DannyBoy

But I feel more and more that I am going to make a complete recovery from my recent sickness which began 4 weeks and 3 days ago on Monday 29 th July when I came down with a number of things but which after a week the diagnosis was getting stronger for the main problem which appeared to be a kidney stone, too large to exit my bladder, which in turn lead to my right side kidney becoming inflamed and the reason for excruciating pain in my right-side back, and for which a week ago I was scheduled for an operation to have it blasted with high pressure CO 2 , that’s carbon dioxide, through a catheter. Fortunately after the Urologist heard my story 2 days after his making assessment and of the need for an operation, that I had noticed black objects appearing in my urine, he had a second CT scan conducted when it was confirmed the stone in question had become smaller, and had now entered my urethra, so that now my operation has been postponed to see whether the fragmentation process continu...

It was after nearing the summit of Braeriach when I ran into a crowd of maybe similarly aged people men and women who upon reaching the summit cairn began to congratulate one another with one woman hugging a younger one and starting to cry she was so overcome: with joy I learned later.  It transpired they were a group who had been walking together for 25 years...The husband of one of the ladies asked me to use his camera with a zoom lens of narrow angle of field fitted to take a pic of their group putting me to stand some distance away before another member asked me to take with his camera also, and then at last one of their group suggested they take a pic of me for which I posed whilst standing atop the summit cairn. Then with the guy who first asked me to take a pic we got talking about óur business lives how it transpired we both worked in the Paper Industries but at opposite ends of the business, me in Research and Development Management, he engaged in the business of ar...

As in 2017 with A-E my wife we climbed 3 of Scotland's 3000 ft, 914,4 metre hills together during our 2 week stay leaving me to climb some of the bigger or more remote hills alone because she is no longer so good at ascending steep inclines as some years before owing to a little trouble with her heart. So for me the transition is a big one: from one day on the hill with my wife for company and then the next I am getting up and out of the accommodation earlier in order to tackle some as yet unclimbed hill to tick off my list of 282 now thanks to our joint efforts standing at only 26 remaining. The first I tackled was Braeriach in the Cairngorms, Scotland's 3rd highest peak and one I had last attempted in the autumn of 2017 when a later start and driving rain caused me to abandon the attempt which meant I was happy to come back to, in the most glorious summer weather in years. On the ascent there were lots of other people and before long I was engaging in first one conv...

Quite a record that, with my aging process well under way, and something that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon..? Of course I am talking about my beloved Scotland which these past 5 years I have begun to visit more than once a year again with a renewed urgency since I sold our small sailing boat in 2012, and decided to make a push to complete my round of the Munro hills all 282 of the 3000 footers, or 914,4 metre peaks (Hugh Munro that is who was the first person to climb them in around 1891...) which set me the task of climbing 104 peaks still remaining. Today that figure has been reduced to 20. My first visit to Scotland was made in 1943 not to climb hills but to visit my father J, with my elder brother J junior, and our mother, A, during WW ll when he was stationed near Oban. 9 months later we were joined by our sister M, and when in 1945 father didn’t return from the war, Scotland began to gain a special significance in one’s life. Some of my earliest memories then...

As a young fellow you could still think of Britain as being Great Britain. If for no other reason than because the first maps of the world I saw at that time were still largely coloured red for the British Empire, though of course the Empire's days in my childhood were numbered... After WW ll the former colonies and British Possessions increasingly wanted to secede: 1947 saw India leave then in 1948 Palestine was wrenched from the British by the Israelis. Thereafter huge swathes of Africa departed, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, etc., etc., etc... Meanwhile Britain continued to spend up to of 12% of GDP on defence, continued to build aircraft like the Avro Jump Jet made as the Hawker Siddeley Harrier which distinguished itself in the Falkland's War of 1982, and saw armed conflict in many parts of the world as I was growing up: Korea in the early 1950s, Cyprus into the 1960s, Suez, a right royal disaster that was in 1956... When I was a University student in 1968-1969 and 19...

The first to depart Europe was my younger son P who accompanied his wife J who had decided she would like to visit India to celebrate her 50th birthday. On their return journey home they will also visit Oman where my wife and I took a winter holiday to visit our godson T and his wife C and my namesake, their son E whom they named after me, a very rare compliment indeed, and such a lovely young person, who like me behaves in character with his given name!? Our elder son S departed yesterday after working during the daytime at his job in one of the capital's universities...This morning I got a WhatsApp message apologising for not telephoning as he promised he would before his departure which didn't surprise me for he does too much work and takes free time only sparingly. Likewise our younger son but at least his vacation was planned well in advance and J will have taken care of all the details, booking the flights etc., etc., etc... and she has even planned a trip to th...

And the sadness in a girl’s life who grows up believing her father cares but little for her affection..? This last week or so I have been clearing out my study cum bedroom in order to reduce the burden of dust in our house which of late would have appeared to exacerbate the chestiness of my good wife. In the process I got to review some of the cards we had received at times like birthdays, Christmastime and odd postcards either we had received, or in odd cases we had sent, to for example our children or grandchildren, who at various times had stayed with us for one reason or another. The person who was the most popular contributor to this old correspondence was of course my mother, and I say of course because it was her love more than anything else I guess which shaped my personality and who towards the end of her life became my most fervent champion..? Whilst we were all three of her children young and growing up she would now and then proclaim “I have no favourites!” “No...

