When considering becoming a nurse, I also considered being a vet. It would have been a lot more useful at our home for waifs and strays.

      Quite often I get phone calls asking for my help to rescue an injured animal. These animals include birds, lambs, hens, cats, dogs, field mice, hedgehogs and lots more. But just recently, I’ve being getting phone calls to help rescue swarms of bees.

      I am not a bee keeper, but I have friends who are and I’ve seen how they jump at the chance of retrieving a swarm of buzzing bees. And they do it so gracefully, and without a wince! Me, a lover of all animals, watch from a safe distance, with my hand over my mouth. The thought of being stung is not something I relish.

      A few days ago I was asked if I could remove a tick from a cat in the village. This is something I have to do quite regularly throughout these coming months and although not exactly difficult, it is better you know what you’re doing, not to spread disease.

      The tick needs to be removed by the head, using a fine tipped tweezers or indeed a tick remover, which we have at the home for waifs and strays. Pull firmly upwards without twisting. Don’t squash or touch the tick as this can transmit disease. You can use a cat-safe antiseptic cream once removed. And don’t forget to wash your hands thoroughly afterwards. Lesson over!

     Chickens are one of the hardest to help, as by the time they show signs of illness, they are already very poorly. The best thing with chickens as with all animals is to know your pet well. Pick them up (unless, of course, your pet is a pig or a horse or something rather large) and get used to how they feel. Watch them and see if their tails droop or if there’s discharge from their eyes or noses. If in doubt, check it out. My father always told me that if you keep animals then you have to look after them.

       Even at our home for waifs and strays, our animals sometimes get sick. This is a part of living. But if we are mindful of are animals from the beginning, it helps reduce the number of incidences and casualties.   

“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”
― Milan Kundera

At the home for waifs and strays, there is an old gate. It’s no ordinary gate, it has a history and a tale to tell.  

      Just as I rescue many things, I rescued this gate when my childhood home was sold. It is part of many pictures I have, so how could I leave it behind?

      Generations of my family have come and gone through this simple wrought iron portal. They have marched through it, on their way to war and back again. 

      I have photos of my great grandparents standing besides it, before the Second World War. My great grandmother wore a long black dress and a stern look on her face. She had scraped her grey hair back to form a bun at the nape of her neck and her arms were folded against her chest. A small black dog is resting by her feet and I instantly warmed to her.

      Then there is my mother, another proud and independent woman on her wedding day and then another holding me in her arms a few years later. And as I look through the photo’s I find another, when she was taken through the gate for the very last time. Bring her back! I remember wanting to scream the words but no sound could I make. Too soon I remember thinking, far too soon!

       There’s the photo of the farmer who lived next door, he was standing against the gate with a rifle in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other. I never did like that photo! I didn’t care much for the farmer either. Once a year he would hold a pigeon shoot and my brother and I would gather as many wounded pigeons as we could. I turned an outhouse into a temporary hospital but it was more like a morgue at the end of the day.

      And there is one of my Aunty Carrie. She wasn’t my real aunty but in those days, we called everyone uncle so and so or aunty so and so. Perhaps it is a welsh thing, I’m not sure. Well she is standing there with an apron wrapped around her enormous body and wore her stockings around her ankles. But she had the kindest smile I can ever remember. She cried and laughed with me many times. I think we laughed more than we cried. And she introduced me to sweet tea. ‘It’ll warm the cockles of your heart,’ I remember her saying. I’m not sure what that meant, but I have drank sweet tea ever since.

      And there is one of my father and I standing outside the garden gate. We had been banned from the house for bringing home a stray dog. It’s snowing in the picture and if they only knew then that the very dog we had rescued would one day rescue my dear brother.

       So I come to that rescue, the one that brought the media from around the world. We watched in amazement as cameramen hung over the gate shouting for my father to go out and talk about the dog, the one we rescued and called Tripper. It was the second time he had saved my brother’s life on a beach near our home.                                                                                                             

        I also walked through that gate at the tender age of fifteen and stayed away for many moons and many summers. But I returned to find the gate still there, still the same. It was I that had changed. But nothing could change the memories that link us. And now that gate is part of our home for waifs and strays. It is a new chapter in our lives.

How strange it is looking out of the window at the darkness thinking I am writing a bedtime story for you to read, when in actual fact you are probably just waking up and enjoying a cup of sweet tea. Well, wherever you are, thank you for taking the time to pop in to see me.

     I often wonder who you are and where you’re from. I looked through my list of followers earlier and discovered you could be anywhere in the world, and I mean anywhere. You seem to come from all around the globe. How amazing is that? I feel quite humble to think that perhaps some of you read my tales. I write them just before going to sleep. So they are hardly ever edited (I’m sorry!) and I never know what I’m going to write about until I settle down to type. Sometimes I’m tired but the urge to write is often greater than the urge to sleep. And I have started something so I will have to finish it.

      As I sit looking out at the darkness that blankets the village I live in, I will often hear an owl in a tree down by the pond or the cry of a cat prowling through the lanes. Cows will sometimes moo in the fields and sheep will give the occasional bleat, but the cry of a fox is the only sound that scares me. It’s the biggest threat to my innocent hens that sleep peacefully close by. Thanks to my kind and unassuming husband, they are as secure as they can be but I will never feel safe knowing the fox is prowling outside.

