Autumn

Such a cliche, I know, but I love autumn.  Mainly because it is the time when everything is being put away for the winter and I can be inside reading, embroidering and drinking tea, instead of putting myself under pressure because it's such a beautiful day for hang-gliding and I am not doing it, or some such random strenuous outdoor activity.  There is such a beautiful melancholy to the general dyingness of things that you just have to embrace or be overwhelmed. 

Bjurbäck kyrka

Up by us

To celebrate this year, I finally have crossed something off my bucket list.  Well, I say, bucket list, it's more like a loose collection of stuff written on the back of receipts and left in the jean pocket. We, Mr G and I with 2 friends, went to the Harvest Festival on Öland.

It's called Skördefestivalen and the whole island of Öland clears out the attics, empties the pumpkin patches and sells the contents on the road side\in the barn.  There are extra points if you have sheep, or ponies that give rides to small children without throwing them off or eating them.   The main road is jam-packed with cars, caravans and mobile homes, and huge, clean lorries.  I am not too certain about the significance of the lorries, but what do I know?    I have never seen so many mobile homes in one place, there were more than I knew existed. We stayed in a cabin, at least that way, I could fit in the shower. 

Generally milling about.  It's what you use tractors for.....

There were a lot of tractors, Ferguson's mainly..... no, I don't know, things with wheels and stuff.  One chap had even had an EU grant to do a proper exhibition of this tractor and other stuff collection.  That is dedication and oomph!

Anyway, nice place is Öland.  Possibly best to go in late spring, less mobile homes and pumpkins.  I have a feeling that nothing can be done about the loppis though.

 Hello! 

Yes, I am still alive, just. In the intervening years such a lot has happened, so I will just list things to wet your appetite and probably/maybe come back to them later. So, sitting comfortably? Then let us begin..

1. Cafe went very well, then Mad M, Cupcake Queen of Norway happened, and I decided to close. You can't work around Mad Cupcake Queens, sometimes you just have to cut your losses.

2. Developed a bad allergy to cat. Almost went into a coma, at the risk of sounding over-dramatic. So poor Psychokitty had to be put down.  She was a wild cat and would only graciously allow us to have any sort of contact, so there was nothing else for it.  I still cry now.

3. We moved. There is a special place in hell for the creators of the British house buying system and a whole blog of invective is coming.

4. Got a job as a country postman. Awesome job, absolutely awesome.  One day I will write a book called Underpants of Sweden - my life as a postman. 

5. Had a massive burnout. Therapy is brilliant, I think that a psychological health check up should be as standard as a physical health check up.  My one regret is not having therapy sooner, I would probably be better at it then...

6. Covid started and I got breast cancer. I am so thankful that I am living here and not in the UK. I also took the opportunity to start gaming instead of waiting until I retire. Marvellous decision, Dragon Age is the best, though have to rediscover keyboard controls. This is probably good for staving off dementia, though not monsters.

7. A slipped disc in my neck (mega ouch) showed bone spurs digging in the spinal column and radiating nerves (oucher)

7. I am still on treatment for cancer today and have had to give up my life as a postie, so technically speaking I am unemployed.  Though I have more than enough to do, societies to join and volunteer organisations to help with. So it is more like being unpaid community worker, combined with having to "listen to my body" (quite frankly, I hadn't realised that it lies so much, especially about the need for chocolate).

So here I am, shouting into the void and shamelessly practicing my writing.  

More to follow!

Can't reply to comments!

Sorry chaps.

Not sure if I should reply to someone called Troll Paladin or whether it would be giving my head for washing, but hey

Yes, elks drive..

Midsummer

As you may have gathered, Sweden is a country that values its' traditions, of which there are many more than the UK.  It is actually very nice to have so many things to celebrate.  Graham grew up with birthdays and Christmas and a smattering of Easter, that his non-Christian family didn't really know what to do with. (Mind you, neither do many Christian families, so no problem there then) and Bonfire Night.  

Today is Midsummer's Day.  It is traditional, on the longest day of the year, to spend most of it in bed nursing your hangover from Midsummer's Eve. As it traditionally rains, this isn't too much of a problem.
It's traditional here to celebrate the eve of something rather than the actual day.  So when people went off early on the day before Midsummer's Eve, it was an Eve Eve,  Would that be called a Lilith? humm.

