Choirboys vs The Camel that wept

For our wedding anniversary we went to BioCity and watched a french movie called the choirboys. It was the story of a terrible boarding school, with children that were out of control. They have a fat pudgy bald teacher who gets them interested in singing, and so begins their road to salvation, as they escape from the brutality of their prison like surroundings into the freedom and beauty of music. The headmaster is a sadistic monster. The janitor is abused and worked like a slave. The gym master tries to keep everything under control by twisting ears. The music teacher is kind hearted and although he has succes in teaching the kids to sing he is fired from his job.

The singing is spine chilling and has a countess clutching a handkerchief to her bosom and looking dewy eyed at the choirboys with angelic voices. There is no happy end and no John Wayne salutes. The fat bald music teachers does not get the girl and he gets fired for all his troubles. The soprano boy in the choir does become famous and he owes it all to the fat bald music teacher.



The other movie we thought about going to see was "The camel that wept" which was made in Mongolia. I just did not see the potential for any drama coming from a movie about weeping camels. We did see the trailer and I was halfway disappointed that we had not gone to see a story about a young camel being deserted by its mother. I think I might have been put off by the thought that it might have been a Disney type "Incredible Journey" with camels talking to each other in Bronx accents, but apparently not. Camels are big in mongolia so why shouldn't they star in their own movies?

The Camel that wept review supplied by crfullmoon on flickr

On the ice

Went to the lake with Jasper and borrowed papa's ice drill it was blunt as hell, and although we bored for 15 minutes we could not get threw the ice. It must be over 50 cm thick.

I remember a story told to me about a couple of Finns who went out drunk at night to fish. There was a field just next to the lake and they had no idea if they had been drilling down to the earth or down to the water, and being drunk they did not care.

The next morning they went out to inspect the holes they had bored only to discover they had been fishing on a field. No wonder they did not catch anything.

She who is to be obeyed asked us to cut down the reeds, and I sythed down a vast expanse of reeds along the lake shore. I thought while I was doing it these reeds are dead and new ones will be coming up when the ice melts, so cutting down these deadhead won't make a blind bit of difference, but it pleased she who must be obeyed and made her happy, so that was the main thing.

"Shall I beat with might and main
lay it on as a man can
or lay it as the tools allow
beat as much as is needed?"

"Kullervo Kalervo's son
battered then with might and main
laid it on as a man can
the water he stirred to gruel
beat the seine to tow
and the fish he mashed to scum"

Wasted energy is not new.

Opening a present of celebration

Today I will drive with Maija and pick up our grandson Jasper and we will then go to Lahti to see Maija's mum. We have plans to go out to the lake and while the ice is still firm, cut down the reeds that are sticking through the ice. I may even bore a hole in the ice an do some fishing.

When I mentioned to Raisa that I had bought a pilkki fishing rod she raised the question of fishing permits. I said that I didn't need a permit since my rod was so short. She told the story to her friends at college who had laughed, and marveled at what a wit her father was.

I look out my window and the sky is a brilliant blue. The flags on Lippulaiva which I always look at to see how strong the wind is blowing are not moving at all. They are still, which means it will be a great day for slow walking in the snow and sun.

This morning to celebrate going to Lahti I opened up one of my unopened Christmas presents. It was from Christopher, "The Kalevala" the Finnish national epic poem.

"This I hoped for all my days
looked for all my growing-time
waited as for a good year
looked as for summer's coming
and now my wish has come true"

"Now some music would be good
and some merrymaking right
for this new state of affairs
apon these fair farms;"

"Steady old Väinämöinen
the everlasting singer
prepares his fingers
rubs his thumbs ready.
He sits on the rock of joy
on the song-boulder settles
on the silver hill
on the golden knoll
he fingered the instrument
turned the curved thing on his knees
the kantele in his hands
he uttered a word, spoke thus
Now let him come and listen
who may not before have heard
the joy of eternal bards
the sound of the kantele!"

I still have two presents unopened. I have a feeling I may have good reason to open them very soon. This is my hope.

Food from the blind

There are two resturants in Berlin that have blind waiters and you have to eat your food in the dark. One is called "Dunkelrestaurant Berlin" and the other one is called "Nocti Vagus"

There is also a cafe for the deaf, and an ultra-trendy establishment, run by a slightly crazy Argentinean, where you eat what you're given, they have no menu, then pay what you think the meal is worth.

