Losing One's Cool

The older I get, the easier I find it is to mobilize and show my displeasure about things.
Pussyfooting around is often the polite thing to do, but it often does not work with some who are dense, uninterested or both.
Sometimes a spade has to be called a spade.
Plain and simple.
The other night, fed up with one blogger's troublemaking on another's blog , I gave my frank and unsolicited  thoughts on the situation.
I hoped it helped .
Being called a twat, publicly is not nice
But it was kind of satisfying to do
On the internet it is easy to give your opinion.
In real life, it is not quite so easy.

The best put down I ever witnessed was on the 95 bus from Sheffield City Centre to Walkley one dismal evening many years ago and it involved a young mother of two and not a swear word in " sight"
The bus was busy, as was the traffic, so three large teenage lads, bored and fractious at the stop/start nature of the journey suddenly got up to no good and tripped up an elderly woman who had gotten ready to leave. The old woman stumbled into the laps of other commuters amid the giggles of one boy and suddenly the young woman was up out of her seat and in the boy's face.
In a clear, loud voice she said " what on EARTH are you doing?" 
The boy squirmed but she refused to let him unlock her gaze
" Have you a grandmother?" She asked him.
The boy tried to front her out and tightened his lips
" Have you a grandmother?" she demanded again
And she repeated the question several more times before the boy final answered in the affirmative
" Shame on you! " the woman said carefully and the boy's face flushed with tears as the confrontation was over.

The brave young woman with her two kids and shopping bags looped over her pushchair  not only shamed  that boy and his cronies but also pricked the conscience of an entire busload of passengers, including myself, who  probably would have done nothing but tut at the teen's behaviour.








Smile and Glide


I don't miss nurse management. Those long days of fire fighting problem after problem after problem with little to no thanks and limited encouragement!
It's often a thankless task.
I was supposed to be working tonight on a night shift but offered to change it to monday night to cover staff shortages. The manager was grateful but didn't quite understand my sacrifice .
" I'll be missing The Walking Dead I hope you realise !" 
They smiled weakly.
Smile and glide I told them, smile and glide.


anyway today's blog is a big up for one of our dear friends Weaver of Grass who is going through a difficult , firefighting time of her own. A plucky octogenarian who always walks on the right line good taste and politeness, Weaver has been blogging for years about her gentle rural existence in North Yorkshire and her comments on our blogs have been always supportive , gently mocking and above all interested in what we all have to say.

We need to send her our love and support at this time


" Grow Up"

Your not funny my friend!!!! Xxx

So messaged a fellow nurse on facebook a few minutes ago
The sweet, good natured nurse at work cut the top of a buttock at home in a " backing into the shower door" incident last night.
As it was hurting her, a female colleague and I suggested that she showed us the injury so that we could assess it and dress it.
In the treatment room we got a good look at the trusting lass' nether region
And with gloves on I suggested I trace around the bruising with a finger!
Secretly
I then drew a zombie face on her arse with a pen!

Not Today

No blog


Working all day!

Another Day, Another Vet Visit


I'm running late today.
Writing this in the vets' surgery..Winnie has gone to have her sutures out trotting away like a baby hippo.
There is a new male vet on duty who looks twelve. Winnie's not bothered how old he was
as he's wearing overalls so looks like a workman...He took her lead and She followed him into the treatment room like a cheap whore!
I am glad I don't have to help lift her onto any observation table as the button has just pinged off my trousers and I am relying on  the zip to hold them up.....I re start fat club on Monday.....as I only have three pairs of trousers I still fit into! Middle aged spread....it's a dreadful thing.
There is much laughter coming from the treatment room.
I wonder what she's up to


A Lovely, Lovely Heart.

I watched the kennel owner bathing William's blind eye when I arrived at the kennels this morning.
They both were sat quietly in the sun in one corner of the courtyard as Mary careered like a loon across the gravel chased by a dim, friendly cockerpoo with learning difficulties.
The kennel owner was rocking him back and forth  as she dab-dab dabbed and as she worked she cooed at him as a mother would do to a baby.
It was a strangely moving tableau.
" He's the gentlest dog I've ever had here" she told me after she had put him onto his feet so he could amble across to greet me " All the kennel girls love him so" 
William stopped , placed a paw onto her knee and stood up to sniff her face
" He has a lovely, lovely heart" she said


Lamb Chop



I walked from our hotel at Russell Square down to St Pauls in blistering sunshine, then went for a therapeutic trip on the London clipper on the Thames then after a short jaunt to the British Museum i met the prof for a late lunch at Dishoom

Dishoom is a delight.......it also serves the best lamb chops this side of Christmas
I ate three in 12 minutes!


