Irish Iron Woman

I love this photo. This would be me as the only attempt I could ever make at being an Iron Woman is, like this lady, to take an ironing board into the sea. I can swim quite well, but the running would have me walloped. Once I swam to one of the far buoys in Low Rock where I swim. It is 200 meters to the buoy and 200 meters back, I am not brave or fit enough to do the whole 1km swim. One time when I swam out to the buoy, I could not swim back due to the current. I had to do the walk of shame back to my friends as I came in off the rocks much further up.

When I hear of people like Eddie Izzard who ran 31 marathons in 30 days it baffles me. He also raised over half a million pounds for charity. Their strength and endurance is unreal. I believe some ultra-marathon runners can run 100- 200 miles. Eddie Izzard has also performed his stand-up comedy in French, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. She is extraordinarily talented and I adore her surreal sense of humor. ‘Cake or Death’ has to be my favorite sketch. So ridiculously clever.

Eddie Izzard – Cake or Death sketch

https://youtu.be/PVH0gZO5lq0

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

One of those days

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJaJTu8Q/

Today was definitely one of those days. It started with a doggy walk and my two dogs going feral at a passing husky who was minding his own business and being husky-like as, after all, he was a husky. I digest, whoops, I digress. Buzz and Finn were both leashed up and last week they loved this particular husky. I cannot fathom why they can like a dog one week and then dislike it the next. It is the same with two beautiful serene Samoyed dogs. They are like big white serene clouds and again Buzz and Finn just decide to take a notion not to like them when they were licking them another time.

As I got into my car a seagull pooped on my head. Putting out the bins later, the bag burst and I had to fight off two pugs off leads that were trying to eat chicken bones. It turned out that one of the pugs was lost and I had to take him home, give him water, photograph him and put a mayday onto our residential Facebook site for somebody to claim her. She was very overweight and breathing with difficulty. I was afraid somebody had abandoned her but thankfully she was claimed.

From now on I will be armed with treats and keep my eyes more peeled than I usually do to distract them and prevent them from barking. But after today it is highly unlikely that I will put my nose outside the door. Although to be honest, I know I will.

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

Sneezy seal day and Viz

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJadhbDM/

Today is a sneezy day for me. I had a swim earlier and as I inhaled salt water; I had a fit of sneezing when I came home. Following two of my sneezes I farted. My two dogs, Buzz and Finn, looked at me with disdain. Yesterday I made a lovely frittata with lots of leeks followed by my now-famous Black Bean Brownies, made from kidney beans. I had a lovely feast but my colon became nuclear later in the evening. Whilst practicing yoga I could not stop farting. I think at one point I saw Buzz’s eyes watering.

Viz has been my favorite comic since it was launched many many moons ago. Johnny Farty Pants has to be the best character. The scene where the climate activists visit his house to ask why the ozone layer has disappeared above it is way before its time. His mother responds by saying that she has suffered chemical burns to her lungs due to her son’s toxic flatulence. It is hard to believe it began in 1979 and went National in 1985.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/26/how-we-made-viz

A dear friend gifted me the Viz, War and P*ss Profanisaurus with a foreword by Professor Cox. It is without doubt the rudest book on the planet.

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

Air Afrikaans

Warning- content may offend.

This comedy duo gives me the giggles. The sketch is hilarious with 10 million views

https://youtu.be/CYOIbXJTVIc

Before I commenced nurse training, I did an interview to become cabin crew with an Airline named Air 2000. I was not chosen and often wonder how different my life would have been if I was cabin crew as opposed to being a nurse. I adore travelling and as my father was an engineer in Aer Lingus, we travelled a lot. We lived in Kano, Nigeria for six months when I was eight and later in Malta. The memories I have of Kano have always stayed with me. I had never seen a black person before and was sticking my tongue out to them as my father drove us to our new home in his Nigerian Airways car. I was very bold and just thought they looked like aliens.

The house where we stayed was beautiful with gorgeous landscaped gardens. We played Monopoly in the living room but the best fun was stopping the money from flying away from the giant fan above us. Capturing scorpions to pull their tails off was a great pastime. We didn’t realise how dangerous it was at the time. As I had learnt to swim the previous year, I was obsessed with being in the pool. Each weekend we went to a pool club and by the end of the day I had webbed hands and feet.

However, I remember the poverty. It was extreme. The children were blind and maimed begging on the pavements for ‘Dashy’. As a foreign family, we were very privileged in the early ’70s, however, I was too young to realise it at the time.

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

Dodgy weather

I love this weather-predicting stone. It does what it says on the sign. No guesswork, just plain and simple. The weather has been unpredictable, to say the least, and I have not been doing too well in choosing the correct clothing. I went to the beach the other day to walk Buzz and Finn and looked like I was about to commence a Mount Everest ascent. I had my big padded duvet-style coat on, a giant orange mohair scarf, and my teal Nepalese woollen hat. When I got to the beach the sun had come out and it was 18 degrees. When I had left it was a windy twelve degrees. Whenever there is wind, I always take four to five degrees from the temperature to make it accurate and the beach is always extra windy anyway. Not to mention my tummy from a hearty curry the night before.

I peeled everything off and had to try and tame my wild hat hair. There was no point and I looked like someone from the Blasket Islands circa 1920. It didn’t matter, Buzz and Finn were in beach heaven. I love the thud of Finn’s tiny paws as he is let off the lead and races across the sand at breakneck speed, anxious to get as much sniffing in as possible. He has taken to picking up coffee cups as he sees me picking them up for the litter bin. I am off to have a cuppa now.

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

Trump’s arrest

Please accept my apologies in advance as my objective in my blog is to never offer opinions and make you smile. Every now and then something happens that incenses me so much that I either have to write about it or write a poem about it. The latter is the case today in honour of the momentous occasion of Trump’s arrest. BTW I am aware that the photo is a fake arrest photo. It is merely a wry nod to his fake news claims over the years.

