Sometimes it's useful to move from one blog system to another.

I've just visited my parents in England and rather than write a new piece about the things that struck me that were vastly different to Finland, all I have to do is re-cycle last year's piece.

The only difference is that we left from a different terminal where there was only a rather terrible standard W.H.Smith with more concentration on sweets and magazines than on books. This was the British Airways terminal (although we were flying Finnair, they have a code sharing agreement with BA) and was definately down market compared to the terminal for foreign airlines we used (SAS) last year.

But, apart from that, the same things apply as last year, so here's that piece again.  (This year's potboilers [luckily bought earlier when I saw them] were Colossus, decline of the US empire; Natasha's Dance - a Cultural History of Russia; and a book on Napoleon's 1812 advance on (and retreat from) Moscow)

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You can tell you've been away a long time when you start noticing odd things about the place of your birth.

I suppose one thing I always have noticed is that nothing much seems to change between one visit and the next. Certainly where my parents live there is no innovative architecture in use when new buildings are put up, just more and more of the same boring old stuff and old red bricks.

Even if you might not like some of the new Finnish architecture at first, it IS often new and different and does tend to grow on you and these days usually fits in to the location.  (There is one glaring exception which is the Alvar Aalto designed Enso (now StoraEnso) headquarters on the sea front at Helsinki harbour which single-handedly destroys the view as you arrive by ship. I don't think even a famous architect would get away with that kind of thing these days).

The other thing I noticed on a recent visit was the constant "Buy One get one Free" and the like everywhere. Not, you understand, that I didn't take advantage when I wanted to buy one of those things anyway, but still.

However the couple of examples I'll mention now really did make me wonder if the world had gone mad.

I bought a copy of a particular daily newspaper because my wife wanted the free DVD it contained (of a film of Alice In Wonderland). When I went to pay for it, I was asked if I'd like a free Mars bar with it. I looked at him .... "We've had an offer all week that if you buy this paper you get a free Mars bar". OK. Why not. (Value - More than half the cost of the paper which remember I bought only because my wife thought the DVD was worth more than the newspaper cost.).

[2006 Note: Now it was buy a magazine and get a (large) block of chocolate for half-price]

Mind you next day was even crazier. I was in another branch of the same chain and bought a magazine. "Would you like to buy an Independent (another daily newspaper) and save 40p (70 cents)?" Suspicious as always I asked how much the Independent cost. "No, sorry I wasn't clear. If you buy an Independent (cost 60p/1:05) you get one pound off the cost of your magazine".

So I ended up with a magazine (full price minus 40p/70c) and a free Independent newspaper. If I'd left without the newspaper the magazine would have cost me more.

Typical I suppose for that part of the country, I then asked if there was anything stopping me dumping the newspaper once I'd left the shop. "I don't care, you can use it to line your budgie cage if you want". At which point the woman in the queue behind me - who'd obviously been following this conversation - said "now you'll have to go and buy a budgie".

I suppose I should really finish there, but once at the airport for the flight back I wanted to buy the new Donna Leon book.

[2006 Note: it grieved me that my wife had this year to pay full price for the latest Donna Leon]

One bookshop had "Buy one; pay half-price for the second" whereas the other had "Two for Three".

Now here's where arithmetic comes in... As the Donna Leon book (a small paperback) was likely to be cheaper than any other book(s) I bought, I should have bought it from the first bookshop and got 50% of the price of the second more expensive book. As it was, I bought it from the second bookshop along with two other (more expensive) books (and thus got the Donna Leon book - as the cheapest - free).

A question for readers. Why ?

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Answer:

Because you can't buy what they don't have. The Donna Leon book was included in the poster advertising the 1 plus 1/2 offer but it was sold out.

In the second story I grabbed the last copy.

Popular book that.

Anyway once that's finished (or grabbed by my wife as it's actually hers ...) I'll be moving on to lighter stuff than crime in Venice. Gulag by Anne Applebaum and Stalin - The Court of the Red Tsar - by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Potboilers.