DannyBoy

It's not every day we think of starting over but without laying it on the line that's what the title of my present blog is all about... Like this morning 25 9 2 I decided to walk round our garden the one outside my study window sitting at my desk here, the desk I somehow inherited from my wife's eldest uncle, John, who didn't return from WW II: falling as he did in the closing days of Finland's War of Continuation, which meant her father, the youngest son of her grandparents' family of 6, would now inherit the family farm then in its second generation, since her grandmother Hilder decided to buy it, when her husband, her grandfather Willi would accede to being its first Gentleman Farmer of the new owners. Little me, of all people! But having lived in our house here these past 37 years since 1989 5 12, to begin with, as people who rented the plot of land it sits on for a token sum of maybe €200 a year from the town, increasing the rent 20 fold to something of ...

After spending another 6 weeks in Finnish and Norwegian Lapland, the arctic north without a single night fall 7th June to 19th July... Every day a challenge only more so than in 2024 when one has to concede not so much success as earlier, but still miraculously meeting the challenges! That, despite sticking to my work-out regimen of walking 10 000 steps a day and scaling perhaps on average 100 m of ascent!? It started out well enough but for the fact I had a couple of weeks before lost my car's near-side wing mirror, when the usual lack of spares in Hanko for old Saab cars meant I couldn't get a replacement in time for my vacation. Instead, as one journied north from Kolari, the termnius of my car-train of 14 hours duration, driving my car northwards, and pulling in at Muonio to a familiar restaurant, as I backed my car into a narrow space on the end of several other parked cars, I grazed the adjacent car. Not to add insult to injury, at which point I stopped the car to exam...

Today meeting the two Qvarnström sisters, the Professor first, and then her older (?) sister Stiina, the Physician, who told me she is still coming here for the Laboratory after hearing about my MRI Scan, so implying that she is still registered as a Hanko person... Quite a long chat first with younger sister when we talked about Finnish Culture and how I came here, giving her not the 5c tour but the 5$, when she responded how Finland appears to becoming more racist... but older sister joined us with their two dogs Stella and ? I cannot remember the later dog's name, but handing over the leads to younger sister leaving Stiiner and me to play catch up, also her older friend... More and more as an "Oldie" I am being accepted more as a member of the Finnish Culture because for one reason it is customary among Finns to drop their usual reserve among foreigners for their stronger respect for anyone seriously old when the main thrust of their behaviour is one of respect...per...

Hot and emotionally intelligent was how this internet Instagram Influensor described the right kind of young man, but what was she really talking about for of course it was a she and not a he who was holding forth! Then I got to thinking about one of my three grandsons, as it happens a first born, who the last time we met Saturday 24th May in Helsinki, for another Museum day out, he related this tale about meeting this girl woman or lady, who he said was lesbian, and she he said had to ask him whether he was in fact gay, because she continued, she had never met a guy who was so sensitive, or words to that effect, guessing wrongly he was homosexual. Like in her opinion only gay men can be sensitive, etc ? In my own experiences of the male and females of the species, I have many times in these blogs related how I lost my Dad to WWII aged 5 1/2, and how he died when my elder brother had just had his 7th birthday and our kid sister wasn't yet 2. And how when men, often accompani...

No, only joking! But of all the people I met during my long vacation this American young lady KG impressed me more than most from the outset: sitting as we were with my wife in this self-caterers' hostel's kitchen-cum-dining room eating dinner together with a few glasses of wine, when she and her male companion returned from probably eating dinner at one of the hotel restaurants in the town, unnecessarily apologising profusely for disturbing us so engaged, and quickly passing through on their way to reach their mixed dormitory accommodation beyond... Coming down from our upstairs accommodation I shared with A-E my wife next morning it was soon established we were the only guests staying there as we each went about the business of preparing breakfast and exchanging small talk about our respective reasons which brought us to just this particular hostel, etc etc etc... such was the confined nature of the kitchen and otherwise that to have avoided any kind of commerce woul...

18 12 16 Once again there has been a flurry of hits to my last blog which encourages me once again to put pen to paper, and if I also mention that in addition to some people in the US and Zimbabwe joining the group of recent hitters, someone from the Unknown Region, and possibly the same someone from Japan also may have re-visited, and that this time my list of individual blogs registering hits increased to the maximum 5 titles, giving me further encouragement to understanding what may be going on, to the extent I am encouraged to write another blog, when in point of fact with the imminent festivities attending this time of year, there are a million other things demanding my time and attention, but then... But then I thought it an opportune moment to write the kind of blog I wrote before my last one, because the day before that on the 14 th Dec I finished the most urgent thing I had to do, which was to complete the digital photograph album before the time-out dead...