Silhouettes on ice
Disney on ice
8.00 am. A perfect winter’s day today. Minus 10 C with glorious sunshine. A crunchy layer of snow like Royal Icing on a cake.
A day that really makes you happy to be alive.
The lake is 40 cm of solid ice. That’s quite a lot: imagine the ice reaching from your fingertips up to your elbow. Heck – if I had a bus I could drive it on the ice quite safely. Or land a plane on it – like someone did a couple of years ago. Quite an amazing sight.
Today, Oscar and I had the whole lake to ourselves. I ventured out into the middle and took this shot. You can see me on the right (just imagine if I really was this tall in real life, instead of being a gnome!), my spark (a large wooden seat with runners that you kick to move yourself across the ice and snow), and on the left is the dog.
What is a perfect day for you?
You can see a picture of me and my spark here.
Where’s that help?
It’s half-term here in Sweden, or as the Swedes call it, ‘sports break’. That’s right, you’re supposed to go away and enjoy the snow at some ski resort or other. Of course – you can just stay at home and enjoy it too. The only problem is that then you are subjected to harrowing bouts of cooking and sleepovers.
Like yesterday. Anklebiter #1 had a friend over for a sleepover. They were up and breakfasted by 6.30 am and raring to go! By eight in the morning, they had finished their art session in the kitchen. They had obviously been painting and gluing and using glitter with blindfolds on. Either that – or the fairy godmother exploded in there.
The floor was a shimmering pool of golden glitter, with dunes of the stuff piled up everywhere. During her explosion, that fairy godmother had managed to splatter the walls, kitchen cabinets and floor with big splotches of purple paint.
So – please send help! Preferably a good cleaning lady or a fairy godmother (the non-exploding type).
The day was saved when I found some old pizza in the back of the fridge, which meant no cooking. Oh dear: I’ve just shot my Betty Crocker image to pieces!
Help! I’m turning into Betty Crocker…
… or Delia Smith or Nigella Lawson! (Well, if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything…) I’m getting seriously worried. You see, it all started off so innocently – with tacos evening on Monday. Yes – I had to defrost the tacos quorn and put it into a saucepan! I warmed the tortillas in the oven (OK – they were in there for too long and had turned into crunchy toast.) I even mashed a couple of avocados and called it guacamole.
Then yesterday, Anklebiter #1 wasn’t feeling too well – and as it is winter break over here – I let her watch TV and then made banana pancakes for brunch. From scratch. I repeat – from scratch. With flour and eggs and stuff.
Exhausted by the concentration it took not to burn anything too much, I was ready to collapse and serve sandwiches for tea. Or even better – let the anklebiters fend for themselves. (I mean – they’re 5 and 7 so old enough to cook a three-course meal, aren’t they?) It was not to be. Anklebiter #1 wanted to cook with mama: because it’s fun and you never know where the food is going to end up.
The simple soup I suggested turned into veggie lasagne, with something that resembled a cheese sauce … I think. I’ve never made cheese sauce before. Is it supposed to be lumpy? How long does it take before it gets thick? And why were those flour lumps sticking to the bottom of the pan?
I suppose it might have helped if I had actually measured out the ingredients instead of guessing wildly.
I layered the tomato sauce with the cheese sauce and the lasagne thingies and then put sprinkled cheese on top. I decided to have a well-deserved blogging session while it was cooking in the oven.
It was not to be: was the top supposed to be a huge bubble? Is cheese meant to expand like that? Lid on or off? (On – keeps the burnt smell in.) And why was the top of the sauce that funny black colour?
The verdict? We made enough lasagne for six people, but the kids and I ate the whole lot! (Sir Pe was out of flame-throwing distance at a meeting.) So, actually, burnt top and lumpy bottom notwithstanding – (you do realize I am referring to the lasagne, right?) – it was a success!
