albeit it fifty years apart.

Wright’s movie uses the ambiguity of mental illness versus psychic visionary to its hilt and uses clever cinematography and vibrant colour to reenact a  Soho 1965 rather impressively 

I’m not a lover of horror films , but this one has some style,and class and I loved the fact that Wright featured three 1960s icons in the supportive roles, namely Rita Tushinghan, Terrence Stamp and the glorious Diana Rigg in what was her final film.

After this I went to Theatre Clwyd watch the rehearsed read through  of the controversial Maryland by Lucy Kirkwood which had recently caused such a stir at the Royal Court In London.

This is an extraordinary piece of writing and theatre , written quickly and in anger beyond anything any man can truly understand

Maryland features the meeting of two women who have been sexually assaulted and watching this 30 minute essay piece of theatre provoked and upset me more than anything I have ever watched in the cinema in a while

The theatre asked all patrons send a donation to https://rapecrisis.org.uk/ in Lieu of a ticket charge

Watching Bake off now with a gin and paracetamol 

Love Noel’s description of Lizzie

“Princess Leia dressed as a children's bullfighter“

T Shirt

I’ve bought some T shirts that are not Walking Dead T shirts

 

Auntie Betty’s Bosoms

 I got my redundant PCR test very early this morning and came home to make guacamole, spiced sweet potato soup and sourdough bread.

I also popped to Lidl where I bought a set of acrylic paints and an electric pepper grinder ( like you do) and I then watched the end of the 1957 epic The Pride And The Passion on the couch where I fell asleep and dreamt of Auntie Betty’s incredible bosoms 

The first bosoms I ever saw up close and personal.

Now I have to share here, that I always think of Auntie Betty when I see Sophia Loren in her hey day .

Not that Betty looked anything like Ms Loren, she didn’t, She was a tall Jewish matron, with a deep rasping laugh that sounded as though she chain smoked Cuban cigars for years and I’m sure she didn’t have one Italian bone in her body but to me as a very small boy, she was an exotic, sexual,  incredibly loud larger-than-life character who once, when very drunk, got stuck up a child’s slide with her cleavage rammed full of melting Dairy Milk chocolate buttons. 

Now, explaining just how and why Aunty Betty got stuck up the slide in the first place would take too long to explain, especially as I don’t really remember just how the whole packet of buttons became wedged between the most phenomenal pair of boobs ,which were pushed up and out like two pale chocolate covered melons by the constraints of a 1970 sheath dress hiked up by two metal slide handles.

It was quite a sight for any small boy to juggle with to be sure , let alone one of confused sexuality, but not only did I recognise the sexuality of the situation but also of the bizarre humour of it all and I remember clearly  collapsing into tearful laughter as Betty bellowed at her predicament and the rather all too eager men at the house party tried to carefully prise her free 

Bad & Good News

 Bloody hell! I was pinged by Track and Trace this afternoon ?..

Seeing that I’ve had my jabs ( though not long after my booster) I don’t have to social isolate but the call line operator told me I shouldn’t go to the theatre tonight. Tomorrow I need a test.

Bloody irritating

I’ve deleted the app

That’s the bad news

The good news is more delightful 

The lovely Hattie messaged me today. 

A couple of days ago she had her baby, a beautiful bouncing and rather late baby girl called Freya Mary 

Mum, Dad and baby are all doing well

Hattie and her lockdown baby, My Mary

Then her Freya Mary

Pumpkin

 Sunday mornings, I have found,  can be the most Lonely part of the week. 

Luckily, when I’m not rostered to work,  I have got into the habit of buying a quality newspaper and treating myself to a proper breakfast and bucket of coffee at y shed, where I can pretend I’m in a trendy corner of Manhattan 

For the sake of my sanity, the dogs are now always left in Bluebell , especially as only last week Dorothy rubbed her arse too excitedly against the table leg and upset my illy coffee over the floor .

I’ve just carved my pumpkin ready for its candles but won’t be home later as I’m off to the theatre with friends tonight. 

At least Covid has put pay to trick and treating

Hallows Eve

Albert loves Halloween 

 

Goats on The Orme

 The sky above the hospice is an azure blue and on my break , I wandered outside in order to watch a large group of the wild goats grazing on the Orme. 

The day is well organised and in order and all is well with the world again

No Time To Die ( a few spoilers)

I took my sister Janet to the cinema tonight, it was her first time back to the cinema for two years! 

Nice to have some sister time

 

The last Daniel Craig Bond No Time To Die, has everything but the kitchen sink thrown at it. Craig’s swan song has homages, visual, spoken and musical , from all of the Bond movies, but especially from the least favourite but most romantic of the series, the one with George Lazenby, whose title I have strangely forgotten and it works well, even though it’s a little too long .