So, back to Midsummer.

You dash off to the supermarket on the Lilith and load up with pickled herring, potatoes, sausages, fillet, creme fraiche, dill, strawberries and cream, having a blazingly polite row with the old granny who has just taken the last of the Swedish strawberries to add to her 500kg.  You have to make do with Dutch ones.

Then you and everyone in the entire country packs up in a synchronised traffic jam and head to the summer cottage or a relative's summer cottage or a random summer cottage that you've always fancied, with the sill, etc and the beer/schnapps/wood alcohol. This involves more blazingly polite rows, usually with the Police, who can't understand that you need to read the paper whilst driving amongst so many other cars.  (yes this is so common they actually list this together with not talking on the mobile phone.  It explains why I have no fear of meeting elks on the way home, but of meeting other cars).

The main event on Midsummer's Eve is the raising of the midsummer pole, that has an uncanny resemblence to the May Pole of rural England.   There are other similaries....  You can do this in a family, but most go to the nearest Local Historical Society who dress up in traditional clothes, dress the pole in flowers and greenery and inflict folk songs on law-abiding people.  We all (ha ha ha) dance around the pole to the lilting '3 small frogs' 'I'm getting the washing in' etc etc, in our flowery crowns. Absolutely nothing is about sex or fertility or blood, at all, in any way.    As we weren't allowed to go to these innocuous festivities when we were young, I feel the LHSs are failing somewhat, somehow...

You then move on the real party, when you all eat the stuff everyone has bought, slap a load of mosquitoes, slap the first person who has had too much to drink and then just give up and join in with whatever fertility paganism is going.

There are, of course, local (or soberer) variations of these traditions, but not many.

I actually feel it's a shame that the maypole dancing has been relegated to the children and their respective parents/strike that, their respective mothers.  It would benefit the rest of the adults to not be so much up their own arses.  However that is a fine Swedish Tradition and not to be messed with!  The wood alcohol could problem be dispensed with though...

Normal Life Day 2

Day 2 is being uploaded/downloaded/sideappatured on day 3 because I left my computer in the cafe, still good things come to those who wait.... [Ed - ?????relevance????]

The day started off as normal with alarm at 6, loaded the car with all the bags and zoomed off to make carrot cake, fetch the buns and passionfruit cake, order the bread for paninis, make chocolate balls and lentil pies... open up and then collapse in a weeping heap in front of everyone..(as they say here for everything - only joking)

Never thought I'd live to see the day I used sprinkles! (only joking)

Behind any great quiche/cake is a load of washing up

Managed to have a 5 min break and look out of the window.  The slope is still covered with wood anemones, like stars.

There was an evening (!) meeting at 6:30 of the Habo Tourism Network, which was very interesting and potentially very useful.  The women from #sveciatravels were certainly pros.  It was fun meeting people too and putting faces to names. Bit of a bombshell with the announcement that Landhs (one of the best cafes in Sweden) are buying the local cafe here.  

Left just after 9 to drive through the STILL DAYLIGHT!! It's such a lovely drive home (not joking).  (only joking)

'Normal Life"

In the strange world of Facebook, I have been 'challenged' to provide photos and a commentary on 5 consecutive normal days.  Presumably normal in this context means the next 5 days, come what may.  I guess most of us won't win the lottery or a Nobel Prize in the window, so it's a little vignette of how life goes on.  I thought that this was quite a good idea actually, so I've decided to also blog them.

Starting with yesterday, naturally.
Tuesday was the second day of my weekend.  It's the equivalent of the wage slaves' Saturday and yesterday kicked off with the dentist and a root canal filling.  Surprisingly, there are no photos.  I had thought to get lots of other shopping for the cafe, but felt unable to do more than food shopping and I also managed to stop at a garden centre (shame!) and got 10 geraniums.  There are rumours of good weather coming!

Got home, collapsed, had a cup of tea and then heaved myself up to start the accounts, paying invoices and filing.  It's illegal to use Excel here, so I have to pay for a proper book keeping program.  I have no idea how to use it, and keep filling in things in the wrong spaces, but I have every hope that things will turn out alright in the end...

After a bite of lunch, I thought that I'd better iron some tea towels and table clothes for the cafe. This is only half of the way through.

I so need to get a more cheerful ironing board cover!

