My niece is wonderful.

Last night I had dinner with my niece (Ay) and her boyfriend (Aa).

It was lovely. She has grown up into a beautiful young woman and i am so proud of her.

There is a possibility that she will come to Venice for 3 months in September to teach English (she’s been offered the position but other factors may stop her). In the meantime, Aa has got himself an engineering apprenticeship with Rolls Royce. Good for them.

And it was a really enjoyable evening. She is so confident of her abilities, which is good. she is a real lady.

Obviously, for those of you who have read this blog for a while, you will know that she is not, strictly speaking, my niece but, rather, the niece of V. However, she continues to call me Uncle Andy and I derive a great deal of pleasure from that.

They wanted to go to the beach whilst they were here, so after some discussion with them this morning, I’ve just bought their ticket to Liguria so they can go on Monday. It’s the sort of thing an Uncle should do, after all. And I am so happy that I could do this thing, especially as I only get to see her for a few hours when she comes over.

A Free eBook and my very first purchase of another eBook. I am moving into this century … albeit, slowly!

WARNING – This post is wrong – see update below!

This morning I downloaded 2 ebooks from Smashwords.

This is, in my opinion, an incredible site.

The first book is Given Away, A Sicilian Upbringing, by Marianna Randazzo.

Not having read it, I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. But, for a short time, using the code SW100, you can get it for free! And, with Smashwords, you can download it in so many formats that you don’t have to have a Kindle to read it. In fact, I have downloaded it as an rtf file, meaning a Word Document (in effect) and it’s an experiment as with this file, I can read it on my phone – so I can read it on the beach :-)

A second book that I have actually paid money for ($4.50) is The Final Straw, by Ted Taylor.

I haven’t read this one either BUT – Ted Taylor is the guy who wrote The Death Guide To Life – which he put up on the internet and which is in my eBooks section on the right. I really liked it and liked his style so I didn’t mind paying something for this.

Again, I’ve downloaded it in rtf format with the idea of reading it on the beach.

Now, of course, on my phone it will be quite small and, if that becomes a problem, I have two options. 1 – wait until I am at home and read it on my computer OR, 2 – buy some sort of reader or tablet and read it that way.

I have a feeling that, as I really need to replace my phone very soon, I might find myself getting a tablet …… finally :-) Maybe, I can get some sort of special deal if I do the two things together.

We shall see.

Anyway, even if you don’t have a reader, do purchase the free book I’ve mentioned above. After all, it’s free (with the code) and so you’ve lost nothing, have you?

UPDATE. Mr Ted Tayler (the guy who wrote The Final Straw) has pointed out that he IS NOT the author of The Death Guide To Life – which is completely down to me not paying attention and having erroneously “come to the conclusion they are the same person” some time ago – I didn’t check it before I wrote this. However, the book I bought seemed interesting anyway. I hope it is!

Ah well, we all make mistakes.