Creak

I got into housework last night. It all started when a bottle of washing up liquid spilled over my Lidls shopping and I had to wash my groceries. Funny how washing and drying a packet of pastrami can put you in the cleaning mood.

Also, I'm finished with the Wee Scrabulous Tourney so have more time for domestic matters. It wasn't as total a humiliation as I'd expected for I did manage to win one game - and against the formidable Lady Cassandra no less. 

So with all the washing of groceries and hoovering of floors I found myself wide awake way beyond my usual sleepy-time. I'm sitting up in bed reading the Sunday papers (and not even last Sunday's - I'm behind with everything) and I look at the clock and it's nearly one and I think, time you had the light off missus. Then there was this strange, brief, creaking, achey noise like nothing I'd ever heard before. I put it out of my mind, went to sleep and dreamed I was a serial killer.

In the dream I kept disposing of the bodies in the water beside Dinsmore's factory. I was hefting the seventh or eighth one in when I thought to myself, 

Oh God! I am a serial killer. 

The corpses were nobody I knew. Just middle-aged men. Just men who'd annoyed me in some way. Earthquakes are very unsettling.

The Queen of the Mournes

That would be Rosie. Me? I'm the Hag of the Mournes.

Bert, Rosie and I had a great time staying at Hanna's Close. We stayed in the Carthouse where, by coincidence , Zoe and Dave had stayed previously. It was Zoe recommended Hanna's Close to us. Naturally it's dog-friendly.

One of the best things about the cottage was the open fire.

It had all the traditional accoutrements for hanging cooking utensils on and I must be one of the few bloggers that remembers these being used.

When I was very little, sometime in the late 50s, my Granny did all her cooking like that. I remember the big black swinging pan where she fried chops and made the traditional Irish breakfast of home-cured bacon, freshly laid eggs and her own soda bread. Glorious. She had a big black pot for boiling spuds and a swinging griddle for soda bread. She must have found it very strange when she moved to the council house in Whelan's Brae.

Bert and I did our small bit of cooking on the electric cooker. We didn't think The Man would have been too impressed if we'd blackened all his pots and pans.

We're Off!

It's been a hectic few days what with the Scrabulous tourney, work and life in general. Tonight I'm trying to finish off a few games and getting packed for our weekend in the Mournes. Tomorrow will be a half day at work then off to Hanna's Close for six o'clock. This will be the first time Bert and I have got a bit of time away together for well over a year. That's what happens when you have a frail and dependent parent at home. And did I mention cantankerous. She's all that too.

Pearlie will be going to respite care for a fortnight so the break continues even after we get back. Although when she's in respite Bert still continues to visit with her on alternate nights. On her first spell in the care home he went in every night and I had to explain to him that the respite was for him too.

She's difficult. Nothing pleases her. And it's not just her age because she was always like that. She does not seem to have the capacity to feel happiness or joy. Bert is incredibly patient with her and he deserves some time off.

Hannah will be looking after Bonnie, Paddy and the calves. Rosie is coming with us. She's the oldest of the dogs and won't be having many more holidays.

The wee scrabulous tourney? I expect to lose all nine of my games. It will be humiliating but sure a bit of humiliation is good for the soul. Isn't it?

You Wouldn't Get A Minute...

...between having to go to work, attending 18th birthday parties, keeping Pearlie up in clean vests and playing in the Wee Scrabulous Tourney.

So you'll excuse us if blogging gets a bit thin on the ground.

Role Models

I’m very afraid that Bert is turning into an eccentric hermit. He feels panicky if he has to venture further than Clint’s place. He uses the excuse that he’s ‘not tidy’ and I think that’s a pity because if a body is going to be an eccentric hermit, surely one of the joys is dressing just as one pleases. Take, for example, Auntie Fungus’s better half – the boul’ Paddy. He never goes to the barber, never shaves. His hair grows strangely in long straggles and he takes these lengthy tufts and winds them round his head and sticks a ‘kep’ on top of it. Sure bits poke out from underneath the ‘kep’ but this only adds to his air of carefree eccentricity.

Paddy is Bert’s role model -Paddy who, with Bert’s help, has turned a pig house into a desirable residence with partitioned rooms made from salvaged wood, mainly old school desks and snooker tables. Bert said that the patchwork effect was very interesting. The green baize, the ink wells, the desk graffiti – ‘Susan ♥ Trevor’. Bert said it was almost a shame that it all had to be covered up with plasterboard and painted. Bert informed me proudly that each and every room has a door with a letterbox – except for the front door.

