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).
...

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!)

Time Travelling on a Rainy Day

 

 

Yesterday was another very rainy day in July - definitely more like October in terms of how you'd better dress to go out! (And picnics definitely better held indoors.)

The illustrations above were made by me some sixty years ago, and are parts of a calendar that I made for my paternal grandmother - presumably either for Christmas, or her birthday. The drawings were in a sort of frame where one could change the picture for each month. (For some reason, three out of the twelve months are missing now, but I assume all were included originally.)

While it's been raining this July, I've been spending some time going through boxes of old letters etc. Reading, sorting, shredding... in order to at least reduce the amount...

I come from a family of hoarders and writers. My paternal grandfather was a journalist with local history as his special interest. My dad was a railway enthusiast who spent much of his spare time writing books about Swedish railway history. In their retirement years, both my parents were engaged in a local history society; and mum also contributed personal memories for the National Museum of Nordic history (in answer to questionnaires).

After our parents died, my brother and I inherited a house full of hoarded stuff - and not least loads of "paperwork". We donated boxes of papers and photos to the local history society, and had a truckload (literally!) of this and that collected by the national railway museum. When we finally sold the house, quite a bit of family-related stuff still came home with me, though. Ten years later, I'm still (periodically) sorting through old letters, family history notes, photos, postcards and other memorabilia... 

Through my nearly 69 years of life, I have of course also managed to hoard some similar stuff of my own - even if living in flats rather than in a house of my own during my adult years has set certain limits.

Neither I nor my brother have any younger generation of close family to pass things on to, though. So my aim is to try to keep "organising and reducing", while I'm still able. 

It's a slow process, though, because every time I start going through something, I find myself travelling back in time... Whether it's laying the puzzle of my parents' or grandparents' lives before I myself was even in the picture - or reviving my own memories. 

Yesterday, I (re)found a pack of letters and drawings from myself to my paternal grandmother (saved first by her, and then by my parents).

The earliest one, I think, is from when I was about 3½ years old. Before I was born, my mum was a teacher for young children. After I came into the picture, she was a housewife with her own baby as her only pupil. It seems she started teaching me to write already when I was around three...

Alas it is in Swedish, so most of you reading this can't fully enjoy my phonetic spelling. But the deciphered message runs: "Hi Grandma, today I've been out playing with Åse and Pia and Amari (=Anne-Marie). I have drawn a picture for you. Monica"

My mum (in an enclosed letter) claims only to have helped "a little"... 

To save her mother-in-law from too much headache, she also interprets the drawings: The first one shows two girls (I'd say a mum and daughter!) and a clothes line with washing hanging on it. The other one a nursery with a baby lying on the bed. (Note: My brother wasn't born until I was six. I do seem to recollect having wished for a sibling when I was much younger, though...)

Sepia Saturday Fun

Normally I participate in Sepia Saturday from my family history blog Greetings from the Past (see link in my sidebar). But the SS prompt picture this week made me think of my own childhood rather than going further back in history - and nothing to do with my grandparents. So I decided to put this post here instead. 

 

I have actually never been all that fond of amusement parks - or even simpler playgrounds - as I've always preferred my surroundings to stay still rather than going round and round, or up and down. Carousels make my head spin, boats make me sea-sick, and even riding in the back seat of a car tends to make me car-sick... So I'd never volountarily even try a contraption like the one in the Sepia prompt picture above. It was never my idea of "fun"!

Children are supposed to enjoy amusement parks, though. So when I was six years old (in 1961), my parents brought me to the well-known amusement park Liseberg in Gothenburg (Sweden's second largest city, on the west coast); and evidently got me to at least try a slow carousel and the bumper cars:

 

Me on the right; temporary friend on the left.

I also visited Liseberg on a few more occasions: with the family once or twice when my brother was little, and it was also the goal of a school outing or two. I know I once did go up in the Ferris wheel (with a good view over the city), but even that was an experience I've never really wished to repeat. (I'm no good with heights either.) My preferred "rides" were on the Ghost Train (in a dark tunnel with scary things jumping out at you and screaming - which on the whole I preferred to getting motion sick); and one that took you through some kind of fairy tale landscape. My memories of that very vague, but it was my favourite because it was slow and totally non-scary... 

Linking to Sepia Saturday 710

 

Sepia Saturday 592 - The Centre of Attention

  ... or Smile, Baby, smile! ...

