Another philatelic passport arrives

My third new philatelic passport of the year, and the 30th overall in my collection, has arrived. It was issued at a big stamp exhibition in France in 1999, I bought it because it had a Moomin stamp on the first country page!

Moominmamma gets to be the first stamp in the passport because the creators of the passport listed Aland, the small stamp-issuing islands off Finland, first. Finland is on the same page and it's a Finnish stamp. 

Whoever collected stamps in this passport had a whimsical approach. They seemed to pick stamps with cartoons and cute animals. Here are some more highlights:

A great miniature sheet from Germany.

Hang-gliding Santa Claus from Belarus

I'd never seen this Faroese stamp before.

Gabon had a shiny hologram on their stamp, celebrating 150 years of the first French postage stamp.

And a bonus item, a loose 'show card' issued by Monaco. This is the sort of freebie that postal agencies give out at big international exhibitions. It was tucked into the passport so I will keep it in there.

I really enjoy looking through these passports, seeing all the different stamps and postmarks. Every one is unique in its own way. I have two from this exhibition now. This is now my favourite because the other one doesn't have a Moomin stamp. 

Read about the two passports I added to my collection in March. 

Moomin confectionery

Courtesy of "Nordic" week at Lidl (which is far more accurate than Scandinavian week given the Moomins are from Finland!) come these little jelly sweets. My sister excitedly tipped me off about them this morning and so, when I went past Lidl later, I popped in and bought a packet.

They are made by the same company that made the chocolate biscuits I blogged about last year (when apparently it was 'Scandinavian week', not Nordic week). The flag on the back confirms their Finnish origins. 

There are four fruity flavours. Pomegranate is an unusual choice to include. Helpfully the flavours are listed in multiple languages so you can learn the Finnish names for the four fruit too.

And there are five characters to munch on - Moomintroll, Moominpapa, Moominmamma, Sunfkin and Little My. 

The fruit taste is subtle. They don't taste like actual fruit, but they taste more natural than a lot of sweets, and even the orange is very mild.

So, yeah, happy Nordic week everyone!

Snack of the Month: Moomin choccy biccies

Lidl had these in for their 'Scandinavian week'. Cathy bought me a box as she knows I'm a fan of the Moomins and also a fan of chocolate biscuits. 

The packaging is adorable.

There's a line up of the characters on the top of the box. One of them is chocolate side up so remains anonymous until you open the packaging.

Turns out it was Moomintroll's best friend, Snufkin (bottom left).

The six characters are Moomintroll, the Snork Maiden (Moomintroll's girlfriend), Moominpappa, Moominmamma, Snufkin, and either the Mymble or her sister Little My. The Mymble would make more sense as she is the same height as the other characters whereas Little My is comparatively little (as her name implies). 

Biscuit-wise, they were very nice plain biscuits. They weren't too sweet. The milk chocolate was decent quality and enhanced the biscuitiness of the biscuits. 

The box contained a decent number of biscuits so it lasted a few days. (I showed more restraint than Moomintroll would have.)

Facing a childhood fear in the Moomin Shop

I had a trip to London last week and it included a brief visit to the Moomin Shop. In among the delightful toys I encountered a literary character that scared me hugely when I read the Moomin books as a kid. 

The entrance has loads of Moomin artwork.

And the shelves inside were laden with delightful toys. 

And some lovely books

At the bottom of the bookshelves is a basket of Grokes. Now the Groke wasn't the character that scared me (when I read Moominland Midwinter). If anything it made me sad. The Groke was always cold and just wanted to be warm, which is why it was drawn to bonfires and would sit on them - which put them out. 

(Years ago I did a 'Which Moomin character are you?' quiz and apparently I am a Groke.)

No, the characters that terrified me were...

... the Hattifatteners. 

I was talking to my Mum about them later and realised the Hattifatteners were the first characters that scared me. I'd read the Narnia books and wasn't particularly scared by the White Witch and I can't remember ever being scared of any other book characters.

But the Hattifatteners were creepy and weird. They were quiet and could give electric shocks. They had their own mysterious purposes and seemed dangerous somehow, because they were indifferent about harming other creatures. 

I had a faint 'brrr' shudder of revulsion when I saw the cuddly Hattifattener. I wasn't expecting that reaction. Some childhood scars stay tender. 

And, yes, I bought a Groke. I could just about squeeze it into my case

2015 in review: Other fiction books I read

I've already blogged about the six Douglas Coupland novels I read this year. Here is a list of the other fiction that I read (or finished reading) during 2015.

A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian
This was my 'Book Group Secret Santa' book. Set in World War II, two teenage girls move to the country for safety and suddenly are able to live free of adult influence. It was quite sympathetically drawn although had a bit of a too happy ending, but it dealt with some mature themes despite being ostensibly a book for older kids. One bit, involving a person hiding orange peel about their person, made me laugh out loud.

Bonjour Tristesse - Francois Sagan
This is a Penguin Classic and came in a set of other classics. In its favour, it's quite short, so you can get the feeling of 'Yeah, I read a classic; without killing yourself to finish an epic tome. It's about a cynical teenage girl who uses sex and emotional manipulation to get what she wants from life. It was apparently considered scandalous when it was published, but I got a bit bored with it. The main character is unlikeable, which I know is kind of the point, but I found it was difficult to engage with her or her reasons for doing what she did.