I said to Bert, never mind all that, you need a haircut. He says, it’s too cold yet. I said, those wispy bits of hair will never keep you warm. You need a ‘kep’. I fear he’s planning to grow long tufty locks and wrap them round his head like Paddy. My lovely Bert – who could have been a model for Kaffe Fasset knitwear. Where did it all go wrong?

Fabulous Scrabulous

There's more than me just a tad keen on Facebook's Scrabulous application. I'm not as good as it as I'd hoped to be and there are some people who are starting to cheese me off because they keep whupping my ass at it. I'm sure they must be taking performance enhancement drugs but until we bring in dope testing for Scrabulous we'll never know.

I propose a tournament and these are the players I'm proposing in no particular order other than that they spring to my gin-sodden mind.

Stray Taoist
The Lady Cassandra
Miss Eleanor
Handsome Ed
Hails
Hootchin' Hannah
Zoe
Nelly
Katkin
Ganching

I nominate Ed to seed the order of play for no reason other than he is a fair-minded chap not related to any of the other contestants.

Akshually to make a proper tournament we could do with 6 more players. Volunteers, suggestions, anyone?

Mothers and Daughters

It was Pearlie's birthday yesterday and it was more than a little bit stressful. Hannah cooked a lovely meal, presents were shopped for, gifts carefully chosen and her favourite people invited. Did Pearlie enjoy it? Not so you'd notice. She never ate one bite of her meal. Refused ice cream in a manner that suggested she suspected I'd laced it with arsenic and, while the rest of us were trying to derive some sort of enjoyment from our food, turned to her niece and said in her most pathetic, whiniest voice,

Mergeret - will ye make me a wee bowl of panada with white bread and warm milk and a wee taste of sugar?

I said,

But we don't have any white bread.

She turned to me and snarled,

I don't know what kind of a hoose it is with no white bread!

Anyways Mergeret got the bread from Pearlie's kitchen and made her the slop and she spooned sugar over it and ate it with affected relish.

Well I won't go into details but it appeared that Pearlie was in no mood for birthdays and it all ended in tears. I did my best to keep my patience but ended up falling to the gin. And worser again ate two extra dishes of ice cream. This gin'll have to stop for it's evident it leads to harder stuff.

Now last week Matty was in despair about her best friend forgetting to take her to the chapel. Never mind it was the coldest Sunday in the world and her friend probably assumed she wouldn't want to go. Matty says to me,

I'm not going to go begging round the country for a lift to the chapel!

I spent a while last week talking her round, trying to get her to see the thing from the other person's point of view. Today I'm in despair about my relationship with Pearlie and Matty does the same job for me. And it worked. I feel much better.

That's mothers and daughters for you. Now mothers and sons - that's a whole different story.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

chumz, originally uploaded by NellyMoser.

With Prejudice

I'm very often put off by careless spelling. That's not to say that I don't make the odd mistake myself but I do try to get it right.

Which is why, when I'm perusing Ebay, I would never bid on any item where the seller's description was full of spelling errors. After all, if they can't be bothered to get that right, the item they're selling is bound to be grubby, smelly, fraudulently described and poorly packed.

I'm not put off by any misspellings in greengrocers as that is a traditional practice. But you'll not sell me any 'sausidges' or 'sirlions' in the butchers because I'll know your meat is fly-blown and badly hung.

However if you're a blogger and you leave a comment on my blog that contains a wee typo you will be totally forgiven. Because everybody knows that typos happen when your fingers are racing over the keyboard to put that pithy comment down before it escapes you.

In the restaurant if there's a bit of a blooper on the board advertising Dish of the Day I'll forgive that because the chalker's English is going to be way better than my command of Polish or Lithuanian. And the service will totally make up for it. But I'll not stand for spelling mistakes in the tea shop. Appel Tart? I don't think so!  

Bonnie Speaks Out

Bonnie got tagged by Hails's super-intelligent cat Kat! And being a good, dutiful and obedient dog she has composed the following for me to copy to Nelly's Garden.

First - the rules

1. link to the person who tagged you.

2. post the rules on your blog.

