Shopping

One day a while back, a chap had an idea.  He would buy up stock from bankrupt firms and sell them cheaply in his own little shop in a little village in the middle of the forest. This turned out to be a good idea, so good that he expanded his little shop and his little village, which was in the middle of a landscape that must have studied the picturesque to university level, found itself with a yellow plastic brick warehouse surrounded by concrete blocks housing other shops and even a hotel. The car park alone must have taken over several farms and there is a constant stream of cars coming from all corners of Sweden, And a television programme.
And there was me, meandering along to give it a go.  Well!!  The car park, let's begin there... Try Tescos on Christmas Eve, just before it shuts, except on steroids. Fortunately the Viking pensioners steering their Volvos like longships hadn't encountered the London Car Park Glare (for those of you who don't know - "dare and I will have the chainsaw out of my handbag and in your face before you blink" and I was able to defend my space, whilst doing the worst piece of parking I have ever done in my life. but I really didn't dare go more than a metre from the space.  A granny would have whipped in.

Got out, and ambled towards the entrance.  I have never seen or heard so many trolleys in my life.  Read the bit in Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett) when the shopping centre hatches, it was so like that.  Hordes streaming past me, grimly holding onto their trolleys for dear life, rattling like there was no tomorrow.

Just getting that far meant I had to stop for a coffee and a fan.  Fortunately there was a Swedish equivalent of a Little Chef just by the entrance and I was able to regroup over a coffee (surprisingly not bad) and a 'home-baked' bun.  Yeeessss, not sure what sort of home it was baked in, but it definitely did need a social worker.

Once I reached the entrance, I thought that I should get a basket and that was one of the best decisions of the day.  Anyway, I'm not sure that there was really room for one more trolley in that place.  Goodness knows what would have happened in Children's Toys if the fire alarm would have gone off.  There was literally (Yes!!) no room to move in some of the aisles.  People were using the shelves as barbeque racks and living off stray wandering children, whole families had been born in the Barbie aisle and Fisher Price was being passed in to teach the children-of-the-shop to read. I have honestly never seen anything like it. I found myself sucked in as I made a dash from Women's Clothes (people changing in the aisles, shudder) to Kitchen Ware and only escaped by lodging my basket between two trolleys and bouncing back out into Music.

The quietest place was the checkouts.  I was expecting IKEA type queues, but no, they'd got it sorted.

Ullared does definitely have decent stuff at very good prices, so I can sort of understand the urge to go, but as I made my way to the checkout bearing a hotplate for the cafe and various little things I had to get for the Charity Auction on Friday, I decided that if I did go back, (to get things for the cafe you understand,)  it wouldn't be until after Christmas and only then after a strict meditation and calming regime.  Two hours drive and you have to make it worth your while somehow!

Curling

Yesterday the local curling club had its annual open day.  One of the women in our knitting cafe group is very, very interested in curling and invited us all to go.  As I quite like watching it on the telly, if it is on, I thought I may as well give it a go.  I like boule and the curling players scuttle around very easily on the telly, so hey, what's not to like.
I can't really say that the curling club are big on advertising, or signage, but thanks to a very nice, young security man, I found the hall.  Another very nice young man showed me the hall, and found me a pair of shoes, whilst I waved at Anita and Gitten through the glass.  Then I went out into the hall, got my protective headband and broom thing and had to step on the ice.  At which point, I realised something.  Ice is slippery, I hate slippery.  The entire skuttling easily over the ice thing was a big con!
One of the shoes is the grippy shoe and the other is the slidy shoe (technical names!). What is that all about?  and to slide the stone, you have to slide too! on the ice! which is slippery! and I'm terrified of slipping! Arggghhhh!  Anita, Gitten and yet another nice young man looked at me, I looked at them, they looked at me, I looked at them and said, 'there's ice', "yes" said Anita, "curling is played on the ice". "Yes" I said, "I know, I'd just forgotten that ice is slippery". "what?" said Gitten, "you'd forgotten?  since last winter?". "yes, it looks so no slippy on the telly".  Nice young man III was totally bemused at this point and didn't really know what to do, so I took pity on him and slide my left foot about a bit, whilst leaning heavily on my broom and wobbling, at which point he looked a bit panicy, so I asked him what one did next before falling over, so he sensibly decided to ignore that bit and showed me how to push the stone thing.  I bobbled over to the pushy-offy bits and tried to imitate him, but forgot to let go of the stone, so was dragged spreadeagled across the ice for miles, with the howls of laughter from my 'friends' echoing in the hall.  The second attempt was better, apart from the getting up from the push bit, but I then got the hang of using the grippy foot to lean on - yay, Winter Olympics here I come!
My hopes of a future career were dashed within a few minutes, I sent my stone winging down the ice and promptly toppled over just as the 'big man in curling' came in and gazed down from his lofty heights in the viewing bit. Sigh.
Anyway, it was great fun, although as I never mastered the actual sliding bit, I couldn't do any sweeping frantically in front of the stone, but I have long realised that you can't get everything in life. And there's always next year...