Fat Tuesday
So, today it is Shrove Tuesday – or Fat Tuesday (fettisdag) as it is called here in Sweden. It’s a kind of Mardi Gras but colder and without the carnivals and music… OK – so it’s nothing like Mardi Gras, but let’s not pick nits, OK?
In England, where I come from, we call today Pancake Tuesday as it is traditional to eat pancakes on the last day before Lent. Pancakes are very common over here – as a main meal (yes – you can eat a dessert as your main meal!) – and lots of people regularly eat yellow pea soup and pancakes very Thursday. So, there wouldn’t be any point in eating pancakes. Instead, the Swedes eat a Lenten bun called a semla – from the Latin word semilia, which means flour. (Hey – I knew that studying Latin would come in handy one day)
Just look at those babies – delicious! (Well, except for the cream, which I don’t like. But apart from that….) In the olden days, people ate plain wheat buns soaked in milk (called hetvägg – which means …er.. hot wall – don’t ask me why!) Then about two hundred years ago, the modern day bun took shape: the bun is spiced with cardamon, and the top is cut off. Hollow out the inside of the bun, fill with almond paste, top with whipped cream and put the lid back on. Dust with powdered sugar. And enjoy!
I’m happy I’m not in Poland because today it is Sledziowka - or herring day!
Although you are supposed to eat semlor only on Shrove Tuesday, luckily for me, they are available from New Year until Easter. So, sit back and enjoy your hot wall, herring, pancake or Lenten bun today! Or a cup of spicy tea or cold water, if that’s what you prefer.
Le Grande Interview – part one
How do I look? No spinach in between my teeth or holes in my trousers, I hope! Good… I’m ready for my interview with the very funny Po aka the South African Sea Monkey. She had a lot of questions, so after a quick cup of coffee, we got started. I was going to offer her some home-baked cakes, but she declined. I wonder why?
How did you meet Sir Pe and how long before you got married?
Gosh – she does know how to pick them! Well, I had just written a Student’s Book (to learn English as a Foreign Language) for a large Swedish educational publisher’s and they invited me over to Stockholm to write the Teacher’s Guide as well as other educational goodies for kids at Swedish schools.
So, I took a three-month sabbatical from my teaching job in England, and without a single word of Swedish in my baggage, turned up in Stockholm one sunny day in April back in 1996. After a couple of weeks, I decided that I ought to at least know some phrases in Swedish (it gets a bit monotonous saying Hej! all the time and sounding like the Swedish chef out of Sesame Street). So, I enrolled in a Swedish class for beginners. I found myself sitting next to the only Englishman in the class: his bow tie was a dead give-away!
This gentleman invited me to his 40th birthday party in The Limerick, a good old Irish pub in Stockholm. The date: 14th May. We went there after class, and some of Bow Tie’s workmates were there – including Sir Pe.
Now, I thought Sir Pe was a native Swede because he hadn’t spoken English for so long that when he did, HE sounded like the Swedish Chef with really bad English. Turns out he was a Swedish citizen (still is), but came originally from England.
We exchanged e-mail addresses (he was one of the few people I knew back in 1996 who actually had an e-mail address), corresponded for a couple of weeks and finally went out on a date sometime near the end of May.
Dazzled by my wit, modesty, good English and cooking skills (I burnt a hole in his coffee pot the first time I made coffee), we got engaged on 1st July 1996.
The words whirlwind romance perhaps spring to mind. Either that or: They’re nuts! After my three months were up, I went back to England, resigned from my job, packed up everything and found someone to rent my flat.
We didn’t get married in haste though – and waited for nearly a year before tying the knot in England on May 17th, 1997.
Oh my – doesn’t time fly by when reminiscing? Only time for the one question… Po had to get back to her place PDQ because she is hosting Strange Shores #4. So, visit her blog for a plethora of more real-life tales from nutty ex-pats.
But is it art?