3. share six non-important things/ habits/ quirks about yourself

4. tag at least 3 mammals at the end of the post and link to their blog

5. let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

Bonnie's post

I don't actually have a blog which is why I'm using Nelly's. I do have a Bebo page but I hardly ever look at it as Bebo's a bit naff. Nelly uses it to hunt out recent photographs of her old boyfriends on their children's Bebo pages. But hey! that's one of Nelly's quirks, not mine. She'll bloody kill me for telling youse about that Bebo stuff.

1. They don't know what age I am. See they 'rescued' me about 15 months ago when I was on the scunge with this Labrador. Truth is they know damn all about me. They'd heard I was ill-treated and sure I wasn't in the best of shape. But then who'd be in great shape if they weren't getting enough grub? Nelly wasn't that keen on keeping me at the start but I could tell she liked me. I took a bit of a notion of her too so I did that thing us dogs do on soft people like her. I just kept looking at her with big, sad and googly eyes and had her by the third day.

2. Unlike those other two eedjit dogs I don't do the scunging thing any more. Don't get me wrong - I like a bit of a run out as much as the next dog - but knowing my luck somebody would nab me and keep me just like Nelly did and maybe next time I wouldn't like my dognapper so much. Another thing about not doing scunging is that when the other two get away Nelly says things to me like, "At least we've got one good dog," and gives me lots of extra attention. I like attention. Anyway Nelly takes me out every single time she goes for a walk. Them other two have to take turns.

3. I'm a bit of a cat fan. Their cat is a total arse but you couldn't help but love it. Even Bert likes it and he totally hates cats. He calls it His Wee Titty.

4. I'm a bit affronted to be telling you this but I'm not actually that brave. People associate us German Shepherds with aggression and security and fearlessness. But strange dogs frighten me. What I really hate are those dogs that slippytit out of gateways and start attacking me when I'm out walking with Nells. I actually get scared going past gateways and walk as far away from them as I can.

5. I like pigs. But they don't like me. I like chasing them even if they just run round in boring circles. Nelly laughs and says, "If Clint could see her running the bacon off them!"

6. Before I get into a van or car I need to run around it once or twice to make sure that there are no enemies hiding underneath it. I don't know what I'd actually do if there was an enemy lurking there. S'pose I'd just bark a lot and hope somebody'd come and poke at them with a sharp stick.

I'm tagging

Gracie

Paddy

Tycho

Although I don't think Tycho will oblige. I hear his master never lets anybody near his oul blog. Then Tycho is a pedigree and probably too snobby to mix with us hoi-polloi. And of course he's awfully young. Probably doesn't even know about blogging yet. Or Bebo.

Minger

Ever wondered why farmers are a bit bogging? Well I've been a farmer for about 20 hours now and already I've got that dirty, crusty thing going on. The sleeves of my coat are covered with milk powder and calf slobber. I'll have to decide if it is going to become my farmer coat or if it goes back to being my good second best coat.

I've decided. New spring coat needed. That oul farmer coat was getting to be too big for me anyway.

Nineteen

Courtesy of Ronni & Baboon Pirates.

I thought 7 of these were crap. Five were OK, six were pretty good and American History X was the best of the lot.

One or two of the others I've seen bits of but not watched all the way through. Forrest Gump is one of those. The most recent film I watched was the 4o year old virgin one. It was shite. Waterworld was shite too.

Rocky Horror Picture Show
Grease
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
Boondock Saints
Fight Club
Starsky and Hutch
Neverending Story
Blazing Saddles
Universal Soldier
Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Along Came Polly
Deep Impact
King Pin
Never Been Kissed
Meet The Parents
Meet the Fockers
Eight Crazy Nights
Joe Dirt
King Kong (1933)
King Kong (1976)
King Kong (2005)

Total so far: 4

A Cinderella Story
The Terminal
The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Passport to Paris
Dumb & Dumber
Dumber & Dumberer (filmed right here in May-Retta!)
Final Destination
Final Destination 2
Final Destination 3
Halloween
The Ring
The Ring 2
Surviving X-Mas
Flubber

Total so far: 5

Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Practical Magic
Chicago
Ghost Ship
From Hell
Hellboy
Secret Window
I Am Sam
The Whole Nine Yards
The Whole Ten Yards

