Fredrik

How's the Pan Tadeusz?

Second measure progressing nicely! I would love to win the Lottery and pickle myself in twelve months!

Fredrik. [Lost soul in waiting sort of Smiley]!

PS: Perhaps I should sell everything - not much I can tell you - and emigrate to Poland and do it anyway! Apparently it is very cheap to buy a good drink in Poland...

Hi Fredrik,

Poland is a fine place to live and the people are very friendly. Spain IMO is cheaper if you go inland but strangely is very cold in the winter (no central heating) but that might suit your Norwegian blood. The Rioja wine is excellent at 1,85 Euro per bottle!!

A good friend who is a Jazz musician (plays every year at Wimbledon tennis) left our village and moved to France - the music scene was better!!

In Poland we now have 2x weekly free concerts for the summer in the Lazenki park if you like Chopin - very good international standard as well!!

So take your choice Vodka or wine but keep smiling.

Please feel free to put my language joke on the other thread by the way, I don't want to upset Berlin Fritz!!

Frank

So Poland are out and England are in!!

I had the TV on with no sound and listened to Peter Gabriel and then the 4 seasons. This was combined with a bottle of Sophia Melnik - drinkable Bulgarian wine. Holiday again tomorrow so some tweeking and some Vodka.

Frederik if you ever want to hear some Chopin we can put you up if you get one of the cheap flights - Luton or Gatwick I'm afraid,

Frank

Dear Frank, Please will you send me an email sometime - address in profile... Fredrik

Dear Friends! [Bleary Smiley]!

Last night I went on an impromptu drinking session. Only just got home in Hereford. I went into a Night Club for only the third time in my life! Well nothing shocks me anymore, but one wonders why some of the people who go into these places should have a vote of equal value to mine at Elections? I went there with our Polish mob, having downed a couple of excelent Lech pints before hand. The beer in the Club was awful! Then my one mate 'disappeared' and did not reappear for a good hour... There are some real slappers out there I suppose! So I went back to their house and continued on the Lech and some fantastic Soup, which is proof against being ill next day. When I woke up I felt non-too-bad, but was certainly still inebriated...

This followed on from work... At a few minutes to ten I was in the canteen having a fag break, and in came the manager (senior production manager) and he was quite shirty. I went and saw him before I went from work [no good not putting in a defence, I have found], and explained not only had we achieved the programme and done the deep cleaning we were asked to, but as I thought this would not adequatley fill the time I pulled three batches forward from Monday, which makes next week's programme that much more achievable, and kept us going nicely. It seems to me if you become deceitfull and simply look busy at the appropriate moments, they never actually check to see what you are really doing. I have never been like that. So given that I shall certainly get a bollucking on Monday, I thought a bit of an impromptu session might be in in order and it was! Yes indeed, just what the doctor would have prescribed! Initially the conversation about work and life was rather good, if things gradually became incoherent as time went by!

So not Polish Vodka, but certainly Polish beer. [The Night Club Stella was criminally bad!].

All the best from Fredrik

PS: I was given a tiny One Grosz coin, to have luck with and make my fortune! That's what happens when you get onto the meaning of life. You get given money!

Jesus, Fred, you're going to end up like me if you carry on...!

EW

Dear EW,

We are not so different to each other, I would think. Both a bit dark in our outlooks, but I am pretty sure you have a streak of humour in you! I have. In real life I can be great fun to be round, and that reflects an irreveverance which is healthy I think. I attrack a small number of the best type of friends, but somehow, ultimately I never quite have let go with a girlfriend since my first true love ditched me. That hurt.

I think you like romantic music more than I do, and I used to so maybe you will become more of a classicist in time. I think you are about 15 years younger, and at your age I was more serious than I am now.

I make no bones about it, if I won the lottery I would certainly drink myself to death! I have never fancied getting really old, and don't want to see too much of the future.

Be good - steady on the bends from Fredrik. [Smiley].

Come on Fredrik,

getting old (mature) is not too bad. I got married for the second time 4 years ago and I must be 15 years older then you!! I want to last as long as I can (so that the price of a pair of 300's comes affordable if nothing else).

Fortunately I am a perpetual optimist - yes sometimes you get knocked down but more often everything is OK if you give it time. I was never woried that my Olive kit became out of date because to me it sounds fine to me. The problem is that my Chrome Bumper kit sounds equally satisfying - not a real problem.

Fall of the bike - get back on!!

I will send you an E-Mail tomorrow and explain my complex movements between UK, Spain and Warsaw. My musical taste is also complex I bought sveral classical LPs yester day including an unplayed set of the Bradenburgs by the Gewandhause zu Leipzig and a Peter Green LP (blues guitarist from 60's). Both excellent performances and 10 Zloty for Bach and 3 for Green!!

