R's rue

Earlier today I sat out on our decking and finished reading "Shuggie Bain" by Douglas Stuart. This earthy novel was last year's Booker Prize winner. It was a book that I really warmed to as I kept turning the pages. The strapline on the front cover reads, "A novel of rare and lasting beauty" and I must admit that at first I could find little to support that claim but by the end I could see where "The Observer" reviewer was coming from. Set in the mean streets of Glasgow, the novel is semi-autobiographical. Hugh Bain, known universally as Shuggie,  is an effeminate boy who loves his mother Agnes fiercely in spite of her alcoholism and the many issues that this causes.  Life is hard.  There's rarely any food in the cupboard and Agnes is seldom at peace with herself, her relations or her community. It is as if Shuggie has to constantly walk on eggshells. The dialogue successfully captures the rough voice of working class Glasgow as once proud in...

The desk at work looks like the wreck of the Hesperus. As a favour I’ve come in to cover sickness but in patients remains strangely quiet , so I’m catching up on nurse revalidation paperwork and am online buying a leaving gift for a colleague . I smell strangely expensive too....which is a first...... I smell expensive because I’ve generously squirted myself with   Jicky ..extract de parfum  which was a gift from one of my patients from last year. I didn’t know it can be bought for £255 quid a bottle until tonight No more squirting Dorothy’s farty backside with it now I know.....hey ho.....I’m such a Luddite  I’m skint too, but before the troll minions start, I’m not complaining about it, just observing it.  The cinemas open soon so I’ve prebooked  tickets for the recent crop of Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins The Father,  Chloe Zhad’s   Namadland  with Francis McDormand, Pedro Almodovar’s The Human Voice,   and the Korean/ Ameri...

 Sunday Spring Day  Stepping on  Dandelions  As the Earth beneath My feet Feels like Home from R's rue https://ift.tt/3e84WAi

  Finally, the laburnum in the Churchyard has started to bud a hardly detectable green. I have been worried about it not doing so. It’s the most magnificent tree in the village. The sun is shining but it remains cooler than you might expect and when you look at the gorse on the Gop the blooms  that looked so golden only week ago , now look more muted in their radiance. The bachelor cockerel is crowing incessantly this morning but the breeze alters the volume of his calls from faint to bearable. There is the noise of a tractor coming from one of the fields in the valley towards Gentleman Ralph’s farm It’s as irritating as a lawnmower on this Sunday morning, the breeze can’t change that. The bluebells are out, in my garden and in the corner of the churchyard where I planted them two years ago.  They are luminous. As if powered by tiny batteries from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3eMvZQK