DannyBoy

Not a preferred end to one's life but protracted it has to be said for the ever surer outcome is inevitably one's own demise. A laying on of the line you might say. But grateful i am not lying in state like my present brother-in-law K-J who has followed his younger brother a little over a year ago who himself was followed by his much younger wife. So there you have 3 examples of what i am talking about. And none of these ppl who could have been said to have died young before their time? That's when one compares their passing to many many more who predisceased them after the biblical (?) 3 score years plus 10. Take my father who died almost 80 years ago the 4th August 1945 and his father who died when my dad was only 8 and my dad's only sister who also died whilst i was still a boy around the age of 50 as their father before them, of a similar age to their paternal fathers. With the exception of my father all these people's death was in all probability the result o...

Be warned and watch this space ppl like A., born this day in the closing days of the first millenuium AD, my first grandson whose birth we get to celebrate on the occasion of the Spring Equinoxes in the northern hemisphere where I have resided these past few yrs: at least as far as San Fransisco in the West where I failed to take a dip in the Pacific Ocean but later had the good fortune to visit in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Okinawa in the East, where I made good the omission since it is said the two great oceans of the Atlantic and the Pacific don't naturally mix, lol. More later as I take a break to go for my daily swim in the Baltic Sea, temperature now rising again at +1 degC! And the thing about crossing t's and dotting i's? Only that as one gets ever older one gets to see the overall perspective of living with longevity in ever clearer focus...Imagine for example becoming a great grandfather 6 months ago when I got to reflect how I could only name my great grandfathe...

I was just 20 yrs of age plus maybe 7 months. It was subsequent to the 17th July since that was the day I first stepped onto Finnish soil. 10th of August to 30th of September to be precise, the time I was employed by Kymene Ab or Kymin Oy, the one Swedish the second its Finnish name. So some time between these two dates after Engeneer Örnhjelm, the Manager of one of the two Production Plants, one for Wood Pulp Production the other for Paper Production, invited me to accompany him to their next meeting and tell something about my background. What I told them was that I had worked at a Paper Mill, New Bury Paper Mills Ltd., belonging to the Wiggins Teape Group, for 5 years since leaving school in July 1955. A Paper Company that used Kymi's Bond Special grade of Bleached Sulphite Pulp. That I had studied Chemistry via the O.N.C. and first year H.N.C. part-time day release courses, the former the Ordinary National Certificate: in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in the first year; ...

Like after a few days ago 25 3 13, when I lost the second of my once 3 brothers-in-law? And since 2002 4 6 when I had my massive heart attack I know how I have been living on borrowed time, all patched up with a triple by-pass surgery? Why so? Thinking of Benjamin Franklin's old adage that we enter old age long before we get the wisdom of how to deal with it or words to that effect..? But then I began to question the premise and reminded myself I first stopped smoking aged 15 being one of those kids who following the example of his peers had had to start smoking maybe aged 14 though exceptionally I was still a little squirt still wet behind the ears... But starting work aged 15 and from my first wage packet of £3 16s 2d getting 10s pocket money from my Mam I wasn't about to squandor my money on smoking what: 2s a packet of 20 Senior Service the butch unfiltered cigarettes of the day because buying cycle parts or a new (secondhand) bike was my bigger priority in the next 3 y...

Take II The dream about my later Patents..? Take I see 2015 2 2 Waking at a little before 7 am on this bright spring morning, 25 3 4, here in my adoptive Scandinavian country, the one with two official languages, Swedish and Finnish. My dream then comprised all the people whose job it was to research and write patents: people who had to spend so much of their valuable time finding somewhere to sit to perform these duties, whilst all the rooms allocated for these activities were occupied by the "higher-ups" who at the same time used these rooms to discuss the organisation of how to conduct these various businesses, trivia in other words. No matter, in 1989 in my second year after having joined the company as Joint R and D Director, on a 4 year contract, I was to fulfill the task of having my idea of using lighter weight substrate abaca paper embodied in a patent specification: with a full year from the date of filing its specification, to exploit its inventiveness, bef...