From my own album, I pick this photo to match the Sepia Saturday prompt of the week. The people doing their best here are my parents, my paternal grandmother (next to my mum), my grandmother's sister, and her husband. My p. grandfather took the photo; and the year is 1956.

Sepia Saturday 592

Sepia Saturday 591 - Mowing the Lawn

   

Prompt picture for Sepia Saturday 591:
"... an unknown lady, striding purposely into the future.
Little does she realise that there is a lawn roller coming up behind her,
ready to flatten all her dreams! Such is life."
(A. Burnett)

The lawn roller here made me go in search of a photo of my paternal grandfather with his lawn mower. I started looking for it in my inherited albums - but ended up finding it in one of my own childhood albums. And it turned out I'm in the photo too! It was taken in 1961, sixty years ago. I'm 6 years old here, and grandpa 57. He grew bald early, and I do remember him in that beret at lot, in casual contexts. I also remember him walking that lawn mower a lot - they had a huge garden!

Alas, a few years after this photo was taken, grandpa got Parkinson's disease, and died at age 65. I think grandma had help from a neighbour with the lawn for number of years. After she moved to a care home, we kept the house as summer cottage, and my parents went back and forth on summer weekends, tending two big gardens (1½ hr drive apart). Thinking back now, they must have spent an awful lot of time lawn mowing! And they too always used manual push mowers back in my childhood. After dad retired (at age 60), they had en extension built to my grandparents' old house and moved to live there permanently, though. They also got an electric lawn mower for that garden - but still one they walked behind rather than rode on.

For my own part, I became allergic to grass pollen from my early teens onward - and never having lived in a house with a garden of my own in my adult life, I doubt there are any more photos of me with a lawn mower to be found! (Such is life.)

Sepia Saturday 587 - Playing Cards

 

This Sepia Saturday prompt of a man playing cards evoked memories for me. We used to play cards and board games quite a lot in my family when I was growing up. This was way back before the digital era, when there also weren't more than one or two TV channels to watch. But we quite often played games later in life too, when my brother and I were visiting our parents for a weekend, or during the Christmas holidays etc. 

But would I be able to find any photo in my own albums to support those memories?  Offhand, I could not recall any.  I suppose that back then, one usually got too caught up in the game itself. (Unlike now, when one constantly seems to have at the back of one's head to also snap a photo of whatever one is doing for posting on social media!)

I decided to randomly pick an album from my teens and have a look, though - and didn't actually have to search long before I came across this photo, from around Christmas 1971. 

Above: The faded colour photo as it looks in my photo album - 50 years later.
Below: An attempt to digitally adjust contrast and colour a bit.

I rarely play cards nowadays (actually can't recall when I last did!), and can't say what game they (or we) were playing here. Maybe I was done with my part in it, and that was what made me go and fetch the camera? Anyway, we're at the kitchen table in our house, where we lived back then. There's a small Christmas tree in the background (we had a full size tree in the living room), and a red 'Christmas' plastic cloth on the table. (From spring through autumn, the table cloth and curtain were yellow. The seasonal change of colour scheme in the kitchen is a tradition I still practice in my own home.)

I recall that one game we used to play was Canasta. I don't remember the rules now, only that I preferred that to Bridge, which at some point dad tried to teach us as well. (There was too much afterward analysis and argument involved in bridge for my liking.)

Golden Rain & Memories

 

Laburnum - 'Golden Rain' or 'Golden Chain' trees

Yesterday evening, and again this morning, I went for walks around the old cemetery, and noticed that it's "golden rain" time... The first two photos taken with my mobile yesterday; today I brought my camera and took some more.

We used to have a whole hedge of these at 'the House', i.e. where my grandparents lived when I was little, and later my parents in their retirement years. The current owners have removed them all, I noticed when passing by there a year or two after we sold the place... I've known 'all my life' that these trees are poisonous - I was probably told so very early on in childhood, but I can't remember any incidents (like actually trying to eat the seeds). But they are really beautiful when in bloom, and seeing them elsewhere now (like in this cemetery) always brings out a bit of nostalgia (or memories).

This week, seeing the Golden Rain trees in bloom also helped to remind me that it's 10 years today since my dad died - 18 June 2011. He and mum are buried in the village where they lived. As I don't have a car, and with the corona situation and all, it's been a couple of years now since I last visited the churchyard there. But we have their grave tended to, and that of my grandparents' as well. My personal memories of family and friends who have passed on are not primarily connected to their final resting place, though; but more to all those little things that trigger memories of them alive - like for example now a tree reminding of where they used to live.