 

Spunky Trump

 

The spunky Trump got spanked by stormy

He paid her from his expense account with glee

He hates Mexicans and tried to build a wall

Incited a riot and joyfully watched the squall

Stated In Africa there are shit-hole countries

Falsified documents with criminal ease

He is a fake news activist

Now he’s indicted and oh so pissed

He is anathema to climate change

Didn’t honour veterans because of the rain

He loves the Russians and insulting women

After this, the Kremlin won’t even have him

He sacked all his staff and attacked racial injustice protests

He ran a mafia, not a government and now we will see justice.

By

Adele Leahy

Silly Tuesday

Today I have decided to be silly. And the Godfathers of silliness are The Monty Python team.

One of their best sketches must be The Ministry of Silly Walks. With John Cleese at his very very best. I learnt recently that they are doing another series of Fawlty Towers which should, hopefully, be a treat. Although, sometimes I feel certain classics are best left alone. John is said to team up with his daughter, Camilla Cleese, as they will both write and star in the comedy.

I have mentioned these clips before in honour of being silly but today I figure that they merit mentioning again to justify my longing for silliness.

The Ministry of Silly Walks

https://youtu.be/eCLp7zodUiI

The Silly Olympics tickles me also

https://youtu.be/qgSzGIkFq2A

Monty Python-Would you like to buy an argument?

https://youtu.be/xpAvcGcEc0k

And Philosophy football

https://youtu.be/LfduUFF_i1A

In honor of the genius of Monty Python, I pledge to carry out the following acts of silliness today

  1. To complete a full grocery shop performing the silly walk intermittently.
  2. Try and engage a friend in a -Would you like to buy an argument, debate.
  3. To ask the person in a petrol station whilst paying for petrol if they sell squirrels.

If you can think of any more, please let me know as I am hoping to dedicate one day a month to being very silly indeed.

 

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

 Camel Botox

In 2021, forty animals were disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s annual camel beauty contest because they had Botox. Two things are wrong with this sentence: one is a camel beauty contest, and two, forty had Botox. They also inflate other parts of the camel’s body using elastic bands. The mind boggles. Prize money of 49 million was up for grabs. Who knew? And do the owners of the losers get the hump? I couldn’t resist; it was too obvious.

Judges at the festival, hosted in the desert northeast of the capital Riyadh, said they are using ‘specialised and advanced’ technology to detect nip and tuck this year. This is baffling. I would give anything to know exactly what this technology is.

What’s next, horses with lip filler? Lash extensions? Alpacas with hair transplants to give them a better-looking mullet? I am just showing off now as I recently learnt that the main difference between an alpaca and a llama is that an alpaca has a mullet, and a llama does not.

Maybe we have missed out here in Ireland on the prospect of a cow beauty competition. It could be udderly amoosing. And again, who knew, I have just learnt from Google that these occur in Russia.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/07/siberian-cows-compete-in-bovine-beauty-pageant-a72257

All the best

Stay fab

Adele

St. Patrick’s Day 2023

https://www.her.ie/life/470-world-landmarks-turning-green-st-patricks-day-stunning-454922

The Chicago River and the fountain in the Whitehouse

I love that over the years, famous iconic structures and places have been green-lit in honour of St.Patrick’s Day. It began in Sydney in 2010 and was known as the Global Greening marketing campaign, which cost 40,000 euros at the time. Tourism Ireland wished to mark the 200 years since the governor Lachlan Macquarie celebrated the Irish in Sydney.

In Brazil, Archibishop Dom Orani Joao Tempesta green-lit Christ the Redeemer in thanks to the good work the Irish missionaries have done in the city over the years. The Irish have a very strong presence in Dubai, as many of the captains of industry are Irish. The CEO of the Jumeirah Group, which owns the Burj Al Arab, is from Galway and has green-lit the beautiful building every year.

St.Patrick’s Trust in Cape Town, South Africa, were honoured for the many homes they built in South Africa by green lighting Table Mountain.

This year the campaign ends due to the energy crisis but we have many years and beautiful photos to look back on.

The following are some of the major structures that have been green-lit.

  1. The Colosseum
  2. Rio-Christ The Redeemer
  3. Burj Al Arab
  4. The Empire State Building
  5. The Sydney Opera House
  6. Disneyland Castle in Shanghai, China
  7. Windmill in Weert, the Netherlands
  8. The leaning tower of Pisa
  9. The London Eye
  10. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff also mark the occasion.

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/festivals/st-patricks-day/buildings-around-the-world-wont-light-up-for-st-patricks-day-as-global-greening-

Have a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day.

Stay fab

 

Adele

Goosebumps

I get goosebumps when I listen to my favourite song or hear a new song I adore. It is such a great word, and I felt compelled to research its origin. They’re called goosebumps because, when you have them, your skin looks like the skin of a goose or a chicken whose feathers have been plucked out. So, if you want, you could call them chicken bumps, too

And, of course, the next natural question that entered my pretty head was- And what do geese or chickens get when excited?  On the famous Irish Late Late Show on St. Patrick’s Day,2023, they featured an egg laid by a chicken that was twice the size of any regular egg. Imagine the excitement of that chicken? Or/ and the pain? He must still have a wonky walk, the poor thing.

When my nieces were young, their description of this was – fizzy hands or fizzy feet, which I love and still use to this day.

It is said that only certain types of people, such as empaths, experience goosebumps more frequently than others, but I do not believe this. As humans, whenever we have the grace of experiencing moments of awe, we get goosebumps. I think it is intrinsically linked to our spirit and frequency, which both create this magical physical experience.

Let me know what you think.

 

All the best

Stay fab

Adele