I’m fifty today. Below the fold is a fragment shored against my ruin. (warning. long; boring; also copyrighted)
By the late Sixties, the aristocracy was found only in the high, remote recesses of Swedish life, like cobwebs. I spent some holidays among them because my parents were diplomats; and for a couple of years in the late Sixties they lived in a flat on Strandv
Felicitations.
I shall remember that piece when I am, as I hope to be, spending a fortnight wandering around a lake, sitting in orchards and trying to write in a Swedish chicken shed (owned by the sister and brother-in-law of a Swedish countess, who farms the holding next door and is thus held in some disdain by her peers. Or so I believe).
I see your childhood, like mine, lacked mosquitos. I have photographs to the contrary, which I disbelieve.
R
Grattis p
Tack f
I’m late to the party, but my best wishes nonetheless.
And (don’t take this the wrong way) I am astonished: I should have thought you much younger than 50.
Anyway: hipy papy bthuthdth thuthda bthuthdy and many hipy papy returns.
eeeh? Speak up!
M
I’m rushing up to bloggers and giving them kisses, and what could be more appropriate than to do so on the blogccasion of your natal feast.
mwah mwah
What Rupert said. My barefootedness was Manx, and peculiarly lacking midges. Although we were de-ticked every evening with the cigarettes of my chain-smoking grandparents.
Midges are worse than mosquitos. Those who know midges will never be spooked by mosquitos again. In another era, I took the FWB to Finnish Lapland where she met the world’s most beautiful dog but even this did not make up for the mosquitos and she and her mother refused to return ever since.
This seems to me astonishingly wrong: a moasuito large enough to fly off with a puppy in its clutches is much less frightening than a midge which can drift into your ear and nose like pollen.