Another absence followed by some Moomin photos - you know what to expect from me!
These are from Lapland, so from a while back. And you definitely wouldn't see me bare-legged in Finland in December! But on this day it was still lovely and warm; a perfect beach day to be Moominpappa, doing Moominpappa things. The most Moominpappa things are having adventures, writing about these adventures and sometimes drinking whisky. These things are also depicted in this 90s Moomin mug, and because there's three different Moominpappas in it with the same theme this post is quite picture-heavy!
Moominpappa is usually writing up his memoir which seems to never be perfect and finished. Most of the time he's waiting for inspiration to strike. He's been struggling for a wee while, but on this day he's feverishly tapping his typewriter. Moominmamma explains:
"He has written all day like mad. The sea has inspired him at last."
"This is going to be an intimate little volume called: "How I miss my own secure verandah.""
A finished piece of writing! And, I mean, who doesn't miss their own secure verandah? To me this feels like such an excellent picture of someone completing a task that's been both difficult and that they've really wanted to get done. In the original comic strip Moominpappa's eyes are properly shining. (Don't know why they decided to change that in this illustration!) My "finished manuscript" is actually my old uni notes on the Scottish Reformation and I accidentally forgot to hold them the other way round so you couldn't see the text (and e.g. one of my professors contact info..), so that's a bit of a messy detail. But this is a good use of my uni materials and the thousands I've put into my education, right?
"Now to cool it."
After you've finished your novel, what else can you do but drink some of your whisky that's been chilling in the sea? If you've only seen the more child-friendly Moomins and not read the comics (and books but mostly the comics), the drinking, crime and other strange business might surprise you. I can't absolutely remember which bottles these ones in the sea are, but I refer to them as "Manhattan Dynamite". That's one name mentioned by Moominpappa, but I'm not sure if it even is whisky; they also find whisky as treasure, try distilling their own spirit and I think on the Riviera they're more into champagne. For me it's always Manhattan Dynamite and that's what I was pretending to be drinking.
My very logical decision was to carry bottles full of water from home to the sea, which I definitely regretted afterwards. Just one bottle of drinking water would've sufficed and the sea would've been full of water to fill the others. The sea probably still is full of water. Carrying all this stuff to the beach was a lot: the bottles, the typewriter, the papers, the tripod and cameras, being very careful with the mug and I also had all of my swimming things and a change of clothes. What a hard life.
It's been a lot of pictures already (cannot help it, I always end up liking so many of these!), but here's a bonus if you've made it this far. It's mainly a series of unfortunate events of things dropping into the sea. I myself didn't fully fall in, but I did trip up, ending knee-deep in the water while still wearing my leggings. But it was still summer, so no worries there.
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