Farm Holiday 2011!

Staying at our friends farm this week and last, which has been a breath
of clean fresh air. The cats are still lovely and crazy by turns
although they seem to have warmed to both Em and I even more so than
last time. I think two weeks of constant feeding has softened Bateman
to the point where she doesn't actively despise me. Ackbar is very
affectionate when she gets to know you to the point she's actually a
little aggressive about it. she'll jump up and you'll pet her whilst
you're watching TV or whatever and she gradually climb up on you until
she's nose to nose with you all the time purring as if to say "PAY ME
ATTENTION!". It's really sweet.

I have actually decided on a nickname for the other supersweet cat. her
nightly serenades to us behind a closed door have earnt her the moniker
Pavarotti, not that she is overweight in any way but the singers most
famous recording "Nessun Dorma" is Italian for "None shall sleep". (I
told you my nicknames were cruel!) Actually just a few reassuring words
and she quietens down fine.

We're having a very relaxing time of it but we had Phil Amanda Jack and
Hugh visit us a couple of times on this trip. It was fabulous to see
them and to see how happy the two boys are and how similar they are in
personality and temperament to Phil and I, or at least how we were when
we were their age.

They came up to the farm and had great fun running around on the lawn
and up and down the drive. Also it turns out that Bateman, who's at
best indifferent to adults LOVES kids. She had a great time chasing
around with them! Just goes to show never judge a psycho by its black,
white and orange fur.

We went on the steam train in Porthmadog with them as well which was
good fun. I had a little moment when Jack was sitting next to me and
Phil and I tried to switch places and Jack said "I want to sit next to
Uncle Rob!". Awwwwwwwwww. (Maybe its the American accent that's just
too cute for words!)

Anyway all is well and I pick up my bike tonight so I'm very much
looking forward to getting some proper biking done. It would be a
travesty to live this close to the mountains and not do some proper
biking.

You don't get fog like this in Rhyl!

do you?

Sons and Lovers

Just finished reading 'Sons and lovers' by D.H. Lawrence. I'm working
my way through a book on 'how to read a novel' and this is the second
of the two required texts. The first one "Waverley" by Walter Scott I
rather enjoyed even if it was a touch on the slow side. Sons and
lovers, thought beautifully written had a totally different effect. The
first part of the novel follows the Morel family as the straight laced
mother deals with the disappointment of marring a miner who is
incapable of loving her as she deserves they had four kids and Paul the
youngest is the focus of the second half of the book as he is torn
between two women, the ethereal and saintly Miriam and the earthly
Clara. Clara has already been married and is separated but not divorced
from her husband who lurks like an evil shadow around their
relationship. As his mothers health fails he doubts his own choices and
reunites Clara with her husband and leaves Miriam.

I don't know if studying without benefit of a teacher is skewing my
view but I did spend the second half of the book internally shouting
"OH, GET OVER YOURSELF!" at the main character. He doesn't know what he
wants, he can't find a girl that has all the qualities of his mother
and he spends a lot of time comparing the two girls to aspects of his
mother. He can find the intellectual Sustenance with Miriam and the
earthly desire with Clara but cannot combine the two in one person he
can settle down with.

He is sometime wilfully cruel in the way he strings along the women,
instead of manning up, finishing with them and seeking his fortune and
love further a field.

The writing is beautiful and descriptive passages that leave you
breathless especially of the natural world surrounding the village
which Paul spends a lot of time in.

The book doesn't so much conclude as just end after his mother falling
ill and passing on Paul is plunged into even more despair and ennui and
comes to no resolve or resolution.

Pretty bleak stuff.

The next book though is Mansfield Park one I haven't read by Jane
Austen (Whom I adore) so I'm hoping for a bit more

"Why, Mr Darcy! Won't you take a turn around the gazebo? " and a bit
less

" Ain't 't grim oop North!".

moving

Moved into a new house on a quiet estate, in a quiet town. It's some
kind of heaven. Victoria Road was convenient for the Rhyl Town
centre

its true. But it was more convenient for the string of deadbeats and

wasters on the way to and from the corner shop to throw used papers

crisp packets and on one memorable occasion a full open yoghurt into
our

front yard. Perhaps he wanted strawberry but all they had was
raspberry.

This is to say nothing of the car vandalism, noise from the club/pub

over the road and angry men, in angry cars with angry exhausts. Our

neighbour went from being a sweet old lady who we never heard a peep

from to an aging tom with an abusive boyfriend to a single mother
whose

idea of housework would have made Stig of the dump blush. Oh and a

tendency to drag unsuspecting men back to her lair and play 'I want it

that way' By the Backstreet Boys on loop whilst ritually slaughtering
a

pig. At least from the noises coming through the wall that's what it

sounded like.

On the one occasion , 3AM on a Tuesday morning, I went around to ask
her

to turn it down she answered the door in jeans and a bra. That was

enough to scare me off. I've lived as a student, watched open heart

surgery in an operating room and nothing has turned my stomach as much

as that cheap denim and poor quality cotton framing a deeply unlovely

person. Luckily she showed the same care and consideration to her

neighbours as she did her rent check and so was forcibly evicted by
the

police. And on that day we had a party.

The new house has had problems too although up to now the biggest
thing

has been that the orange food waste bin has decided to roam the world

freed of its earthly burden. Or in English its disappeared. The
Council

are sending another one around.

However something has happened to spoil this elysian paradise. The

central heating packed in yesterday and I have zero experience of an

actual proper central heating system. My Mums house had the novelty of
a

warm air system where as far as I could see a team of asthmatic
badgers

would wheeze tepid air around the flues. It was kind of a homeopathic

heating system, air that had once been warm was diluted and passed

around a space that was too large and it had all the warming ability
of

clustering around a picture of a fire clipped from a magazine.

I poked the clock a few times, relit the pilot light on the boiler and

then, aware that my manly credentials were taking a downwards
direction

declared it 'broken' and 'We should get a man in.'

There are things I can do and things I can't and frankly if it doesn't

have a GUI then I'm screwed.