More Musings

Hello again, just spent a week in London with my lovely grandson Otso and his parents. Had to fly through Bahrain as I was travelling on Gulf Air which is a Bahrain based airline. I spent one night there and my short impressions were that it is another lovely place surrounded by water, trying to be like its bigger sister Qatar by developing big hotels around a bay. I am told it is cheaper to holiday there and as we can drive through to there we may take a holiday one day. My time in London reminded me more and more how strong the influence of your cultural environment is when you are growing up somewhere. My grandson speaks with a beautiful British accent (when he is not speaking Finnish) and he walks in Shepherds Wood and watches squirrels run up and down the trees as he learns to use an umbrella, negotiate subways and play with his multi-lingual friends. His favourite music is Caribbean at present, his favourite foods veggie sausage and rye bread. We had a lovely visit as my son Nathan and daughter-in-law Katja prepare for a new baby which Otso insists will be a baby boy whose name could be Poppadom! 

Now I am home to two new kittens (Jonah's) and my lovely boys who have just spent a week in Thailand at an outdoor education camp. They had a ball. My homecoming wish was to have a Thai massage with my favourite lady and then a Morrocan Chicken Tajine meal at the Souq where we sat in the fading, warm light on the top deck, watching on a huge screen the local soccer teams vie for the cup, Steve smoking his beloved apple Shisha while I devoured a wonderful meal with vegetable couscous and mint tea. Our drive home along the Corniche was our next piece of cultural enlightenment for the week. We noticed straight away a series of vehicles with young Thobe-dressed young men sitting out through the sunroof waving the flags of the winning team and generally celebrating. We wondered why the police had not stopped the first two cars we saw until we realised that this is a standard way of celebrating the winning of favourite teams. It appeared that there was going to be a parade eventually of the winning players and in the meantime we had a whole lot of pretend players perched on roofs and out of windows with their faces disguised by scarves, living the dream of being a champion in a parade for that special moment. We decided to just stroll along the Corniche with many other spectators while the sea sparkled with the reflection of thousands of lights and people sat in the grass with their nightly family picnic.  Life is good here.

As an aside, I would urge you to check out Nathan's website nathanthomson.com, which has his latest CD featured on it. He has just signed a deal with the Naim company to produce and market this CD. We are all very excited.