DannyBoy

Hot and emotionally intelligent was how this internet Instagram Influensor described the right kind of young man, but what was she really talking about for of course it was a she and not a he who was holding forth! Then I got to thinking about one of my three grandsons, as it happens a first born, who the last time we met Saturday 24th May in Helsinki, for another Museum day out, he related this tale about meeting this girl woman or lady, who he said was lesbian, and she he said had to ask him whether he was in fact gay, because she continued, she had never met a guy who was so sensitive, or words to that effect, guessing wrongly he was homosexual. Like in her opinion only gay men can be sensitive, etc ? In my own experiences of the male and females of the species, I have many times in these blogs related how I lost my Dad to WWII aged 5 1/2, and how he died when my elder brother had just had his 7th birthday and our kid sister wasn't yet 2. And how when men, often accompani...

No, only joking! But of all the people I met during my long vacation this American young lady KG impressed me more than most from the outset: sitting as we were with my wife in this self-caterers' hostel's kitchen-cum-dining room eating dinner together with a few glasses of wine, when she and her male companion returned from probably eating dinner at one of the hotel restaurants in the town, unnecessarily apologising profusely for disturbing us so engaged, and quickly passing through on their way to reach their mixed dormitory accommodation beyond... Coming down from our upstairs accommodation I shared with A-E my wife next morning it was soon established we were the only guests staying there as we each went about the business of preparing breakfast and exchanging small talk about our respective reasons which brought us to just this particular hostel, etc etc etc... such was the confined nature of the kitchen and otherwise that to have avoided any kind of commerce woul...

18 12 16 Once again there has been a flurry of hits to my last blog which encourages me once again to put pen to paper, and if I also mention that in addition to some people in the US and Zimbabwe joining the group of recent hitters, someone from the Unknown Region, and possibly the same someone from Japan also may have re-visited, and that this time my list of individual blogs registering hits increased to the maximum 5 titles, giving me further encouragement to understanding what may be going on, to the extent I am encouraged to write another blog, when in point of fact with the imminent festivities attending this time of year, there are a million other things demanding my time and attention, but then... But then I thought it an opportune moment to write the kind of blog I wrote before my last one, because the day before that on the 14 th Dec I finished the most urgent thing I had to do, which was to complete the digital photograph album before the time-out dead...

Bury's Coat of Arms ...Just imagine a boy of 8 9 or 10 who with his playmate Brian weekly getting their knuckles wrapped to encourage them to be more deligent in Primary School whenever riciting a sentense in English from their shared learner, silence reigning only when it came to their desk in Mrs Grundy's class, their matronly Head Mistress? And during the same period getting 2 spellings correct out of 30 the second from the bottom of the class of 32 students my mate Brian bottom! Well, age 11, when the brighter kids passed their 11+ examinations to enter either the High or Grammar Schools (a selective secondary school that admits students based on merit, typically assessed through an entrance exam called the 11-plus) we, the dregs, continued at our Elton County Secondary School, until aged 13 we got another opportunity to better ourselves, with another entrance exam to the Bury Junior Technical School, on which occasion I succeeded, like my elder brother before m...

  You know each day during my adult life I have walked for up to an hour a day round the town or a part of it and in the process got to update something I call my continuing story: endlessly incomplete… Just lately my elder brother J, 16 months my senior, has been much in my thoughts because it appears he phones me less and less, the last time I calculated was on the 3 rd of September, I say calculated but in point of fact I simply refer to my old Nokia which logs my calls: incoming, outgoing, which together with his house phone and mobile numbers properly edited, I can see who has been in touch, with duration in minutes, time of day, etc: mainly him and my sister M who are together the main people who call me on a regular basis. But yesterday I got to decide I wouldn’t get on his case about it because he has never been the kind of needy person I see myself as, and in the process got to review many of the traits which run through our families. Things perhaps which when we are ...

So here's how it is.. Another nail in one's coffin is how I have begun to see this being stripped of first one of the attributes I once upon a time took for granted but which increasingly cannot be so now taken anymore And if that is the down side the upside is that the process takes more than a day to happen: maybe a year or two or three or four...that it is a fairly slow process is everything good about it, and slowing the process down becoming one's main preoccupation... Perhaps it all began with an audiology aged 47 with a Mr Anderson at Bolton Royal Infirmary. When he examined my hearing and the disjoint I was experiencing from one ear to other. A slight delay by probably the left compared to the right ear, which his examination revealed was to do with the fact that in his words "It looks like a Double Decker Bus has driven over the septum of your nose!" Proceeding to tell me he could perform an operation to correct the defect, which may not correct my ...

