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ullehaddock

Writer of sorts with a soft spot for Photo. Writes about life and what comes into my mind.

Invisible

Invisible

He was grunting to himself as he poked through the waste basket. Without looking up he moved to the next. Now mumbling louder he started to poke this one also. He looked up triumphant as he found a returnable bottle. A half eaten hamburger was also collected after he taken a bite.

People walked passed him as if he was not there. Amazingly nobody bumped into him even if the railroad station mall was really crowded at rush hour. Even the mobile phone zombies managed to avoid him. It was like there was some kind of advanced radar system keeping the two worlds apart.

I wondered why this man ended up here. Dirty and worn down clothes. Hair that was a long time away from Head & Shoulders. I recalled the commercial with that hockey player telling the team. “First shampoo, then balsam”. I didn’t think he would care if he only was allowed a shower.

I was disturbed by the waitress that came with my coffee. When I looked out for the man again he was gone. Suddenly I saw him between two security guards leading him out from the station mall. Out in the cold. Strange that the only ones saw him was the security guards. What was the risk? Probably that he dampen the shopping spirit by reminding us what can happen if we stop fitting in.

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2020-10-29 1 12

Seaport

Seaport

Just like to share some photos taken yesterday from the boat. The sea was very calm and on a tiny island the ducks was waiting to take off to warmer water.

In transithall

Takeoff — In transithall

I need to share this picture of calmness and reflection.

Water reflections

Check out more photos on my instagram. Like, subscribe and comment! Take care of mother Nature.

2020-10-24 0 11

Stroke

Stroke

A strange tickle in his left arm and side. Like the feeling when a part of your body is sleeping even if you are awake. He rationalized it with sleeping in a bad position. Sleeping poorly in the extra bed at his sons flat. He got up and made breakfast for him and his son. Sat down to work as his son went away to a lecture. The tickle did not stop and now he could feel it in his leg and his face. He tried to walk it of with a tour around the campus without any success. The school and work week was finished so they decided to drive the 150 kilometers by car to home. He drove out of the city and half way home. The son took over the driver seat after a lunch stop at a fast food restaurant on the way.

The call

The tickle was still there and now he started to be a bit concerned. So he went online with his phone to find information regarding these symptoms. Nothing fitted very well and as soon as he arrived home he decided to call a medical advice service. He was set on a long waiting time but he soon got to talk with a nurse. Half way through describing his symptoms she interrupted declaring she connected him to the emergency service and at the same time instructed them to call out an ambulance! Now he was spooked and surprised. The alarm operator told him nearest ambulance was thirty minutes away but an emergency doctor vehicle would be there in five minutes. The questions flew through his head. He was not sick. It was just a numbness in his left side. The doctor took an EKG to check his heart and gave him some pills that would make his blood flow easier. He told him that he suspected a stroke. A STROKE!? But he was a man in his prime age. Only 54 years old and very fit. It cannot be. No smoking and hardly any alcohol. It must be something else.

ER

Ambulance came but he did not want to go. Afraid to leave his autistic son alone before his wife got home. Finally he gave in but insisted to walk by himself to the ambulance. It started already in the ambulance. The probing and piercing. Afraid of needles? Try get a huge one stuck in your arm while the car is moving 100 km/h on winding bumpy roads. A nice chat with the ambulance guy before arriving the hospital an hour later. There the nurses stripped him of the clothes and left him in a thin gown. Not sure if this was part of the examination but he soon started to shiver of cold. Next test is patience, waiting, waiting. Oh, a doctor opens the door. Looks in her papers. Wrong room! A low rumbling breaks the waiting boredom. What is it? A helicopter with more patients? After a while he realizes that it is his stomach complaining over the emptiness. A new nurse comes into the room and wonders what he is doing there. Symptoms for the tenth time. The nurse answers with a frown the question when he can see a doctor. Soon!

Corridors

After a decade or so she enters the room and the symptoms are presented again. Now shorter and to the point. The doctor looks concerned and orders an X-ray. An orderly comes in after some more waiting. With a short nod he releases the breaks of the bed. He takes him on the most fun you will have in an hospital. The Bed Ride. Before your emagination runs wild. This means you get transported to an examination in an expensive machine in the other end of the hospital. The orderly was very skilled and avoided bumping in to the other bed traffic. The man was thinking the metal rod sticking up at the head end of the bed was not there for the drip bottle. No it was like the flags little children have on their bikes to be seen by cars.

