DannyBoy

After spending another 6 weeks in Finnish and Norwegian Lapland, the arctic north without a single night fall 7th June to 19th July... Every day a challenge only more so than in 2024 when one has to concede not so much success as earlier, but still miraculously meeting the challenges! That, despite sticking to my work-out regimen of walking 10 000 steps a day and scaling perhaps on average 100 m of ascent!? It started out well enough but for the fact I had a couple of weeks before lost my car's near-side wing mirror, when the usual lack of spares in Hanko for old Saab cars meant I couldn't get a replacement in time for my vacation. Instead, as one journied north from Kolari, the termnius of my car-train of 14 hours duration, driving my car northwards, and pulling in at Muonio to a familiar restaurant, as I backed my car into a narrow space on the end of several other parked cars, I grazed the adjacent car. Not to add insult to injury, at which point I stopped the car to exam...

Today meeting the two Qvarnström sisters, the Professor first, and then her older (?) sister Stiina, the Physician, who told me she is still coming here for the Laboratory after hearing about my MRI Scan, so implying that she is still registered as a Hanko person... Quite a long chat first with younger sister when we talked about Finnish Culture and how I came here, giving her not the 5c tour but the 5$, when she responded how Finland appears to becoming more racist... but older sister joined us with their two dogs Stella and ? I cannot remember the later dog's name, but handing over the leads to younger sister leaving Stiiner and me to play catch up, also her older friend... More and more as an "Oldie" I am being accepted more as a member of the Finnish Culture because for one reason it is customary among Finns to drop their usual reserve among foreigners for their stronger respect for anyone seriously old when the main thrust of their behaviour is one of respect...per...

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 ...