Blurry Memories of Tents (Sepia Saturday 569)

The Sepia prompt for this Saturday is a man in a raincoat standing outside a tent. I can't recall any camping photos from my ancestors' photo albums, and myself I never liked camping. On holiday trips in my childhood with my parents we used to stay at b&b hostels or cabins - no luxury, but at least a proper roof over our heads in the night.

So - how do I even know that I don't like camping?

For a year or two when I was 10-11 years old, I was a junior girl scout (brownie). As long as we kept indoors in a basement room tying knots on a rope and playing games, I don't think I objected too much. But the summer before I turned eleven, I was sent to a Big Summer Camp for a week. I hated it. Everything from carrying my dad's backpack (much too big and heavy for me), to the uniform (blouse, belt, skirt - all a bit too tight for comfort), to sleeping in a tent, to cooking outdoors, to the primitive outhouse toilets, to being around lots of people all the time. And at least one night it rained enough for everything in our tent to get soaked.

My memories of details are as blurry now as the photographs I took with an old camera of my dad's. 55 years later I don't think I have to worry much about anyone recognizing themselves (or anyone else) in these photos, should they ever happen to accidentally come across this posts.

Greeting the Flag in the morning

Lots and lots of similar tents...

 

My own version of a tent (drawn in my album)

For some obscure reason they had named it the Eskimo camp.
Well, I do still kind of shiver just thinking about it...!

Campfire at night. If this was a recent photo my impression would be everyone was staring at their mobile phones and tablets. But as there weren't any such things back in 1966, it must have been something else! (Perhaps the Scout Song Book?)

I never went on another scout camp or overnight hike; and can only remember two more occasions, up in my early twenties, when I tried spending the night in a tent at all. Both times, it was just for one night. The second time, it was meant to be two nights, but I got bad reactions to my grass allergy. There was a gang of us and somehow we managed to rearrange things and I went back home early with some other people than those I came with. I've never made another attempt at camping since!

 Sepia Saturday 569

 

On the Ledge

 In a comment to my recent post A Tale of Two Paintings, Sandra asked me to post a close up of the picture shelves above my sofa that could be seen on the last photo. I replied that if you google picture shelf or picture ledge, you'll find similar ones at for example Ikea or Amazon. They are also called floating wall shelves in some ads, and they can be used for displaying anything from paintings to photos to small objects and figurines; with the advantage that you can easily change decorations around without making new holes in the wall.  I bought mine in a local shop when I moved into my present flat (12 years ago). Not that I usually move pictures around all that much, but it happens.

Today I started taking down some of my Christmas decorations - starting with tomtar, i.e. little gnomes and Santa figurines. (Just as I put up decorations gradually during December, I also tend to take them down gradually during January, one category at a time.) 

As it happens, one tomte family of little dolls knitted by my mum, spend their Christmases on one of those picture shelves. And just as I stretched out my hand to take them down to send them back to their rest-of-the-year-home (a box in my storage room), I heard tomtefar (Father Christmas) say: "Hey! How about some photos? I know it's on Sandra's wish list, and it would be a pity to keep her waiting until next Christmas..."

So, here is a collage showing the shelf at Christmas vs the rest of the year:

The painting of Tower Bridge is one that my parents bought from a "street artist" in London back in 1969, on our first family holiday to England/London. And it's one of the paintings from my parents' house that I wanted to keep, as I remember so well when we bought it. I thought I might even have a photo of the artist with his works spread out on the pavement. But when I check my photo album, there is no such photo there - only in my memory.

Baking Ginger Snaps

 

No Christmas without ginger snaps!
Today, and 60 years ago...

 

Baking a small batch of ginger snaps today made me think of these old photos in one of my  early photo albums. The year was 1960. I'm 5 years old here. Back in the spring or summer the same year, we (my parents and I) had moved from a flat in town to a house of our own in a village nearby. The kitchen was a galley kitchen with a dining alcove. Whether mum also made her own Christmas ginger snaps while we were still living in the flat, I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure she did it every year from then on. I have baked my own most years of my adult life as well. Not quite every year, though - for one thing, there have been years when I couldn't manage it because of neck/arm problems. But I've always missed it when I've not been able to do it. 

 

At Long Last, Another Seahorse from the Past (for Sandra)

Over a month ago, Sandra the Madsnapper had a post entitled Seahorse from the past which included a huge seahorse sculpture in Palmetto, Florida, and also memories of a Seahorse gift shop that used to be in that spot in the past. (See her post for photos.) 