That lasted until G came home and I was bound by my duty as a good wife and cat slave to start dinner. As I haven't yet got routines going, such as, what G is going to buy on Sat so we can have dinner on Tuesday, we had salmon from the freezer, boiled potatoes and dill and peas pureed with mint.

The cat was very, very pleased with the salmon, ate one skin almost without stopping to chew and promptly went upstairs to sleep it off.  Didn't see her again the rest of the evening.

This is Psychokitty halfway through her dinner, she's not that keen on her picture being taken and hasn't got a diners instagram account.

After that, well, it was getting things in bags, piling them by the door for taking to work the next day and then collapsing into the sofa (again!) and listening to Radio 4 as there was nothing on the telly.  Tell a lie, there was ice-hockey, but I guess we're not yet completely Swedish and so fail the Norman Tebbit test... Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

May flowers

I know it's a cliche, but May really is the most beautiful month.  Even when the weather has been pants, like this year, it's lovely.  The pines and firs send out their new shoots, light against the dark and the birches are like spring green mist.  After a long dry spell, the rain came and it's been raining on and off with daytime temperatures of around 8-12C for a week now.  It feels colder than minus temperatures, probably because it's meant to be nice!  However, the smell is delicious, rich and light with the promise of sun and flowers.  And the cows have been let out!  It's a real family day out, even in the rain!


I'm sitting now in my café, watching the blossoms spiral down from the tree outside the window, hoping for nicer weather and some customers.

"You are the brand"

The café is up and running, though I'm waiting for my first electricity bill to see if it can pay for itself yet.  It's not exactly packed, though people are coming back and bringing friends.  As it's not on the main drag, it's more of a special visit sort of place, so it makes it very weather dependent.  I've been amusing myself by guessing how many visitors will come when I read the weather for the day and so far I've been very right!

Marketing is interesting though.  Trying to convince my marvellous, though London, graphics man that it is actually OK to put up laminated A5 bits of paper cos it's the only thing that works on a hamlet notice board.  Social media is definitely good, if you are prepared to use it to communicate things totally unrelated to any sort of real life and to be relentlessly perky.  It's having a sort of BlackBook effect on me though, probably one of those balance of nature things, like sugar and insulin.

 I've been firmly resisting, so far, fame.  ??? I hear you cry, 'how on earth can you be famous'.  Indeed, but apparently the web abounds with blogs that net huge earnings, lucrative deals and general well-knowness etc. On the same floor as my humble cafe is the office of one of those bloggers, who shall be known here as Cup Cake Queen of Norway.  CCQN is very good at what she does and works relentlessly. She jets off over the world and stays in 5 star hotels advising princesses etc having been a normal housewife before she started the blog thing. It seems so unusual to actively go against society's wish for fame/ the desire to leave something of worth that I think that it must be a hangover from childhood upbringing/indoctrination.  It probably explains my resistance to updating this blog and improving my writing skills.   I'll have to get fame therapy, there must be a blog somewhere....

Big non-salty chocolate balls.

Well, I've been running the café for a month now and feel that I'm settling into things.  Consequently I've been able to think about things like blogs, signs, philosophy and breathing.

One of the main differences between here and London is taste.  This is especially true in the country, where big city sophistication certainly does not rule: big, cheap, simple, but of the highest quality is the desire. Yes, quite. Tastes also vary country to country. Obvious, but it means that things you take for granted don't happen as expected.  Take for example, Chocolate Balls (no, they are not salty!).  Every single child here lives for CBs.  I had my first one when we were on holiday here as a small child and thought they were hideous, sweet, gritty and severely not enough chocolate.  Despite tiffin being much better and basically the same sort of thing, children are essentially conservative and tiffin is a little sophisticated.

Much recipe research ensued and some chocolate balls were constructed.  I thought they tasted lovely, cocoa, butter, espresso coffee, vanilla essence and a high class brand of oat as befitting a high end cafe like this, but I realised that I had no idea what they should taste like.   A randomly sampled mother said that she made her's with no coffee and water.... hum....  I hastily repaired to several well known cafes to shameless nick their knowledge and bought 4 different chocolate balls.  They were twice the size of mine, made with the Swedish equivalent of drinking chocolate (not so chocolate and twice as sweet).  After sampling all 4 with my morning coffee, I was so sugar-high that I was forced by the worried expression of those who share the space here to run up and down the stairs about 10 times.  Some of the sugar was burned off and I was able to stop talking and keep the same space for at least 15sec.