The normally peaceful – let’s not have a conflict – Stockholm has been suffering from a wave of protests this week about a so-called art project by Magnus Gustafsson, former student of Konstfack: Sweden’s University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. For his graduation thesis, he carried out an art project, which consisted of a two-minute film of a black-masked person (himself) defacing the interior of a train compartment by spraying the walls with spray paint. He then smashes a window and jumps out to carry on spraying the walls of the tube station. All in all, he managed to cause 12,000 dollars’ worth of damage.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I understand that graffiti is a sub-culture and I’m not totally against it as an expression of art. But the actual act of spraying paint in a carriage full of passengers and then smashing the window is … well, against the law.. and it’s usually called ‘vandalism’ in other contexts.
How can it be that what is vandalism in one context is art in another? Mr. Gustafsson, who goes under the name NUG, is doing very well out of this controversy, thank you very much. His film is called Territorial Pissing (and yes – it is a Nirvana song -quite right!) and the copies he has sold have raked in about 13,000 dollars so far – half has gone to him, and half to the gallery owner who sold them.
The whole thing whiffs of: we are all equal, but some are more equal than others. I’m betting that if a young immigrant had made a film of himself defacing a train, then he would have been carted off to jail faster than he could have said, “But officer — it’s art!”
Terrible writing
Jenners over at Life with a Little One has come up with a game to entertain us all. This game is called Bad Writing and it sort of tickled my funny bone.
It shouldn’t be too hard to write badly – after all, I’ve had plenty of practice!
EXTRACT ONE:
After the analysis and validation phase of support strategies for customer satisfaction parameters, we maximized our team support assessment skills and focused on empowering our team competency abilities in order to utilize the paradigms of our validation strategies.
From: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit. By A. Fullavitt
EXTRACT TWO:
The cliché is a long lost art that these days seems to be a hit and miss affair, a hotchpotch, if you like – a kind of curate’s egg. Although when they are good they are excellent and when they are bad they are awful, it is still true to say that many hands make light work even if it can get a bit crowded in the kitchen with too many cooks with ants in their pants fighting over the broth and the wooden spoons. And even if you can’t stand the heat and should get out of the kitchen, I pose this question to you: Why close the stable door when the horse has bolted? It makes as much sense as saying it’s as easy as pie when everyone knows that it is the early bird that gets the worm. After all, there is no I in team, right?
From: A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. By Bob’s Your Uncle.
No really… we do have a contest winner… honest!
Drum roll, please! Because we really do have a winner of the book Falling Leaves!
If you left me a mnemonic suggestion, I wrote your name down on a slip of brightly-coloured paper. If you left me two suggestions, then your name was entered in the draw twice and so on.
The anklebiters got all excited and decided that your names should be tossed into their doll bath. (Shouldn’t so much pink be against the law?)
We mixed them up well and then Anklebiter #1 closed her eyes and drew out a slip. Slowly, she read out the name…
…………..
“Oh, it’s says ‘Lucy Come in’, mama! Who’s that?”
Lucy Come In is none other than…
Imagine a fanfare of trumpets here and the sound of satisfaction as the gauntlet is returned to its owner.
Louise of Carmine Superiore! That’s right: by a serendipitous twist of fate, she who demanded a contest also won it! I wanted to do another draw (in case you thought it was rigged) but the anklebiters said that wouldn’t be fair.
And then the dog started wolfing down the slips and things went rapidly downhill from there… So, congratulations Louise! And a BIG thank you to everyone who joined in. I had great fun reading all your suggestions. What can I say? I’m so proud (sniff! sob!) of having so many creative readers…
Send me your address details, Louise, and your new book will soon be winging its way towards you!
And the winner is…
… being eaten! Obviously very tasty.
Er… well.. I’ll have to get back to you tomorrow with the name of the winner of the mnemonic contest!
Until then – just remember that every dog has his day!
Give-away (dog not included)!
Roll up! Roll up! Come and get it while it’s hot… This is it: my first give-away contest! (OK! OK! I’ve already given away my dignity, parts of my sanity, a satisfying recipe and some basic instructions about how to cook and sew…)
Anyway, do you remember that a few days ago I told you about Pluto being plutoed when it was demoted from its status as a planet? Hands were thrown up in horror and cries were thrown around with abandon.
