as anything goes, or the bad influences on our youths!

or how a message about some comet on your dutch national news ends up in looking back to what i think is still the best tv series for the young.

somewhere long ago, i got hooked on all tv series based on the books of a certain astrid lindgren, it was often a double sunday treat when we had been over to germany for the weekend, had our time with the german tv for the small humans, i so well remember the guy with the hat, that could shrink himself, after that or before you had das program mit der maus, or that program with the mouse, in between there been blocks with adds to prime you with the next generation of haribo sweets, i am still hooked on gold berchen, or berrekes as they are called in my family, the mause could not be run fast enough off screen, because after that it was time for pippi langstrumpf, or pippi langkous in dutch and pippi longstocking as her name came to be in english. after driving home we usually end up just in time to get the dutch sequel of our pippi before bed time.

and yes maybe der pippi had a bit of a bad influence on myself. but it did not stop there, i was like my better half very lucky to have younger siblings, and it was simply still accepted to keep al calm by telling the oldest around to keep the younger ones calm and happy in front of the tv. and you was supposed to read out the subtitles.
so doing that resulted in learning to know that astrid lingren had written more books, and another series was reworked into a tv series.

it was called mikael, or emiel for the young dutch, i can not even find if the uk ever got it shown on tv. the beauty of these series is you hardly have a need to understand the language, they are made so well, and mikael became my one and only tv hero. and actually still is.

so this moprning reading about a comet that was last seen something like 80.000 years ago, can be seen if we put around dinnertime put our heads out of a window. and plop my memories served me mikael again, so we jusy have found the full first series on you tube.

as two older adults we just have had a good laugh again. the best episode is still the one where mikael , the series on you tube is the german version, that started with the making of cherry wine a pig, lots of chickens. but as always when i find the series i simply relook at all of the episodes. there is a great one with a comet in it too, but my mind mixed up the comet and the cherries. so it can do with a bit of reloading.

but between laughing we start a bit of thinking, and maybe the modern humans in growing up can no longer look at these series, because when it comes to human behaviour many things we found perfectly normal are nowadays not done anymore.
and the series is just under 50 years old only.

but it would be perfectly alright of course for other adults, you know for a bit of a bout of history, youthful sentiments and to keep your dementia at bay to take a look. and if you missed this in your younger years youtube can work with english subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC9sDj-QCkQ&list=PLnwE9X9NBm0x5nFZWC13IoX6Tx7G9C_-M

and yes of course it the series of mikael had certainly its influences on things i actually have done in my younger years, i think i got the confidence from pippi , but much more of mikael to simply do things. without putting much time in any thinking process at all.

like when our neighbours and i was at that time a kind of duo with a bit younger boy from that family, and his mum had that afraid of all dirt thing that was very popular in the seventies to have, and i had simply a lot of younger siblings that were not that much fun, so we usually had to keep us outdoors. with colder or very wet wetter that meant the shed of his dad.

when it got summer the dad, who was into the sport of absolutely neath gardening, i already had a free pass because i was very good in catching wild mouses by hand. when i tried that same hand on rats, that ended in a hospital. but i was always a helpful one, so when my friend and i found out the hedge next to the parking space for the car had insects, alder leaf beatles, i decided that we would help. so with my friend as assistant we took ourselves into the shed, and climbed up to the shelf with all the coloured bottles, they all had these skulls and bones signs on them, and that was exactly what i needed.

so i nicked from home a big bucket, in these days you still had these sturdy iron ones. and start pooring, my little friend had the task of steering it with a large wooden spoon i nicked from the bbq set. when we had about 5 liters of stinking brownish mash, it was still a kind of a liquid, i decided that for the best chance to work it just needed a nice slosh of that red paint.

we found some old sponges and brushes and got the stuff on the hedge, it worked actually very fine and well, all kind of dead insects came raining down, it worked so well even all the leaves came down too, when that happened we did what we always did when we slightly start to grow into the idea that the would not be best pleased with one of our efforts, meaning making ourselves scarce.

and we must have been very good at that then, because even 20 years later when we decide to tell we had been doing it, they still did not fully believe it.

but yeah, i think astrid lingren learned us through her characters in her books, we not only stopped by looking at the tv series, we did read the books too, that you could simply do things you had before no idea what it would end up in.

but it still is a great memory, and still brings on some hidden grinning, when people start to talk that you never can no what comes from the chemical stuff. and even less when they use them in a mix, actually i have a fair idea what accidentally can and will happen. there still is no sign of anything living where that hedge stood before we helped out with it.
or that time i stood next to kind of nature conservationist inspector, that said when standing in front of a large plantage of willows, 'a shame no one found ever something that works against the willow leave eaters!', and your mind gets into a conflict and want you to say; actually there is one...., but some gathered wisdom takes over, you imitate a good sneeze and walk away.