Top Of Their Game

We had fantastic seats for The Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty

I think I understood it all
King and Queen had a baby ( they didn't dance much)
Lots of fairies jumped around
While posh people applauded from the wings
Good bit when rats ran on with Cruela de Ville
More dancing 
A Lass in white frock jumped around some more and Cruela shouts at her
Girl falls asleep
Bloke with massive, lovely thighs leaps around to lots of applause 
Lots of others jump around
We all had ice cream
More jumping and dancing
Big Kiss
Marriage
Everyone claps! 


It was fantastic



Days Out

I'm running late today.....I was running late yesterday too.....didn't watch The Walking Dead until gone 11pm....apologies for not answering any comments.
I'm going to London today ( hence typing this in bath) I also am nursing a pulled groin which was the result of doing the splits on a slippy gravestone this early this morning rather than the lumbering around on the badminton court I did last night.
I am reminded here of Elise's embarrassing story from yesterday's blog, for like her, I am still blushing at the way I sort of crumpled to the floor, like a bowl of thick trifle hitting concrete from a great height.
Thank God no one saw me.
The last time I embarrassed myself publically was on Saturday when I coughed and farted very loudly in the queue at the spar garage!

Eye On The Background


I adore this video. It is so funny on so many levels.
I was reminded of this " what's going on behind you" phenomenon this morning when I bumped into a former colleague from work outside the vets in Denbigh this morning.
I had William and Winnie with me both on leads .
My friend had a rather over weight mongrel tied to a pushchair. In the pushchair was an eighteen month old baby in a bright blue romper suit ( I tell you only in way of adding a bit of local colour)
The dogs all were good natured and friendly.
We chattered for a while and swapped small talk as they sniffed and licked.
Moments later I had said goodbye and had lifted Winnie into the back seat of the car.
As I turned to William , I could see his tail wagging guiltily .
In his mouth was a half masticated baby's rusk.

Tits over Deco

I was impressed by two things yesterday.
Brie Larson's tits was one ( well two!)
And an art deco pub called The Albion in the fortified town of Conwy was the other!

 
The Albion 

We have started to have a few hours off in the pub on a weekday afternoon recently. It works very well as I drive ( I hate having a drink in an afternoon) and the Prof can have a few pints of special brewed beer ( not my favourite tipple)
Our chosen venue is the aforementioned real ale pub The Albion which is a delightful and untouched 1920s public house which has scrubbed tables, quality scotch eggs as snacks and doggie treats for customer dogs who are allowed in all rooms!
I took a broadsheet newspaper and Mary and The Prof took a trashy Miss Marple-ish book and in front of a real fire we read then chatted to a couple of fellow drinkers who fell in love with Mary, who sat politely next to me.
Britain does do pubs well, when they do pubs well......
I would have taken Winnie but I think even with the recent hysterectomy she would have found someone to masturbate over!
Anyhow
Later on I dragged The Prof and my sister to see Kong Skull Island which had some of the worst dialogue since Helen Reddy's Nun said of Linda Blair's seriously ill passenger in AIRPORT 75 " The poor kid , she's in Washington  and her kidney is in Los Angeles"
Brie Larson's bust was impressively on show though....and I felt almost heterosexual after two hours of it heaving in front of the cameras! It's a shame really she was soo good in the movie Room.


Bosoms


Thanks to Della

Della from Pen-y-cefn-isa sent me some old photograps of the village for my archived history blog.
I thought they were interesting enough to be showcased here...enjoy
Overlooking the village in the late 1930s 

A rather untidy churchyard circa 1910

A photo of the entire village's civil defence during ww2

A rare shot of the members of the local hunt on top of Gop Hill, note the entrance to gop cave
Long since dismantled  

Creepy!