Once upon a time, we had a very useful mnemonic to help us remember the names and positions of the planet: My very elegant mother just served us nine pizzas. But with Pluto gone, we need a catchy new mnemonic to help us remember. In fact, the lovely Louise over at Carmine Superiore threw her metaphorical gauntlet (well, probably more of a warm woolly glove at this time of year) down and demanded a mnemonic contest. So – here it is!
I know you’re on the edge of your keyboards … this is what you can win!
No – the dog isn’t up for grabs: the book is! It is called Falling Leaves (The true story of an unwanted Chinese daughter) and is written by Adeline Yen Mah. It is the story of the author’s childhood in China during the civil war, except the war is not in focus here, but the terrible stepmother. Rejected by her father and siblings and abused by her stepmother, Adeline survives the pain of her awful childhood, moves to the States and manages to overcome the lonely and painful start she had in life. It is a book about destructive families – and also about how the human spirit can emerge triumphant. It is about the will to endure – and to love. Highly recommended!
So, what do you have to do to win? Well, all you have to do is to come up with a new mnemonic that we can use to remember the planets. Use these letters in this order: M V E M J S U N. Leave your new catchy phrase in my comments and you’ll be entered into the draw.
Some of my readers wanted me to come up with a mnemonic. I’ve done better and come up with three for your pleasure!
Many very elderly mushrooms just smell utterly nauseating.
My vicious elephant may just smash us nicely.
And – rather appropriately:
My very exceptional mumbo-jumbo spouts uncanny nonsense!
The competition closes on Wednesday morning – my time (LFT = Lady Fi Time).
Crazy cooking: hearts and sprinkles
In order to wish you all a very Happy Valentine’s Day and all that, I’ve cooked you up a storm in the kitchen!
OK! The word cook is probably an overstatement. Strike it.
Those of you who know that I tried to boil cabbage without actually using water do not need to fear!
No heat or complicated recipes were needed. Just some imagination – and a jar of sprinkles.
You can see that the red swirl in the middle is a heart, right? Good!
So, how can you create this explosion of tastes?
Get some vanilla yoghurt and put in a bowl.
Now get some ketchup – yes, you heard right! KETCHUP! – and swirl the ketchup into the yoghurt in a heart shape. Decorate with sprinkles.
If you don’t like the crunchy taste of chocolate with the tomato juiciness of ketchup and the creaminess of the vanilla, then leave out the sprinkles.
Voilá! The perfect romantic dessert!
Psst! On Sunday evening/Monday morning, I’ll be having a contest! Yes, where you can actually win something… But let’s keep it our little secret, shall we?
Cool!
As you may or may not know, I have two jobs – both to do with writing. On Mondays, I take the little blue tram into Stockholm to sit in the office and work for a day. It’s nice to get out of the house and my usual routine of coffee, work and fetching the kids from kindergarten and school. It’s my day of treating myself to a lunch out, doing a bit of mindful shopping (usually at the health food shop and the book store) and pretending to be hip while sitting at my favourite café and drinking a really good coffee.
On the way back from lunch, coffee and a haircut (it’s amazing what you can pack into a lunch hour!), I was stopped in my tracks by .. er… well, ice. As you have probably gathered, Swedes are obsessed with the stuff: they build bars, and restaurants, and hotels out of it. Or they can be found enjoying the icy surfaces of lakes and inland seas at the weekends as they skate on it.
It turned out quite n-icely.
Oh – what is it? A big block of ice, lying on a bed of ice chips. Inside the ice block there are a lot of corks. It was an advertising stunt for the Wine Cellar. I wanted to join in and sample a few wines, but you had to be ‘in the trade’ in order to be allowed entrance. Apparently, just claiming to love wine wasn’t enough.
Sadly, but soberly, I went back to work.
Winter is blue!