For some reason I like this novel approch to eating. I have had my own experiance in Italy of eating in a resturant where you have to eat what the chef makes for you. It was in Trieste Italy and the owner was "Frank the Pig"

But how do I arrive at writing something about resturants for the blind. Well it all started off as an experiment getting CD's from the library. I decided to go in to the CD racks and pull out 7 CDs at random, I was acting as though I was blind. I did not look at the covers or the artists, I just blindly took them and checked them out.

Out of the 7 CDs there was one gem by a singer from the Faroe Islands. His name is Teitur, and he sings in english. His music is very poetic and lyrical, and I enjoyed the soft melodies very much... and so it was when I was finding out more about Teitur that I found out that he wanted information about these "blind resturants" in Berlin. So a strange little circle relating to blindness was completed. Going from the blind selection of CDs to the "blind resturants" in Belin.

In our lives we hate to fly blind. Everything has to be planned, and thought out well in advance. The calories in the food we eat are all calculated. The % fat in our milk. It is almost as if our well being is weighed out for us. Excess tips the balance in one direction. Frugality tips it in the opposite direction. We leave ourselves very little room to be surprised by goodness. We miss out on good music because we are not prepared in any way to pick up a CD by someone from the Faroe islands with a name like Teitur. We are not prepared to go blindly into a resturant, and on trust, eat what the chef prepares.

The principle of our lives is one of limitations, and by having that outlook we miss being kissed by the joy of the unexpected.

Dancing fingers.

So I wanted to do a video for Noa on his birthday. A short capture from the Webcam, and the idea was to have dancing fingers. All dancing fingers should have black patent shoes so I painted my fingernails black. I stuffed a hanky up my sleave and let it hang down so that it looked like a skirt and then I made my fingers dance to the samba, and did some provocative high kicks so you could see that my fingers were not wearing any underwear.

The dancing was out of sync with the music and most of the steps were just a blur... what do you expect from a cheap webcam, but the most disapointing thing was that once it was made it was too large to send as an email attachment.

But that is not the end of the story. I didn't wash the ink off my nails and I became conscious of this fact while in the library at Iso Omena when I noticed a couple of gothgirls were sniggering at my black painted fingernails hovering over the mouse. I would have thought it was completely uncool for gothgirls to snigger. If you are pale and white and dressed in swaths of black lace then it does your image absolutely no good to snigger behind a lily white hand cupped over you mouth and nose.

Then at the supermarket checkout the cashier had a David Beckham diamond stud in his ear. I griped the pen to sign the receipt, and all of a sudden I wished I was ambidextrous. The cashier observing my black painted nails, sucked both of his cheeks in and pouted his lips. I gave him the benifit of the doubt and construed this to mean he was trying to control a snigger and not that he was flirting with me.

When I got home I took a picture of my painted nails and then scrubed the ink off my fingernails

Dancing fingers video

Singing the blues away.

choir
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

When I was young I was always listening to the radio, waiting for the song and the words to be broadcast that would change my life. There was this expectancy that somebody somewhere will put words and music together that would transform me into something better. It has never happened, but I am still waiting, still eager for it to happen.

I ask myself can music influence things in the world, can it affect change in peoples lives. Did John Lennon's "Give peace a chance" stop the war in Viet Nam? Would the war have draged on longer if he had never written that song?

Or what of the "Singing Revolution" in Estonia when over one quarter of a million people meet in the open air to sing songs like "Koit" (Dawn Is Breakin' Through), Laulu Mõju [the Influence of a Song], Laul Põhjamaast [Hymn of the Nordic Lands] Nukurava Nukulaul [the Puppet People's Puppet Song [from the Song Cycl].

Previously in Hungary and Checkoslovakia, any attempt to become independant were brutally crushed by soviet tanks, but in 1988 the Estonians sang their way to freedom.

In the Song Fields of Tallin, night after night, thousands of people turned up to sing in the open air. The singing turned into a political rally, ending with over 300,000 Estonians voicing their demand for self-government through song. The Estonians say "We sang ourselves free."

A good song is no more than the expression of a truth that we hold deep in our hearts. The utterance of the words, the voice releasing the melody, gives birth to hope, and new life.

Puddock in a pool.

