Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Weekly Round Up – January 3rd – 9th 2020 – Breakfast Show, 1960s, Poetry, Book Reviews, Health and Funnies

Welcome to the round of posts you might have missed this week on Smorgasbord.

A rollercoaster of a week on many fronts and hard to stay hopeful in a time of such unrest and the pandemic. Ireland saw cases rise to around 500 mark in May during the first wave but yesterday recorded over 8000 new cases. With only 5 million population the cases so far have shown that being a small nation makes it just as hard to contain.

This does not of course compare to the over 300,000 new case in the USA and similar horrific figures in Europe and other countries. Vaccines are slowly being rolled out but the logistics of vaccinating whole countries, to ensure that those in most need such as front line health carers, those most at risk. We are down the list without any underlying health issues and being under 70, and also I cannot have the Pfizer vaccine as I have a severe allergy to both Penicillin and Tetanus.

Allergy warnings have been issued by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) following reports of anaphylaxis among two recipients of the vaccine last week.

The head of the MHRA, Dr June Raine, said: “Any person with a history of anaphylaxis to a vaccine, medicine or food should not receive the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

“A second dose should not be given to anyone who has experienced anaphylaxis following administration of the first dose of this vaccine.”  allergies and Covid vaccine pfizer.

I firmly believe in vaccinations but will wait until the Oxford variant is available.. and if you would like to know more about how the various Covid vaccines work with out bodies to help protect us then these articles are very helpful.

How the Various Vaccines Work – And – How does the Oxford Vaccine Work

Other news on the personal front.

One of the bright spots of the week has been the wonderful support of the writing community who have been kind enough to share their thoughts on Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries.. and if you would like to read their reviews you can find some on Goodreads and all of them on my book page. Thank you for the motivation.

And I do have more news on the book. We have always printed my books independently and uploaded to Amazon and paid them commission to sell the books. However, despite Ireland not being part of the UK and without VAT on printed books at the time, Amazon said that to continue to sell print books we would need to register for VAT.. so we removed my print books and I have sold them at fairs and via paypal.

So we decided to try out Amazon’s print on demand and so for those who would like the book in print it should be available in the next week. Looking forward to seeing how it works out.

On the blog and book promotion front for you….

Since this series began in January 2018 there have been over 1000 Posts from Your Archives where bloggers have taken the opportunity to share posts to a new audience… mine.

The topics have ranged from travel, childhood, recipes, history, family and the most recent series was #PotLuck where I shared a random selection of different topics.

In this series I will be sharing posts from the last six months of 2020

It is an opportunity to showcase your writing skill to my readers and also to share on my social media. Which combined is around the 46,000 mark. If you are an author your books will be mentioned too, along with their buy links and your other social media contacts.

How to feature in the series? – 2021 – Pot Luck – Posts from Your Archives

As always my thanks to William Price King, Debby Gies and Daniel Kemp for their contributions this week and so pleased that the new Breakfast Show is going down well.

And of course many thanks to you for visiting and leaving your comments and sharing around the usual haunts.. it is much appreciate..

This week’s posts.

The Breakfast Show with William Price King and Sally Cronin – Chart Hits 1960 – Part One.

The Sewing Circle Part Two

The Other Side of Heaven

Chesebro’s Poetry Challenge – Butterfly Cinquain – ‘Hope’ by Sally Cronin

April 1986 – San Diego – Trash Can Punch and Sea World

#Mystery #Paranormal – The Light (Wake-Robin Ridge Book 4) by Marcia Meara

Past Book Reviews 2020 – #SouthernFiction – Little Tea by Claire Fullerton

New Author on the Shelves – D.L. Cross – The Forgotten -Astral Conspiracy: (An Alien Invasion Science

New Release – #Western #Romance Sandra Cox, #Fantasy Vashti Quiroz-Vega, – Review #Poetry Balroop Singh

#YAMystery D.L.Finn, #Memoir Liesbet Collaert, #Family Judith Barrow.

Reviews – #PostApocalyptic Terry Tyler, #Fantasy C.S Boyack, #Memoir D.G. Kaye

#Chocolate Robbie and Michael Cheadle, #Fishing Dawn Doig, #Wolves Elizabeth Jade

Monday 4th January 2020 – Carol Taylor, Jennie Fitzkee, Judith Barrow

Wednesday January 6th 2021 – Stevie Turner, Mary Smith, Jean Lee

Friday 8th January 2021 – Carol Taylor, Joy Lennick, Patricia Furstenberg

Getting the year off to a healthy start – Part One by Sally Cronin

Getting the year off to a healthy start – Part Two

Smorgasbord Laughter Lines – January 5th 2021 – Hosts Debby Gies and Sally Cronin – Pajamas and Word Games

January 7th 2021 – Hosts Debby Gies and Sally Cronin – Crafting and Teenage Imaginations!

January 8th 2021 – Another Open Mic Night with author Daniel Kemp – Poachers and Retirement speeches…