tirsdag den 7. april 2026

A-Z Challenge ~ F for Ferry

  Warning! This post contains the answer to today's Wordle
Proceed at your own risk

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once
.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.


Today my starting word is Ferry. It was not that bad, and as the average today is 4,7, I am back to average once again:

Wordle 1.753 5/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Ferry This has a lot to do with travelling. But as I come from Elsinore, my associations go somewhere else. I wrote about this in my Susan's tales. But as most of the non-magical stuff there this is from my own experience, you can substitute Susan's name with mine in the following excerpt from Susan's trip to Sweden.  

Susan, come here!" Mum called. "What are your plans for today?"
"Nothing really," Susan answered truthfully. She had some vague ideas about drawing their cat, reading a bit maybe, studying some Icelandic and spells and NOT do her homework until tomorrow, Sunday.
  "I have some complimentary tickets for the ferries, they expire Monday. Would you mind taking a trip to Sweden and back? You can have all the tickets validated on the way there, and then buy cigarettes for me with all of them*. They are all return tickets, you only have to show one of them when getting on board in Sweden."
  "How can I have all the tickets validated? I'm only me ... one person?"
  "Today miss Hansen is at work. If you greet her from Dad when showing the tickets, she'll do this as a service for us."
  "Do I have to go back with the next boat, or can I go for a walk in Helsingborg before I return?"
  "If you have time, there's no reason why not. These tickets are good for all day once obliterated. I even have some Swedish coins. You can go and buy an ice cream or something."
  After Mum told her this, there was no doubt in Susan's mind. She loved soft ice, and in Sweden you could have her favourite variety. Pear flavoured soft-ice. "Oh yes," she said. Let me get dressed and get my book and a basket while you get the tickets and the money.
  Susan returned, fully dressed even to shoes carrying her favourite basket with the contents covered up by an old scarf. "That way no one can see all your cigarettes and be tempted to steal them," Susan told Mum, who smiled and handed Susan a wad of tickets and a big bank note, "This is enough for cigarettes both ways. Don't lose it!" Susan shook her head. Mum the gave her a small handful of coins, silver and bronze together: "And these are for ice cream and what else you can get." It was mostly small coins, bronze 1, 2, and 5 öre, and worn silver 10öre, but also some of the bigger iron 25 or 50 örer and even some large, silver 1 kronor coins. "Thank you Mum," Susan said, "I'll take good care of them." She took her small red purse from the zippered pocket in her skirt, put coins and tickets in one compartment, and the banknote in the other before putting the purse back and zipper the pocket again. "Good Susan," Mum said. "I'm sure you'll do fine. Remember that the tickets are only valid for the big ferries, no idea in you trying to go by the small boats."
  Susan smiled. "Won't do." she agreed.

Susan decided to take the shuttle bus to the ferries and walked down to the small, cosy square from where it departed. It was only a short trip to the other side of the harbour, but she would catch an earlier ferry. As instructed, she greeted the lady from her dad and had all 10 tickets validated. This meant she could get a whole carton of cigarettes each way. But first she had to get aboard. As Denmark and Sweden were part of a union, she did not have to bring her passport - she did not even own one - or any other personal papers. But she had to go through the customs. and as usual the customs officer looked at her and decided that she was suspicious.
  "What do you have in that basket, young lady?" he asked,
  "Oh nothing special," Susan answered. "My books, some candy and a couple of pencils." She folded back the scarf and let him have a look.
  "Aren't those extra salty liquorice?" he asked suspiciously.
  "Why, yes, of course," Susan said. "I like it. Do you want some?"
  "Oh, no thanks. I was just asking. You can board"
  Susan wondered why she was almost always controlled, and what they were searching for. They were of course on the lookout for fireworks, which was cheaper and better in Sweden - but not in the summer, and not departing from Denmark - so why she was always searched remained a mystery to her. She just regarded this as one of the laws of nature. She was not afraid for the return journey. the Swedish customs officers were always very lax when it was not the season for fireworks.
_________________________________________________
* The ferries between Elsinore (Helsingør) and Helsingborg sailed international waters. Hence the shops on board could sell tax free tobacco, liquor and candy. In order to limit the tobacco to 1 packet per person per trip (one way = one packet) you had to show your ticket and have it stamped. (The one-way tickets were simply taken by the salesperson). Cheating with this system was a sport among the inhabitants of Elsinore. To buy liquor you had to stay in another country for over 24 hours - thus irrelevant - and the duty free candy mostly was not really cheaper.

And now for today's Wordle



mandag den 6. april 2026

Poetry Monday :: Passover

Poetry Monday is a blogging game invented long ago. Mimi of Messymimi's Meanderings and I are keeping it alive until Diane @ On the Border returns home from her break of health and relaxation, travelling the world with her husband as far as we can tell.

We just hope she's going to take back over once she returns home.