Eye with blue monitor spot.
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

I was thinking about my father today, and more especially his love for poetry. Having been brought up in a house with no TV the main passtime was reading, and at a young age I got a fair bit of exposure to the poems of Robert Burns.

My father went for the poems that looked at social inequalities, hypocricy, conflict between church and state, the freedoms of the individual. Who would have thought Burns could sum up the problems of old age in a couple of lines

"But see him on the edge of life
with cares and sorrows torn.
Then age and want that ill matched pair
prove man was made to mourn."

When he was struck down with dementia, when he he could not remember the day of the week, and he had difficulty remembering what had been said to him a few minutes before, he would often perform these amazing feats of recitation and faultlessly recite a poem he had learnt as a boy. Perhaps he would do it to reassure himself that his memory was still functioning properly.

But the one poem that brought a twinkle to his eye and made him laugh was a very short one. I don't know who wrote it, perhaps he made it up himself.

"When Rob is in a rage,
He's like a lion in a cage.
But when his rage begins to cool,
He's like a puddock in a pool."

Roope and Maija listen out for scrumjax

Listening out for scrumjax
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

If Scrumjax is anything like Slack then I want you to cut me some. We all need some slack in our lives, especially when things get too tight. Some people don't have any slack and they are screwed up fit to burst.

I want slack in my trousers. I want slack in my bank account. When I am eating I want my food spiced with slack, and when I am out walking I want to do it is a slack way.

I am more that willing to give my children all the slack they want. You just can't have too much slack. It comes in handy to give away as presents. Having plenty of slack at a birthday party helps things to run smoothly.

So cut me some slack Jack!!!

Shaggy dog story #2

Shaggy dog story #2
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

We did have a dog once. It was a ”foster-dog”. That should have set the ALARM BELLS RINGING.
She was a BITCH… a fast black BITCH.
She was officially known as a Lapland reindeer dog, and from the way her eyes popped out of her head, and her tongue hung out the side of her mouth you would think she’d eaten A KILO OF COCAINE FOR BREAKFAST.
This dog was CRAZY with a capital “K”
She wanted to RULE EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING.
Dogs, cats, kids, birds, ANYTHING THAT MOVED
Take her to the enclosed dog park and in a second she would have rounded up all the other dogs and put them in A CORNER.
If another dog did not cooperate she would jump on their backs and KNOCK THEM to THE GROUND.
Great Danes, Alsatians, dogs twice her size had to OBEY.
She was a PSYCHO. She needed to have everything UNDER CONTROL.
She would have herded stones IF THEY HAD MOVED.
She had to have something to herd. If she had penned all of the dogs she would start on any LOOSE KIDS RUNNING AROUND.
If she had worn stockings she would have had their GUTS FOR GARTERS.
If she had played golf she would have had their GONNADS FOR GOLFBALLS.
She had ATTITUDE, and would not be messed with.

Tricks? Yeah she could do tricks especially at the DINNER TABLE.
For Ilona that bitch would SHAKE HER HEAD to get something to eat,
For Patrik she would YAWN,
for Riina she would ROLL OVER,
for Raisa she would do a FORELEG STRETCH
When we had visitor around that bitch would get in front of them and do infinite combinations of the ROLL OVER, YAWN, FORELEG STRETCH, HEAD SHAKE
What is WRONG with that BITCH they would say.
We’d say SHE’S PSYCHO.
Let’s just say me and the wife were sitting down for a meal. A Friday night together without the kids, and a nice roast chicken on the table. The door bell rings. I get up to answer it. It is somebody for Maija. I call her to the door. While at the door we hear a clatter of plates falling from the table and that BITCH is standing on top of the table with HALF A CHICKEN in her mouth and a look of dumb bemusement on her face as if to say “WHAT?”

Run? That bitch could run ALL DAY and never get tired.
It was EXHAUSTING JUST WATCHING HER GO.
Took her to the forest once, she was all the time straining at the LEASH TO BE FREE.
Released her and she shot off like a FLASH OF BLACK LIGHTENING
Called for her to come. She came within 3 metres and smiled. That look on her face said YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE LET ME OFF HE LEASH.
For THREE HOURS SHE TEASED ME. I hate being made a fool of by a BITCH.
Every time I tried to catch her she was off like a BLACK BLUR ON THE CANVAS OF FORREST FLOOR.
So humiliating. I had no luck in catching her. If I had fallen into a BARREL OF TITS I WOULD COME UP SUCKING MY THUMB. My luck was that bad.
Sex!!! That was her downfall. Another man with a dog on a leash stopped to observe THE MAN AND HIS DOG COMEDY SHOW.
And when dogs get together they like to do a bit of BUTT-SMOOCHING.
That gave me the opportunity to grab her and put her on the leash, but the look in her eye to the other dog said TAKE ME I’M YOURS, that three hour run in the forest WAS ONLY A WARM UP.