I've never been to Florida, but I commented to Sandra that seahorse combined with gift shop brought up memories for me too and might even inspire me to a blog post of my own some day. Then came October and I forgot about it. Today, however - with rain and storm hitting my windows here, and Sandra posting about something totally different - the seahorse came swimming back through my mind again... Here it is:

While the seahorse sculpture in Florida is huge, mine is tiny (4 cm) and lives (well...) in an old jewellery box. It's a genuine dried sea horse, I think, with a pin attached to it, to be worn as a brooch. If memory serves me right, I bought it in the gift shop at the Maritime Museum in Gothenburg, probably on a school trip when I was like 10-11 years old, in the mid 1960's. I don't seem to have any old photos to date the memory more exactly. 

Googling seahorses now, I find that they have been around for 3 million years, but may now be under threat of extinction - over-fished because of being very popular in Asian medicine. I had no idea. (The weight of mine does not even register on my letter-scale, though, so I don't think I'm sitting on an unexpected fortune... Just a common souvenir from the past.)

Down Memory Lane

Graham at Eagleton Notes recently posted about his childhood bicycles and tricycles - and I promised in a comment to look up a photo my first bicycle, which was of a construction somewhere in between: It was a two-wheeler, but with the pedals on the front wheel, like on a tricycle. 

The only photo I found is to the left in the collage below. I probably got it for my 5th birthday. I've been trying to remember if I had a tricycle before it, but cannot find any evidence that I did. Then it struck me that until I was nearly five, we lived in a flat in town, and maybe it was not practical or safe for me to have one there. And by the time we moved out to the village, I was too big for a tricycle, but still too young for the "grown-up" kind... So this was probably considered a compromise.

The one on the right is of my first "proper" bicycle, from when I was 10. I seem to recall it took me a while to learn to ride that one; but by the time I was willing to pose with it for a photo, I was probably also able to use it!

From my drawing (also in the photo album), it is made clear that one of my favourite places to cycle to was 'the libbrary'... (deliberately misspelled here to reflect that I had not yet learned the Swedish word correctly: biblioteket...) 

I think I also usually cycled to school (in grade 4-6). The school (and also the library) was around 2 km away (at 'the other end' of the spread out village where I lived). Before I learned to cycle, I had to walk. Except in winter, because then we (a bunch of us who lived in the same neighbourhood) got to go by taxi. I have no photo of that, but it looked like an old big black London cab. I suppose our parents preferred that solution to have us out walking and cycling on the main road in snow and ice.

From grade 7 onwards, I went to school in town, and then we went by bus.

Baskets (Sepia Saturday)

The Sepia Saturday prompt this week shows a big collection of baskets. There may be other baskets hiding here and there in my photo albums, but what sprang first to mind to for me was picnics in my childhood. Especially when visiting my paternal grandparents, we often went on "coffee picnics" that included a proper old-fashioned basket. 

As illustrated by my mum in my first photo album:

This is from June 1957, so I'm around 1 year + 10 months old here. (And as you may conclude, a bit of rain didn't stop us!)

Some time in the early 1980s, I inherited three of my grandmother's sturdy old baskets - spotted, dusty and worn, but still intact. I cleaned them and painted them with egg oil tempera (of my own mix); and I am using them still. I keep a lot of baskets in different sizes around my flat as I find them very useful for storing all those little things that otherwise just tend to spread themselves out all over the place. 

The three above are those that belonged to my grandmother (and were "old" already in my early childhood). The blue one (originally unpainted) is the biggest, and that may be the one that was used for picnics. Nowadays a decorative holder for "various" stuff in my living room. The green one (also originally unpainted) is slightly smaller. I use that for my "gardening" stuff, and it lives in a nook by the door to balcony. The third one (smaller still) had original flower decorations on its sides which I wanted to keep, so I just painted the handle and rims on that one. That one too sits on a sideboard in my living room.


Periodically over the years, I have painted some more (smaller) baskets, which I bought (new) for that purpose. (Sometimes using hobby paint, easier than tempera as it dries faster.) Taking a turn round my flat, I found all these still in use... (The red one in a cupboard, but it will change places with the yellow one in winter - on my kitchen table.)

 Linking to:

Looking Back At Christmas

Reading and hearing about other people’s Christmas traditions, including all the wheres, whats and hows of it, made me contemplate (once again) upon my own.