A Day in the Village

On Saturday, Bottnaryd, our nearest village, had a 'fun' day to raise money for the equivalent to the UK's Cancer Research. There was a whole day's programme and all the shops got involved, the shop and the pizza place donated a portion of the day's takings, the beauty palour did 10min massage/hair things and the gym had spinning classes and stuff.  The Pentecostal Church did the cafe for the morning and the Swedish Church in the afternoon, there were concerts by local talent, inspirational talks from people who wanted to cycle from here to Paris, who had survived cancer and stuff, a fun run, a jumble sale, the scouts had fun games and popcorn and there was even a bouncy castle.

Graham was already booked to work down the church (they are redoing the grounds at the front), so he had the car, and managed to contribute to the effort by eating pizza for lunch - he does have a hard life!  I decided that, as I'd managed to change the voice in my head to 'look after yourself', I would cycle.  It's only 5km and only 2 hills after all.  It was a bit grey and cloudy for the first time in 4 weeks, but that was OK.  So I decked myself out in my best 'sitting in a cafe, listening to live music, being charitable, whilst occasionally throwing balls at things' look and set out.  The air dampness started halfway up the first hill (yes, I was walking! live with it!), it coalesced into drizzle on the straight over the lake and became serious drizzle at the top of the second.  It was possibly a bit damp...  Fortunately part of the look was my old Post Office duffle, which is guaranteed to keep out all Welsh weather - drizzle? pah, it laughs.

It was great fun, music was good, the Pente coffee brilliant, scout games fun, fun, fun and I chatted with loads of people.  The dampness and need to not look in a mirror got too much and I left for home at 2, so couldn't compare the Swedish Church coffee and hear the country band (shame...???  who were also very good examples of the genre), but it was actually great fun cycling home.  I felt terribly, terribly french, probably the combination of turtle neck jumper, moleskin skirt and wicker basket.  and for a village of about 800 inhabitants (plus us country odds and sods), they raised over 75000SEK!

Review

It's been exactly 2 years and 4 months since I've worked in an office, and 2 years since we came to Sweden on a 'sabbatical', so I guess it's time for a random review.
Soooo, in the last 2 and a half years, I've been made redundant (along with most of the NHS it seems!), discovered the extent of my burnout, finished my Masters, move country (and don't talk to me about the Social Services here! even the Immigration people are fed up with them), move house twice, driven in a car accident that made the front pages (what they don't tell you in the propaganda is that being fat helps cushion vital internal organs, it was my skull - the bit with no fat, that was broken -ha!), asthma came back badly, jobless, starting a completely new career at the age of almost 50yrs and planted some broccoli.







Right... hummm, well, those were the highlights. I would say it's been a bit of rollercoaster really.  So now, I live in a picture postcard house with my husband

(still together-see above paragraph, it was the broccoli that was the real difficulty...) and cat (hummm, asthma...) and am going to open up a cafe and small art gallery in the mission hall over the pond.





So, living the dream!  It is actually quite tough when dreams start to become reality.  Things come up that weren't figuring in the dreamworld - like money and builders, and then of course, what is there left to dream about? (yay, caribbean island).