We don’t have a dog now and if I do take a picture of a dog it is a DUMB DOG.
A dog that is wearing a HAT
Dogs that wear hats can’t be ASS-SMOKING SMART to let themselves get rigged up like that, so you are safe to take their pictures, but I always keep a wary eye on my back in case a BLACK BITCH STREEKS from nowhere, jumps on my back and HERDS ME INTO A CORNER.

efatima:colour and detail

efatima:colour and detail
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

efatima from the UAE was a very active photographer on Flickr. Over the weekend her account was deleted, and all of her beautiful photos disappeared.

Now if you wanted to recall what she has done it is impossible. I had a few of her photos maked as favourites but even the thumnails have gone. On her blog site all the places that used to have images are now gaping holes. Only her words remain, and I thought I would save at least something she had written before her words might disappear as well. Her photos were very vibrant with lots of colour saturation and she was very interested in minute details, so the text I chose was about her vision of a small world.

If the earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a field somewhere, people would come from everywhere to marvel at it. They would walk around it, marveling at its big pools of water, its little pools and the water flowing between them, the bumps on it, the holes in it, the very thin layer of gas surrounding it, the water suspended in the gas, all the creatures walking around the surface of the ball, and at the creatures in the water. People would declare it precious because it was the only one, and they would protect it so that it would not be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and they would come to behold it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love it, and defend it with their lives, because they would somehow know that their lives, their own roundness, could be nothing without it. If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter.

-efatima (Sunday, November 17, 2002 blog)

Black dog with blue boat

Black dog with blue boat
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Trawler frozen in the ice at Espoonlahti, with man walking a black dog on the frozen sea.

Painting Box
by Mike heron

When the morning of your eyes comes waking through my shadows
Leaving just a trace of twilight sleep,
I whisper to the baby raindrops playing on my window,
And tell them gently this is not the time that they should weep.

For somewhere in my mind there is a painting box,
I have every color there it's true.
Just lately when I look inside my painting box,
I seem to pick the colors of you.

The purple sail above me catches all the strength of summer.
Fishes stop and ask me where I am bound.
I smile and shake my head and say my little ship is sinking,
But I kind of like the sea that I'm on, and I don't mind if I do drown.

For somewhere in my mind there is a painting box,
I have every color there it's true.
Just lately when I look inside my painting box,
I seem to pick the colors of you.

Old Boy (did you see what I just did there)

Old Boy (did you see what I just did there)
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Walking on the frozen sea at Espoonlahti is something I enjoy. I has got something to do with the vast expanse of snow, and the equally vast sky that is blindingly blue.

The other thing that makes it so good is the air. It is better than a meal, or at least when you have done a five kilometer walk and breathed all that fresh air a meal tastes so much better.

What do you see when you are out walking on the sea? Well lots of other people doing the same thing. Families out for walks, kids being pulled behind on a sledge. Old couples walking slowly over the ice, Young couples skiing fast in the skating style, middle aged couples skiing in the traditional nordic style. And then the ice is pock-marked with 15 cm holes where the ice fishers have been.

My own plan is to walk quite near the shoreline and look for a hot spot. This is a place that is sheltered from the wind, and for some magical reason is miraculously warmer than out on the open sea.

The hot spot always seems to have a huge granite stone you can lean on, or an upturned boat with a black pitch bottom that absorbs the suns rays. It is a pleasure to sit in a hot spot and watch the movement of people out on the ice. They often look like matchstick people from a L.S. Lowry painting. A hot spot is at its best when someone fires up a sauna on the shoreline and the blue smoke smell of resinous spruce permeates the air.

The sun makes young people move fast, and it makes old people sit down.