He was already freezing when he entered an even colder room. Tocked in so he could not move his head. Difficult since he was shivering of cold. He was moved into the X-ray machine and the machine and his stomach competed over who was loudest. Out of the machine and the orderly rapidly pushed him back to the same room. He lost count of the lights in the corridor already after fifty something. The clock was close to midnight when the doctor came back and told him that there was nothing in the pictures of his head. That was RUDE! It was decided that he needed to stay to the next day for more exams and probing.

To be continued….

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2020-10-22 1 12

Friendship

Friendship

Everyday with good weather he passed by the house. Walking or cyckling. With his black packpack. When she sat in the garden she saw him coming. Most of the times it was the dogs barking that alerted her. She waited for this moments. A small chat with the nice young man. There was something special about him, of that she was sure. At first he hurried pass with just a quick hello. But she wanted to know more so she tried to start a conversation with him.

She was long retired and lived on a peninsula and the house was at the end of the road. Passed her house was only a tractor path to the fields. Surrounded with water and cliffs this was the only way to the fields. On the fields there was sheeps grasing all summer. The dog was her only companion since her husband passed away several years ago. The house was a bit big but she enjoyed living there in the tranquility. Even so it soimetimes became a bit loonely so when somebody went pass her house she wanted to know who it was. Some of the summer houses in the area also had some break-ins. After that she took upon herself to check for outsiders.

So she was not letting this young man pass her house many times without knowing who he was. On the seccond or third time she stopped him and bluntly asked who he was and what he was doing there. He was very polite in his answers. The grandson of the local farmer at the beginning of the road. He came to sit among the sheep to practice drawing and painting. He could do that now due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The university was closed and all lectures was online. He even attended some out there in the green pasture.

As time passed that spring and summer it became a ritual and the days he did not come or she missed him she wondered what he was doing. She knew he would not come on rainy days as it was not possible to draw or sit with a computor in the rain. She really enjoyed those short conversations and he seemed to do the same. At one point he told her passingly that he was autistic and struggled with social interaction. She did not reall know what that was but she noticed that gradually answered with longer sentences. In mid August he stopped coming and she knew in her heart that something bad happened to her friend. Yes, she really considered him a friend.

By Ulle Haddock 2020. Please like, subscribe comment and share. Find more from me here.

2020-10-18 0 12

Autumn

Autumn

I share with you some photos of the autumn. Shades of grey but most of all colors.

Finding the micro cosmos in nature offers many new perspectives.

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2020-10-15 0 15

Plastics

Plastics

Why is it a problem

It has been under debate. Single use plastic and the fact that it ends up in the oceans and nature. To me very evident as I live by the coast. We usually have voluntary activities to clean the beaches from plastics and other waste. As much as five normal size bathtubs of waste flushes up on the shores of Bohuslän due to the currents. According to the Swedish environmental organization “Håll Sverige Rent” (Translates Keep Sweden Clean) 70% of all waste in the ocean is made of plastics. The most dangerous type is the plastic part grind down by natures forces into micro plastics. So small you cannot see it. It creates problems for fish and birds to digest their food and to reproduce.

Found in the forest on an island.

Human behavior

So where do all this “shit” come from? Is it the locals and tourists that drop of their garbage after their fishing trip or pick nick at the shore? This is part of the problem and this behavior is unacceptable. But most of the waste floating to the shores and bays of Bohuslän comes from Europe with the currents. The plastics parts, packaging and other, has somewhere in the world been thrown away by a human. It is an indisputable fact that no animal drops plastic parts in the nature!

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It is us humans and hand to your heart. Have you ever dropped a package, cigarette-end or a bottle to the ground and not picked it up? Have you ever put your waste in, or rather beside, an over filled dustbin? This is then taken by the wind or the rain water out into the waterways and finally into the sea. Around 50% of this sinks to the bottom and the more close to the shore the more damage it does. Sea freight and fishing is also a huge source of plastic waste to the oceans, boxes blowing overboard, nets and ropes lost, and finally amazingly waste dumped from the very boats that has the sea as their source of income. It takes up to 100 years for a plastic part to be broken down by nature.

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So trying to reduce this by banning single use plastics like bags and mugs is a good start but not enough. For many this sounds more like political symbolic but I guess we need to start somewhere. We need to realize that plastic is a fantastic material that solves many problems for man and even nature. As with all tools we need to use it correctly. To quote Bob the Builder: “don’t use the saw as a hammer”! I like to draw the attention to another, in my view, big contributor to the problem. Over packaging!

