R's rue

Excessive Revenge in the style of Picasso ⦿ Vengeance (A parable) Once upon a time, there was a man who had a neighbour called Gaston. The man and his family had been troubled by Gaston for years. They judged him to be a bad neighbour. Sometimes Gaston played his music loud. You could hear the booming of it through the walls. And once he cut down the branch of an apple tree that he claimed had been overhanging his garden. There was much tension between the neighbours. Gaston had a Nissan pick-up truck and the man had an Alsatian dog called Brutus. One morning, Brutus was off his lead yet again running hither and thither - up the street and down. At the same time Gaston was off to work in his Nissan pick up truck. He backed out of his driveway looking up and down the street. If the truth be known, Gaston saw Brutus in his rear view mirror but he was late for work and you can guess what happened next. Brutus ran behind the truck and in an instant was killed. Gaston pretended t...

 Today’s lesson No matter  How much We don’t  Want to Ask for  Help Help Is what You get When you Get tired Of battling Your pride from R's rue https://ift.tt/IHS0YxC

  Remember my old mate Bert?  He was 87 years old on November 24th. Of course he had a fall in his house back in early July and was then in hospital for almost a month. He had broken his hip - an injury which required surgery. For four and a half months Bert has been housebound. He has a walking frame and he cannot get upstairs. His bedroom is now in the front room of his terraced house and he uses a commode for his daily "discharges". Fortunately, his 55 year old son Philip is able to act as his live-in carer. However, Philip is a football safety steward and every two weeks he spends five hours at Sheffield United's football ground - Bramall Lane. He was there today as United were playing Brentford in a Premier League fixture. I knew that Bert would be on his own all afternoon so I went over to see him and stayed in his house for a couple of hours. I was able to make him a mug of coffee and a snack. I had also brought over a couple of bottles of beer for him, a banan...

Shane MacGowan (1957-2023) Another death. Another funeral. Like Benjamin Zephaniah, Shane MacGowan was only sixty five. He was born in Kent in England but his parents were Irish and his spiritual homeland was back in County Tipperary. With drink and drugs, Shane seemed to have an active self-destruct button so I suppose that it is something of a miracle that he made it to sixty five. He was the creative force behind The Pogues and managed to find a way to marry punk with elements of Irish traditional  music. He had a way with words. This afternoon, BBC World News  covered the three hours of his sometimes chaotic funeral, beamed live to our living room from the town of Neenagh, County Tipperary. It was a heady mix of remembrances, readings, music, prayers, mistakes and a traditional Catholic mass. The church was packed for Shane was much loved and attendees no doubt  recognised his essential humanity, his poetic soul and the struggles he had had to just to navigate li...

 Shine on me Smile at me Send me A sign That wherever  I am So are you from R's rue https://ift.tt/NFS2iOD

 What are you loving? What are you eating? What are you buying? What is making you smile? What is on your heart? from R's rue https://ift.tt/oYrObyp

A lot of good people seem to have died in the last few weeks. Today, I was saddened to learn of the death of Benjamin Zephaniah at the tender age of sixty five. It was a brain tumour that got him. I guess that most bloggers from other countries will not have heard of him but here in Great Britain, over decades, he had become something of a national treasure. Born into an immigrant West Indian family in the city of Birmingham, he left school without qualifications having being diagnosed as "dyslexic". Later, it was a meeting with a typewriter mixed with his growing fascination with the lyrics of reggae songs that woke up his poetic voice. He found a way to make his poetry sing to ordinary people and schoolkids. His topics often involved injustice and the multicultural experience but he could be funny and sweet too, enjoying wordplay, looking at nature and the quirkiness of human existence. He appeared in "Peaky Blinders" and was a lifelong vegan. He became flue...