The Pyramid Project

Well that was easy! My blogger friend Lynda in Cairo has just set up a new meme, which I thought at first would be very difficult to complete. The challenge was to find a pyramid of some sort somewhere. She also said it was importatnt to have fun doing it. Yeah right! I never got to have any fun because it dawned on me after a few seconds; I only needed to put my hand into my top-right desk drawer to find this….

Go on! See if you can find a pyramid.

Tendy-Ten

I saw this meme on Carol’s blog and thought it looked interesting...

Ten seconds ago... I was reading blogs.
Ten minutes ago... I had a cup of tea.
Ten days ago... I was disappointed with the stand-in restaurant manager where we normally go on a Monday.
Ten weeks ago... I looked into swapping the SAAB for a Volvo. I’m not Swedish for nothing!
Ten months ago... I had the pleasure of having my mother visiting, and introduced her to our life here in Germany.
Ten years ago... I started on a course to become an Oracle developer after having been on a wonderful three-week trip to Australia.

**********************************

Ten years from now... I'll be getting on a bit; I’ll be a septuagenarian with three (?) grandchildren.
Ten months from now... I might have finished my book project. (Oops, now I’ve said it!)
Ten weeks from now... I’ll be preparing for a visit by my brother, sister-in-law and their youngest daughter.
Ten days from now... I’ll be working all day, on a Sunday!
Ten minutes from now... I'll silence my stomach with an apple.
Ten seconds from now... I'll see if I can find a picture to go with this post.

Google Image Meme

I spotted this at Carol’s place some time ago and it has been brewing ever since.

Instructions: For each of the following, search Google Images and post your favourite pic.

Where I grew up:

It is not easy to give you one place where I grew up since we moved quite a lot, every three years approximately. So I decided on the town where I started school, followed by a three-year gap, and then returning to spend my teens and most of my adult life until the age of 39 in Malmö.

Malmö is situated in the very south of Sweden, opposite Copenhagen in Denmark. When I grew up you had to cross the water by ferry, hovercraft, hydrofoil or whatever was available at the time. These days there is a magnificent link across to Denmark, consisting of a bridge, a man-made island and a tunnel. In the picture you can see it quite clearly with Denmark at the other end of the link. It is a truly beautiful bridge, and driving across it, you are treated to some gorgeous views.

Where I live now:

Another tricky one! I almost stared myself blind at pictures before I settled for this, rather simple one. I mostly found photos relating to the football team Borussia Mönchengladbach and other very uninteresting objects, so I took this radical view, a street sign!

My favourite place:

Thinking hard and long I went for a place with great emotional value, where I and my son spent our summers for his first thirteen years. The place is called Gullholmen and is situated in the archipelago on the west coast of Sweden. We both have wonderful memories from our holidays there. The tiny island and the village share the name, and the village spreads out onto another larger island. The small island is today a cluster of wooden houses for the wealthy; there is hardly any open space and prices, I believe, can compete with any major city centre. Gullholmen, the island, is on the right in the picture.

My name:

The most famous person to share my name is Anders Celsius, yes, the guy with the thermometer. Click on the links, one name link and one picture link, to read more about him.

My grandmother’s name:

Like most people I have two grannies, one called Victoria and the other one called Elma. When I googled Victoria, my screen filled up with pictures of Queen Victoria and Victoria Beckham, and to a certain extent Victoria Silvstedt, a Swedish “glamour model”. Instead I went for the slightly unusual name Elma. That was not easy; but in the end I found a painting by a 13-year-old girl from Sarajevo, Elma Softic. She says: “Today people talk a lot about environmental protection, but they should talk about how to protect the environment from their own destructive desire to ruin everything that surrounds them”. I thought it was rather touching.

My favourite food:

It has to be the French cuisine.

My favourite drink:

Elderberry! I just love that flavour. The picture shows exactly how I used to do it myself, both at home and with school children in London at the Swedish School. You get a delicious cordial which you can add gin to for the adults, the perfect summer’s drink.

My favourite smell:

Fresh air! The picture I found has an added poignancy to it, non-smoking. Just fill your lungs!

To round off I have to wish my readers a Happy Easter. Oh yes, we’re off to France again, two weeks or so. Cheerio!