Recipe has since been amended, though still with coffee and cocoa, just less and with some Oboy and milk instead. I've also been forced to buy sprinkles for the first time in my life to coat them. Oh, the degradation...

An even braver new world

I am now no longer an unemployed NHS Manager.  I am officially no longer evil, doubley evil, if Ian Duncan Smith is to be believed re the unemployed. I own and run a café,  Get me!  It's even got a proper espresso machine, which I have every hope of mastering one day.  I think the trick is to have excellent coffee, then no-one will notice you don't know what you're doing.  

You probably want to see pics.  Haven't got any, sorry, but despair not, I will come with my camera next week, once I've got over the shock.

I've been open 1 week and some people have been back!  and brought friends!! others have complained that it isn't 'normal'.  It is normal if you live in a) a city, b) any other country in the world, but some people have not been to either, so, no, it's not normal - it's got a proper espresso machine!!

As you may have noticed from the surfeit of exclaimation marks, it's all been a bit much.  In fact, I can honestly say that I will never, ever do it again.  I have never, never been so stressed in my life.  Not in the redundancy, not in my finals, not in doing the sound for Justin's funeral in front of a whole load of BBC bods or not in standing in front of 500 baying surgeons (in fact, the last was just normal...).  Graham was a complete and utter star and stopped me chewing my own arms off.  A bit later I will write Karin's Guide to Setting Up a Cafe, but now I'm just enjoying a time with no customers for a few minutes - hint, custom is incredibly weather dependent.

Anyone for coffee?

Bird feeding

Like a good wildlife friendly eco person, with delusional tendencies, I decided to feed the birds during the winter.  Last winter they just got a few fat balls hung up outside the kitchen window.  This year I decided to buy 3 feeders and a bag of wild bird food.  After banging in a couple of poles and putting a washing line up, I pegged the feeders out and now have a somewhat saggy, though artistically pleasing (delusional remember!), bird feeding line.  I congratulate myself on unaccustomed foresight when putting this line over the flower bed.  There is now a whole 5kg bag worth of husks scattered over the ground and I can now dig them into the bed!  Result.  I admit that the idea was more for home delivery guano, but I'll take what I can get.
What I didn't reckon on was the fussiness of the birds.  At first I bought Wild Bird Food.  As I would be feeding wild birds...  So they went through it with a fine tooth comb tossing out any wheat/barley seed, keeping the hemp for later and scarfing the sunflower seeds.  Obviously they aren't doing the Caveman Diet and I have less of a flower bed, more a cereal field, though we shall see how many sunflower seeds survived.
Now I just buy Sunflower Seeds for Birds, though I haven't yet got to the stage of getting the ready husked ones!
Think I'll plant sunflowers in the bed this year, they'll look nice above the barley...

Spring (?) Walk

First sunny day in ages today!  Yes, we've seen the sun for more than 2 hours today, I think that this deserves several exclaimation marks - !!!!  In fact, I went for a walk for the first time since, oooh, about November.

See - sunshine!

It was so lovely to got off the path and step into the forest with moss on the ground and a gentle breeze in the tree tops, and no ice to slip on, no snow to hide holes.  I'm becoming such an old woman, it's a disgrace.

On the way home.

The ground ice is beginning to melt and this path will be extremely boggy in a few weeks, but now it's just perfect.  I just need to change my route and revisit my rock.

Big town barista

Yesterday I trotted (well drove carefully and steadily) along to Göteborg (Gothenburg) to have my course in baristaship.  So I don't just thrown things at the coffee machine and hope for the best. I did want to take the train, but they don't run after 8.30pm (WHAT!!) and the course finished at 9.

I thought I'd go a bit earlier so I could do some art galleries and some shops, as I was visiting the 'city'.  Managed to find a parking space, after a bit of getting lostness brought on by G being so small (compared to London).  I overshot my turning off the motorway, thought I'd gone miles out of my way, turned down a street in roughly the right direction (Karin's guide to finding your way - point the nose of the car/bike/human sort of the right way and be prepared to wander a bit).  And there I was! Amazing - I think I'll get an invoice for the congestion charge in a day or two and parking cost 190SEK, though...

