DannyBoy

Born into this house, 13 Thornleigh Road, Fallowfield, Manchester 26th Nov., 1939                                         But then moving here on the 12th of May 1989 some 50 years later together with my wife of 23 year, A-E K child... First a view of our house we bought in 1988 from its northern aspect. Then from inside the living room looking East…                                           Lastly its southern aspect in the autumn collecting fallen leaves: a rather nice front piece for where I'm at today wouldn't you agree?

that is up-lifted I have to think: the compunctions of the blogger and his or her audience and readership!? No, what it has to do with for me is getting towards the top of my game at last. We start out in this life totally dependent on others: our mothers and fathers brothers and sisters...aged 3 I had the full set : my Mam who had just given birth to our kid sister, my elder brother by 16 months, blazing the new trails and our Dad, a Royal Marine Commando no less, albeit someone who most of his early time in the forces was building army huts for the Wrens who were to woman the listening posts on Scotland's Western Isles seaboard facing the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to track Adolf Hitler's U-boats. Later he would ship out to Oz en route to Japan to do whatever was required of him in the Japanese theatre of war, only he didn't make it alive. Then growing up, at first not quickly enough for some, like one's Head Mistress who thought she would encourage some of us to read...

Not easy for a kid who was routinely beaten aged 7 or 8 for his inability to read as quickly as the other kids in his class, after loosing his father to WW II , though not as a hero in t conventional sense because "he died from Natural Causes" according to the Lawyer representing the Crown againgst our Mam, who pursued her right to a War Widow's pension to help rear her three young children, ages 1 y 10 m, 5 and 7, from 4th August 1945, his death day until Oct 1947 when our Mam won her appeal in the HIGH COURT at the discretion of the later Lord of the Rolls, His Right Honourable Lord Justice Tom Jennings. There quite a mouth full for starters! That our Mam was a fighter and my personal hero all my life was never in question. Our Dad who needn't have gone to war in the first place: a married man aged 36 too old to be called up , and in any case as a tradesman Joiner or Carpenter, a Pattern Maker to give him his top title, who at the time of volunteering for War Ser...

Yesterday on T-T there was this aging man holding forth about every man's first daughter how they are formed in his image, t reason being so that he can relate to her. Right away it got me thinking of my sister's first child, a girl, who is not formed in her father's image but more his than my sister's in terms of character, so much so that i can guess she is his favourite child sporting his exageratedly long chin. And his 3 subsequent sons: Nicholas (also a chip off the old block!), followed by Gregory (more like her than him) and finally Thomas who would call his only son after me rather than his own father! So the star of every young man has to be his mother, which was certainly true in my case until my wife-to-be finally entered the fray, as i was coming up to 30. When I was coming up to 60 I asked my mother and sister to arrange a birthday party in my honour, thinking what a good bash our mother's 80th was but fearing she might not see 90, so therefore my 6...

Yeah, that's where I came from during 18 yrs of my childhood, to 36 yrs of my late adulthood...but to be fair the house into which I was born was more salubrious, sporting 3 bedrooms, a fitted bathroom, and even an air-raid shelter in the rear of two gardens, thanks to the city of Manchester's slum clearances in the early part of the 20th centuary, in 1936 to be precise 3 years before my arrival. In-between times many stops and starts along the way. For example branching out on my own in 1960 first, aged 20, I got to reside in a Swedish School in Kuusankoski given over to accommodating students in the summer months of June through August when I shared a classroom with this very superior PhD student from Austria, one Herwig Marshalt, for 6 weeks. Before, a year later, getting my own room on the 1st floor of an apartment block known as Kukkolla (meaning the Cocks' residence, housing only males, facing another building entitled Kannalla, for Hens, lol). A year later still I ...

Country? Some have it that it is because its ppl are mostly community spirited whilst others say it is because its ppl are more interested in free time than in amassing great wealth... As an immigrant I have a few pertinent views i believe which I shall endeavour to ennumerate, thus: 1) It's small size of only 5.5 million ppl is one factor living in a country in size greater than that of Britain which has 66 million; 2) As the most northerly republic in the world, which is to say it has a harsh climate, is undoubtedly another factor: without a community spirit the ppl would have perished a long time ago; 3) I'm gonna say its women are on average stronger than its men: taking my daily swim swimming in the Baltic Sea from the men's side of the Town's Changing room, on the beach formerly known as the "Ladies Beach", where twice as many women than men, have their daily dip. (Women's subcutaneous layer of fat no doubt a factor in all this. 4)Their way of r...

...is that one is then able to question its validity in a new and perhaps enlightening way..? Unsurprisingly I revert to my musings about the two cultures of this my adoptive country and the very different receptions I got from the one culture compared to the other when my latest thoughts might derive from the fact that I only ever took one of these two cultures fully on board! And the thing to remember about cultural differences is that they are anything but obvious... Kicking off as an eventual emigre then in Kuusankoski in the summer of 1960 and being hired by the most amenial Sw-Finn DI Gräsbeck but then being assigned to work for FinnFinn Maisteri Pauli Paasonen it was clear who were the masters of this particular meeting of minds, as it was clear I would become a FinnFinn owing to the fact the majority of Finns spoke Finnish, and therefore be able to converse with more than 95% of the population, as I was not good at learning languages, and learning Swedish would have involved...

He and I were friends almost from the cradle up and once grown up a bit our Mam told how when I was younger I had said "When I grow up I'm going to marry Brian" as he was then. Well we got to share a lot of stuff like building a boggy: a plank of wood, stolen from nevermind where, and fitted out with four old child's pram wheels, 2 in front and 2 at the back, maybe someone of us pushing one of the others, seated with reins in hands, to change direction, left or right. Taking turns to enjoy the fun, until Brian's elder brother, Lewis thought he'd exchange it for someone's air gun..! Lewis, so much older, never considered consulting we group of youngsters, some 3 or 4 years his junior. Lew wasn't a man's man: just another a*sehole, hahaha I personally got to share lots of things with Brian in those early years, including the two bottom places in our secondary school class of 32 students, for our shared desk, and inability to learn to read, or spell...

Today I got an alert from MAISA the Finnish Health Service's new App for seriously sick ppl, to tell me the result of one of two tests performed in the last 24 hours from blood I gave at 10 10 yesterday, i.e. within 24 hours, time now 10 12, to say my testosterone level is low at Good news because I have been taking Androgen Deprevation Therapy since the 27th of October 2025, only interrupted on the 25th and 26th of December because two days before the Apteekki had advised they would be open until 4 pm on the 24th when of course being a Christmas Eve they closed at 12 00 noon. Therefore a result hardly reflecting the steady state of my testosterone levels but nevertheless in the range of where it ought to be. The good news then is that I am ending the year 2025 on track again thanks to a certain friend at the beginning of the year relating his experience of getting a diagnosis for something he would be unaware of but for asking for a certain test to be performed, when I was to re...