Fischer King

Fischer King
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Fischer proved to me how gifted (regarding openings) he was with his first match against Spassky. The guy played openings and defenses for the first time in his life almost perfectly against a world champion! As a human being, the guy's values are not in touch with the real world, but when it comes to pure chess knowledge, he has no equal! -- Keith Hayward

Many people allow their judgments concerning Fischer the individual to influence their judgment of Fischer the chess player. -- Ed Kennedy

Being Jewish myself, I somehow didn't see the problem: who cares what a mentally ill (but strangely likable) individual says? If he didn't make some money at chess, I could see him becoming a street person, shaking his fists at cars as they passed by his corner of the block. Isn't it preferable to have him in a self-sufficient position rather than as a liability of the state? -- Jeremy Silman (on Fischer)

While there can be no excuse for the public statements he has made, there can be understanding and even sympathy - for him, if not for his illness. -- Frank Berry Jr. (on Fischer)

Is Fischer quite sane? -- Salo Flohr

During the cold war the russians were chess champions, but on July 11, 1972 Fischer began his match with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland for the world championship. He won and became a national hero.

On September 1, 1992, Bobby Fischer came out of his 20 year retirement and gave a press conference in Yugoslavia. He pulled out an order from the U.S. Treasury Department warning him that he would be violating U.N sanctions if he played Chess in Yugoslavia. He spat on the order and now faces ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine if he returns to the U.S. Bobby Fischer had become a villian.

Bobby Fischer is being held in a Japanese prison and awaits extradition to the USA.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead.

Those were the days.
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Yeah Johnny Depp did Hunter to a tee, straped a tape recorder to his chest and pushed his head in the bog and spoke, letting the stream of conciousness rip in a demonic babble, and the tape recorder caught it all. All the brain farts and the kalidascopic hoots of nonsence, am I supposed to enjoy that. No I trashed Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Aimed it straight at the rubbish bin and lobbed it in. It was a hole in one. It gave a satisfying thunk as it hit the bottom of the trash can. Didn't think about selling it on eBay, didn't foist it off on somebody else as a present, just consigned it to the rubbish heap with glee. If somebody offers you a plate of dried scabs to eat you do not nibble your way through the crusted dried blood, you trash it. He blew a hole in his head at 67. The gonzo. Everybody is singing his praises of how he lived on the edge. I am disinclined to honour him. Poor sweet pitiful man who relied on a tape recorder to record his incoherant drug induced rambling and then when he was sober, played it back and tried to make sence of it. What a technique. I do the exact opposite. I write when I am sober and edit it when I have drunk a bottle of cheap red wine. It worked for Hank, so why not for me.

I feel like I am fading

I feel like I am fading
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Oh Jack, Oh jack, you were the one to steal cars and drive from coast to coast with Cassidy, picking up cars and women at the same rate and abandoning them at the crossroads just as fast. It was all about the speed of things and bebop, and the maniac howl of Ginsberg who was searching for the third chord that would enable him to play the blues, and when the saxaphone blew, it blew cement dust that covered the sunflower that was growing in a wasteland. T.S. Elliot said it would all end with a whimper, but he was proved wrong because the beat poets from Liverpool came along and said it would end with a Wimpy. And where was I when Shearing played at Newport and Anita O'Day scat sang in white gloves and a big white hat with feathers on it, and everybody wore Ray Bann's and didn't even know it was cool. Where was I when they jived on the rooftops and played classical cello naked on a hot afternoon and called it jazz. Where was I when Chichester sailed around the world, and braved the southern seas in a boat no more than a rusted bucket. And at Newport the water vibrated blue to the sound of a double bass, and Britain was practising once again to get beating in the America's cup. American technology would win everything even the war in Vietnam. When did purple haze turn to purple rain and how did it happen, was I asleep for so many years dreaming of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and penguin dust. I had my own dust to observe. The dust that settles on the window ledges of deserted houses. Boarded up villages abandoned and neglected. The dust from coal that solidifies lungs. Lungs that will never function again not even in the cleanest and purest air. Not even with pure oxygen from a compressed bottle. The miners with ruined lungs played in the silver band. Played show tunes from South Pacific, and on Sundays really thought they had a chance at the national championships in the Usher Hall, but they got too drunk to blow, and half the band spent half of their time working the valve to let the spit drop from their cornets, their trumbones, their euphoniums and their tubas. Black spit that could be Guiness or coal dust. Take me away from all this decay and failure. This futile striving that never pays a dividend, co-op or otherwise. Tune me in to Radio Luxemburg on 208. Take me away Pharoah Sanders. The cool calm nights at the corner, the cigarette smoke keeping away the midges, the distant laughter coming from under the bridge down by the river, as people watched the salmon come up to spawn. I will tell you where I was. I was in a room near George square ratcheting a manual calculator and listening to a small bell ping then a satisfactory answer was reached, but my mind was in Morrocco, in Marrakesh where I wore a berber cape against the cold of the desert air. Where snakes were charmed and men in the marketplace spat fire instead of coal dust. I slept on beaches from Barcellona to Algeceras while John Lennon sang of revolution #9. He was nowhere near the Paris barricades of 68, he only became a working class hero later. It was Tariq ali who rolled the marbles under the police horses hooves at Grovsner square. A Pakistani radical leading a bunch of white skinheads. The madness of the whole idea. I was there when the black and red flags of the anarchists broke away from the main demonstration heading towards Hyde park and wheeled past the Playboy club. I was there when the bunnies on the balcony were encouraged to jump. I was there when we linked arms and charged the police cordon. It was like a game in the play ground. If we had ever broken through we would not have known what to do. When the flag was lowered on the embassy that was victory enough and we all went off and had a Wimpy, so Elliot had got it wrong after all... or it might he might have been half right since the endevour ended in a whimper.