It’s official! Thanks to Kelli in Denmark, I’m now sending off this catchy new tourism slogan to the Tourist Board: Welcome to Scandinavia: where the weather is out of focus even when you haven’t been drinking!
After the wet-washing-on-a-line kind of weather, Monday dawned clear and bright. As I picked my way carefully on the icy path at 6.45 am (out walking with the dog), I looked up to see the most wondrous moon setting behind the trees. It was ablaze – a glorious orange ball. I rushed back at break-neck speed to get my camera. (You need to understand that break-neck speed on a path of sheer ice is the equivalent of the speed of a snail…) Oh – the things I do for you, dear readers! Risk neck and limb to take a fabulous photo.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t it! The moon was nearly below the trees by the time I had slid my way back to a suitable shooting point. See that orange ball? That is the moon taunting me as it slides out of view.
But just imagine this: an enormous Chinese Lantern … without the gold lettering… and orange in colour… That’s right! A huge orange hanging in the sky. So big you could see all its dimples … its lunar cellulite, if you like.
And have you noticed how blue the photo is? Just one more bit of proof that winter is so cold it is blue!
I like it.
Wish you were here!
Sunday morning. A wet mist hangs like damp washing over the countryside. It’s cold. It’s wet. It’s unpleasant. And no – the photos aren’t out of focus. The weather is.
As that old cliché goes: it’s good weather for ducks. Their orange feet are the only flashes of colour to cheer up the day.
What a shame that you aren’t here to share it!
Anyway, if you want to escape our candy floss mist, then head on over to the third riveting edition of Strange Shores: a blog carnival written by ex-pats. It’ll leave you shaken, and quite possible, stirred.
The planet formerly known as…
The cosmos is a place of mystery and wonder – never static, forever changing and challenging our perceptions of what it is.
Look at this picture… does it look any different to you? Because it does to me!
Let me give you a clue…
Did you ever recite this when you were growing up?
“My very elegant mother just served us nine pizzas.”
You did? Then you know that this was a way of remembering the nine planets in our solar system.
HANG ON! Nine? Well, when I was growing up, there were nine planets! But things change – and from 2006 – there are officially only eight planets. So, if you look at the picture again, you’ll see that one of those planets is missing: the cold, mysterious one.
The planet formerly known as Pluto.
If you remember, this caused quite an outcry. It turned out that people were emotionally attached to that little ex-planet. Normally mild astronomers turned into wild beasts as they fought for the planet to retain its status as … well, a true planet.
Indeed, such was the outrage that the American Dialect Society chose ‘plutoed’ as the 2006 Word of the Year. The definition of ‘to pluto’ says it all: to demote or devalue someone or something.
Pluto: Discovered in 1930, Plutoed in 2006.
No one likes change – yet without it, there would be no progress. What we once took for granted as a truth can be overturned. And that is a good lesson for us to remember: there are no absolute truths; just many different perspectives of the truth.
The cosmos is dynamic and in constant motion. We have to unlearn what we once learnt. Pluto has now been re-classified as a dwarf planet and is one of the Kuiper Belt objects.
It is not a demotion, but a change of identity for Pluto. It may no longer be the planet furthest away from the sun, but it is now a pioneer; one of the first citizens on the distant but teeming shore of the unknown.
Skiing back then
A ghostly mist has settled itself over the lake. Now and then you can see apparitions of the hardy – and brave – folk who are out on the lake, skiing in the slush or skating on the lake. The snowracers race like bullets over the snow. Everyone is bundled up in hats, gloves and bulky coats.
Cue music. Cue twirling swirling colours. We go back to the turn of the 19th century. Travel back in time more than one hundred years ago …
… to this: Australia!
The start of girls' snowshoe race, Kiandra - Australia
I’m captivated by these hardy pioneers! They look as if they are going off to church – not about to start a race. In the cold snow.
Apparently, round the end of the 1800s, skis were called snowshoes in Australia. One of the oldest ski clubs in the world was started in Kiandra and still exists today.