TAGGED: Open Book

Traveller One has tagged me for this little meme, ‘Open Book’. These were the instructions:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it at page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence/ phrase.
4. Blog the next four sentences/ phrases together with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig your shelves for that very special or intellectual book.
6. Pass it forward to six friends

My slight problem is that, sitting at my desk, I have mostly dictionaries, and books in Swedish behind me. I thought it be a bit unfair, and not particularly interesting to most people, to quote a book in a language spoken by a little over ten million people (taking into account the Swedish-speaking part of the Finnish population). So I stretched a little further along my books and picked the first one I could find in English. That book happened to be the first one my wife gave me after just having met thirteen years ago, so it holds a special place in my heart. (Was that too sentimental? Never mind.)

It is not exactly fiction, but a book you read through initially and then use like an encyclopaedia. It is called ‘Revolution In The Head’ (by Ian MacDonald), a detailed description of all the Beatles’ recordings. It tells you all the relevant facts, where and when, who, how etc. There is also a small chronology section at the end of the book with the columns: The Beatles – UK Pop – Current Affairs – Culture, useful source of reference when you cannot remember ‘when’.

Page 123 deals with ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ from the album ‘Help!’ (in the US ‘Rubber Soul’) released in 1965, with Paul McCartney doing the vocal.

So here are sentences 6-9:

Because his [Paul McCartney’s] Auntie Gin liked it, the tune was shortlisted as ‘Auntie Gin’s Theme’ until McCartney added the love-at-first-sight lyric which, with its tumbling internal rhymes and gasping lack of breathing spaces, complements the music perfectly. Taped in six takes, without frills or second thoughts, the song grabbed Capitol’s A&R department so firmly that they pulled it off the American version of Help! and turned it into the opening track of the American version of Rubber Soul, thus conspiring to give the US public the impression that the latter was ‘The Beatles’ Folk Rock Album’ (see [56]). As with [59] YESTERDAY, there is no doubt that had I’VE JUST SEEN A FACE been ready three months earlier, it would have featured in the film. As it was, it lifted the later stages of the Help! album with its quickfire freshness – a pop parallel to the fast-cutting impressionism of contemporary Swinging London movies like Richard Lester’s The Knack, John Schlesinger’s Darling, and John Borman’s Catch Us If You Can.

Let's play tag. The recipients of my tags will be these fortunate people:

1 Matthew
2 Green Haddock
3 Christina
4 Christina G
5 Rositta
6 Eric

It is supposedly a quick and easy one! What’s on YOUR shelf?

Looking Out My Kitchen Window

Lynda at Lulu's Bay had put up a picture of the view from her kitchen window in Cairo, and asked her readers to do the same. So here is mine, the result of an earlier attempt to stitch photos together with my camera. Let's see how Blogger handles this kind of picture. (Click on it to enlarge!)

So what do you see from your kitchen window? Post and link!

Meme

I have been tagged by Greenhaddock for the 7 Random Things meme. I will endeavour to mirror his 7 randoms, find something as close as possible to his. Is that a bit too cheeky?

1. My parents put my first name in the middle, because it flowed better when you said my full name. Consequently I get a lot of “official” mail looking like it was meant for my 86-year-old uncle!

2. I happen to think that grey/white is a perfectly beautiful, distinguished-looking hair colour. ;-)

3. I like driving, anything you can drive. I am not interested in the vehicle itself; it’s the controlling of them in traffic that I’ve always loved, from hunting with the wolf pack in the fast lane of a German motorway to negotiating a shopping trolley in the supermarket. I just can’t get enough of it, and I have never caused an accident in over forty years!

4. My pituitary gland has been killed off by a benign tumour, so I am on HRT for the rest of my life. Some cheating athletes would envy my stash of steroids!

5. One winter night in my teens I had been to a Hungarian restaurant (in Sweden) and had Goulasch Suppe and some sickly, sweet wine. When I got home I noticed that the alcohol did not go well with my Suppe, so I had to open my window on the first floor and “let the food out again”. The following morning I had to explain to my parents why the otherwise beautiful, snow-covered shrubs outside the living-room windows had an added orange colour. Embarrassing!

6. My favourite bird has to be the Kingfisher. When I proposed to my wife by the river Thames at Marlow, we saw a surface-skimming fly-by by a Kingfisher, twice. How’s that for romantic?

