
I feel a bit of a fink being online for about oh all of 5 mins and not being able to communicate properly or devote as much time to blogging as I want to - its purely circumstantial - Suolas owns the pc and has to work from it , I on the otherhand have to learn new skills in cattle ranching as my girls get more boisterous and demanding (arent they supposed to get more independant as they grow older???)

My major reason for being away this time is that it was My mothers 60th birthday - my mum looks very much a fox for her age, gifts included a selection of peacock feathers and swords, a very snazzy yet uber stlish petal cuff coat from marks and spencers and a pair of leopard skin killer stilletoes (trust me they are rather classy - I know leopard skin shoes are always a no no but these look like the where liberated from a burlesque dancer) Mac Make up and so forth - and thats for someone who's turned 60! Thats the way I want to go at that age!
So theres a bit of a meal tomorrow for all the ladies in my Mums life, family and friends. We are heading back to the thai restaurant where my sisters engagement party was held (3 tiny chinese guys playing fuck off sized guitars and singing 'do that to me one more time ' by captain and tenille). She also got some tickets to see a musical called 'menopause' which she has asked me to go to with her but I told her to ask her best friend on the basis that it may depress me for whats in store for me not so long down the road..
Anyway When coming home on the train from Chez Parents today I read this article in the scotsman
Stigmata' monk made a saint by John Paul is branded a fake
NICK PISAIN ROME
A MYSTICAL Italian monk made a saint by Pope John Paul II and who claimed to suffer the wounds of Christ was a fake who used carbolic acid, according to a controversial new book.
Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was canonised in 2002, claimed to have first suffered the stigmata - holes in his hands and feet where nails pierced Christ at the crucifixion - when he was 24. He enjoyed a massive following, with thousands visiting him.
However, a book called Padre Pio and the Italy of the 19th Century, by historian Sergio Luzzatto says the wounds were self-created using carbolic acid and he claims to have found documentary evidence to prove it in the Vatican's secret archives.
A letter from pharmacist Maria de Vito, 28, who made a pilgrimage in 1919 to see Padre Pio at his monastery at San Giovanni Rotondo, near Foggia, and stayed for a month, said:
"The eve of my departure, Padre Pio called me to one side and, in great secrecy and asking me not to tell his fellow brothers, gave me personally an empty bottle he asked me to act as a chauffeur take it back from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo with four grams of pure carbolic acid.
"He explained that the acid was for disinfecting syringes for injections and he also asked for other medicines such as Valda tablets."
The letter said that a month later, a further request arrived from Padre Pio in which he asked for four grams of veratrine [painkiller] which was not available in her pharmacy, so she asked her cousin, who refused because he feared it was being used for faking his stigmata.
Now this guy is like the rock star saint in catholic Ireland the grannies and staunch spinsters LOVE THIS GUY, it will no doubt be like when Elvis died when word gets around this country!