For nearly sixty years of my life, Christmas always involved a lot of travelling back and forth, both longer and shorter distances. In my childhood, we lived around 100 km away from both sets of grandparents – who in turn lived around 10-15 km apart from each other (in the same area where I live now).

Christmas nearly always meant travelling to stay with one or the other for a night or two; and never mind whose house we stayed at, it also involved some going back and forth between the two, and perhaps other places as well.

I have a blur of memories of me and my little brother (six years younger) sitting in the back of the car, in the darkness of winter, counting Christmas trees in the gardens we passed by while driving between the Village and the Town… Outdoors Christmas lights were not as common back in the 60s and early 70s as they are nowadays!

At age 20 I moved away from home; and from then on, the next 16 years involved hours of train and/or bus rides to visit my parents at Christmas.

Then followed another 19 years with me living in Borås, and my parents relocated to this area as well (dad’s childhood home); and my brother driving down from Karlstad + also doing a lot of to-and-fro chauffeuring between the city and the village whilst here.

After our parents passed away, a few more years of worry about the House (empty of people, but full of Things) until we finally got that sorted and sold in 2014.

Truly: At this point in my life, I count it as a Blessing just to be able to spend Christmas in my own home, and not having to go anywhere at all!

I also don’t mind spending Christmas “on my own”; as in my thinking there is a big difference between that and feeling lonely.

Sooo… This was my Christmas Eve 2018:

Around –5’C in the morning, but dry, and no wind. No snow, just patches of ice here and there (but not everywhere). I went for a walk into the city centre and attended a “Nativity” church service (starting at 11 am) in the church you’ve seen several times before on my blog:

Then I went home and ate lunch (prepared the day before). I never really cared much for the traditional “a hundred courses and too much of everything” kind of Christmas buffet anyway, so I skip most of that now… On a typical Swedish Christmas table you would find for example a ham, meatballs, sausages, ribs, a potato dish with sprats in it, and various kinds of cabbage… My Christmas lunch for One was meat loaf with bacon, a potatio gratin without sprats, and mixed green salad without cabbage…

In the afternoon at 3 p.m., we have the very strange tradition in Sweden to always watch the same Disney Christmas Special on TV. This goes back nearly 60 years now, to the very early days of television, when we had only one TV channel (and in black & white of course) - and Everyone watched Everything, because that was all there was. They have tried to change or move or remove that Christmas special every now and again over the years - but any suggestion of such a sacrilege still causes massive protests from half the nation. So we’re still stuck with it - nowadays in colour and HD, of course. (And of course a million other choices now, if someone really does not want to watch it!)  So – did I watch?? The answer is: Actually I did… (Traditions die hard!!!) …with my afternoon tea and ginger biscuits…

After ‘Kalle Anka’ (Donald Duck), it’s time for Tomten (Santa Claus/Father Christmas) to come knocking on the door. Well, as you know, he already came knocking on mine a week early, disguised as postman… So I had a little basket of parcels waiting…

And, as has become our new tradition (to replace all the travelling!), I opened them during a Skype session with my brother (who also opened his from me).

One of the parcels from my brother contained some coloured LED-lights (see below + the 4th photo from the top).

For now, I have hung them on a bookcase in the “dressing room” corner of my study; but I think they might actually also fit my little Christmas tree, should I fail to find any more replacement bulbs for the old chain of lights (problem mentioned in a previous recent post).

A bit later, I also talked on the phone with my aunt, who had sent me a package of Christmas “goodies” including tea, crisp bread and chocolate.

Later I watched a film on DVD that I’ve had for years but never got round to before now: The Soloist, from 2009. About a newspaper journalist who discovers a homeless musical genius (with some mental health problems) and tries to improve his situation. The story was a bit different from what I thought– and probably all the more realistic, for that very reason. (No simple answers.)

What inspired me to watch that on this particular day may have been the Romani beggar sitting on the street outside the grocery shop in town where I stopped by on my way home from church to buy a few “extras”. Because it was Christmas Eve (and perhaps because I had watched A Christmas Carol the night before!) I also gave her a bit “extra”… (Not that I know if you can rightfully call it “extra” when I rarely give anything - like that, on the street - and every time I do, it sets me wondering whether I do it for them, or for myself, and if it really helps improve anything, in the long run, and… and... Ah well. Again: No simple answers!)

Eventually, late on Christmas Eve, I went to sleep in my own cosy bed…

… wearing a Christmas present from me to myself…

PS Today: Obviously one can easily spend another day just contemplating Yesterday!