Grandchildren ..?18 2 8 (21) 25 1 31

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 mother and in the fullness of time chose to study the subjects which were dearest to their paternal grandmother, A-E's heart, in choosing the humanities, chiefly English Language subjects, the one, F, English with Art, and the younger, S, Creative writing...

As a Scientist, that's me, our 2 sons S and P were in something of a quandary in choosing their careers because they were good at both languages and the sciences. However it was our elder son S who chose the language route for a career, studying English and Russian at University, and then taking a job as an English Teacher in Japan for just a year but then staying 5 to qualify as a teacher of Japanese for Foreigners, when he returned not to UK with his Japanese wife but to the adoptive country of his father, Finland.

It was interesting for me therefore when exceptionally A, S's eldest son, chose to study Chemistry, my main subject, for one of his Advanced level subjects in the 6th Form, which he will complete this coming spring aged 19. A and his younger brother D are both gifted linguists in the sense of speaking 3 languages fairly fluently, but not as academics but rather for practical reasons: English with their father, Japanese with their mother and Finnish with their colleagues and friends in school.

Interesting for me that whilst D was the brother who in his childhood always sought my approval, as they have grown up so far it would appear A is taking over this role..? He has already developed a keen interest in cycling and taken my lightweight frame to build it up into a fine specimen of a bike, and during the last visit he made to our town to stay a few days here with his girlfriend E, I was also able to off-load my old single-lens reflex camera I haven’t used since the 1980s because primarily of its weightiness and latterly because it is a film camera, when I switched to digital images at the start of the new millennium. A meanwhile has started to develop his own films and currently has collected maybe 4 or 5 such old cameras, in a life not altogether different to the life of his paternal grandfather all those years ago..?

Yesterday I sent both boys via WhatsApp a news item from the Guardian Newspaper which commented on the Bombardier insects of Japan and how after being swallowed whole by forest toads release the chemicals hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, the latter a chemical also used in developing films amongst other things, which combine to produce a searing and firey benzoquinone in the toads stomach to the extent that after 88 minutes many of the toads vomit the offending insects which in an accompanying video clip are then seen to walk away..!? Before sending the item I first had to scratch my head to work out the chemical reaction taking place in the toads' stomach with what I can tell you was a very tentative exercise for their aging Grandad, hahaha!!! 

Have a good day everyone as I hope you too get to share stuff with your grandchildren…