7. My grandfather never had to do anything like fighting a war, just dressing up in a funny uniform. Check out that triangular hat from ca 1910.

Here are the rules which you must abide by if you are tagged.
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 3 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

I am tagging Scattered Chatter, An American Expat in Deutschland and Lulu’s Bay.

Meme

Since I have not been a blogger, or a blog reader for that matter, for very long, I was a bit puzzled when Haddock left a comment on my blog, saying I had been tagged. Well, I understood roughly what that meant, but meme? What the heck was that? I went on whatis.com to find out and then I had a look at Haddock’s blog. After that I had the whole picture.

I don’t ‘know’ many other bloggers yet so I will have to see how many I dare invite to take part. I feel a bit uncomfortable approaching ‘strangers’. What will they think? How pc is that? What about blogosphere etiquette? Throw caution to the wind? Well, I have put up a proper photo of myself in my profile now, so why not be bold and harass a few people in the kindest possible way?

Rules: Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people; then visits those people’s sites and comments, letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.

1. Inspired by CanadianSwiss I will reveal what I wear in bed – ear plugs! It’s a habit from the days when we lived under the Heathrow fly path. Now it keeps out early birdsong, snoring (yes, I snore too) and noisy neighbours.

2. As a little boy in Sweden in 1958 I managed to get the autographs of the whole Brazilian World Champions football team, including Pelé, Garrincha, Didi, Vava etc. My father, whose favourite foreign language was Portuguese, interpreted for them on a couple of occasions, so I had easy access. Sadly, later in life I lost the autograph book with all the valuable signatures. Sentimental value, but also real money value. What would they have fetched on eBay, I wonder? A fortune I guess!

3. I saved somebody’s life on Hammersmith Bridge once, or at least I thought so. I was walking across the bridge when I saw a man standing on the outside with his arms behind him, clutching the railing. His briefcase and coat were behind him on the bridge. He was a big chap and the Thames was rushing out towards the sea far below. Without thinking about my own safety, I instinctively hurried up to him, grabbed him under his arms, held hard and said something like ‘What are you doing?’ All of a sudden the place was swarming with police, first-aid people, camera crews etc. They had all been hiding in little wooden hides, which I presumed had something to do with the forthcoming Oxford-Cambridge boat race. They were filming for a recruitment ad campaign for the Special Constabulary to see how people reacted in different scenarios. So, did I save somebody’s life? In a way I did, I suppose.

4. My own life was definitely saved 30 years ago when I was a passenger in a car crash. What saved me? My good habit of always putting on my seatbelt, even before it was made compulsory. Despite the trouble of lifting up three pairs of skis to fasten the belt, I stuck to my routine. It was quite useful when the car hit a lorry sideways in the fog. Every morning for many years after that, I said to myself ‘It’s good to be alive.’ It certainly is!

5. A life that wasn’t spared was that of a pheasant on the M25, the London Outer Circular. I was doing ca 85 mph and the dumb bird smashed up my front. I pulled over, walked back to try to recover my lost number plate and was severely told off by motorway police who had spotted me.

6. In the sixties I played in a band in southern Sweden. On a number of occasions we were the first support act to famous British bands. We ‘played with’ all of them except the Beatles and the Stones. Everything was so much simpler and small-scale in those days. I felt rather insignificant standing next to John Entwhistle of the Who tuning my bass guitar. We were becomingly embarrassed the time we played (from our regular repertoire) some Spencer Davis numbers, which they repeated an hour later on the same stage. Dooooh!

7. I still feel guilty sometimes for once having prevented a female colleague of mine from getting Paul McCartney’s autograph and photo. We were having an after-work drink in the Sun Inn in Barnes, London, when we spotted Paul having a chat with a friend. My colleague had the camera, paper and pen, but I convinced her to leave him alone. Even worse, a few years later a friend of mine gave me a birthday present, a demo single with a personal dedication from Sir Paul. I feel not a little rotten about that.

8. Five years ago I had a pituitary adenoma, a tumour/growth, which killed off my pituitary gland. So all hormone production was wiped out. Before I was completely diagnosed and got the proper medication sorted out (ca 2 months), I experienced something which is normally the domain of women, namely hot flushes. So, menopausal women everywhere, you have my full sympathy. I know what it is like!

I have tagged the following bloggers for this meme: TBA ASAP