Dancing on the inside

Well I went down to the revival
to give my soul a chance
And the DJ spoke to God,
and the congregation danced.

Everyone was dancing
around that golden cow
I slowly shuffled forward,
feets’ don’t fail me now.

The DJ pointed upwards
to an angel on a swing.
Back and forth she went
and the choir began to sing.

Rose petals fluttered downwards
and perfume filled the air.
Thinking will imprison you.
Dancing takes you there.

The DJ points his finger
my stillness he derides.
Because it's not apparent
I'm dancing on the inside.

Conflict of interests.

Mrs Young at the Elders.

Mr Smith was a retired minister. He had taught at a private school, and had been dismissed. He was now a dishwasher and a part time gardener in an oldfolks home. Every Sunday he went up to Westminster cathedral to listen to the choirboys sing. He liked their high tennor voices.

The other passion in his life was potatoes. He liked saying Maris Piper, Record, and King Edward. He knew all about wireworm and blight, and he kept a keen eye on the potato shaws, and admired the sheen and health of the leaves. He regarded potatoes and choirboys with the same rapt gaze.

Mrs Young was the same age as Mr Smith and she loved flowers. She was frail and couldn't do any heavy digging and she would always ask me to prepare a flower bed for her. She liked to surround herself with cut flowers. She liked the scent. She liked the colour. In the big house the splashes of colour in the corridors, and the fragrances over the fireplace, were evidence that Mrs Young had been about her work. Sweet peas, Wallflower, and the climbing rose Zephirine Drouhin were her favourites. She always said the scent from that rose was better than a meal.

Mr Smith also required my services to double dig his trenches for his early potatoes. There was a constant pull between potatoes and flowers, between male and female, between function and frivolity, between formality and abandonment. One day Mr Smith took me aside and said he was going to let me into a great secret and he drew me close and whispered in my ear "You can't eat flowers in the winter". Mrs Young who had been observing this took her secateurs and cut me a perfect single rose and presented it to me with a smile.

My fridge loves me

When you fall in love you are always wanting to be with the one you love. Always phoning them, writing letters, making any excuse to meet them for a date. Now that I have mended our fridge I have fallen in love with it.

When I open the fridge door a little light pops on and smiles hello. Sometimes I open the door and listen to the coolent course through the back plate. If it has switched itself off and is silent I check the thermometer and if it is at 6 degrees everything is cool, no problems.

I have given it lots of presents, well food really. Moved all the stuff I had out on the balcony into its cool belly. At night I have got up to see if it was OK. The condenser has purred at me and thanked me for stocking the shelves with food. It remarked that it had to work hard when the shelves were empty, but now that they are full things have stabilised.

It is excellent that things are back to normal.

Moves

Is moving good for you. Not really it gives you alot of stress and headache. Packing, unpacking, finding new places to stay. You start off with your family, and your mum and dad looks after you, but you might get shunted around a few times from grandmothers to great aunts if there happens to be a tragedy in the family. So the early years go like this.

