R's rue

  My niece Katie was born in the autumn of 1976 so later this month she will be 48 years old. Born in north London, she had experienced many visits to western Ireland before she moved there for good at the age of eighteen. If you heard her speaking now you would think she was entirely Irish and you would think the same if you witnessed her singing or playing her flutes and whistles in a bar in Kilfenora, Lisdoonvarna, Lahinch or Doolin. In this she has followed her father, my late brother Paul. Her singing voice is lovely. She closes her eyes and sails away upon the back of the song to somewhere else. Virtually all of her singing has been of other people's songs but in 2020 she crossed the line and created an original song for my brother. As it says in the first line, "This song is dedicated to my father". I have featured it before in "Yorkshire Pudding" but recently I was alerted to the existence of another video version on YouTube. Listening to it and w...

 Dreaming of A Milanese adventure  Days spent  Marveling  At architecture  Perusing The best fashion And eating My weight In pasta And gelato from R's rue https://ift.tt/QhZltS5

 Thinking on  Good and noble  Pursuits To anchor me In the present And not  Let my anxiety  Run wild I’m on The spin cycle With no end In sight  My rational state Has been obliterated  from R's rue https://ift.tt/YnvVgTa

I borrowed a blood pressure monitor from the health centre but the "cuff"  you put round your upper arm was too tight for me. I guess my arms are a bit like Popeye's after a can of spinach. The cuff kept bursting apart as it inflated. Anyway, we decided to invest in our own monitoring device which I did NOT order from Amazon! Instead I went to the "Boots" store at Heeley Retail Park. There were several to choose from. As I was looking at them, I met a man who showed me which one he had bought. Some friendly chat followed and it turned out that he had only recently emerged from the hollow of "Long COVID". For three years he had been housebound - mostly languishing in bed but now he's up and about. I said, "It must feel like being born again?" He said, "You're right. I hadn't thought of it like that." "Boots" is Britain's most famous pharmacy chain. At the prescriptions counter, a young shop assistan...