Bookish

If you’ll recall, after two lengthy phone calls, Work & Pensions said I already have a National Insurance Number from the 1970s and all I had to do was show up with my passport.

Wrong.

Passport is in my married name. I must bring my birth certificate or my marriage certificate. And something with my name and current address. I learned this after driving downtown and paying for parking. Since I was in the city anyway, I went to two charity bookshops looking for a book I need for book club. No joy, but I bought four other books.

One is a detective novel for David (Inspector Rebus); one is a volume of fiction by an author I haven’t read since I was a teenager--one of the few authors writing about the troubles in the 1970s; and two are collections of poems and watercolours by the same artist. Most of the paintings are of scenes I know well, some along Belfast Lough, some along the Ards peninsula, some in villages I’ve been to. I often feel like I’m living in a work of art. Seeing the landscape captured in oil and watercolour is something I find irresistible. I felt the same way about the Brandywine River valley and the painters who tried to capture its loveliness.
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