Memories

 December 29th 2005 was a Thursday . 

A suicide bomber killed himself, two Palestinian civilians and an Israeli soldier on the West Bank 

Tony Blair was Prime Minister and Mariah Carey was doing well with “ Don’t forget about us” 

There was little else of note to report that day, however it was the day I started to write Going Gently.

My first post was perfunctory 

disaster thoughts

well my first blog........sounds rather like something Kenneth Williams would say.
I will be brief, and "set the scene" as it were.

I am 43, a nurse professionally, newly moved into the Welsh country side from Sheffield. I Am probably going through a mid life crisis.

Ideal for a place like this......................look forward to talk soon.

I didn’t give much away did I? but the “ Midlife crisis “ quote was a bit of giveaway. 

For I felt a bit…..aimless. 

Lizzy asked about my move from Sheffield to a tiny village the size of Hillsborough Park and I’m trying to recall the lead up to it. 

My husband certainly had itchy feet and had wanted to move to the country for  a long time and we had been together five years in a city that had served us both very well. He was looking for promotion , 

I was looking to nest.

If children were on the cards then, I would have been an ideal time to adopt,

But we left my large three bedroom terrace on the steep Wynyard Road in Hillsborough with two old cats, Welsh terrier Finlay and grumpy Scottie Maddie and moved to Trelawnyd which was a village three miles ( and thirty  years )different from my childhood home of Prestatyn.

The first year in the cottage seems a blur now. 

There was a lot for me to organise as the inside had been reduced to a bland, 1980s shell by the previous owner and so I contracted a big shy bear of a carpenter to design a new staircase and handrail, Victorian looking glass fronted cabinets for either side of the inglenook fireplace and a bookcase and wardrobe for the bedroom. 

New windows were replaced in the back of the cottage and a new garden dug from beneath the tarmac car park , an  eyesore which was bordered with a new but traditional welsh limestone wall complete with an iron wrought gate made by my brother in law.

I oversaw everything and made a home. 

And never had much to do with the “ locals” until one moment when I was painting the living room ceiling one day I caught two old ladies peeping through the living room windows. 

Both had matching cardigans on. 

It was my first meeting with lifelong friends Gwyneth Jones and Olwena Hughes. Gwyneth had a penchant for tweed skirts and lived in the farm down the lane.

Olwena had no ankles and lived in one of the pensioner bungalows on Bron Haul.

Both ladies made a run for it when I saw me waving at them with my paint brush.

I caught them in the lane by the kitchen wall and invited them in for tea.

They admitted they wanted to see what we had “ done to the place” 

I recorded this video of the two matrons a few years later. I wanted to record some spoken welsh 

The conversation is about a fellow villager who had hurt his face in a fall.

Both have long since passed away

Funny what you remember

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Promotion

It was my 69th birthday last weekend. On Saturday, Shirley and I drove out to "The Fox House" for brunch. Then in the afternoon we attended the wedding party of two old friends of ours - Ian and Linda. They had been engaged for over twenty years but finally they decided they had had enough of living in sin. It was a lovely occasion in the function room above our local pub. Shirley and I left around seven o'clock. The best part was where Linda's grown up children said that Ian had been the only real father they had ever known.

Sunday after Sunday I prepare roast dinners at home but last Sunday we went out to The Dore Moor Inn to celebrate my birthday. The meal was  delightful and Little Phoebe was a very good girl - especially when you consider that we were in there foe two hours and fifteen minutes. When the time came to pay the bill, I realised straight afterwards that we had been undercharged so I went back inside and told our waitress that our bottle of wine had been left off the bill. After a bit of humming and ahhing she decided it would be too much bother to amend things and so we could have the wine on the house! I certainly wasn't complaining about that.

I received a few welcome gifts including two T-shirts which have not yet been ironed so I'm sorry about the creases. Apparently, they are from a new line of apparel designed to promote this humble Yorkshire blog. They are available via Amazon.uk and elsewhere if you would like to hunt around. What could be better than strolling down the street wearing a stylish Yorkshire Pudding T-shirt?

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Roger’s Stairs

 

After many weeks of trepidation and angst, Roger has now mastered the cottage staircase.

True he runs at it with all legs flaying,

Almost as if he was a over wound clockwork toy injected with Adrenalin 

And true he is still very much so an uncoordinated mass of red and tan curls, typical of a puppy half his age.

But hundreds of times a day, he can be found someone where on or around the staircase,

Bouncing up it

And Falling and bouncing back down it.

A gleefully happy smile upon his daft face.

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