Tuf Voyaging - George RR Martin
This was a reasonably interesting science fiction story split into four separate stories. The first one was excellent, probably some of the most enjoyable science fiction I've read for a while as space-wanderer Havilland Tuf finds and lays claim to a starship of almost unspeakable power - a planetary and genetic engineering vessel that can be used for good or evil. What lets it down after the first story is a drift towards slightly racist stereotyping as Tuf helps a culture that is overpopulating its planet. That the people of the planet are known with an 'ese' suffix makes you think of China or Japan and the descriptions of the people seem to follow this up. So that left me feeling uncomfortable. Then there's Tuf himself who is all-wise and able to second-guess anyone and unbelievably lucky and always right about everything. Which was plain annoying.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson
This started well and then got stupid very, very fast. I liked the concept more than the story. The initial chapters of the eponymous old man's disappearance is funny and engaging. But then the flashbacks of his life begin and it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Moominland Midwinter, Tales from Moominvalley, and Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson
Here's a three for one offer. I'd read Moominland Midwinter as a kid and really enjoyed it on a re-read. Moomintroll wakes up mid-hibernation and can't go back to sleep so leaves the family home and explores the alien wintery Moominvalley. It's quite fun and has some great characters, like the traghic and scary Groke who just wants to be warm, but extinguishes all warm things it sits on. It's the best Moomin book I've read and I've read most of them.

ales from Moominvalley was a bit hit and miss. There was one short story about the Moomin family taking in an orphan girl who had been rendered invisible through living with relatives who constantly belittled her and put her down. I quite liked that. Moominmama is the lead Moomin character, which doesn't happen often. There's also a story of when Moominpappa goes sailing with the enigmatic Hattifatteners, who terrified me as a child, but now seem a lot more comic.

Comet in Moominland was one of the first Moomin books and is pretty weak. For example, Moomintroll and Sniff travel to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains and back to Moominvalley but cross completely different topography each way - crossing a dried up sea bed on the way back of an ocean that wasn't mentioned on the way there.

One thing all the Moomin books have in common is that I can't shake the feeling I am reading an in-joke. The characters are obviously based on people Tove Jansson knew and no doubt her family and close friends wet themselves laughing when they read the stories, but for me that was frustrating because I felt excluded somehow.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
This isn't really about a monster. It's about cancer and loss and the darkness of grief. It's ostensibly for kids. Someone who knows more than me about bereavement said it was one of the best things they had ever read about it.

The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
A depressing set of stories about not making promises you can't keep, and not setting your heart on something that is out of your control to have - like promising a boy a red pony of his own when there is every danger the pony will get sick and die, which of course, it does. Set on a ranch on California in the early part of the twentieth century, the description of living there feels authentic. I like Steinbeck's writing style, but this is a short book and as such sometimes feels a bit superficial even though it is dealing with deep themes. This particular edition came with an essay about the book as a preface, which I didn't read until afterwards. This proved a wise move as it was chock full of spoilers from the get go.

So, that was my year in fiction.

Finnside Jokes?

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a children’s book for some time, or at least that’s my excuse for reading kids books (but not Harry Potter and the Phnub Phnub Bleerr, or whatever it is).

Over the past year I’ve read four of the Moomintroll books, including a couple I hadn’t read as a kid. Maybe it’s just they haven’t aged well, or they’re in translation, but how weird are those books? It feels like you’re reading something in code.

The stories themselves are stream-of-consciousness narratives which don’t seem to follow any thought-out plan. But it’s the characters which feel most like an inside joke, with you the reader firmly on the outside of the humour circle.

There are several instances where it seems a character exists only to poke fun at someone Tove Jansson knew. The Muskrat, for instance, moans a lot and likes to think deep thoughts and not be disturbed. I imagine him as being a caricature of a cantankerous, bearded uncle.

In my minds eye I can picture Jansson reading out her stories in family gatherings with everyone collapsing in fits of laughter when the philatelist Hemulen starts going on about his precious stamps, or the Snork Maiden almost falls over a cliff because she’s primping her hair, or whatever. It’s funny when you don’t know the people she’s sending up. It must have been downright hilarious if you did.

In Comet in Moominland, Moominpappa’s obsession with recording his life in his journal – to the point where he feels he has to go out and do something so he’s got something to write about – reminds me a bit of my own dad, ringing me up to check how many football matches I’ve been to last season (and where). Maybe it’s a common trait of dads. Certainly, I’m willing to bet the loving, resourceful, wise, distracted Moominpappa, and the knowledgeable, caring, permission-giving Moominmamma are basically Jansson’s mum and dad in (moomin)troll-suits. (And the thought occurs that Moominpappa would have made an interesting blogger.)

So where is the author in all these trollish happenstances? Is she the boyish hero Moomintroll, or his noisy, messy, small chum Sniff? Or is she the cool and detached Snufkin, watching and going along with the plans of Moomintroll? It seems everyone else she knows is in there somewhere. She must be in there too.