High Water

Oh, and I'm so outrageously behind on photo-sharing that I will never ever catch up, but here, have a few from our first post-surgery trip to Stockholm, a week or so back. We hung out in the comics library in Kulturhuset, which is basically the best thing ever. It was also possibly the only place with a reasonable air temperature in the whole of Stockholm that day.

Just outside there's an 'eco cafe'. Loads of plants growing in systems made of recycled plastic bottles hanging in the windows.

( Kulturhuset )


In health news, I am healing "beautifully" & don't need any sort of plaster or dressing any more, I will be going back to physio once my physio person comes back from holiday, and... I have a cold, which really doesn't seem that much to complain about after Everything Else, though I have to say I'll be glad when the world stops spinning every time I make a sudden head movement. Otherwise I've been sickeningly lively, even without having slept properly in a week.

Here! A HEAP of photos. Mostly flowers. One cat.

( Read more... )

We're pushing on towards summer now, which means light, though not necessarily warmth.

( illustration )

It's getting harder to sleep because there's at least some light for so much of the night. By midsummer, midnight will basically look like the 10:30 photo above! I have conflicted feelings about this because on the one hand, loads of light, and really light nights can be beautiful. On the other hand, sleep is kind of nice...

( Photo dump from my latest couple of daily shuffles )

(Basically, I try to take myself out of the house daily, and shuffle a little way around the area. Since it's the same general area all the time - given that I can't go that far - I try to find random details to take photos of to keep myself entertained. Now I'm done throwing post after post at you for the day.

Also, Eurovision: I should never listen to the lyrics. I need to basically work from the assumption that they're all terrible love songs and that listening will make me angry and hold mental score purely based on the quality of hats on show.)

Good morning. Today the cat made a blanket fort. It was the Best Fort Ever.



( more terrible photos from my phone )

Isn't he just begging for captions?

As pointed out, many things are crap or kind of hard work right now.

But as my hairdresser says, at least I have a cool haircut.

I'm starting my job properly tomorrow - I've been working since the middle of last week but at home, Organising All The Things. Commuting time, basically.

( Although I did travel to Uppsala a couple of times last week. )

I do have a brand new phone which I can check my mail & go online a certain amount with, so maybe I won't vanish completely. But!

brigid posted about Christmas traditions. Obviously, this year mine are in flux.

In my childhood we had:

( Rules! Very Important Rules about what colour candles you could have! )

And since then I've either been home for a simplified version of the above or family have come to me and we've done pretty much business as usual, but less formal.

And now I'm in Sweden! I'm keeping hold of the mince pies, but that's about my only concession to Britishness this year. It will be presents and insane amounts of food on the 24th, and complete collapse on the 25th. Different food, etc. (More fish. Don't even pretend you're surprised.)

We've also got different advent decorations:


Advent candles. That's moss in the base with little mushroom decorations attached into it. You can have things other than mushrooms - Val's parents also have little birds - but that's what we've got!

(Yes, that is a glass statue of a raised fist of solidarity in the background. It's a candle holder. ...what are you looking at me like that for.)



Advent star. A lot more people in the houses around us have the flatter-looking sort of star you can see in most of these pictures. Pretty sure this is a German tradition, but what about christmas as celebrated here isn't?



Well, maybe this. Yule goat! There is a story to how goats are involved but I gather it is Definitely Not Pagan No Not At All Nothing To See Here.

That's all we've got up for decorations here. The tree and all that will go up at Val's parent's as we'll be there for christmas anyway and the cat would only do something terrible to a tree if we had one.


P.S. How many limbs does this cat have? And how on earth does it arrange them like this? And can that really be as comfortable as his face seems to indicate he thinks it is?

As previously reported, it snowed in October. About half a week later the world still looked like this:

( Snow )

This photo was not taken when I was out cycling. I am slightly too fond of my own neck.

Coming home from school, about a week ago:

( Do you remember when there was light in the evenings? Well. )

Out on my bike today, with the snow having left:

( 2nd November )

& now it's, you know, November. So I'm planning on reading Sent i november and feeling vaguely melancholy, mostly.

And I guess making the Christmas things that'll benefit from sitting around in a cupboard for a couple of months. (I'm making mincemeat and then mince pies, as the single British contribution to Christmas. I've never actually made mincemeat before, so we'll see how that goes.)

I've been thinking a lot about identity in various forms lately. I've been trying to write about how I feel about my national identity, but that's defeated me several times now, so I'll give it a break and maybe come back later. Instead, expression of identity through appearance.

( Me. And the quest for something that fits. )