Bankend Ayrshire Scotland: Rooms with Rab Wright
Glebe Street New Cumnock Ayrshire Scotland: Upstairs house (Mother and Father)
Castlemains Ave Ayrshire Scotland: Granny's house.
Glebe Street New Cumnock Ayrshire Scotland Upstairs house (Father)
Green Braes Road Ayrshire Scotland Great Aunt Marg
Glebe Street New Cumnock Ayrshire Scotland Upstairs house (Father)



You step out of the home and are on your own for the first time when you go to university, and you live the life of a tramp with no roots. It is the nomadic life as Bruce Chatwin puts it. One day you look out of the window and see a bird soaring in the blue sky, and you imediately decide to go walkabout, and like the aborigine who strips himself of all his clothes and walks naked into the desert, you leave the soot and chill of Scotland behind and head for the continent. You work where you can, and sleep in any available bed. The work and the accomodation change with the seasons. Slipping in and out of society. When you leave society behind you have to lie about where you are escaping to, and when you return to society you have to lie about where you have been. Telling lies is not good for you. And from a teenager to a young man it went like this.

Baird Hall of Residence: Sauchihall street Glasgow Scotland (Greece)
Bognor Regis Hants: Summer working at Butlins
Baird Hall of Residence: Sauchihall street Glasgow Scotland ( Morrocco )
Minehead Sommerset: Summer working at Butlins
Rochester Kent: Accounts dept for county council. (Russia)
Neasden London NW10: Macvities and Price biscuit factory on the night shift to buy a boat.
The Grange Leatherhead Surrey : Ronsons lighter factory. (India)



Living to please youself would seem to be the best you can do, but the sun becomes too hot and the body is sick of the heat. India is the last great escape, but a broken landrover and a broken relationship sends me to the cold north of Scandinavia.

William Morris had gone to Iceland to mend his broken heart. I would go to Finland, and become a christian. Mystical monastic life for me. I devour the Spiritual life by Watchman Nee. I sell bibles door to door in Italy for food. I do it all with a sheet of A4 paper with Italian phrases on it.

I then work in an old folks home and see demented old women put their petticoats on top of their dresses. I lift them out of their urine soaked beds. I dress their bed sores. I put their false teeth in their mouths. I listen to the coherent ones tell me that their son will be coming this weekend to take them home. Every week they tell me this story and every weekend the son fails to turn up. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. I lift those who have fallen out of bed and lie dead on the cold cold floor. My son is born, and I begin my life of working for nothing. Five years of not earing a penny, and living never the less.

Koski HL Jokelan Kartano Finland: Odd jobs
Italy, Pisa, Milan, Reggio Emilia: OM
Hammelton Road, Bromley Kent: STL
West Wickham, Kent: STL
Tweedy Road, Bromley Kent: STL
The Elders Ewell Surrey: Old folks home




The stink coming from the mycelium clings to your clothes and hair. You could go into the local library in Hanko and the librarian would sniff you and casually remark "So you work at Fermion do you?" I wonder how many people can have their exact jobs pinpointed from the way they smell? Viikki saw the brith of Riina and Raisa. Kontula saw the birth of Patrik and Ilona.

I was the crazy christian who was so ignorant that I knew nothing about birth control. Intelligence was stamped apon you if you had 1.4 children. To have 5 ment you were a bit loose in the head. Take 5 children on public transport and you will be looked at. I graduated as a microbiologist. Studied, worked, and took care of 5 kids. We survived, and it was not hard.

Then came kick-ass radical christianity with an emphisis on prayer and worship. The Welsh revivalist were left coughing in the smoke of our songs, the shape note singers from Boston in their singing squares were swept away in a barrage of power chords. Charles Wesley was tossed aside and replaced by Kevin Prosch. We were a flaming arrow shot from the bow of a righteous God. It ended very badly.

But I had become a bioinformatician. Not only was it a new word that nobody could spell, apparently the world was clamouring for people who knew something about bioinformatics. I applied to work at the newly founded European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge UK . These were the years of study and work study and work study and work.

Gentoftenkatu Hanko Finland: Fermion ( Penicillin factory )
Latokartano Viikkki Finland: Helsinki University
Ostostie Kontula Finland: Helsinki University
Stenbackantie Kauklahti Finland: CSC
Åminnenranta Kauklahti Finland: CSC
Krämertintie Metsälä Finland: CSC




The summer was hot. I let Raisa trim my hair and she having punkish tendencies decided to put a couple of go faster speed strips down the side of my head. It looked a mess so I told her to shave my head completely. However I had a 10 year growth of Raspuitin beard which did not look quite right with a bald head, so I instructed her to swipe it off as well. I did not recognise myself with this clean cut look, and neither did anybody else.