Over packaging

I guess you all have cursed and had your blood pressure raising when you try get to the product you actually bought. But you stand there. Blood running from your fingers. Sweat pouring down from your forehead. You try using a scissor but it was destroyed the last time you tried to penetrate a package. Yes, you know the type preferred by the electronics industry. The hard stiff plastic. When you finally get to the product. Hopefully without any damage. You realize there is more package material to get rid of than the actual product.

If you are lucky you live in an area that has a good recycling collection system where you can get rid of it. However in many areas this will end up on in a landfill. Landfill sites close to the ocean.

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Call to action

As a consumer you buy the product and not the packaging material. But this is part of your consumer experience and you can actually do something about it. Check out the company website or read on the package to find a e-mail adress to give your feedback. In worse case they send you a band aid but in best case they change to a more environmental friendly package.

Was the environment even considered here?

Finally I need to share the above picture with you. What do you think? My best guess the brewery tried to make it Covid-19 safe. Then they decided to make a crash display making most of the lids fall of! Even worse that on the shelf there was a six pack variant. In shrink wrapped plastic! We cannot rely on the politicians to solve this. We need to take sound consumer decisions and raise our voice to the producers.

As always like, subscribe, comment and share. Check out my other post here. As always take care of mother Earth! Also check out my social media.

2020-10-10 0 12

Missing

Missing

Missing the improvised tunes from the grand piano. Fingers moving with ease over the keys. The harmonies and mixes from psalms to Rammstein.

Missing the intelligent puns. The playing with words. In English and Swedish and sometimes both.

Missing the sound of the drums. Pounding away. Learning fast. Heal toe technique on the base drum.

Missing the walks in the forest. Picking mushrooms or just walking. Thinning forest with chainsaw and clearing saw. Working together.

Missing the keyboard clicks. Coding or mixing music. The sound of guitar strings. Then base guitar. Then piano. Click to record then sliding over the floor to play.

Missing working in the garage. Grinding and welding. Creating and mending stuff. Building that Cross Cart. Fixing the car Mulle Meck.

Missing going fishing or just having hot chocolate in the boat. Excursions to the small islands.

Missing that hug in the morning. The click on the remote to start the TV. Being your breakfast machine.

Missing my best friend.

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2020-10-03 1 14

Bite

Bite

The dog barked aggressively. Showing her teeth and growled deep down in the throat. But this boy showed no fear. Smiling at his friends with confidence. They had dared him to approach the baby carriage that the dog was protecting. After all it was his baby brother in the carriage. His three year younger and five months old brother.

Their mother used to put his brother on the courtyard and leave the dog to watch him. The dog would bark when the boy made noise in the baby carriage. His mother came down from the second floor in the apartment building to feed the baby or change diaper. No one else were allowed near the baby. The bitch was really a hunting dog and not a family pet. For some reason she had taken the newborn under her protection. She barely allowed her master to pick the boy up. The master that she would obey blindly when they were out hunting.

Today everything would change as the older brother continued to approach the baby carriage. When he reached over to pick the baby up she attacked. She attacked with her strongest and sharpest tool. Her teeth. The bite tore a large part of the cheek of and the boy screamed in pain and terror. The boys mother that just came down to see what was going on froze for a few seconds to the scene.

Her oldest boy bathing in blood. The baby on the ground, also covered in blood. The dog growling and barking with blood dripping from her teeth. Not knowing where she got the courage from she gave the dog a hard punch on the nose and picked up her oldest son. A large skin flap was hanging from the cheek and she placed it back the best she could and tried to stop the blood with her kitchen towel.

Now the neighbors started to come to aid but the dog had now recovered from the surprise from the punch. She was now standing over the baby with bloody teeth and a dark dark growling. An ambulance was called for the boy and police to take care of the dog. The two policemen was not able to get hold of the dog until the boys father came home from work. He managed to contain the raging dog and the boys grandmother could finally pick up the baby from the ground.

This is based on a true story taking place in Göteborg, Sweden in the mid sixties. The doctors managed to save the older brothers cheek with only minor scars. The dog had to be put to death as it could not be trusted anymore. Please like, subscribe, share and comment. Check out more from me here.

