Second Childhood

 

English title: Poo-Poo and the Dragons; originally published in 1942.
My copy in Swedish translation was printed in 1952.
Available for Kindle for about USD 1.05

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This month of July, with the weather shifting between too hot and too wet, and my bad knee still limiting me a bit as well, I seem to have reverted to a "second childhood" in my reading. On a whim, I started checking if some old childhood favourites of mine in Swedish (which I still also have in print) were also available in audio format from one of my library services - and as they were, I have been re-reading some of those "the lazy way" - i.e. by listening while resting, when too tired to do anything more productive... 

Alas the series that I dived into first (about "Kulla-Gulla") does not seem to be available in English: Only one or two of the books were ever translated to English at all, and none seem to have been turned into e-books. So the only chance of finding even the first two seems to be second-hand. (The series does seem to have been translated to German, but probably the same thing there - not likely to have been more recently re-published.) 

So really not much point in reviewing them here... But I'll give you a brief summary anyway - hopefully you might understand why I still feel inspired to do so, before I get to the end. 

I read these books more than once in my childhood/early teens, when visiting my maternal grandfather. Originally they belonged to my mum and my aunt - and later on, when that house was sold, they were among a few books that I decided to keep from there. 

Published in the 1940s, the story in these books takes place a few decades earlier (early 1900s). The main character is a girl (Gulla) who grew up in an orphanage, and then had to go into service very early on (still really just a child herself) to help in the household of a poor crofter with many children. (The croft called Kulla, and thus the girl came to be known as Kulla-Gulla.) Back in those days, orphanage children were "auctioned" out as servants to whoever demanded the least money from the village authorities to keep them. As things turn out for Gulla, though, it is discovered after some time, that she's really the illegitimate grand-daughter of the lord of the manor in the village. So in the later books, we find her having moved to live with her grandfather at the manor, and struggling to balance between having grown up extremely poor but then suddenly being expected to become a "lady". 

It's been several decades since I last read these books, but to my surprise I found I still liked them better than I expected. In some ways I can probably relate to them even more now, because of in later years also having learned more about my other grandfather's childhood: He was born the only child of an unmarried mother, and grew up in poor circumstances in a small croft cottage, too. After only a few years in the village school he became a shoemaker's apprentice - but then managed to change his career and became a journalist instead; and wrote a book about crofts in the village where he grew up (which was published after his death, by my parents).
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Another of my old childhood books that I recently managed to find to listen to in Swedish is the book at the top of this post: Poo-Poo and the Dragons, originally written in English - and available cheap for Kindle if anyone should feel tempted...

It seems that this author, C.G. Forester, wrote many novels - and this one is not among the those he's best known for. (You can look him up in Wikipedia if you want to know more.) Personally I can only recall having read this one, though. Poo-Poo and the Dragons (1942) was created as a series of stories told to his son George to encourage him to finish his meals. (The boy had mild food allergies and needed encouragement to eat.) It is a totally whimsical story (involving dragons kind of "taken for granted"), but I found myself still enjoying it!

Now I'm curious to know if others among my blogging friends who have reached "senior" years also still have kept some of your old childhood favourites - and perhaps even re-read them now and then... ? (In my own case, as I don't have grandchildren, I can't "hide" my re-reading of children's books behind such excuses!)

Recycling, Exercise and Statistics

Friday last week, 24th July, was my 18th anniversary of moving into the flat where I've been living ever since. Back then, in 2008, I had not yet started blogging; and I don't have the photos of the moving chaos on my computer or online. (Another commemorative post from last spring may give you a "hint", though:  Memories of moving 2008.)

This July, another reason to let my thoughts wander back over the years that I've been living here, is that we just recently had new recycling bins for various kinds of packaging materials installed in three different places along my street. The photo below shows one of them, and another one just like it is more or less just across the street from where I live. 

 
This means that I will no longer have to go for a longer "recycling walk" to a somewhat bigger recycling station some 8 minutes walk or so away - which will be a relief, not least in winter... and with getting on in years besides...

I'm also hoping that "people" will take better care to leave the close-to-home stations tidier than they tend to do with the bigger more out-of-the-way station...  (The photo below was snapped some years ago - but alas it's very much of a repeat story.)

 

My thoughts travelling down the long and winding road of years past, it made me wonder how many weekly "recycling walks" I've made over the 18 years I've been living where I do now. It's usually been once a week. If I'm doing the math right, that means 52 x 18 = 936 times. And with each of those walks taking me about 20 minutes there and back, that means 312 hours, which equals almost two weeks (day and night).

Maybe I shall have to extend my walking in other directions to compensate for the exercise!! ;)  ... 

Skywatch Friday

 

Sunset sky - Thursday 23 July, 2026

Photo taken from my balcony yesterday; after a sunny day with pleasantly "cool" Nordic summer temperatures (not rising much above 20'C). Clouds gathered in the evening, followed by a mostly overcast day today. I don't think we actually got any rain, though - so far, anyway! (writing this at 6:40 pm) 

Personally, I much prefer it when I can open the balcony door or a window to let cooler air in, than having to keep everything shut, blinds down, curtains drawn, and fans running around the clock to try and keep the heat out (and yet not really succeeding) - as has periodically been the situation here too, this summer (but not for as long at a time as further south in Europe).

Linking to Skywatch Friday 

Wet and Dry

 I had a few comments on my previous post about how it still looks rather green here - and as I replied to some, for one thing we've not had the same long-lasting extreme heat as further south in Europe (Britain included); and for another we've probably also had more rain (even if mostly rather unpredictable showers combined with thunder). 

In our area/town there has also so far been no ban on using sprinklers for watering, which means that the places where I usually walk and snap photos - like the old cemetery nearby, and the park down in the city centre - have had extra help to remain predominantly green. 

However, today I walked a different way down to the riverside, and snapped the photo below to show you one example of places nearby where it's more obvious that it's really "fundamentally" rather dry around here too:

 
This is the grassy hillside below the cemetery up on the hill; and on the other side of the street, a slope down to the railway running in a valley further down below looks much the same.

But then down by the river, it's quite easy to forget about the drought again for a while. (There are dams at the northern vs the southern end of town to adjust the water level through the city centre, and it has been kept normal so far.)

 Water lilies are now in bloom in certain places in the river - here, yellow ones. (Alas as I only had my phone camera, I could not really zoom in the flowers properly.)

 

Interlude

 

Finally a day of neither glaringly hot, nor risk of sudden heavy downpours and thunder. As seems to have become the pattern this summer, I needed to take advantage of that for a couple of necessary errands in the city centre (mainly to the pharmacy this time); leaving me very little room for any more exciting excursions. But it did allow me a walk through the city park, and along the river, to get myself there and back. 

 On the way back, along the river, I sat down for a little while on a bench in the shadow on a kind of jetty (or wooden platform) - opposite the apartment blocks below:

In spite of the weather today being quite pleasant compared to last week, being on my feet for a couple of hours in the sun still had me feeling quite hot before getting back home again... So after lunch, I had another one of those afternoons when I just fell asleep, listening to an audio book - and then really not getting much else done...

I'm still using a walking stick, which is both "a blessing and a curse" at the same time. A blessing because it allows me to walk further than I would dare try without it. But a curse because it means I never have both hands free (and have to plan any errands or other activities accordingly - including photo stops!)