Oh dear! - or a word to that effect

Apparently, this commercial was banned. What a pity. It's hilarious.

Chrysologus

I think I have found my patron saint at last: St Peter Chrysologus. Today is his feast day, and he's called Chrysologus - golden-worded - because of his "exceptional oratical eloquence." Someone once said of me "This man could talk for England", which might have been a compliment, though I doubt it.
I'd much rather they'd just called me Chrysologus.

Mrs Trellis has a query.

Dear Mrs Scrote, she writes, I am intrigated by your use of the word "munchkins" to describe your grandchildren. Is it a term of endearment, or are they really tiny and fictitious? My husband, the late Mr Trellis, had various names for me, not all of which I understood, so I used to watch his face for signs of satire. In the Spring, he sometimes called me his "little pussy willow". At such moments, I noticed that his face was flushed and his breathing a little tight, but I put that down to overindulgence in the dandelion and baldock. In the autumn, I became his "little shiny conker", a name which I thought would have suited him better. Anyway, I didn't much like that name, though it was better than being his "little red haw", which I took to be an unflattering reference to my private area.
I've often wondered if Scrote is your real name, or something you were given by a hostile agent. 
Blodwen Trellis, Mrs, Widow, retd.
.

July visitors

Well, they came, the Californian munchkins (they were good enough to bring their mother with them), and they stayed with me nearly a month, and then they went back (taking their mother back with them).
I really had my grandpa fix, I can tell you.
Highlights were a visit to the Imperial Air Museum at Duxford. If you haven't been, do go, it's awesome, although the price of ice creams is outrageous, even without the chocolate flake; and a visit to the Raptor Foundation to watch the falconry display. All three munchkins had a go at feeding an Eagle Owl, a bird so much bigger than any of them that they couldn't help flinching as it flew up to take the morsel from their gloved hand.

Oh yes, and for Kiki an outing to check some Kestrel and Barn Owl boxes. Despite appearances, the owl that she is holding is not dead, just placid.
After I came back from seeing the family off at Heathrow, I set about cleaning up the house, or at least the living room. Now it is immaculate, nothing out of place, everything polished and sparkly. But it's deafingly silent and spookily empty. Can't wait for the next invasion of the fruit of the fruit of my loins.

L'Uomo dal Fiore in Bocca

You're not going to believe this, but I had a real Pirandello moment yesterday. My dentist told me I belong to a category of people who have excessive calcium and phosphates in their saliva. We are the people who therefore build up lots of plaque, and so need to visit our dentist more frequently than the average for de-plaquing. And all these years I thought I was normal. It's enough to make you spit.

Ite, missa est

My feisty granddaughter, Sophie, has elected to do Latin next year, so, when she heard that there is a Mass in Latin at the Catholic church in Cambridge, she asked me if I would take her there. We just got back. I am dazed, but Sophie seemed to take it all in her stride. At least she was relaxed enough after the service to ask me if we could stop at the Spar grocers to buy candy. And there's me thinking that virtue is its own reward.

When you say you are "depressed".......

 The following is an extract from a recent entry in Prairie Mary's blog. If you find her words as cogent as I do, I urge you to visit her blog: it's one of the best on the net.
QUOTE
But this is what I really want to say.  “Being depressed” because one will never have a house with a bathroom for each bedroom, a double garage, and a wireless network for your electronics -- which one’s parents had -- is not the same thing as the yawning abyss at the feet of the truly organically depressed.  The latter is the darkness that engulfs and destroys, mocks with hissing evil every effort to act or to think.  Most of us cannot even imagine it and those in the grip can’t describe it until later and then tell us that every effort fails.
To say that the ordinary set-backs and wrestling matches of the day are “so depressing” is to use a word to mean unpleasantness that can be addressed and resolved (possibly to excuse ourselves from doing exactly that) when REAL depression is demonic, catastrophic, nearly theological and beyond most medical help.  It is apoptosis of the soul, apoptosis being the formal term for a cell that orders itself to die.
We can only pray for those suffering depression on that scale.  But we should also pray for those suffering in extremis from hunger, disease, trauma, slavery, because those people are BEYOND depression themselves and should be beyond “depressing” us.  NOT beyond our help.  
UNQUOTE
Thank you, Mary, for giving me permission to publish the above on my blog, thank you for being my friend, and thank you for introducing me to the delicious word "apoptosis" - a word like that coiuld come in very handy one day...

Mrs T catches up with the news

More pithy comment on world affairs from my North Walian correspondent.

Dear Mrs Assad, she writes, isn't it awful when people start disliking you, though in your case I expect people have disliked you for years, you being a  Babylonian and all. I suggest you give all your shoes to charity, sell off the family silver and carpets, and do a runner to somewhere anomalous like Golders Green, but I advise you not to take any enslaved Hebrews with you.
Yours etc
Blodwen Trellis, Mrs, Widow, retd, unshaven

I don't want to digest yet!

People of a squeamish disposition should look away now. I have just found this (metaphorical)  model of my intestines.

Thank you, Nurse Esther

To the surgery yet again yesterday to have my scar inspected and the dressing changed. Nurse Esther is a beautifully-sculpted lass, so I was quite disappointed when she held up the tweezers holding the offending foreign body that had been preventing the scar from closing. It was a tiny black thing no bigger than a gnat's bollock. It means, ceteris paribus, that the scar will now close, making this my last visit to the surgery and the joy of being poked about by a nubile nurse.
Oh well, maybe tomorrow I'll slip and bruise my gluteus maximus. With a bit of luck....

It's just a hole in the ground really

And now, a shot of the garden pond, complete with stone toads and piddly waterfall. Thanks to the spiky vegetation in the pond, the ducks no longer come. As far as I can tell, the faunal wildlife in the pond now consists mainly of mosquitoes. I hope there's something nearby that eats the little whining buggers.

Horses

Idyllic scene this morning from my kitchen window. The horse in the corral (to the left) has something wrong with its front right paw (paw?? you can tell I am not a horsy person), which appears to be bandaged. An angel of mercy called Sheila comes to the field around dawn every morning (don't ask me how I know) and ministers to it. The wee Sheltie to its left is in the corral for company. As for the horse in the foreground, well, you can see that it's going to be a hot day again....

Salve atque vale

Say hello to my luscious berry-laden Rowan Tree. You might as well say goodbye to it as well, because the Blackbirds have already started noshing the berries. Normally they wait until late September to strip the tree, but the long dry spell probably means that they are having a hard time digging protein out of the hard ground. So, I guess my luscious etc will be a mere skeleton before July is out.