       So what is it you can hear, or see, on the other side of the world? You must wake up to so many different sounds. I guess some of you live in cities so indeed, the hoot of an owl is replaced by the hoot of a car. And the smell of the dew on the grass is replaced by the smell of bakeries and coffee houses and dusty sidewalks. Then when the evening comes, you have the electric stars to guide you as you hurry along the streets. Well, whoever you are, wherever you are, I wish you all a good morning or is it a good evening? Or as they say in my beloved Wales, Bora da! or Nos da!

Part two

We didn’t see the strange little man for another two days, although I looked out for him everywhere we went. Then on our last night on the island we saw him, in the doorway of a restaurant up in the hills and far away from where we last saw him.  

     I kicked my dear and new and unassuming husband under the table and tried to warn him with a strange look on my face. It didn’t work, he just thought I was trying to remove an unwanted bee or bug from my hair. He leaned over and said whatever it was had gone. Gone! Like heck, I thought, my stomach promising to throw back my meal if something wasn’t done...soon.  He was right there, still standing in the doorway, still avoiding my gaze.

     ‘It’s him!’ I hissed across the table, my napkin pressed against my mouth. ‘Take a photo of him quick and see if he’s real or not!’

      So my poor newly and kind husband picked up his camera and shot it in the direction of the doorway. Well obviously, the man had gone, leaving us wondering who he was and why was he following us.

      The following day we left for the airport and blow me, there he was, leaning against a lamppost in exactly the same spot the first time we saw him. Although I stared at him as we passed, he didn’t look my way.

      During the flight back to England, I went over and over in my head, the sequence of strange events. The funny little man who met us at the church as if he knew us, then turned up almost everywhere we went on the island. How he invited us to a dance in the village square that didn’t exist but it led us to the girl who was almost identical to myself. She also ran a cafe and a home for waifs and strays, just as I did and shared all the same interests as myself. But stranger than that, was the bond we shared even before we spoke. Our souls were connected as if we had known each other all of our lives. It was a sad parting and I promised to return the following year.

      It was totally bizarre, I thought to myself and I wondered what my newly kind and unassuming husband made of it all. I later heard him tell many of our friends and family, that I had a double and that a strange little man led us to her. People laughed, until I showed them the pictures of us both.

       We returned to the same place the following year, just after my dear father had died. I saw the church in the distance and instantly felt the same pull towards it but there was no strange little man leaning against the lamppost this time. So along the dusty track we went, to the old whitewashed cafe on the corner. The greeting was even stronger than before and we joked about being sisters and having lived together in another time, another place.

        Along with her Greek husband, she took us to meet her father, a retired sea captain, from Athens, who had once come to Wales. He was very ill so had come to stay with them for the summer. Well I wasn’t prepared for the shock, I can tell you, when I saw him. It took all my strength not to cry for I knew that I had seen this man before. Not just seen him, but I really knew him and when he put his arms around me I was quite certain. And as this frail old man tapped my back just as my father used to do, I saw him! That strange little man was walking towards us and this time he was looking right at me.

Dear readers, this story will continue tomorrow. It is not fictional but based on a series of strange events that happened over a few years.

‘There she is again!’ Selin pointed to the seal in the water. ‘What do you think she wants?’

      Seth looked at his twin sister and frowned. ‘That’s what everyone in Gusty Gully wants to know but who cares?’

      ‘I care,’ shouted Selin as she ran down to the water’s edge.

      Seth huffed and puffed as he followed in her footsteps. Girls, he thought, why do they have to be so soppy?

      The young seal hovered behind a rock and grunted at the children.

       ‘It’s trying to tell us something,’ Selin said. ‘I wish I could talk seal talk!’

        ‘You do talk seal talk,’ replied Seth as he dug his bare feet into the wet sand. ‘All girls do!’

       ‘Do you think she is injured?’ Selin ignored her brother’s moodiness and rolled up her trousers. ‘Perhaps we should take a closer look.’  And she wadded through the cold water towards the rock.      

       ‘Be careful Selin,’ Seth began to take notice of what was going on. ‘You know that seals can give you a nasty bite, especially if they feel threatened.’

        ‘Hello girl,’ Selin spoke gently as she climbed on the rock and peered down at the seal. It didn’t dip below the surface as one would expect, it just stared back through eyes almost hidden beneath long lashes.

        ‘She’s a Grey!’ Selin said excitedly. ‘She has a Roman nose! And she doesn’t look hurt. I’m going to call her Grypus, seeing as it’s a part of her scientific name.’

         ‘If she isn’t hurt, then what does she want?’ Seth turned around and looked across the deserted bay. ‘There must be something here.’ Then he ran across the sand towards a cave. 'And I think I know what it is,' he said to himself.

         ‘Wait for me,’ Selin slid down the rock and shivered as she entered the water.

         ‘That is what she wants!’ cried Seth as Selin caught up with him in the cave. ‘It’s a pup, just look at her white fur.’

         ‘She beautiful,’ cried Selin. ‘What do you think we should do?’

         ‘Leave her alone,’ replied Seth. ‘She is obviously well fed, just look at the size of her!’

         ‘But what is she feeding on?’ Selin placed her hands on her hips.

         ‘Grypus feeds her milk, when the tide comes in,’ she gets thinner and the baby gets fatter. Phil the Fish told me all about it the other day. He knows everything.’

        The children tiptoed out of the cave and ran all the way back to Gusty Gully.

         ‘Let it be our secret,’ said Selin.

         Seth nodded. ‘I like secrets,’ he said. ‘And we can check on them again tomorrow.’

And the baby survived and left the cave a couple of weeks later.