DannyBoy

Celebrating my parents first wedding anniversary x0 years on, 2018 3 23 Celebrating my parents first wedding anniversary x0 years on, 2018 2 26 Yeah, a big day for Jim and Alice and a big day for me in all because I was born 9 months later, Sunday 26th November... First off my sister M rang me this morning to ask did I know what day it was, as I was just about to start writing this blog, when I not only talked briefly to my sister but then decided to ring our brother, Jim junior, to ask whether he knew what day it was, when he admitted to not knowing its special significance.  Well it is nice to do this and of course different siblings have different reminiscences of such significant events: our sister for example reminding me of two things, 1) the fact that Alice was heavily pregnant with our brother Jim junior, on their actual wedding day, a year earlier since he arrived 5 months later on the 28th July, to the extent she later admonished her only daughter, M, nev...

Reaching the top of one's game? 24 8 4 (4) A good day to start this blog 79 years to the day since my father died in 1945 whilst serving with the Royal Marine Corps of GB en route to Japan...and coming to the conclusion that reaching rather being at the top of one's game is more crucially important a concept since the sequel inevitably of the latter is one's decline! My reaching the top of my game really began in earnest I believe, aged 20 with my first real bout of girl trouble: over the previous summer meeting this attractive girl in a foreign country, speaking a foreign tongue, writing while I was away from home to my previous girl friend, Joyce, who had worked in the same Company, to pronounce our relationship was at an end... And now back home in England infatuated, receiving letters in the Finnish language signed off "Sinun Mirkusi" for "Your Mirkku", me never any great shakes at picking up new words, let alone those in a language said to be the...

Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of t once great US of A..? 2025 2 5 Is noted on Tik Tok for saying Man grows old before he gets the wisdom of how to enjoy one's life, or words to that effect: which strikes a chord in my old head as I seek to make sense of the last two incumbents of the US White House sitting as I do this am at 6:27 a good few years their senior in my attaining octogenarian status plus 5. The preamble to recounting my last full year age 79 I last visited Scotland in 2019 in pursuit of my remaining Monro hills: 21 in number when I succeeded in claiming the summits of 7 new peaks plus 1, an old chestnut my wife and I had climbed many times before, Meall Chuaich (hill of the shallow, two handed cup), at 920 metres just to the south of Newtonemore. The first then involved a 6 hour walk-in to Allt Scheicheachan Bothy, unoccupied my good fortune, to the south of the nearby Beinn Dearg (Red Hill), a popular name for a hill in the Scottish Gaelic tongue, which took ...

When I was a young man of 20 I met this girl I shall call M-L whilst on holiday and I became infatuated with her and I guess she too was interested in me to the extent we started dating. Not a big deal you might suppose but for the fact that I met her in arctic Norway on her way home to Finland and I was the guy her mode of transport, a touring bus had just given a lift to, as the hitch-hiker I was…My true lift was in a car carrying hauling gear to pull the bus back onto the highway from a ditch at the side of the road, and it was these people as you might say the people in charge of the bus that offered me my subsequent ride in it. It was one of the best lifts I ever got because it turned out to be open-ended which is to say the bus was returning to Helsinki and so had the length of the country to travel and I was given the opportunity to travel with it all the way if I had chosen to. So I began my journey and at the end of each day stayed wherever the bus stayed. In this way I ...

who have hit my blog in the last week plus two people one from an Unknown Region, the other from Russia who I believe have each visited before..? On this the last day of another year of my life when tomorrow I shall begin another year with another birthday. Today is the b-d of a lady who used to be our post mistress and I like to wish her a happy birthday for today is the only day in the year I am only 26 years her senior, for tomorrow age wise I shall of course be 27 years older so you see the number 26 has special significance for me, a numbers kinda guy, mathematics always my best subject in secondary school! So when I saw the last visitor was someone from Burundi I had to check it out on a map to see where it is situated: my knowledge of Geography not as good as my knowledge of numbers although I did once get a GCE O-level for the study of Geography, after I left secondary school, by way of an extra study subject so I could qualify for University entrance when I should for...

Written in the main 19 11 20 in connection with my latest consultation...withdrawn shortly thereafter and today, 2019 12 9, republished after my blog taking another hit from one of my most loyal readers, a person of an Unknown Region...  When I was a child I was rarely troubled by my health save to say I had a good many of the ailments children usually get to catch from other kids: chicken pox, measles, mumps, various ear infections and throat conditions, worms, head lice, warts, and in my case whooping cough, as the potentially most serious, aside from mumps for boys if they don't have them before reaching puberty, because of the attendant danger of becoming sterile, which, as I got older meant a good many inoculations against other contagious diseases: things like diphtheria and smallpox, especially later before long-distance travelling, when protection against eg. cholera, hepatitis and such became obligatory... As a teenager already started working for a living, I ...

