DannyBoy

Given that for the 9th year in a row Finland has been proclaimed the happiest ppl it is perhaps high time I wrote a piece about my take on it after interacting with it these past almost 65 years? This the time of year the Cranes and other migrant birds return home after wintering in far off places to the south. My own arrival similarly that of a summer visitor stepping foot on Finnish soil on the first occasion July 17th but exceptionally approaching from the north in Arctic Norway and not so much returning home as instead perhaps finding a new one. lol Which is to say as a ppl they couldn't have been more welcoming. As a hitch hiker my first lift I had to chose would I stay for the ride the length of the country from Aligas on the Finnish Norwegian border all the way to Helsinki, a bus which had been hauled back onto the highway after running into the ditch, some miles after hitching a ride in the car carrying the hauling cable a short way after Skaidi. And when I applied fo...

Yeah, just now in my wife's bathroom putting my grey hair in order which meant wetting it through to dry out before my first daily walk out and swim on my way round the town when I could also do some shopping on the other side of the railway tracks: reflecting on how he looked 2008 8 1, the last time I saw him, with his then white hair and white beard, a man of 79, six years my junior as of this day! This, not the first blog I have devoted to this man who entered my life, insinuated himself into it, clearly knowing I should be easy prey. But then he was a mature man of 26 years compared to my 15 years always, at least for the next 46 years destined to be 10 1/2 years my senior, maybe now no longer figuring among the living? And when we last met already atrifying since his meagre demeanour, his rear garden over-grown, nothing at all to suggest any progress in his situation during the 5 years of absence, since we had last met, in 2003 shortly after my heart attack of 2002 4 6, and ...

In-between thinking what I crap father I was, when I was younger during the smaller holidays which came up, occasions like Easter, Whitsuntide, etc., I would collect the youngsters together: my two boys with maybe one or two of their friends and take them all off to the English Lake District for a few days hill walking. The friends being "Nidge" and "Russ" most commonly, like the time we all went to Conniston Copper Mines, standing out as a laugh a minute, check in out with S and P!. But also with maybe a cousin "Nick" thrown in as well, like the time my eldest son stayed home: probably to study for his upcoming GCE O-level examinations, when with my younger son P we took the route from Ambleside via the walk passing Kilnshaw Chimney over to Patterdale, then staying at the Patterdale Youth Hostel... As they grew older and we moved country to Finland their presence on my forages into "the Lakes" or into the Highlands of Scotland were often accom...

Yeah, as we age we tend to become more long winded. So if I'm not careful I am quite likely to start a sentense and repeat myself towards the end of it, for example. Then there are ppl who rarely answer one's question, but who instead go off at a tangent and talk about something totally unrelated. So in a nutshell there you have it: Less is More! You're thinking things through more before you open your mouth, put pen to paper, or whatever. Brevity is truly the soul of wit: a rare gift, but always appreciated by the many for the few... More later, or will that suffice? Your hits, or otherwise your silence, will be all telling, hahaha!!?

This new blog from my home in Finland these past almost 36 years..? His father's father J-P aged 52, his father also J-P and sister, L.L. 51. Only his mother L.R. aged 72. Also of course my own father dying aged 39 when I was only 5 1/2 years, but old enough to get to know his sister and mother, my Grannie K., and be a guest at L.L.'s second wedding in 1944, see pic below, a re-run of his own wedding perhaps, held in the year I was born? But then his sister's children, all 4 boys would, in part half and half, like me, suffer myocardial infarctions at one time or another. My older cousin Dave, her eldest, the first, resulting in his requiring a quadrupal bypass operation, whilst my bypass by that time living abroad, like my Great Grandad K., was for only for 3 arteries, the grafts coming from a non-essential breast artery being re-directed, together with grafts taken from the length of my left leg. Whilst his next to his youngest half brother, Bob, finally succuming ...

....Golden Days, full of gaiety and full of truth..? This once haunting lyric came to mind this morning, reminding me of the person responsible, or persons, from the time of my 21st birthday in 1961: when my mother bought me a Dansett Record Player, with a diamond stylus, so unlike the older styluses once used to play 78 rpm older fashioned records, it would play the new lighter contructed LP Records in vogue around that time, time and time again, without the need to change the stylus. My then friend, a Mr K.Reed I had met 5 - 6 years earlier when I was 15 years old, and he 26, born as he was in the month of July, whilst I had to wait until November for my b-d. My first LPs: "Come Fly with Me" featuring singer Frank Sinatra, a Traditional Jazz LP featuring Chris Barbour, and Mario Lanza's "Golden Days" on an LP of "The Student Prince" by Sigmund Romberg, a gift from my Aunty Ada and Uncle Bill. It was Mr Reed's all time favourite from my collec...

This first pic shows the house into which I was born when our family shared it with our father's mother and his younger widowed sister and her young son Dave in the years from 1938 to 1941 before he volunteered to join WWII... The next courtesy of Google, is a pic of a Sanderson air-raid shelter like the one in our rear garden to the house above. For a time we were fortunate to have a father who went out to work 5½ days a week but with Germany's blitz beginning in 1939: during night times with our boxes of gas masks we repaired to the shelter as WWII got underway When Dad left to become a Royal Marine Commando our family fortunes took a downward turn as our mother no longer felt welcome by her widowed sister-in-law so she up and moved to Bury into the house in the next two pics taken a good number of years after we had moved out and looking even less salubrious compared to the relative richness of the accommodation above...           ...

I'm guessing but don't know for sure that Vegans should they live as long as I have may well have similar problems to the ones I had last summer in Arctic Norway when I ceased to be able to enjoy eating salads if they included foods I used to delight in eating such as freshly chopped onions for example. The thing that precipitatd this situation was the remaining teeth in my upper palate which used to support my false teeth began to get loose and threatened to drop out and thereby reduced the range of foods I could enjoy eating...So instead in the delicatessesn where I used to buy my provisions I began to restrict myself to buying such foods as Scouse (potatoe hot-pot comprising lamb or pork together with the softened vegitables including carrots, raw carrots no longer an option), Chilli Concarne or simply various Quiches, the latter for microwaving at my Camp site kitchen before eating. And if I visited a restaurant instead of only once choosing a fish option like in the p...

...on our youngest son's birthday...That was the question I put to him in the spring of 1995 or maybe earlier following the birth of their twin girls in 1993 10 13, His response was that they had no money since not so long before he had been a soldier in the Finnish Army completing his National Service when it used to be joked their pay was sufficient to buy a packet of fags a day nothing more...thereafter doing a manual job as a machineman of my company's 23-29 machine, a not so high wage for such a young man with his young family his wife-to-be caring for their two girls. So I said his mother and I would meet half the expense of a wedding if his partner's parents were willing to raise the other half. That all agreed allowed us to hire a hall one of the town's two sailing club pavillions and there followed the party assocated with their nuptuals sactified with a blessing in the Parish Church after a civil ceremony held the day before in the next town. We were to hi...