Being a social beast, the hardest things have been leaving my friends.  Of course, the people here are lovely, they really are, but there's not a lot of space in people's lives in the country.  Things don't change much, so people fill up their internal spaces and don't know how to squash up, to make room for a new person coming along. Of course, in the countryside, it's not as easy to bump into people, or meet up, so everything is more of an effort, as is making sure there's enough milk, cos the nearest shop is 10km away and doesn't open until 10am.  (she says, conveniently forgetting about the 14hr service station shop only 5km away).

I've planted and eaten my first vegetables, made a miniscule profit (but a profit nevertheless!)  with a summercafe, made new friends, been lonely, happy, sad, had time to unlearn and redo some fundamentally flawed, but persistant, core beliefs, reenforced my understanding of God's love and interest in my life and really have begun life in my 40s (UK proverb - Life begins at 40).  It appears I've had a midlife crisis thanks to a right-wing government - should I be grateful??

Office life

Now I'm a 'proper' business person.. (yeah, wateva) I thought I'd better get myself a proper office thing.  So having got hold of my grandfather's desk, I decided to do out and sort the office space.  As I've said previously, the walls are not the best colour in the entire world, being a really cold blue and throw a grey light on everything,  but I've painted some old shelves and arranged things 'to be used imminently' on them, also cleared the old desk.  My camera appears to be playing up a bit, so the photos aren't as good as could be, but it gives an idea.  Now just to tart up with a bit of colour!

The view from the window, which is small! It'll look lovely with colourful crocheted bunting.

Desk made especially for my grandfather.  It holds loads! (Note the neat desk, all those who have previously shared an office with me...)

Shelf

Work in progress.  Unfortunately the table also needs to house the printer.  I'll do something about the music when I get some money!

Sorted!

This week, I'm taking some time to sort out the office, rearrange all the boxes and put up some shelves and things.  So far, so mundane, but!  The new desk is my grandfather's and was hand made in oak, I'll need to paint the shelves that came from my great grandfather on the Storck side as they are stained dark and will dominate the narrow space. I want to keep wools and swatches on there, so I can see them easily. I'd love to redecorate, the walls are completely the wrong shade of blue, but we're not allowed.... we'll see in a couple of years though.

The amount of stuff that my grandmother left was totally phenomenal, but how can you throw away pattern books from the 1850! I must admit that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all, but there's nothing to do, but just get on and sort it out.

Will post a photo on Friday - that'll give me a deadline..

The Veg patch

In the interests of living a life as unlike London-life as possible in our increasingly homogenous culture, this year we have a veg patch.  Well, four, to be precise. They are raised and I had the budget to buy compost for 3 of them, so we'll have to wait until next year before going into full production.  I set them out on the lawn, Graham readjusted them into a more aesthetically pleasing pattern, dug the grass up and built the greencottage on the side of the house, I wheelbarrowed away the turves and put the compost bags in, so full credit to me, naturally...
The green-cottage (not quite big enough for a greenhouse) is full of tomatoes. Perhaps a little too full, but hey, green tomato chutney is lovely. There are not such a thing as growbags here, so the tomatoes are in compost filled buckets, five of them all different colours.
The diamond shaped beds are 2x1.5m-ish.  One has broccoli and some sort of cabbage, one has sugar peas and french beans and the other has spinach and parsnips.  The last has weeds, I suppose I could use the sorrel and say it's my salad bed, but...

Learning experiences so far -
1) planting distances on seed packets are not guidelines, but should be taken seriously (whoops....sorry beans)
2) Learn what the cabbage should do/be used for/what it is exactly before you plant, so you won't have to go around all your friends waving a cabbage leaf and asking what to do with it.
3) Frames for things to climb/hang on, yeeessss, hummmm.  A new skill that I feel I need to learn better...(sorry peas, tomatoes and anything else over 10cm tall.)
4) every garden really does need access to a wasps' nest.  If you have one near, you will have no problems with catepillars making lace of your cabbage leaves and scalping your sedums.  You will not have to stand over plants scraping off and squashing green wiggly things. Wasps are lovely, intelligent and can be taught, hurrah for wasps.

Now, how do I buy a wasps' nest?