This my yacht she got to sit in if not to sail... A blog perhaps more for the members of my family who one day in the not-too-distant future will be remembering me on my as yet unknown death day? A day in the last week or 7 days when I got to write two letters of condolences to the loved ones of friends who were once dear to me, as above all others was of course my Mam, aged 90 I like to think of, as 91 years and 13 weeks on Earth. As I remarked in the wee speech I made at my 60th birthday Bash in Elton Liberal Club, to the gathering of friends and family that attended this occasion, my Mam saw me over the foothills of my life growing up in Bury, after which my wife A-E took over on the bigger peaks, in my case the Munro hills of Scotland: behind every great man there stands a woman goes the saying and in my case I would claim two such people. Great? Only in your own mind do I here the refrain? But in terms of a mother's love I could not have desired better for she was alway...

...so used to say my old friend Osku's "Ukki" a man, his father, in maybe his 70's when in 1964 around Christmas time I visited the family home in Eastern Karelia and met his older brother Arto, his Äiti-Mamma, and of course Ukki. 38 years later I would be calling Osku on the phone on Monday 27th May during the day, relating my "tale of woe" regarding the heart attack I had just sustained, when he told me how lucky I was, because he added it wasn't his coronary ateries that were blocked, but the arteries in his neck, maybe the so-called carotid ateries? That is the last conversation we shared before he passed away on May 31st from blocked arteries, not a week later, and prescient in the sense he never spoke a truer word. Ukki had a few things to say...for me personally he told the joke about how the Russians, "Russe" in his parlance, invented the samovaari but Saksa, the Germans its "hanna" or tap! The Hyppönens had not had it easy ...

At HIRC according to Google so I was advised by Dr E my sponser I guess I shall have to call him, the partner of a cousin of my wife's. To be on the safe side I searched my old wallets for an old business card when among the many I decided to take one of the last I used to use when I styled myself E***** K*** CSci CChem FRSC standing for Chartered Scientist, Chartered Chemist, and Fellow of the Royal (of The United Kingdom) Society of Chemistry of KonsultancyK***, the name of my Consultancy which operated from 2004 11 29 the Monday of the first week of what should have been my retirement upon reaching the age of 65. Together with a photograph, a self portrait I took at the time when I still had dark hair, now turned grey in the intervening almost 20 years: and on the reverse side the same name but styling himself Chairman, Working Group of Cellulose Casing Manufacturers, based in Bruxelles, Belgium, as the headquarters of C.I.P.C.E.L. (COMITE INTERNATIONAL DE LA PELLICULE CELLU...

The next also Bury...hahaha... After a time father went off to war the At HIRC according to Google so I was advised by Dr E my sponser I guess I shall have to call him, the partner of a cousin of my wife's. To be on the safe side I searched my old wallets for an old business card when among the many I decided to take one of the last I used to use when I styled myself E***** K*** CSci CChem FRSC standing for Chartered Scientist, Chartered Chemist, and Fellow of the Royal (of The United Kingdom) Society of Chemistry of KonsultancyK***, the name of my Consultancy which operated from 2004 11 29 the Monday of the first week of what should have been my retirement upon reaching the age of 65. Together with a photograph, a self portrait I took at the time when I still had dark hair, now turned grey in the intervening almost 20 years: and on the reverse side the same name but styling himself Chairman, Working Group of Cellulose Casing Manufacturers, based in Bruxelles, B...

I have come always to think of my younger brother-in-law, W. and G. his dear wife whenever the Eve of the 1st of May comes around because for so many of the last 37 years of living here we used to celebrate it with these members of our family. And even before that we could each remember their wedding in the spring of 1972, when for 2 years 1971 to 1973, we resided in Finland and got to socialise with them, and other members of my wife's Finnish family. Then, from 1978 until 1984, I used to visit Finland for my British company in England, beginning in September when I decided that if the company wished to send me for 2 nights business, I would take the opportunity to stay a further 4 nights on my own account, so I could also visit with the four couples who made up the main members of my wife's family: her two brothers and their wives, my sister-in-law and her husband, plus my parents-in-law. And what I thought would be a one off visit continued with autumn and spring visits for...