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...