“Thence onward skirting Linz but stopping short of the City of Vienna when my lift dropped me a short distance away, maybe ½ hour’s ride from the City Centre, where I was fortunate by the side road to see this café which I visited to get my first Wiener Schnitzel, though in truth I can’t recall was it made with veal or whether it was made with pork? However I do remember that an American lady, who was also visiting the café from Linz where her husband was in the US Military stationed there at the time, picked up my tab, a very kindly gesture especially because I was running low on funds, and having written home to get more cash sent to me Poste Ristorante. At the same time the proprietor of the café allowed me to camp on his land, and when he offered to run me next morning, on his way to work, into the City Centre, I was set for almost a week: being able to sight-see unencumbered by my big rucksack with tent, sleeping bag, paraffin stove and aluminium cooking utensils… I’ll call t...

Yeah, I'm married to this person who in many ways couldn't be more different to myself and believe it or not the differences I would have to admit sometimes appear to be predominantly positive. Like in the midst of winter taking me off for a week's vacation to Puerto de la Cruz on the Island of Tenerife! You see as most of my longer term readers will appreciate my idea of a good holiday is to re-visit my beloved Scotland and climb a few more of my remaining hills, which in a few months' time we shall probably do anyway, but in the depths of winter she, the true native of these northern climes, needs to get away to warmer places because she finds the darkness of deep winter oppressive, whilst I who hail from somewhere further south have no problems with the restricted light of winter, because at its worst the days are still light from 9 until almost 4 in the afternoon and generally we have snow during the darkest time of year, which of course brings addition...

My wife and I have just returned from a short winter break in the Canary Isles Gran Canaria to be precise a second visit after a gap of maybe 15 - 20 years which is to say we had little benefit from our last stay there for we were different people then with different appetites... The trip was one of those "Leave Immediately" affairs when you can buy inexpensive flights to fill the aircraft but at the end of it you probably finish by spending more on accommodation travel while you are there etc., etc., etc. So our accommodation left much to be desired, cost €350 for the 7 nights Monday to Monday and was situated in the middle of no-where in a northern suburb of the capital Las Palmas, a dormitory kind of place with very few amenities and only the odd restaurant within walking distance, situated quite close to sewage and cattle farms: A place with the name Marzagán. When after booking the flights with Thomas cook Airlines we discovered there was no transport laid...

Of course all my readers know of this fact already and also know that her husband my eldest son S is or one day may become my biographer if ever such a thing were to happen because he belongs to the literary types in our great family and there are a growing number of us who like to put pen to paper. Why only this morning i noted that my youngest granddaughter Si also penned a pic of one of her fictional characters that is set to appear in her third novel: not bad for a 23 year old wouldn't you agree? Well Sa also belongs to this group and I would guess she occupies first or second place in the pecking order having had some of her articles accepted for publication by for example "Cosmopolitan Magazine" in Japan, and she too just yesterday was talking to my wife about writing a book about figure-skating, a sport she is particularly interested in following..?   But after a stressful afternoon coffee party on Saturday last for R who is my wife's elder brother, ...

Yesterday my wife and I visited this lady R who for some years has lived alone, her 3 children all I believe married or in open marriages and one daughter, Mi quite close who together with her partner, Mo, have been helping R refurbish her small apartment of 15 years habitation. Two other guests were also present: Ei another retired lady who has recently moved house from a family-sized detached bungalow into another apartment block, a condominium in US parlance? Down-sizing in the process, and C a third single person but male who has also just retired and who I believe also lives alone. The common link between the members of this gathering is that we all belong to the local walking club, and with the exception of C are all off-comers but living some considerable time in the town though C who was born here has lived away for a good many years in between times, including some years spent abroad in Sweden. Well we had not been gathered long before the subject of her refurbishment ...

Keeping my head to the grind once more I have been spending much of my free time this first week of the new year editing my digital pictures for my next on-line photo album which if it sees the light of day will be my 6th and will cover the period from March 2008 until who knows when, perhaps until September or October of the same year for there was still much going on in my life that year, the year I finally retired..? It's an activity which is gradually taking a hold of my imagination for during the past 4 days I have done little else. Yesterday for example I ran across the first pics I ever took of my two grandsons A and D taking to sail and the sea in my small yacht, M, of 24 feet in length, together with O my long term sailing partner. At the time in the summer of ‘08 they were respectively 9 and 7 y old and we hadn't gone more than the odd ½ sea mile before A was instructing his younger brother D which way to pull the tiller, this way or that, to head M's nose up...

Or the importance of family life..? When I was a younger guy say early twenties when I first got interested in girls in a serious way, that is opposed to the cursory interest I had before that when I would only admire them from afar, I began to think that one day I should like to be married and raise a family... Now not everyone thinks in this way: like my rock-climbing partner K at the time who always shunned the idea of settling down with a girl and having kids... In his midlife when at last he began to have steady relationships he even had a vasectomy, the idea was so abhorrent to him… He also shunned the idea of having friends his own age so that I for example was 10½ y younger, as was his partner only she was a full 13 y younger… Well everything changed for him when at 69 his partner went and died leaving him the only one of his circle not still gainfully employed with everyone else so caught up in their own lives, and me for example building up for a coronary event a...