Our cottage lies down a winding lane on the western most fringe of the village. The lane meanders from the main road and drops some twenty or thirty feet as it follows the Church boundary wall before reaching my field and the farms down and across the valley.
Mary and I walked up the lane last night and as we turned the corner by the Church gate, I could see the School wall which is covered by a thick hedge. As we were lower than walkers would be on the main road, I could make out the Gothic porch in the old school building just peeping above the hedge.
There was a light on in the doorway, whether it was from a security light or from an open door, I couldn't tell and framed in the light was the clear figure of a person standing quietly.

The rest of the  school was in complete darkness and there was no cars in the small car park that I could see, so I stopped and looked again at the figure when suddenly the light went out.
It was almost as though the figure had seen me watching.
I was suddenly very creeped out.
The school remained in total darkness, and we stopped by the gate to see if any other light came on anywhere to signify that perhaps a cleaner was making their way through the building. We saw nothing.
There was no one to be seen
This was 8.30 pm 

Spring

The light in the lane got fixed yesterday which was a shame.
I loved the fact that the cottage sat in total darkness during the night.
I've never slept so well.
A man in overalls was tinkering behind his van when Winnie spied him through the window, and I let her into the front garden so she could watch him carefully from the gate as he climbed into his cherry picker and repaired the light.
She blew bulldog kisses at him and hyperventilated.
I called up to asked if he would say hello to her when he had finished and true to his word he did and I wasn't surprised that, as he reached through the bars on the gate, she rolled onto her side to show him her suture line in a shameless attempt to court sympathy
" She's just had a hysterectomy " I told him.
He looked impressed.
" So's the wife" he replied

Neighbour Trevor had asked if I could remove " a little bit of moss" from his driveway the other day, so seeing that it was a sunny spring day I turned up with a hoe to find several hundred square feet needed clearing.
Hey ho ( hey hoe) I managed to get the majority done which was a harder job than it looked, but I was happy that Trevor had offered me " the going rate" for a job well executed.
I earned only a fiver short of my hourly rate as an intensive care nurse! Go figure that one!

Mrs James called down, as I was working,  to ask if  could publicize her table top sale in the memorial hall on Saturday morning. All proceeds are going to a Parkinson's Charity.
Job's done!

The weather has changed for the better..... as I worked I spied 8 buzzards flying in lazy circles in the blue sky above the Gop they seem to herald the start of spring.

Winnie lurking in the front garden trying to catch a glimpse of an overall

“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”


I saw her in Marks and Spencers.
A rather chic woman in her middle sixties with fashionably cut grey hair.

I recognised her immediately.
She was my biology teacher at school.
Vaguely I remembered as a teacher, she was an efficient but rather distant individual,  but it was seeing her that sparked a memory not of her way back in Prestatyn High School in 1974 but of her husband who my English teacher
Her husband had the rather odd nickname of  " smiler" as I remember and I recall one small kindness he afforded me as a boy of twelve when I was bullied in one rather awful moment of childhood cruelty.
I loved my English classes and was a bit of buttoned up swot at every lesson, so occasionally provided a butt of the joke for several of the thicker and more disruptive boys.
One day, just before class one of those boys broke my newly bought ink pen by jamming the nib into the desktop.
It was a nasty little moment of destruction which was aimed to hurt..and hurt it did.
As class started, and biting away tears , I remember Smiler starting the lesson which was for us to write a précis  of the novel " A Kestrel for a Knave" and as he walked up and down the line of desks he gave us instructions of what he wanted of us to do.
As he passed my desk, and without comment he reached into his pocket and pulled out his own rather smart ball-point pen which he placed quietly before me.
The lesson carried on as normal.
It was a kindness that meant so very much to a twelve year old boy.

At the end of the lesson, as Smiler was stacking the novels into piles, I stopped at his desk and offered him his pen back.
" Keep it" he said giving me a slight nod of his head

Who was your special teacher?

Women's Problems!

The Prof runs a large and by all accounts successful University department with consummate ease.
The large stuff  he copes with.
My mind literally boggles with the scope of it all.
He doesn't , however, deal with the small stuff that well.
" I'm living in a midden!" He bellowed.
It was 5.45 am and he was boiling his breakfast eggs.
I could see his point. Winnie suffering from a bit of post op bladder weakness and had left a couple of puddles on the kitchen floor, puddles of which were added to by Mary who looks as though she is entering her first major season.
There was pee everywhere!
William, blind as a bat, walked merrily though the puddles!
" FILTH! FILTH EVERYWHERE!" The Prof bellowed some more.
His day was getting off to a dreadful start

I reached for the kitchen roll.