Anyway, I mooched around the National Gallery, had lunch in the restaurant there (ha! they think they were pretentious! Pah, come to London if you want to see pretentious!) , wandered the streets and visited a couple of cafes (study visits, of course).  Only just got to the time of the course and I wanted to go back to the forest.  Enough of the city already.   It was sort of 'been there, done that' and near enough everything after London is a village anyway, so I might as well be in a real one.   Don't get me wrong, I love Göteborg, (more than Stockholm, sorry), and it would be interesting to visit megacity other than London, but I'm done with the people and the traffic and need to wear hats and beards inside. 

The course was fab.  Interesting and fun, I'm really good at lattes but need more practice with my froth for cappuccinos.  I'm also looking forward to making an elk out of the foam for when I enter the next national barista competition (NOT!).  

The way home was not so much fun, though I still drove carefully and steadily, also, in addition, very, very slowly.  It started snowing and I've never driving on a motorway, when it was impossible to see where there was a road, let alone where the road markings were.  There was no way I was overtaking anything, especially as it was getting worse and worse, so I was very glad when I lodged behind another slow car and then another came in behind me etc etc, so we convoyed at 45km/h, whilst being roared past by lorries and idiot volvo owners.  It was fun seeing the skid marks further up the way.  Snow stopped completely when the motorway stopped in a roundabout and the road was perfectly clear.

Next step - buying a machine.

Holidays

Hello, we've been on a holiday.  To those of you who want to point out that the whole of my life is a holiday, I say 'pah!' This is the first time in 5 years when the most responsibility I've had is to choose a white or red wine with the lovely sizzling skewer of meat and vegetables on the table before me.  We fetched up in a little hotel in a little bay in the south of Gran Canaria, chosen mainly because there were no white plastic chairs in publicity.

This doesn't mean to say that I haven't been learning, of course.

1) 4 books were almost not enough.  Unfortunately, I got a humdinger of a cold from the Danes, so books by Nobel prize winning scientists were not going to cut it in that situation.  If you're interested: Ragnarok - AS Byatt (fab), Dead Man in Depford- Anthony Burgess (very good writing, but didn't like), Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman, (excellent),  Act of Creation - Koestler (didn't finish cos of virus infiltration)
2) White Rioja is really, really good on a hot day.
3) The 80:20 rule really does work.  If you are at all body conscious, do NOT go to a resort with lots of Swedes. 80% will look and dress better than you. If they are Danes, 80% will be better dressed than you, but dumpier.  If you go to a resort patronised by Brits, 80% will be dumpier and worse dressed, so best to do that.
4) There is a Marks and Spencers in Las Palmas!!  Hurrah and lots of t shirts and ready meals.  Saved us a fortune cos there was a microwave in our hotel room.  Marvellous idea, a mini-kitchen in a wardrobe.
5) We are officially middle-aged.  We went on THREE coach trips, yes, three... We did redeem ourselves slightly with two local bus trips, but still.... all we needed was a thermos flask....
6) I absolutely LOVE Gran Canaria.  We are seriously considering moving to Teror, because one has to live in terror....  No but seriously, I may close the cafe for a month next January and move to the south of Gran Canaria, possibly Mogan or Porto del Mogan and write.  Graham can bring me tapas and white rioja at regular intervals, so he'll have something to do.

Ahhh, holidays....

The view from 'our' sunbeds

 

