Turns out that what you can find out about your family is pretty awesome. Yeay to all you people who put things online.
So please hear it for a little bit of that...
My grandfather was in the RAF and was stationed in Singapore in the 1950s. I know exactly how and when they came home because the shipping lists are out there.
Which is brilliant. First class back from Hong Kong to RAF housing.
This is in contrast to an earlier journey he did. I found a passenger list from when he came back from India via Australia with his parents as a child. That was 3rd class and I suspect the journey was a lot less fun.
I had one of those found-out-as-an-adult-slightly-changed-my-childhood-revelations yesterday. My stepdaughter told me something I really think I ought to have known.
(This wasn't like the crushing disillusionment I have had in the past. I mean, it was a good thing, nothing like finding out about Kenneth Hutch. Shudder.).
I know that there are shadows of racism hovering over the character now, but this isn't about that. This is about finding out that a character I knew and liked had an actual name. Which my stepdaughter just told me. Which I really ought to have known - Tom and Jerry is totally more my generation than hers.
But yeay, now I know. Have one back, childhood me.
Every now and then I sing two lines of this song repetitively. I tell you, my husband is one heck of a lucky man. My Norwegian stepchildren know the slightly incorrect badly sung two lines. My 5 year old nephew knows them too. In fact, we should just agree that all those that surround me are lucky people.
I saw this on Sesame Street with my little brother when he was even littler than he is now. Yeah, he was born in 1989, so it was kind of a while ago.
Which completely excuses me remembering it badly and only knowing the two lines that start at 01.34. No, not even the first two lines.
And now I will share them with you.
Think of this as an early Easter present, you lucky, lucky things.
Recently there has been a small but significant trickle of big old hollywood stars doing an ad in Norway. Presumably a pretty lucrative ad where they get some pretty big bucks and they aren't overexposed in an 'inappropriate' market.
Reese Witherspoon did an ad campaign for Lindex last autumn.
And now it is Gwyneth Paltrow's turn.
Lindex is a Swedish owned high street store, so it is a bit like them doing ads for Dorothy Perkins or Forever 21. Which probably wouldn't happen.. Fair play to the ladies though, why not, etc.
The best ad to have come out of this mini wave is this one for a Norwegian bank..
'Some people are lucky in life, for the rest of us saving up can be smart'.
I love the look on the woman's face, she looks delightfully shocked the whole way through and I rather suspect she wasn't acting too much.
Both times it is my hand (I got married in the two years between shots so the rings changed) and both times I have no idea what happened. I am clearly attacking myself.
I must admit, the top photo is awesome - who wouldn't want a tiny red person digging in their hair?
(Oh and sorry, no excuse for the lame post title...)
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