2020-09-28 3 9

The Reunion

The Reunion

She had moved away and gotten married in southern France. Now he was on his way back from that long last reunion. It had been as perfect as he dreamt of all those years.

She was so beautiful as he remembered. Even if the years had put some fine lines around her eyes. But her smile. Her smile hit him like a hammer in the gut as she stood there at the train station in Marseille. He always thought that her smile could melt a solid rock. He was thrown back to a high school kid and his legs could not move. She waved. Still smiling but now with eyebrows frowned. Questioning why he stopped.

As the platform was almost emptied with people his legs finally started to function again. They met in a warm long embrace. He felt his whole body melt into her arms. He could not hold back his tears. They were tears of longing and time lost. She broke loose from his embrace and held his face in her hands. Those soft warm hands. With the thumbs she dried his tears of and gave him a kiss. He was unprepared so it was short. They looked at each other. Still with her hands around his face before they joined in a long kiss. A twenty year of waiting kiss. He could see it from the outside like in a movie. You know when the camera circles around and the song She with Charles Aznavour playing.

With a warm feeling inside he told this to the two young backpackers he was sharing train compartment with. He did not have to tell them this. They had only started some small talk as they realized they were from the same country. As the train pulled out of Paris Gare Du Nord he continued his story. The two youngsters listened with big ears and interested eyes. He decided to leave out the first night they had together as they arrived to her small Vineyard outside Marseille.

When he heard that her husband left her he had struggled with himself to dare that first letter to his youth love. The love of his life. Finally the longing got the better of him and he wrote. His own marriage was already over as there was no love. He wrote with the pieces of his shattered heart. The heart that broke when she did not returned after a year as au pair. He waited in turmoil for the reply. Lost several kilos as he could not eat or sleep. After a week he got her reply that he opened with trembling hands and sweat dripping from his forehead. He had to start over several times to finish as his eyes was blurred by tears of yearning.

He called in sick to work. Booked a train ticket and sent her a letter explaining when he would arrive. He was that confident that the feelings were still there. Confident that if they met the spark would burst into flames. Now he sat here telling his story to the two boys. Going back to finish of his entire life and move to the south of France. Move to her. She who shattered his heart now so gently mended it piece by piece.

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2020-09-26 0 14

The Walker

The Walker

He came walking with small steps supported by a old peoples walker. It was a cold damp morning in December with temperatures just above freezing point. He walked towards us as we stood in the small shelter waiting for the tram to arrive. He was dressed in hospital clothes. Those thin trousers and loose hanging shirt covered only by a thin jacket. He did not appear to be bothered by the cold as he entered the shelter to check the board for arrival time of the next tram.

Tram (Picture by Ulle Haddock 2020)

As it was early in the morning there was a few minutes more wait than during the day. He leaned against the walker and breathed fast from the walk. We just stood there in silence waiting for the tram. As the tram approached he asked if we could help him aboard. He explained that these older type of trams was difficult to board due to the gap and the walkers wheels sometimes got stuck. We offered without hesitation to assist him. He looked at us with a big smile of relief.

We got on the tram and helped him get seated. I think he saw the question in our eyes so he offered an explanation. He was on leave from the hospital where he recovered from a small surgery to meet up with a lady friend in the city center. He emphasized that it was a lady friend. They plan to have coffee and then go for lunch before he went back. There was a sparkle in his eyes when he spoke about his lady friend. I guess there were deeper feelings involved.

As we approached the city center he asked for help again. This time to get of and change to another tram line as this one would not get him to his final destination. How can you refuse? We even waited to help him to enter the next tram. Luckily so because the driver tried to close the doors on him several times before a lady in the front shouted at him to calm down and let the man get on the tram.

We watched him as the tram drove off. Last thing I could see was that he was struggling to be seated and I hoped that someone else could help him. We crossed the tracks to our next tram taking us to our final destination. So the life went on but I sometimes think of this man. Was he on the run from the hospital? Should I try to call somebody? How has his life been? Did he have any children? Why was he out from the hospital alone?

These questions remain as hidden gems for a wannabe writer like me so I will cherish them and be thankful that I could be of any assistance, right or wrong. If you are bored with commuting, try to look at the people around you. They are stories that only they know and if you do not feel like talking. Just make the stories up, nobody will know. As always please comment, like, share and subscribe. You can also me out on social media or check my other posts. Both pictures in this post are made by me. First attempt to draw on the touch screen.

2020-09-20 3 11