   

The Walking Dead Episode 12


At last we have a slower episode and it worked so well!
Date night!
Michonne and Rick have some quality time, find guns, find their relationship's depth and have a few laughs along the way.
It's an clever moment in time.
Apart from the playfull humour there are flashbacks to older, and sadder episodes here....Glen on the dumpster, the survivor battle in the supermarket, death scenes of numerous old characters, but Michonne and Rick win through in a wisecracking , uplifting and rather romantic honeymoon moment.
This story is bookended by a worrying Thelma and Louise moment as Rosita teams up with Sasha in what could be a suicide bid to kill Negan.....
But it made the audience take breath, revert to The Walking Dead of old, and reconnect to the characters
A great episode!

Marriage Two Years On


In a 'recent' interview, the artist David Hockney made it clear that he thought that too many gay men are now determined to lead boring ordinary married lives. I can understand ( but not agree) where he is coming from, for I suspect he feels that some gay men are losing their queer slightly subversive
edge in an attempt to be part of the mainstream.
I see things slightly differently.

Two years ago today we got married.
We got married  because we wanted to.
We wanted to publicly declare our relationship.
We wanted to celebrate that fact with our families and our friends
We wanted to, be married in the eyes of the law of the land with all of the legal benefits that allows us

We wanted to have the same rights afforded to every straight couple.
And we wanted to dress up and wear shiny shoes!

Our marriage also unearthed interesting feelings that we did not expect.
Days before the wedding, cards of congratulations and gifts started to appear. A bottle of champagne here, a bunch of flowers there. Hundreds of cards, scores of gifts, money and good wishes arrived and they overwhelmed us because neither the Prof  and I expected anything.
We didn't expect anything because, I suspect deep down, we didn't really felt that we deserved  anything. Weddings were for straights, and not for middle aged old poofs like us. It's a subconscious idea that we thought only existed in the minds of bigots.
And we and the " actors of the piece" we actually thinking it! 
Auntie Glad, in her own morally right way of looking at things made it clear as she dropped off a card and a wedding present " It's the law of the land! " she observed simply.
A 96 year old, a devout christian getting on with a huge change of thinking because common sense told her so.
If she could get her head around things, we could, I remember thinking.

The wedding was lovely. It was lovely because it felt right.
It was right for us and it was right legally
And morally it felt right. 

And if that's us selling our gay, subversive side?
So be it.
I never had a subversive side anyhow

Hey ho!

Movie Chatter

In a former episode of the BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are? the journalist Anita Rani explored her family's experiences of the partition of India. It was a moving piece of television for it underlined the chaos , violence and misery the forced migrations of the Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations as Pakistan was forged out of the India subcontinent.
The " story" how Lord Moutbatten oversaw this move to independence has recently been made into a film.The  Viceroy's House, which we had the misfortune to sit through last night, is an attempt to show the human side of " Partition" through the experiences of the Indian staff who served the British hoi polloi.
Directed by Gurinda Chadra, the whole thing feels like a awkward mash up of Downton Abbey  with a Bollywood  melodrama as the Indian actors seem to overplay the drama whilst actors such as Gillian Anderson ( playing a rather forward thinking Lady Moutbatten) underplay beautifully.
And one is left feeling that the melodrama portrayed by the servants rather trivialised the real and very terrible tragedy Partition brought to two new nations.

The dishy Manish Dayal with Huma Queresi 

The Prof harrumphed his way through The Viceroy's House and shook his head when this trailer was shown just before the main feature



Described thus
"A Dog's Purpose" shares the soulful and surprising story of one devoted dog who finds the meaning of his own existence through the lives of the humans he teaches to laugh and love." 
The Prof could see me sobbing within the first minute and said gruffly
" Not one for you then"
I agreed

Anyhow to finish we have gay Disney! What a palaver over Gaston's fat little Queen side kick Le Frou! It's all been too much about nothing ,especially as the Russians have got their knickers in a
twist about it.......what no one seems to realise that Le Frou is the second gay character in Disney
No one has mentioned Ursula from The Little Mermaid! 
Now if she wasn't a fucking drag queen my dick's a kipper!



Hey ho!