Well I don't know what it was like in France for example but when I was a kid growing up in suburban North West England most of the kids were what you have to describe as somewhat wayward apart from kids like my older brother for he was more reserved and didn't mix so much with all the other kids as I did... My condition wasn't helped by the fact that our father didn't return home from the War with all the other fathers in 1945 and thereafter because I could have benefited from a stronger hand to rein me in at times, though most of the mischief we got up to was harmless enough. It was just that looking back on it now I can't believe we survived that kind of childhood. I mean like having to go to the loo when there wasn't one for miles around and not being able to do it in a sanitary way: washing one's hands and stuff..? Of course all the kids in the neighbourhood used to get "worms" from time to time which could be seen squirming in and out of...

I have always wanted to write about the breasts of lasses but up until now I never had the courage: on the basis that people may think I'm just a dirty old man which is what I am in a sense because I am certainly old no question about that, and so far I haven't showered this day although I fully intend to do so especially since I have an appointment later in the day with my doctor... But I have been writing much about my childhood recently which got me thinking about the subject of my blog title this day, which incidentally marks the last day I shall be my present age because tomorrow marks the day of my conception on my parents' first wedding anniversary, which exceptionally for them would be the first such act of conception as a married couple, for my older brother was born only 5 months after they tied the knot in holy matrimony, my mother's pregnancy running the full term... So when I came along 9 months less 2 days on the 26th November WW ll had just begun...

As grandparents my wife A-E and I are fortunate that, although our 2 granddaughters and 2 grandsons don't live on our doorstep, we have nevertheless throughout their young lives managed to stay in touch with them. Which is not to say none of them have ever lived in the same town: our 2 granddaughters lived here until age 4 or 5 when their whole family moved to England, a Finnish-speaking, as opposed to Swedish-speaking, Finnish family whose head, our son P had studied Food Technology at a British University and who for a time, after completing his military service here to claim his Finnish citizenship, worked in the same company as I, his father, but by not being born here, but rather coming here from UK where he had grown up, had little chance of developing the career he has since established for himself in England in a Food Company as their Technical Manager.  Their twin daughters F and S then began their formal education in England speaking Finnish with their Finnish mo...

And who knows one day she may get to read this blog because she is the one person outside my immediate family who knows of the existence of my BlogSpot with its perhaps unique alias..? Of course to anyone familiar with the content of my blogs it won't take long for someone to recognize the person I am about to describe because I have written about her many times before though not so much just recently? What precipitated this particular blog then was a conversation with my elder son S whom we haven't seen since Christmastime last Saturday or Sunday evening as my wife and I returned from the Middle East when A-E Face-timed him on her I-pad and she didn't get very far before he bit her head off..? Such is this son's temper sometimes when roused, a less than charming trait he no doubt inherited from his father, but thankfully not so often and behind it is a bad patch of ill health and too much work etc., etc., etc. So yesterday after writing my second blog sinc...

This morning I posted another couple of pics on Instagram from our vacation 18 1 25 to 18 2 3 in these Middle Eastern countries: these of the people who populate these countries. The first ostensibly of the two western ladies sitting at our table on this 5 star hotel terrace where our party were enjoying chilled beers before switching to a Pakistani Restaurant for dinner, but more pointedly of the group of 4 ladies dressed in the black Kuwaiti hijab: covered in black from head to foot with only a gap of maybe 2 cm x 10 cm, about an inch by 6 inches, sitting on the next table where they sat pulling with gusto on their order of Water-pipes (the water through which the hot tobacco smoke passes said to be for cleaning and cooling purposes) brought by a waiter suitably prepared with burners which stood slightly to the side of each of them. Beyond there was a table of a group of men also attired in traditional costume of ankle length white collarless gowns with long sleeves, known as Di...

Whenever I go away on vacation I only rarely research beforehand about the people and places I am about to visit because generally speaking it is my wife who takes the initiative with all destinations except those to do with UK and particularly Scotland where I take over as the principle organiser. So when we decided to visit our godson T and his wife C and their young son E it was my wife A-E who arranged our flights and hotel accommodation first to Dubai then in the evening of the following day onwards to Muscat in Oman, together a 2 night stay in Dubai, before the 4 or 5 nights stay with T,C and E at their spacious apartment some 240 square metres say 2600 square feet in round figures, on the outskirts of Muscat in Al Seeb.  We had last visited them in November 2011 when they lived for a time in Haiphong, Vietnam and that too turned out to be a similarly mind-blowing experience since the Vietnamese culture was also very foreign to us... So with so much anti-Muslim o...

  Well I don't know about that? But think of it this way these days people rarely go into something and stay in it for the rest of their lives like in the old days! They have to be prepared for career moves, especially if they wish to stay in the same place. But some people know what they wish to do by the golden age of 7 I told my soon to be 18 year old grandson just the other day: like the British Public School Eton boys for example who at that age already knew they wished to be Prime Minister and in point of fact more Old Etonians than anybody else fulfil this ambition..? It was rather different in the family in which I grew up though for none of us attended Eton or any other Public School, save for my eldest son who always professed not to have rated it..? No, the family I grew up in was full of people with trades in their fingers..? My dad for example was a Joiner, a Carpenter and later I learned in point of fact he was a Pattern Maker which is the top job for people ...

Well one truly good thing about growing old is that as you put time between having an experience and reflecting upon it one's perception of what it was all about ceases to change on a day to day basis. I'm sure there are other truly good things too but this particular one is the one that catches my imagination today and at the same time I have to be cognisant of the fact that if I wish to continue to be read I need to try to write eye-catching blog titles, hahaha Like when you first retire you go about your daily life in much the same way as when you were gainfully employed but the structure of an orderly life has over-night been swept aside and little by little you have to deal with these changed circumstances..? Now I have filled a lot of blogs up with what these adjustments are about when one retires and in my own case how during my working my working life I had become something of a world expert in my specialist field only to begin my retirement when in no tim...