Total so far: 5

The Day After Tomorrow
Child’s Play
Seed of Chucky
Bride of Chucky
Ten Things I Hate About You
Just Married
Gothika
Nightmare on Elm Street
Sixteen Candles
Remember the Titans
Coach Carter
The Grudge
The Grudge 2
The Mask
Son Of The Mask

Total so far: 5

Bad Boys
Bad Boys 2
Joy Ride
Lucky Number Slevin
Ocean’s Eleven
Ocean’s Twelve
Bourne Identity
Bourne Supremacy
Lone Star
Bedazzled--the 60s version
Predator
Predator II
The Fog
Ice Age
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
Curious George

Total so far: 5

Independence Day
Cujo
A Bronx Tale
Darkness Falls
Christine
ET
Children of the Corn
My Boss’s Daughter
Maid in Manhattan
War of the Worlds (1953)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Rush Hour
Rush Hour 2

Total so far: 8

Best Bet
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
She’s All That
Calendar Girls
Sideways
Mars Attacks!
Event Horizon
Ever After
The Wizard of Oz
Forrest Gump
Big Trouble in Little China
The Terminator
The Terminator 2
The Terminator 3

Total so far: 8

X-Men
X-2
X-3
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2
Sky High
Jeepers Creepers
Jeepers Creepers 2
Catch Me If You Can
The Little Mermaid
Freaky Friday
Reign of Fire
The Skulls
Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions 2
The Hot Chick
Shrek
Shrek 2
Shrek 3

Total so far: 9

Swimfan
Miracle on 34th Street
Old School
The Notebook
K-PAX
Krippendorf’s Tribe
A Walk to Remember
Ice Castles
Boogeyman
The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Total so far: 11

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: Return Of the King
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Total so far: 11

Baseketball
Hostel
Waiting for Guffman
House of 1000 Corpses
Devil’s Rejects
Elf
Highlander
Mothman Prophecies
American History X
Three

Total so far: 13

The Jacket
Kung Fu Hustle
Shaolin Soccer
Night Watch
Monsters, Inc.
Titanic
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Shaun Of the Dead
Willard

Total so far: 15

High Tension
Club Dread
Hulk
Dawn Of the Dead
Hook
Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
28 days later
Orgazmo
Phantasm
Waterworld

Total so far: 17

Kill Bill, Volume 1
Kill Bill, Volume 2
Mortal Kombat
Wolf Creek
Kingdom of Heaven
The Hills Have Eyes
I Spit on Your Grave, AKA The Day of the Woman
The Last House on the Left
Re-Animator
Army of Darkness

Total so far: 17

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Ewoks: Caravan Of Courage, AKA The Ewok Adventure
Ewoks: The Battle For Endor

Total so far: 18

The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Animatrix
Evil Dead
Evil Dead 2
Team America: World Police
Red Dragon
Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal

TOTAL 19

D.I.Y.

Clint has man flu. He came into the kitchen this morning to get warm water for the calves and I said,

I thought you’d been up already or I would have fed them.

I wish I’d known that for it was hard rolling out of bed this morning. I’m dying!

What’s up with you?

I ache all over. I feel terrible.

Well don’t worry. I’ll do the calves at lunchtime and I’ll get them tomorrow morning as well.

Sure I’ll have to get up anyway to see to the geese.

But you won’t have to go off your own yard. I’ll do the calves tomorrow.

That would be great. I could do with a morning off.

Meanwhile Bert is lying softly snoring in his cosy warm bed.

He gets up at around eleven o’clock.

Poor Clint is sick again. He’s always poorly, isn’t he?

Huh! Little wonder for sure isn’t he always standing about in some cold hole!

What do you mean? What’s he been at?

Take yesterday – one of the coldest days in the world. He’s standing foundering in an open-sided shed painting oul hen-houses. What need did he have to be at that!

Meanwhile you’re sensibly sitting in front of a warm stove playing your clarinet and as warm and toasty as can be.

Exactly!

But Clint always has to be at something doesn’t he?

Aye. Oul eedjit. D’ye know what Peter says Clint’s version of DIY is?

No. What is it?

Clint’s idea of DIY is Done It Yesterday!

Wouldn’t you wonder what drives him on?

Shock! Horror!

In the news. It's bloody cold. Snow is falling. Winds are blowing. In February! Who'd a thought it?

God! We're soft as shite these days. It's only weather.