Hi Leonid, Blackbowtie, NaiNa and other kind friends. Thank you for following me. I’m on holiday now and only have a “Dum phone.” So it’s difficult to keep up unless I use smoke signals. But I will be back. :0)
PS. Have borrowed an office computer to send this. :0) All the best. Busy Bee. I’m off to dance with wolves.
Gone to visit the Queen. (Mother). Back in a couple of weeks. :0)
Stories have connected us to others since they were told through oral narrations around a campfire. It is with great pleasure that I connect you with… Trending Tuesday There Wasn’t a Chair — Sherrie’s Alw
My parents often took their grandchildren on trips and both parties enjoyed it as much as each other. And it really was great to see how two different generations interacted with each other.
There was something magical about watching my parents behave like children, and the children’s attempts to always be a bit older and a bit taller than they really were in order to gain some extra benefit from them.
Which brings me to the question asked by some at the time about why grandmother was seen sitting in the car in her underwear. And why granddad visited a Laundromat for the first time in his life, bearing a handful of woman’s clothing, all of it dripping wet.
He’d mentioned that it all went very quiet when he’d first entered. He thinks it might have been the woman’s tights hanging over his arm that did it. And as he also said at the time, his biggest worry was that somebody would call the police.
You see Dad being a man’s man, it took a lot of convincing to even get him to do the washing up, but to be asked to walk into a Laundromat, and to wash and dry female attire, in front of spectators, was really pushing the boundaries, well his boundaries anyway.
But needs must, and anyway it wasn’t his decision.
Apparently, everything was going fine until mother laid out the picnic blanket.
She’d turned to help my father empty the car of more stuff, saw his facial expression, sensed that something was wrong, and commenced with her usual twenty questions guessing game.
My father was a man of few words at the worst of times, and to get an answer from him in response to any question about any subject was like trying to get blood from a stone.
But in a panic, the best he could usually do in the way of communication was to stamp his feet, puff his cheeks up until they nearly burst, and point with both arms whilst shaking his head. And this is what he was doing now.
‘Do you want the toilet? Have you stood on a stinging nettle? Do you… ‘. Realising that she was getting nowhere mother turned her head to witness my toddler son running down the hill at full speed.
He was testing out his new trainers but didn’t know that on a downward slope the specially designed treads were never going to stop him when he wanted to stop. And of course, they didn’t. Splash – he was in the lake.
Mother chased after him, down the same slope, but in a pair of Crocs with even less tread, and splash – she was in the same lake with him. Apparently, she’d looked like somebody skiing down a slope, and didn’t actually fall into the lake, but rather slide into it at great speed. And with both hands up in the air.
Thankfully everybody survived – my son from drowning, my mother from immodesty, and my father from an unusual display of less than masculine behaviour.
But as my son said at the time, in his own toddler way, none of this would have happened if he’d been wearing a proper pair of trainers like the one’s Mo Farah wears.
Stories have connected us to others since they were told through oral narrations around a campfire. It is with great pleasure that I connect you with…
via Trending Tuesday There Wasn’t a Chair — Sherrie’s Always Write
How to prevent a child from choking. Easy to understand instructions.
http://www.itv.com/thismorning/health/what-to-do-when-a-child-is-choking-dr-ranj
You haven’t failed until you give up.
So don’t give up.
The place buzzes with activity on this late autumn afternoon – a golden sphere of sunset igniting the red stone city that stands before me.
There are many ways to get around it but I choose the bus – a larger than life guide exuding ample amounts of Belfast humour as we make our way down roads once the subject of so much bad news – black humour, hers, softening up the stiffness of a now excited visitor. Me.
Our double-decker turns into a street teeming with people – curves around the Waterfront – steers towards an area reflecting back black water – a chequered mix of old and modern buildings spooling past my window until, once stopped, I disembark beside a mosaic fish. Its big and its shiny. But there are no chips.
The Black Man – Belfast City – Northern Ireland.
I immerse myself in the energy ignited by this burgeoning city – taste olives in Saint Georges Market, meander towards a ‘Black Man’ not yet visible, my plans to visit him, as was the case the last time, delayed by the draw of the curiosity shops lining a side street just over my shoulder and to the left.
I purchase replica models of Ian Paisley and James Nesbitt from one of them and watch them being wrapped in brown paper before I leave.
Now don’t forget. You are heading up to the see the “Black Man” a voice in my head shouts.
Five steps forward , I stop again. This time, in order to peer into a shop with a crammed to the rafter’s window display of “nik naks”.
I’ve made it. No more shops I vow as I look up and study a teal coloured building. It has the dubious reputation of being the most bombed building in Europe but none of that is obvious to me, it’s once shattered windows long since replaced with the shiny smoked glass ones I’m now looking at.
A confident ‘Europa Hotel’ sign protrudes above the sea of busy commuters beneath it and a not so busy me – and the lazy limousines, and the cautious bearers of coffee cups – and the promoters of “good will” near its entrance who hand out God to those who might be needing him. They insist I take a leaflet.
Next door stands the Opera House, a mini version of The Royal Albert Hall, and further along a castle, well a Castle Court, the name of a busy shopping centre on the busiest street in Belfast.
It’s brimming with shoppers heading in and heading out, all the while managing to avoid bumping into each other en route.
So what do I do? Bump into a family of four huddled over a bag of doughnuts. Trust me. ‘Sorry’.
Belfast Waterfront – The Big Fish.
Whilst still aiming for the “Black Man”, I’m lured yet again by another eclectic mix of shopping possibilities – and by the planetarium-style structure that rises up before me now.
It houses an array of international retail outlets, star struck shopping professionals praying at their temples, a scene stretching as far back as my eyes will take me.
Not much sign of a recession here if the fashion carriers borne by passers-by are anything to go by I mumble – not a single one of them advertising a Charity Shop. With time ticking, I make myself move on.
The Albert Clock, a once tilted structure that now stands upright due to all the conservation work, appears ahead of both me and a line of pulsating street fountains.
A Labrador, provoked by their intermittent squirts, runs towards, then rushes away from the holes gushing up cold water.
He shakes himself dry at my feet, any excess water soaked up like a towel by the jeans I’m wearing.
Deciding to dry off I stop at McHugh’s – a watering hole of choice when I’m visiting.
Sat back and comfortable in a small wooden snug I sip a glass of the black stuff and observe my surroundings above the rim of it – time and another pint softly tuning my ears into all the different accents.
But before I can truly decipher any of them its time for me to move on yet again.
I’m now back at the well-lit river bank where I’d started, cool blue light morphing the River Lagan black, the concert hall to my right like a big fat lighthouse luring people in from the chill and straight into the heart of Joni Mitchell. She’s appearing on stage tonight.
But my bus is here and it’s time to leave.
I never did get to see “The Black Man”. Too many distractions and so little time to see it all. Sorry.
But I vow to come back soon.
And it’s a vow I’ll have no problem honouring.
*Footnote: Who is the black man? The statue of Dr. Henry Cooke. (1788-1868), leader of Belfast’s Evangelical Presbyterian’s. Over time he has turned green.
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Life is a game, play it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
There's much more that unites us than divides us. Hip Hurray!
*****The Silent Majority*****
alienatednation 
Thats another fine mess…
18 09 2016I’ve just discovered that with a cat in a hat and a mouse in a house I can change the size of the images I use. This is all new to me but also very exciting.
Now, how do I change the spell checker from Icelandic to English. Oh great. Just found it. Annar stafsetningu mistök!
(Picture courtesy of pixabay.)
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