Jo Robinson's Blog, page 58

The Eleventh Day of Christmas with Sam, Garry and Russel with festive food for pets.

jorobinson176:

Christmas with Sam. :)

Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:

I have shared quite a few memories of Christmas Past over my alternative Twelve Days of Chrismas but one thing you will know about me from reading my blog this year is that I feel that animals are part of our family and should be treated with the same love and respect however large or wild they may be.

So whilst talking about the food and treats for the season it would not be right to neglect those four legged family members who will shortly be in sensory overload with all the aromas wafting from the kitchen.

Dogs and cats do not have human digestions but for thousands of years they shared our scraps from our table and thrived and in fact this continued to only about 30 years ago. Two things happened that impacted the way we feed our domestic animals.�� The pet food industry marketing machine went into���

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���The Angler and the Owl��� by Viv Drewa

Originally posted on theowlladyblog:

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For 25 years France Hunter has been studying owls, and has discovered five new species around the world. Her work has kept her busy and she never had time for a relationship. She travels with Jason ���Doc��� Bradley, a former paramedic, and his cousins Tony and Andy Bradley. Now, on her last outing she is joined by a magazine writer, Cathy Birch, and a world famous angler, John Sinclair, who has also dedicated his life to his field.
As the small caravan travels to the Amazon river France falls and severely injures her left arm. Against Doc���s recommendation to turn back, she pushes on. This is her last trip and she wants to go to the place where she found her first new owl.
While fishing a blue-ringed owl lands on John���s canoe and looks down the river to where France���s group is, and then looks���

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Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

jorobinson176:

Merry Christmas from Kev with a song. :)

Originally posted on Kev's Music Blog:

This song is my gift to you all. :)

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The True Story of Rudolph (The Red Nosed Reindeer)

Originally posted on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog..... An Author Promotions Enterprise!:

This was emailed to me by a friend:

A man named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing. Bob���s wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.

Little Barbara couldn���t understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dad���s eyes and asked, ���Why isn���t Mommy just like everybody else���s Mommy?���

Bob���s jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears. Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob���s life. Life always had to be different for Bob. Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he���d rather not remember.

From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit���

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Pamela Beckford

Originally posted on Reading Recommendations:

Pamela Beckford

What is your latest release and what genre is it?Love: Lost and Found ��� a collection of love poems

Quick description: Using various poetry forms we are introduced to the ups and downs of love, from the throes of passion in a new love to the angst of a lost love

Brief biography:

I started writing poetry in 2013 and haven���t stopped since. It is still hard to think of myself as a poet (or a writer), but I am. I find writing poetry has been a great release for me. I have been a non-profit executive for over 15 years and am passionate about my job, even though it is extremely demanding. I have one grown daughter and an adorable young grandson who live way too far away from me.

Links to buy Pamela���s book:
My books are all available in paperback or Kindle ebooks. I���

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Christmas Eve with guests Mira Prabhu and Kim Gosseling – Sparkling.

jorobinson176:

Join our lovely Sally and her very special guests for a festive Christmas Eve. And trifle!

Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:

Over the last twelve days I have been sharing memories of Christmas past but today I am going to look to the future. We feel that our house is priced to sell within the next twelve months and that by this time next year we will be back in the UK and settled into our new home. Hopefully closer to our families and UK based friends by several hours. It is both exciting and bitter sweet as we have loved living in our home for most of the last 15 years and also enjoyed the warm friendship of our neighbours in the area where we live.

We are also looking forward to taking some long awaited trips to Canada to visit family and friends and take the train across the Rockies. We also hope to meet up with our friends from our Houston days over 30 years ago. I also���

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Echoes of Narcissus in the Gardens of Delight is LIVE

Donna thought there was something wrong with her. That she was suffering from a mental illness that has caused her husband to despise her, distance himself from her, and cheat on her. She blames herself for the desolate, miserable thing that is her marriage and her life. Then she comes across a book that will change everything for her, and reading it, she discovers that there���s nothing wrong with her mind at all, but that there is something very wrong with her husband instead. Marco, she realises, is a malignant narcissist. A text book case. He has a real and documented mental disorder, and that he���s been controlling, manipulating, and abusing her for decades. The sudden full knowledge of all that he���s purposely done to her enrages her. Not sure how to leave after thirty years of what she finally knows has been intentional mental and emotional abuse from him, and believing that she has nowhere to turn, being so physically isolated, she bides her time.