It was then that I was called to the UK for an interview for a job at EBI. I knew a few of the people on the interview panel, but when I entered the interview room in my new defoliated form they had a hard time recognising me. To make matters worse one of the interviewers had a similar bald pate. Everytime I looked across the table it was like looking in a mirror. The rhyme Humpty Dumpty kept running through my head, and instead of answering questions I am thinking about Tweddle Dum and Tweedle Dee from Alice in Wonderland. The interview was surreal and the strange laughter that was bubbling inside me threated to explode in the faces of the panel.

I got the job because I said I was a bioinformatician. Children get married and leave home.

Beck Road Saffron Walden Essex England: EBI
Johnsons house Johnsone yard Saffron Walden Essex: EBI
Cromwell Road Saffron Walden Essex; EBI
Castle Cross Saffron Walden Essex: EBI
EspoonLahti Finland: CSC




Ten years on and I am back in Finland. All of the children are on their own, and everyone of them are beginning to make their own moves. Some are settled some are on the move.

Bruce Chatwin said in Songlines that we are all decended from Nomads and to be on the move has a secret place in our hearts. Personally I have thought that God has tied me down when I wanted to go, and kicked me in the arse when I wanted to stay. I feel a bit like Abraham.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.

That is precisely what I have done, and it has taken me 30 moves, and I am wondering what my inheritance might be.

A little bit of history repeating

The fridge is on the blink. It will run for hours and never switch itself off, unless you fiddle with the controls and then it does switch itself off but never comes back on again. The only way to get it going again is to pull the plug, let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes and then plug it in again. Then it runs like a maniac huskey out in the frost heading for home. Thermostat problem everybody says. I believe them.

But what does a thermostat look like and is it easy to replace. I imagine it to be a little gadget that you unplug from a socket, buy a new one, plug it in, and bob's your uncle. Sorted.

I haul the fridge out from the wall and look around for something electrical and I see a small black box attached to the compressor. I remove springs and clips and the cover and it reveals a something with lots of wires atached to it. Electrical must be the thermostat. I take a photo of it, so I can show the man at the spare parts department the type of thermostat I want. It is made by Danfoss. IT looks like this.



I drive to the shop and show the man my photo and he says that it is NOT a thermostat. I feel such a fool, but I ask him where the thermostat would be then and he says connected to the temperature control knob which is at the top of the fridge. Gritting my teeth I buy a general purpose thermostat that should do for all fridges. It is a little metal thing with a long wire coming off it. That wire has to be threaded somehow inside the fridge so it picks up the temperature and controls it.

I get home have a meal and then get down to the job of replacing the thermostat. Rip off the facia. Unscrew bolts and nuts. Unexpectedly little springs and washers were pinging everywhere. Flying so fast out of the electrical guts that I had no idea where they were coming from. Plod on. Soon the front and back of the fridge looked like it had taken a severe hit with a rocket propelled grenade, and after much rattling, clipping, twisting and snipping I extracted the thermostat. If you are wondering what a fridge thermostat looks like then the old one looks like this.



That long wire has to be delicately threaded through the polystyrene insulation and fixed to the back plate of the cooling unit inside the fridge, in a place that is so hidden and obscure, that it could be wearing a cloak of invisibility, or impersonating an essential part in a stealth bomber. Even the nimblest fingers of the fastest weaver would have difficulty attaching it to where it should go.

It took me 2 hours to dismantle everything and put it all back together again. Most of the time was looking at how things were joined together, and discovering after much effort that they were not supposed to be taken apart. At the end of the operation I only had two little nuts left on the table. I did not know where to put them, and half heartedly wished I had a young innocent child on hand who would have mistaken them for sweets and eaten them.

It was then I had the flashback to the washing machine incident. Would the fridge work, or was I looking at giving myself a hernia carrying it to the dumpster. I swicthed it on. It purred into life. There was no sparks or blue electrical flashes. It was working. It ran for an hour, the temperature droped, the thermostat kicked in and it switched the compressor off. James Brown said it best. I feel good.