Groaning Boards

This anniversary Graham gave me quite a treat.  Usually I get taken to sample the gastronomic delights of MacDonalds, or, as a special treat, for our 25th I had fish and chips at the English pub in town here.  However, this year, we booked at a lovely, little, hotel in Mullsjö to sample their famous Julbord.  The Christmas table is very popular here and people go with their workmates, families, friends etc several times to several places in the run up to Christmas Eve. Then everyone talks about how it's all gone downhill since last year and they'll never go again and they can never look a meatball in the face again.  It's traditional.
Every Julbord has the same basic ingredients: several million types of pickled dill, smoked cold meats, several different ways of doing salmon, mackerel, herring and cod, cold sauces by the thousand, beetroot salad and mimosa salad, then hot stuff - meatballs, small hot dogs, spareribs, ham, brown beans, red cabbage, janssons temptation, lutfisk (cod preserved in quicklime), boiled potatoes and dop (bread dipped in broth), a cheese board, a sweet table with sweets, a pudding table with traditional cheesecake, fruit, creams of various sorts and biscuit type things.
At Björkhagan, it was all beautifully prepared and very well cooked and there were piles of people all queueing politely.  I'm so pleased I booked in the family name and so we got in early and first (yay for using what you've got!).  There were also piles of food, with chefs running in and out, 10 sorts of pickled herring, 5 sorts of salmon, assorted mackerel, smoked elk, lamb, wild boar, turkey, etc etc.  juicy spareribs and meatballs, etc.  However after looking at the alleged cheddar, I feel that trip to Neals Yard should be mandatory for all Swedes and tinned mandarins and pineapple rings on the pudding table were bizarre, but hey, why not! Graham had a big bowlful and felt quite nostalgic for the 70s.  Apart from a small amount of boiled peas for the lutfisk and lettuce garnish for the eggs, mayo and caviar, there were no vegetables or salad.  Lots of sauces, and cream etc.
After 5 sorts salmon, and some hot stuff I was groaning gently in a corner and was persuaded to try a melon slice before I threw in the towel.  How people pack it all in I have no idea.  We didn't drink anything but a small bottle of Julmust (a cola type drink) and normal water, but people were stuffing their faces with glogg, aquavit and beers as well as all that food.  Now I have to go back and try the cold meats, pickled herrings, breads, sweets and puddings.  May be it'll have to be another 2 goes!

The Joy of DIY

For 25 years I've had a dining set of handmade Arts and Crafts chairs, table, dresser, sofa, serving table and two plant stands. The set was made for my grandmother's parents as a wedding present, came to my grandparents as a wedding present and then to Graham and me and are lovely. Oak, carved with apples.  Apples are unusual as the most common motif is pear, and this sort of furniture is two a penny around here, if you want some. My grandmother had had the dining chairs recovered in the 1970s. Fair enough, they were in constant use.... re-covered in brown vinyl.  This has been on them, wearing extremely well, being extremely practical and looking foul, until this summer.  I've been meaning to reupholster them for years, but never got around to doing it/finding suitable material etc.  And then, a pile of material samples came into the Second Hand shop where I've been volunteering.  Well!  strike whilst the iron is hot, so to speak.  All you need is a heavy duty stapler and you can go from dark brown vinyl to this.

Really, it is that simple!

Jar o'whisky o

"wine makes life merry" according to Ecclesiastes, but getting hold of it over here is an, errrmmm, interesting experience.  Take Graham for example.  For years didn't touch a drop, had a few beers on occasion and a glass of wine on special occasions, but definitely no more than 2 and was perfectly happy with that state of affairs.  You would have thought that he would do well in a country with a huge history of alcoholism and hence very strict alcohol controls.

You can only buy alcohol over about 3% from the state controlled shops "System Bolaget", no delivery and if you buy a lot, they quiz you, age of consent is 20 years old and there are posters about drinking too much all over the place.  The choice is OK, but limited really and the prices are about 1/3 more expensive than the UK.  There is also far, far too much cheap (?) Riesling available.  As you go around, you get increasingly furtive, your nose starts swelling and going red and the tendency to go 'hic' increased exponentially.  It has improved though, when I was a child, you had to place your order in advance, go round the back alleys to a hatch and have your brown paper bag passed through, cash only.  It was easier to buy hard drugs.

Sunday dinner came around this week and we had a glass of wine (chardonnay, yes, I know!!) with the chicken.  He sat contemplating it, sipped it, sighed with appreciation and said 'it's so nice to have a glass of wine, it feels so sophisticated, I'll have another thanks....... [pauses] the system alone here is enough to turn you into an alcoholic'.

Before he was quite happy to not drink, but the sheer disapproval rating here is enough to make you want to go 'nahhhh' and drink a bottle of vodka at one go. Terribly teenagerish, I know, but there it is.  I long for the days when I could go into Majestic and buy 12 bottles, to have a G&T to relax after a hard day's work a couple of times a week.  Here I'm filled with a terrible urge to explain myself after buying 3 bottles, I sup furtive glasses of wine from a box at night and no G&Ts (cos of no Plymouth Gin, just stuff I've never heard of, allegedly from London) and no one I know goes out for a drink.  If I do they get completely rat-arsed within 10 minutes, which is not fun.

Pricing does work though, we buy much less, but then, we never had a drinking problem...

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!