8a.m. Friday

Left my work keys at home and had to walk back to pick them up,
but it was a beautiful morning for it.

Back from the shops

New hat
and
new outfit.

"Glittery bits"

From the front and

from the side window of the car on the way home from riding today.

"There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by"

Noel Coward

From now on no more doom and gloom from me.
I've shuk off that black doog
and my rosey specs are back on.
And one day I might explain the title

Troubled times

It looks peaceful, but last weekend 19 windows were broken here.

From tot to ten

Miss T. walked up to the boat with me last Saturday and helped pull it up out of the water and turn it over for the winter, but not untill we had broken the ice.

Autumn

Happy Birthday Pa

Hope you can hear this.

Grrr....Brrr....

We woke up to snow this morning.
Even for us it's a bit too soon.

Powerless

This hydro-electric power station is not doing what it's supposed to be doing.

A beautiful sunny autumn day,

except for the strong wind that has brought down our power cables, see the trees in the background. We've got the woodburner to keep us warm, but no power for the water pump means no tea,

so we head back to town, past the lake we swam in this summer.

Back in town in time for riding this afternoon which included jumping and cantering for the first time. This was taken on the way home from riding, in the background the mountains are covered in cloud which is dumping snow not rain as the temperature gets close to freezing point here.

Tenth Birthday Cake

(The cream cake was inside the box)

Clever headless squirrel

I nearly took a photo of it, but even I am not that cold hearted. This morning on the way to school we ( Miss T, Strawbs and me) saw a decapitated squirrel. Its head was flat on the road surface and it was spilling a few guts, organs etc., we didn't investigate too closely, otherwise it was whole. But the saddest thing of all is that this dead squirrel lay on a zebra crossing. If only the driver had been as street wise as the squirrel.

One other weird trafficy thing that happened today, at least this is what I was told, but I am sure I didn't.
And yes, they were driving me nuts, but surely I can't be that bad yet? And I would have thought they could have shown a bit more gratitude towards me trying to save their skins from speeding bicyclists. Anyway, whilst walking along a busy street in charge of 25 fifteen year olds and 26 visiting foreign fifteen year olds, who all claim they heard me, I apparently yelled at them to "Get off the psychopath!"

Oooh, look at the nice moo cow!

Barred

With no spare time this week or last, I am having to rely on photos 4 weeks old, taken at the local open air museum. But there is a connection to how I feel right now:
stuck in my tracks and wanting to let off steam and wishing I could put some other children behind bars, not just for my own protection, but also for the protection of others and themselves. Barring them from school has also crossed my mind, but we don't do that here, and if we did, I don't think it would really help unless they had a caring home environment, which sadly many of them don't.
The summer holidays are definitely over.

More from the twilight zone

Just been out to dinner to celebrate Miss.T's 10th birthday. When we got back to the car the front passenger door stood wide open. We all assumed the worst until we had checked through the luggage. Nothing missing . Everything just as we had left it. And none of us can remember actually closing that door.

It has been a long week. We are now all back at school and I have spent the entire week with a class of 35 angels most of whom had not behaved well enough to join their own classes on camping trips up to the mountains. Considering they started the week letting off fireworks in the classroom, I think I have done well to end the week with the classroom and all it's contents still intact, and all 35 still breathing with ten fingers and toes attached.

Spot the frog

A happy man!

We got a call from the police yesterday.
Someone had found and handed/wheeled in
the M.O.T.H's magic bike,
stolen way back in June 2006.
We never expected to see it again
and certainly not in such good condition:
new mudgaurds had been fitted
and the tyres didn't even need pumping.
On Friday Miss T. had left her rucksack at the library
with her purse in it, which contained a large chunk of her savings.
On Saturday, before we had even noticed it was missing, a librarian called to say
that they had found Miss.T's rucksack and purse,
not one krona was missing.
Pike, purse and bike, life can't get much better than this.

Got him!

We went out on Saturday after the elusive pike. Last time we were out for ten hours and all we caught were four perch, which made a decent lunch, but we wanted the pike that had swum off with two of our wobblers. This time we were only out in the boat for a few minutes when he snapped on my fourth cast just seconds after the bait had hit the water. He put up a good fight, but with the M.O.T.H. on the other end of the rod he had no chance.
Baked fish and potatoes for dinner last night, fish cakes for lunch today and the rest of him is in the freezer.

Perky perch

The perch were up for lunch.
Miss T. caught three big ones.
But the pike were nowhere in sight.
Will try again this weekend.

Blueberry picking

We hooked some berries to a thread,
ate more than a few,
the rest we took home.
More about our not so little silver fish anon.

Back on Thursday

Off into the wilds for a few days.
Hoping to catch some pike and perch.

Hudik

Hudiksvall is a small fishing port on the east coast.
We stopped here for a meal and saw this green van
with the words:
the salmon ambulance
written on the side.
Why?

Halsingland

Having left little sister and family at the railway station in Sundsvall to take the fast train back to Arlanda Airport and then home to London, we avoided returning to an empty house and continued down into Halsingland to pay a short visit to the M.O.T.H's little sister. More pictures from that trip soon.

More from Stockholm

A rune stone and a canon help prop up a building in the old town.

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Sylvia kindly provide a backdrop with their city palace,
but they didn't invite us in for tea.

In front of the palace.
A soldier's life is terribly hard.

The last week in July 2007

11p.m. and all good children should be in bed, but this one is sitting on her cousin's shoulders and listening to her favourite band playing at the Great Lake Rave street festival.

Here we stopped for coffee and cakes before the storm broke.

After a quick swim in the lake the hail finally drove us to take shelter in the ladies changing rooms.

A few more angles taken at Skansen, the open air museum in Stockholm.

Reflecting on a grey seal.

Reindeer?

No thank you, we've already had some.
More pictures from Stockholm soon.

Entertaining guests

After three weeks of wearing out visitors, first big sister and family and then little sister and family, we are now down to the four of us again. It is a bit quieter, but we miss you and really enjoyed having you all here. Here are a few of the things we have been up to:

Climbing mountains and riding cable cars.

Looking for elk, and finding them eventually.

Fishing for food.

Swimming inspite of the weather.
Sitting in wait at the airport.
More soon... i.e. the next few days, not the next few weeks;-)