The prompts now come from 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group. This is a Facebook group with a prompt for each day of the year, but no worries, the prompts will still be here and at Mimi's blog.

Today's prompt is: Passover


Woe is me. I read River's Mimi's blog and poem before writing one myself.

Add to this that I found Passover a hard theme for a poem, and that I - as every Easter Monday - forget that it IS Monday because it's a holiday ... lots of excuses, I never got to write anything, but in the "rules" for Poetry Monday it said somewhere that You're allowed to copy somebody else's poetry. That's what I'm going to do.

This spiritual actually tells the story of Passover, Easter, and salvation.


When Israel was in Egypt’s land,
Let My people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let My people go!

Refrain:
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt’s land;
Tell old Pharaoh
To let My people go!

'Thus spoke the Lord,' bold Moses said
Let my people go!
'If not I'll smite your first born dead.'
Let my people go!

No more shall they in bondage toil,
Let My people go!
Let them come out with Egypt’s spoil,
Let My people go!

Oh, let us all from bondage flee,
Let My people go!
And let us all in Christ be free,
Let My people go!

- - - - - - - - - - Coming Themes  - - - - - -

taken from the 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group.

Apr 13 Fabulous
Apr 20 Superhero
Apr 27 Plaid
May 4 Back pack
May 11 Futuristic landscape

A-Z Challenge ~ E for Emoji

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once
.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.


Today my starting word is Emoji. It was unexpectedly difficult, and I only just solved it:

Wordle 1.752 6/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Today's Wordle Review tells me it has an "average of 4 guesses out of 6, or moderately challenging." I no longer ap keeping up with the average - maybe because of my forced starter words.

Emoji! What on earth is the connection between travels and Emoji? 

Both before and after getting married, hubby and I travelled for a month each summer. We had a strict budget as young and still studying, but we both were good at languages, and we had friends in many places in Europe. We camped in out of the way campsites, and walked long distances by foot to see the sights of many an European town and city.

In many places we found we were not the first to visit -- we met the OG emoji. We met it in Colosseum, Rome, in back alleys in Paris, under the bridges in Venice, in short everywhere in Europe we met a man with a long nose looking at you over a wall -- Killroy was here.

This too was short and rather obscure. Sorry. I hope to have time and energy for more in the coming days.

And now for today's Wordle

EMOJI:


søndag den 5. april 2026

A-Z Challenge ~ Debug

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I post almost every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!), not on Good Friday, though, so I need to post on at least one Sunday to make up for this, And I'll post later Sunday because I'll have to return back home first.

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once
.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.


Today my starting word is Debug. It was unexpectedly difficult, and I only just solved it:

Wordle 1.751 6/6
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
But then the Wordle Review also tell me it has an "average of 6 guesses out of 6, or very challenging." Actually I mostly hit the average.

Debug! When I was on my big journey in Africa, we lived with the people wherever we were, naturally this included some not so pleasant side effects. Bugs were one of them. If you're not in for graphic descriptions of creepy-crawlies, fleas, mites and lice just skip today's story. 

At intervals during our journey - we travelled through Egypt and Sudan for almost two months - we stayed at more luxurious places. One such was at a very rich man's palace in an oasis in southern Egypt. He owned enormous stretches of land, a village or two full of people, and lived in what I can only call a palace. His sons all worked in the off-shore, one of them had even been to Norway.

He had food and drink flown in by helicopter from Uganda at least once a week - he even had his own landing pad. Breakfast was imported white bread, eggs from his columbary, imported jams, tea and coffee with local buffalo milk. This was a luxury after weeks on beans and bread with weevils in it.

As I wrote in my topsy turvy Bucket-list post:
I've eaten bread with beetles, yes!
At least in bread
they were baked and dead
In biscuits - well, I'll let you guess.

But the biggest luxury was a washing machine and a shower. I had a sleeping bag with a yellow inside. It was perfect for flea-spotting, the small black bugs stood out against the yellow background. All three of us stripped naked in the laundry room, stuffed everything that could be washed into the machine, and jumped into the shower where we washed thoroughly for a long, long time. 

Lice were a worse plague, we had to live with them, as washing only somewhat removed the biggest ones, and did nothing to the eggs at all. After our return to Denmark we bought combs and lice shampoo. All were combed, lice were found and we had a treatment ... except for one boy who said that he had no lice, as his scalp did not itch. But and we all continued to be infested with lice, me and one other insisted on combing him. In the end he gave in --- combing was not necessary in order to find anything, as we lifted his hair his scalp was literally crawling with lice.

Still now I begin itching all over from just writing this.

This too was short, with some obscure hints. Sorry. I hope to have time and energy for more in the coming days.

And now for today's Wordle

DEBUG:

Glædelig påske ~ Happy Easter

Kristus er opstanden - Ja, Han er sandelig opstanden. Halleluja!

Christ is risen - He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! - Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!