No gloves, long skirts and hats. I like to think that, although physically confined by their clothing, their spirits were free as they raced down the hill at exhilarating speeds.
Did you know that Flickr: The Commons is a place where institutes can upload their old photos and save them for posterity? This photo is part of the Powerhouse Collection.
Rubber thingies and broken bones
In honour of his foot/leg’s second anniversary, Sir Pe was obviously bored at work kind enough to snap this photo for you of his rubber thingies. The ones with nails that you put on the bottom of your shoes and strap around your ankle. Even if you fell over, you would need all the skills of a yogi in order to impale yourself on them. But good luck trying.
Actually, you if you really wanted some home-made acupuncture, then I would advise going with the Leki stick. It’s got a sharp little spike that you can pull out when needed – it gives you extra grip on the ice. Actually, I was quite impressed to see that the crutches Sir Pe came home with (after his fall two years ago) also had these spike contraptions on them.
Anyway – back to the saga: on the night that Sir Pe came crashing to the ground, so did lots of other people. In fact, Sir Pe found himself in the waiting room of the hospital next to a colleague of his!
“See you around the office?”
“Not for a while…”
Instead of the usual eight falls a night, there were 42 on the night of that snowstorm. So, as you can imagine, patients were stacked up in the corridors because there was nowhere else to put them. (I imagine Michael Moore would have had a field day in there!) Sir Pe spent the first night in the corridor.
The next day and night saw him still waiting for his operation, but at least he was moved up to the deluxe accommodation. He was put into the medial supplies store room. He told me he quite enjoyed it as he got a lot of company from the doctors and nurses who kept popping in to fetch the bandages and drugs. (I’m sure he liked it because he kept inhaling….) As no one knew when he was going to be operated on, he wasn’t allowed to have any food. So, for three days he was kept on a drip with a sugar-salt solution topped up with morphine.
He was moved to a ward on the third day and – finally – got his operation that evening (i.e. three days later). The doctor had been working for two days with no rest, so it’s no wonder the bones didn’t set properly. Well, at least he got the correct leg!
What strikes me as slightly ironic is that there is a craze over here in Sweden for beds of nails. Yes, beds of nails that you might associate with India. People lie on them or stand on them. Supposed to be very therapeutic. And expensive.
Modern bed of nails
Rubber thingies
Can you see the similarity between the nail bed and the nail soles for your shoes? Next time you want some therapy, just give me a call and, for a reasonable fee, I’ll come over and walk on your back with my rubber thingies.
Skid pans and broken bones
It’s that time of year again. It’s that type of weather again. It’s February.
For us northern dwellers, February is usually the coldest time: the time for ice, snow, icicles, frosty noses and cold fingers.
However, for many people, February is a nightmare. The footpaths are skating rinks and for the unsteady of foot, going outside can be hazardous. Hence the selling out of those little rubber soles with nails in them that you can attach to the bottom of your shoes in order to get a good grip on the ice.
They are a must: but some of us only learned this the hard way. The very hard way.
Nearly exactly two years ago, Sir Pe was working late and caught the bus home in one of the worse snow blizzards ever. On that fateful evening, he got off the bus at about 10 pm. I was fast asleep when suddenly I was rudely awakened by my mobile ringing next to the bed.
“I’ve broken my leg,” was all I heard. Remember that I was in a deep sleep only seconds ago, so it took a few seconds to register that it was probably Sir Pe on the phone.
“You what?”
“I’ve broken my leg.”
“Where are you?” I wondered why he hadn’t phoned the ambulance but was phoning me.
“I don’t know.” Ah – hard to call for an ambulance when you don’t know the name of the street where you are. In between passing out, he vaguely described where he was. I threw on some trousers underneath my nightie and put on my winter jacket over my dressing gown and made a dash for the car.
I could hardly see a thing: the snow was whirling around creating a big vacuum of whiteness. I left the kids (then 3 and 5) asleep, and prayed that they wouldn’t wake up. I then went out in search for my husband and actually found him pretty quickly.