Best regards

Frank

Dear Frank,

I always smile at the observation that my great grandfather, Ivar Fiske, born 1875, did get married at 44 and then lived till 92! I rememebr both of them and his wife was actually 18 when she married him. How would that go down nowadays?! In fact he was something of a philanderer, and my great granny was very much a nice person who was rather badly hurt by him over this. On the surface he was charm personified, and a very clever man, engineer and inventor. But being successful often seems to lead to people being a bit cavalier in dealing with the people who should be their mainstay.

I am the opposite. I take my commitment, even if only to a small number of friends as the only important thing! I think people either recognise that aspect or often merely let me keep them at a respectful distance. My father married five times, and by the age of 18 I had seen three step mothers come and go! He married again about two years before he died, and finally he found a person more wilfull than him! She was the boss! My mother is on her third, and we have not had contact regularly since 1993, and at all except Christmas day 2005, since 1997. I rang her, and sh3e was not pleased to hear from me!

Naturally I am cautious after that tattered type of childhood. But in the real world I can be be great fun to be with, and a real torment to those I am fond of! I only tease people I love, and it takes a long time for me to lower my guard enough to really risk getting hurt. Ironically one of my two Polish trainees has become a real friend, and certainly he is glad enough to talk to me as he ought to be able to his father. Like me with my father in the old days, there is no commication in that department.

Friendship can come from the least expected quarters! I tend to think it is the only thing that actually matters...

All the best from Fredrik

Fredrik's great grandfather as a young man in the 1890s, I would guess.



Ivar Fiske 1875-1967

Posted by Fredrik Fiske

Hi Fredrik,

Your Grandfather was a really handsome man!! E-mail in preparation.

It's raining in Warsaw so more music at home this morning. PM there is a concert in the park - if the rain stops!!

Best regards

Frank

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:

Dear Friends! [Bleary Smiley]!

This [very satisfactory piss-up on Friday/Saturday] followed on from work... At a few minutes to ten I was in the canteen having a fag break, and in came the manager (senior production manager) and he was quite shirty. I went and saw him before I went from work [no good not putting in a defence, I have found], and explained not only had we achieved the programme and done the deep cleaning we were asked to, but as I thought this would not adequatley fill the time I pulled three batches forward from Monday, which makes next week's programme that much more achievable, and kept us going nicely. It seems to me if you become deceitfull and simply look busy at the appropriate moments, they never actually check to see what you are really doing. I have never been like that. So given that I shall certainly get a bollucking on Monday, I thought a bit of an impromptu session might be in in order and it was!

All the best from Fredrik. End of QUOTE

Well, Dear Friends,

My defense must have worked a treat for I met my dear chief production manager, (and I am always on good form at the begining of the week), right after going in through the door! He grinned somewhat in the manner of a man not quite sure what to say next!

He asked if I was in a better mood than on Friday! I responded that I was always alright till people messed with me at work, and we both had a little chuckle. Nothing more was said at all! Result!

All the best from Fredrik

Another lovely Polish beer has been sampled in moderation (one bottle followed by a can of Lech), and I have to say it is a real stormer. a lovely beer. Warka. It comes from the same brewary as Zywiec, but this one I have not yet found. My goodnes the Poles know how to bottle a nice beer or several!

Fredrik

:

Hello Doc!

I'll visit your home turf!

Fredrik

Whilst one lives life by the day, I am not sure it is idle to sample a few simple delights as one goes along, and having had one bottle of Warka last night, I thought it good to enjoy just a few more tonight! We shall see what the head brings in the morning. Forgive a report in the morning, for if such a nice beer really does not give rise to pain next day (as Okocim does) then is is indeed a heaveny Brew. Bit like Archer's Gold in a bottle! Most similar in taste to Norwegian Christamas Ale {Hansa is nice}, which is about as close as the Norse get to brewing a strong beer! The Poles call Norwegian beer Gay Beer. That is comical in my book, and one assumes they are refering to the sexuality of the beer and not the quality, as there is no doubt that Norwegian beer is really rather fine!

Fredrik

Hi fredrik - in Spain for a few days and cutting rings off the leads - it is amazing what it does - I am re-positioning everthing as well.

We visited the Warka brewery a couple of weeks ago as part of the project!!!!!! You are right it is very good.

A bottle of Rioja tonight though.

Best regards

Frank

Warka is, as I suspected not a beer to make one ill! Well anything would if you had too much, but in moderation no harm came of it.

Dear Frank, Are these wonderful beers on draught in Poland? That would be a diiferent thing again!

Fredrik

Hi Fredrik,

Yes - all on draft!!!! The Rioja is bottled!!!!!

Next week I am back in Poland and we have our final Training course before the summer - the lasy night will be entertaining to say the least,

Best regards from a very sunny Spain,

Frank