Weirdness

It is not for nothing that Wales is known as the Land of Song. I have probably done more singing in the past seven years than I did in the previous 40. It is just a part of life here, and there is none of the apologetic mumbling that you get at weddings and funerals dros y clawdd (across the dyke - my favourite way to say "in England" in Welsh). For a long time, I always carried a little piece of paper in my handbag with the words to the national anthem - to ensure that I never had a John Redwood moment!

I don't think it is just a rural thing either; certainly not if you have ever heard the rugby crowd singing at the Millennium Stadium. The eisteddfod tradition has a lot to do with it. Every school, even at the primary level competes in local and national eisteddfodau, so getting up on stage and singing, dancing or reciting is not a thing to be feared. Most people seem to be able to tell a few jokes, play an instrument, sing tidily or act on stage.

I love singing myself. I'll never make a soloist, but I can hold a tune and love being part of a bigger noise. And I quite enjoy being on stage and making a fool of myself, so I was rather pleased a few years back when I was asked to take part in our village's entry in a local "entertainment" competition. And rather more surprised when, a couple of years later, I found myself writing it as well.

For obvious reasons, I took some time out from this after R died. Then last year I had a small part which did me a lot of good at the time. This year, the writing baton somehow got handed back to me so, for the last couple of months, I have been totally absorbed with scripts, props, casting, rehearsals, finding suitable music and all the other minutiae of putting on a playlet. It is amazing how a 30-minute performance can totally take over your life - it is the ideal distraction for the widow with the slightly obsessive personality!

Well, we entered the competition. It wasn't a stellar performance, but we came joint second, which was probably a fair result. But as it always seems such a waste to put all that effort into just one night, we repeated the performance at our local village hall as a fundraiser for the church. And the winning team was asked to join us too.

"Where on earth is she going with all this?", I am sure you are thinking to yourself by now.

Well, all this goes some way to explaining how, yesterday evening, I found myself standing on stage introducing the Master of Ceremonies for the event - who was none other than the funeral director who buried R.
This situation was made all the more weird by the fact that he was wearing jeans and T-shirt, rather than his sombre funeral garb, sang in a rather excellent tenor voice and told a lot of slightly risqué jokes over the course of the evening. I am not sure what I expected a funeral director to do in his spare time, but it certainly wasn't this.

But it didn't end there. The other team performing this evening was led by the couple who own R's burial field. They are lovely people, and made sure I was OK, but it was all very peculiar, standing there having a post-performance glass of wine with them.

Oddly none of this was the least bit upsetting.

But it was very, very weird.

Anti-climax

I had decided it was time.
Time to take my superhero knickers out of the underwear drawer and go battle some demons.

The local First Responders group held its AGM and social evening on Friday, and I resolved to go. In previous years there has been a bit of business, followed by some wine, nibbles and chatting and then a session introducing newbies to the CPR dummies.

I figured I could manage the first two and would simply go home when the last bit started.
The business part of the meeting was boring. But that is fine - boring is good.

Standing around chatting was fine too, apart from one conversation I had with a man who kept on going on and on about how he had read on the Internet that the use of a defibrillator can cause blood clots. I just wanted to slap him hard around the face and scream, "But at least you would be still ALIVE, you moron!" What I actually did was to excuse myself, run to the loo and do some deep breathing for a few minutes.

It was nowhere near as satisfying.

After a couple of glasses of wine I was starting to feel quite relaxed, and was wondering if I could handle the Little Annie showdown after all. At which point I saw the training coordinator taking the bags with the dummies back out to his car. Apparently there was no one new there to sign up so they weren't going to bother.

I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved that I didn't have to face up to it or annoyed that I would have to work myself up to this point again. So I am now trying to decide whether to ask to bring one of the dummies home with me or whether it would freak me out totally having one in the house.

On top of the world

In a small village the social calendar is characterised by its predictability. We don't like radical changes, and want to know by looking at the date what is coming up in the next couple of weeks.
So August might be a bad month for me, but the wheel keeps spinning and the regular events come inexorably round in their turn.

This Sunday was the date of the Summer walk. Last year it helped me a lot in getting through some of the bad days, so I was very much looking forward to this year's walk. And I wasn't disappointed.
The group was smaller than in previous years, but there were still several people who had left their 'other halves' at home, so I didn't feel like the odd one out for once.

We walked up to the moors to the Llyn Mawr nature reserve above the Carno valley, and then followed the path back past our local wind turbines. I rather like being up above the huge blades - it puts them in their place somewhat. Although we climbed somewhere between 400 and 500 feet, it was a long, gentle and easily-manageable gradient. The sun shone benevolently and the slight breeze prevented overheating, and an elusive glimpse of a hen harrier made the climb worthwhile.

The only thing that marred the day was the fact that I couldn't take Moose with me. He has had arthritis in his shoulder for a while now, which we have been managing with a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement and regular doses of an NSAID. Sadly about a month ago the stiffness I had started noticing in his back legs suddenly worsened almost overnight. They are sometimes so wobbly that he falls over, and he is having difficulties walking much more than a mile or so - and then only at a very slow pace.

He seems happy enough in himself though, and still charges around my paddock like a mad thing when the mood takes him, so I am hanging fire on asking for steroids for now. But it has not stopped me embarking on another of my internal debates, this time about the moral implications of hip replacement surgery for dogs. I am sure I will be revisiting this one in the near future!