There was no street sign. So, in the end, I knocked on a nearby house, briefly described the situation and asked her what the name of the street was. This marvellous lady phoned the ambulance with the names of two nearby streets and came out with blankets for the shivering Sir Pe. It was a cold minus 13 C, the pavements were treacherous underfoot, but he had somehow managed to haul himself onto his rucksack. When the ambulance didn’t arrive within five minutes, she phoned again. They arrived and very nearly went bottoms up themselves on the icy street as they tried to lift Sir Pe onto the stretcher and carry him into the ambulance. I had to rush home to the kids, but he didn’t notice as he had passed out again.
Sir Pe does things in style and defied the doctor who told him he would be running by that summer. He broke his foot in seven places, has ten metal plates in his leg and often sets off the metal detectors at airports. The bones never set properly and after three operations, it is pretty clear that he will never run again. And will probably always need his stick to get around.
It is amazing to think how the earth can shift under you in a split second – and how that can then go on to change the direction of your life.
Think about that for a second. And then take a few minutes to appreciate all the good things that you do have: be it your health, your family, your friends. A roof over your head and food on your plate. Or even a whole service of dinner plates in your leg.
A thing of terrible beauty
I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve been having nightmares about a post-apocalyptic world. A world on fire, destroyed, covered in ashes. A world where bearded men roam the road in search of victims. A time of hopelessness; lawlessness.
I haven’t been sleeping well because I’ve been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
“He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.”
In the book, in this cold, dark and heartless world, a man and his son walk the road. Trying to survive by scavenging food and avoiding the men who stalk the road. They only have each other – and that small spark of humanity that they tend inside themselves like a precious fire.
This is a shocking and harrowing book – mesmerizing in its language and theme. It is difficult to read, but you can’t tear yourself away. It is a dark novel, but it does carry with it a tiny spark of hope.
It is a book of terrible beauty.
Should you read it? Yes – it’s a must! But it’s also a warning. Beware: it might give you nightmares … but your life will be the richer for reading it. Update: I loved this book, but it was very harrowing.
Remember! This weekend sees the third edition of Strange Shores – a blog carnival with witty insights into ex-pat life. Go over to PaddyK and give him some links to posts that you want included.
Embarrassing … or what?
As I was poking around the myriads of disorganized photos I have in iPhoto, I came across this one. My heart leapt for joy because it is actually a sewing success. Naturally, I had nothing to do with it. Anklebiter #1 worked on it painstakingly and in secret in order to surprise me at Christmas. No one helped her with the sewing – or the spelling. (God Jul is Swedish for Merry Christmas.)
My mind hopped like a gleeful kangaroo from: daughter to sewing failures to embarrassing moments. And there – like an unwelcome visitor at midnight – yet another of my I-can-learn-by-failure-but-when? moments popped into my mind.
About five years ago, when the first anklebiter was a toddler, she and I flew to the south of Sweden to stay at a friend’s summer place: a marvellous funky modern house with its own deck and stairs leading straight into the sea. As I knew we would be attending my friends’ large family gathering, I decided to fly in one of my best dresses: a long purple creation that I could float around in and imagine that I looked elegant in.
I wore this dress from the house to the airport, through customs, on the plane, at the other end, and finally, at this very posh outdoor party next to the glittering sea. When I finally took it off that night, I discovered that no one – NO ONE I tell you! – had bothered to point out that…
… there was a huge tear at the back of the dress. A gaping hole that stretched horizontally giving anyone and everyone an eyeful of my bright blue knickers!
(When I asked my friend if she had seen the hole, she replied, “Oh yes! We ALL saw it! But I didn’t want to tell you as it was already too late and it would just have spoilt the day for you…” Little did she know that I might have been able to salvage a few strands of dignity with the nifty use of a stapler, a safety pin or some duct tape!)
That is when I wanted a big hole to appear and swallow me up!
Who says what?