I like Craig in it, who had a chance to act as well as shoot his cuffs, and gurn his lips

I love the playful way that the replacement 007 was a black woman and not Iris Elber

I liked the sassy Lashana Lynch as the “new” 007 ( in this movie Bond has retired)and I liked the script which you could just tell had the bite of Phoebe Waller Bridge flowing all through it

Paloma Bond Girl

I also liked Ana deArmas who almost stole the show as a ditzy but rather capable Cuban Bond girl called Paloma

Big, showy, overly talky ,and too love story ish,  it isn’t the best Bond, but it’s a suiting tribute to the Craig Years in the role which made Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench such wonderful parts of the franchise.

The very sexy Jeffrey Wright as Felix

A Meatball under the freezer

The heavens opened this morning on North Wales and the many dog walkers on the Dyserth/ Meliden walkway were found sheltering in small polite groups under the old railway bridges that intersect it at regular intervals. 

The rain was torrential.

And rather threatening.

Dorothy loves walking, so ignores the weather. 

Mary hates wet conditions so shivering pitiably, refused to walk a step further.

We hurried  home and Dorothy only stopped sulking that her walk was cut short after she found a errant Swedish meatball under the fridge freezer

Off to see James Bond later

This afternoon I’m lagging the thermal store tank

I’m one crazy bitch

 

Salt n’ Pepper

This pair of condiments were delivered today

when I was at work 

No note 

No clue who from

Made me smile

I’m tired

 

May we Come In?…….Dune & Choir

 Dune was an unexpected gem yesterday.

Usually I’m not a syfy fan, but this incredibly authentic, almost medieval romp is a feast for the senses as everything about it impressive and incredibly entertaining.

Rebecca Ferguson

Jason Momoa

The lovely Oscar Isaac

The casting of sexy, hirsute  DILFs in the supporting roles was ( for me) a stroke of genius as I loved Oscar Isaac, jason Momoa, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem just to look at, but they and the likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling and Zendaya gave the whole film a gravitas already outlined by the quality cinematography and beautiful design.

Timothée Chalamet ( not an actor I’ve rated before ) has incredible presence and charisma in the lead

role and although, sometimes I didn’t quite know who was who, I loved this romp with its old fashioned adventure feel.

After the movie, I just had time to walk the dogs before I went out again 

This time to choir, which has returned to Tuesday nights in my world.

I last sang indoors just before the first lockdown and it was lovely to be back

We sang a new song called This Winter

I shed a small tear behind my mask as we “got” the harmonies

It was like coming home 

Juggling Act

 

“ You are always doing things” 

This is a common remark I have received on line and in person and it is a comment that is occasionally caveated with the borderline and vaguely unpleasant thought or question of…

“How can you afford it?”

I run a car and a home on a budget. 

True I have a pension , but I still have to work full time in a job which pays much less than rates in the NHS to keep my head above water.

Out of the blue, bills have to be carefully managed.

Nearly a year ago my affable chimney sweep declared my chimney unsafe. The liner had tarred up due to me burning dodgy wood which was originally advertised as being kiln dried and now needs replacing. 

The bill will be around a thousand pounds and it has taken me ten months of saving to get that amount put aside in readiness for winter. 

Today I booked the heating engineer to review it.

That was satisfying ! 

Thank goodness Bluebell passed her recent MOT without needing any expensive tinkering but I have put aside money for her service next month. Without her I am scuppered.

The dogs are insured and their healthcare is guaranteed, but I still have to pay a chunk of their treatment costs. It took me 9 months to pay off George’s vet bills that I incurred before his death. Sadly he was not insured as the others were.

But you are always going to the theatre and London ? 

I’ve been accused of being frivolous before. 

But I am careful. I book single named journeys by rail which are always off peak and always in advance which saves me money and generally I book the cheap seats at a theatre or a bargain room in a hotel, something covid has helped me with over the last year.

My two tickets to the Royal Ballet next year were 40 £…how good was that?

But I do put my hands up…guilty as charged, when it comes to nice things for home. I bought that bowl yesterday on a whim and the art wall in the kitchen wasn’t all cheap but I live with a grotty bathroom, watch a child sized television and only own one really nice pair of shoes and one natty jacket which is accessorised by one dark pair of pants and one light….covering me now for most occasions .

Weddings, Bar Mitzvah’s and funerals.

I still buy fresh flowers every week and I pay for my sister to do my garden and so I’m not pretending I’m Bob Cratchit just yet 

But I’ve very aware that when I’m let down by a broken cinema screen and have to pay petrol to drive all the way there and back, I get annoyed I have wasted money

it’s just like with everyone else in this expensive world …..paying to live, and not just to exist ,remains a bit of a juggling act.

Especially when you are single