Another phone call

It seems to be the week for them.
But what a difference a couple of days make - this one had me giggling.

The call was from a sweet little lady in the village called Ivy, sister of Maldwyn the daffodil planter. She is getting on a bit, and a Welsh speaker, which very occasionally gives rise to communication problems.

Around here nobody, but nobody starts a telephone call with "Hello, this is XXXX speaking". Everyone just launches straight into the conversation. As it always seems a little rude to tell someone I have no idea who they are, I was racking my brains trying to place the slightly familiar voice. So I wasn't paying full attention to what she was talking about, which appeared to be something about the end of the month and someone called Richard. Which meant absolutely nothing to me whatsoever.

It eventually percolated through to my brain that it was Ivy speaking, and that she was talking about R's anniversary. Only his name isn't Richard, he was alive and well all through July, and Ivy didn't seem to be able to say the "D" word either!

Once those minor details had been cleared up, we had a very pleasant chat.

Compostville

In our little village we have a table tennis club that I help to run with two friends at the Community Centre. This started up a couple of years before R died and, as he was away during the week for much of the year, he very much encouraged me to get involved.

We run the club from September through to Easter. It all started as something for the village kids to do on a Wednesday evening. Then a few adults turned up for a bit of a knockabout after the children went home, and it has gone from strength to strength to the extent that we started playing in the local league this season.

It was probably the first social thing I did after R died - the club started up again no more than about 5 weeks after his death. I don't know why I felt I could do it. Possibly because I realised that I was now on my own, and needed to get back out into the world, even though I really didn't feel like it. Or possibly because the kids didn't ask any difficult questions, so it was a non-threatening way to ease myself back into the world of people. It certainly wasn't for the table tennis at first as I had all the concentration of a demented butterfly at that time; my game was shot to pieces and remained that way for months.

But whatever the reason, it quickly became the bright spot in my otherwise grey week. It got me out of the house and forced me to think of something other than my grief. I think that that the kids taught me to laugh again.
And the adults who came along to play have formed the core of my unofficial, but unswervingly loyal support group within the village.

Take Brian, our coach, for example. He and his wife Janet are blow-ins to the village like R and I. He is now in his early 70s, while his wife is a few years younger. For some reason, they 'adopted' R and I as surrogate children (despite already having four of their own). Janet, in particular, was devastated to learn about R's death, and they have been so sweet in the way they have unobtrusively looked after me ever since, both emotionally and with practical support.

The latest example of this came this weekend.
When we moved to this house, I built myself a set of compost bays behind the barn. This was a rather Heath Robinson affair, created out of old fence posts and pallets. It didn't look too good, but nevertheless served its purpose well for 6 years. This year, however, it had started to rot and totally fall apart, and some serious repairs were needed.

Sad, isn't it?

I can't remember exactly why I came to show Brian the parlous state of my composting facilities, but when I did, he said that he had exactly the solution to my problem.

And so this morning we built this:

Amazing what you can do with a couple of pieces of rebar and some old corrugated sheet!

Magnificent obsession

A couple of days ago one of my neighbours said that the Daffodil Lane should be at its best this week. Poor Moose has had to put up with runs lately because I am still training for the Race for Life. He doesn't complain, but it doesn't give him a lot of time for mooching and sniffing while we are out. So I decided he deserved a good, long, slow walk today, and we set off down the hill to the start of the lane.

It looks promising, even if the sheep don't appear very interested.

Round the corner. Yep, the daffodils are definitely out.

Up the hill a bit, and they are starting to come thick and fast.

We had to stop here for a little while as Moose found something very interesting to sniff...

... then it was off down the hill, past the entrance to my friend Pip's farm. No let-up on the daffodil front though.

The daffodils were planted - every single bulb - by an old boy by the name of Maldwyn. A life-long bachelor, he lives with his brother and sister just off this lane where they have a small farm. The daffodil planting started some time after he retired from the Council's Parks and Gardens department - I think he must be in his early 80s now. When I asked him about it, he said he started at the end of their track and got a bit carried away - and just forgot to stop!

A few years ago, the village built this seat for him at the prettiest spot on the lane.
It looks over the weir.

R used to love this spot too. We often brought friends down here to stop a while by the river and give any dogs with us a chance to splash in the water on a hot day.

Moose was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to stop and throw sticks in the water, but it was soon forgotten as we started going up again.

There is a whole army of daffodils along this stretch. A positive host, if ever I saw one.
"I'd better check the other side of the road," says Moose.

And if you look very carefully, there are a few other little goodies that Maldwyn tucked in here and there when he had a few leftover plants.
Here is a little patch of pulmonaria peeping out from between the daffs.


Oh look! Some more daffodils.
You can spot his progress along the lane as one variety takes over from another. I cannot imagine how long it took him to do this.
The Autumn after R died, I planted a whole sack of bulbs in his memory. It took ages, even while I was at my most manic. But this stretch of road must hold a truckload of the things. It is unimaginable to me how anyone could keep going at the task.

There isn't a lot of space available for planting beneath the hedges here, but even so he has managed to tuck some into the poor soil.

Looks as though we are coming to the end...

... then a final flourish as we reach the village sign.

Maldwyn is a kind, gentle and modest man. But he has certainly made his mark on this little patch of Wales. I hope he will be with us for many years to come, but when he does go on to his reward, what a legacy he will leave behind him.