Then she meets and befriends a group of unusual people who share her passion for gardening, and so begins her journey to escape. She joins her new friends in their project to assist elderly people in old age homes care for their small gardens, as well as secretly supplying those suffering from painful and terminal illnesses with medicinal herb and plant remedies, including illegal plants such as cannabis. As weeks go by, she delves into her memories, relearns what it is to be respected, liked, and loved again, and slowly she formulates a plan to safely leave her dangerous husband. But unbeknownst to Donna, Marco is in serious trouble, and has desperate plans of his own, and absolutely no regard for her safety.

** This is a work of fiction, but malignant narcissists really do exist, and it is a recognised mental illness. Unfortunately, many people never realise that they are involved with a narcissist, because their actions are so demonically bad as to be unimaginable and unbelievable, and so they spend their lives in misery, depression, fear, and isolation. If only by the accidental reading of a fictional story, I hope that this book will help even one person, unknowingly suffering narcissistic abuse, to realise that they don���t have to, and that it���s never too late to start over, be happy, be fulfilled, to love and care for yourself, and be truly loved and respected by others.

Available now from AMAZON

The Ninth Day of Christmas, Chocolate, Egokiller, Indlondlo Zulu Dancers take to the floor.

Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:

So pleased that the Twelve Days of Christmas are bringing some pre-festive enjoyment and thank you to all of those who have reblogged and commented. I am shortly going to draw another name out of the hat for the sixth recipient of one of my books in the daily draw and I am loving the response to that.

On this ninth day of my own memories of Christmas I have moved on from 1977 when I was not sure what the future would hold for me to the Christmas of 1979.

I had left the school in Sussex where I had been Housekeeper/cook for 18 months and moved in the April 1979 to Wales to be Assistant Manager at a hotel between Dolgellau and Barmouth on the Mawddach Estuary in the stunning Snowdonia National Park.

I was by this time in a really good place personally and had regained my���

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Plight of the Rhino – Springbok Publications

Originally posted on Feed My Reads South Africa:

One of my stories, Nkoninkoni, has the honour of appearing in an anthology created for the purpose of donating proceeds to Save the Rhino International

Firstly, please share a little about yourself, and what you do in our writing world.

Hi Jo, thanks for your kind words and the opportunity to chat to you. I was born on the West Coast of South Africa and after meeting, my now wife, we decided to temporarily move to the UK to see what life has to offer outside of South Africa. That was 14 years ago���
I mostly pen short stories and flash fiction, but am currently working on my novel, due to be released at the end of 2015. I have been blessed to have some of my short stories published in the US, UK and South Africa. I always have a piece of paper and pen to hand, because life���

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..in Memoriam, Miss Kerr… Born 18 ? ?— Died 1962…

Originally posted on Seumas Gallacher:

..a wee change of pace from my usual content, and I���ll ask yeez to bear with it, and read it through to the end��� when Master Gallacher was all of fourteen years old, most of the non-school hours were spent playing football with my pals on the spare ground close to our home in Glasgow��� an open piece of grass on which our pitched jackets served as goalposts, was bounded by tenement buildings��� overlooking the area, one of these ��buildings was tenanted exclusively by older folks��� single, either spinsters or widowed individuals, well beyond even the age that I���m now skirting with��� one day I heard a call from a third floor small balcony��� a petite, white-haired lady beckoned me to come up��� I did so, and met for the first time Ms Kerr��� she needed some help and asked if I would be kind enuff to carry her���

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