When the leaves fell, they made the streets colourful and rustled nicely under the feet. But then they were trampled and driven over, softened by the rain, and trampled again, until they’ve all turned into a brown sludge. Not so pretty any more.

And it’s a very slippery sludge, by the way. In fact it’s so slippery that ice is an improvement, because the sludge is thick enough to be slightly lumpy and uneven when it freezes. So when it’s above freezing in the morning I aim for the bare black parts of the road, and when it’s below freezing I aim for the frozen sludge.

I thought leaves used to be cleaned away well before they turned into mush, by men with leaf blowers or big street cleaning machines. Is this a new way to save money? Or are our streets too small for the city to care about?

Everyone is talking about quinoa everywhere, even the NY Times. It’s the in thing to eat, apparently. There were half a dozen different varieties of quinoa on the shelf in one of the supermarkets I went to recently. (On the other hand they had no pearl barley, which is what I was really looking for.)

So I tried it. And it was like eating styrofoam. Everybody says it has a “delicious mild nutty flavour”, and I thought it had almost no flavour at all. Perhaps it tastes good when compared to parboiled white rice… But it’s got no chance in competition with thai rice, or brown rice, or pearl barley.

It gets some plus points, though, for looking like tiny worms when cooked.

Are you a quinoa fan? Am I doing something wrong?

Ingrid’s latest favourite “toy” is a sticky plaster. Has to be the little pink one, the larger blue ones won’t do. She doesn’t want to put it on, and she doesn’t seem to do much with it, just hold it and carry it around. She takes it with her to nursery in the morning (and then loses it during the day and must get a new one when we get home). Yesterday she took one with her to bed, too. And I wasn’t allowed to put it on the bedside table – it must be on her pillow. The first thing she said when she woke up in the morning was “plåster!” and wouldn’t rest until we’d found it, under the blanket somewhere.

Turns out it’s Halloween today. We’d sort of missed that, and were unprepared. Luckily only one gang of kids turned up and we found something for them in the corner of a cupboard.

But it all felt uncomfortable and weird rather than fun. How did it become OK to just go out and beg?

There is a somewhat similar tradition in Estonia kadripäev and mardipäev or St Catherine’s day and St Martin’s day, one for girls and one for boys. But the girls and boys who go out as kadrisandid or mardisandid give something in return. At the very least they sing: first behind the door, asking to be let in, and then more songs once they’re in. Traditionally they would also bless the household but I’m not sure how much of that is still done.

In fact I’m not sure if the tradition is still alive… perhaps it’s been drowned by Halloween. I remember doing this when I was around 10 years or so, and I remember receiving kadrid later than that. But now I’ve been away for 15 years of course.

In any case, it was fun to get a visit from a gang of kadrid. It was a show. The family would gather in the hallway and listen. These kids came, got their candy and left. Where’s the fun in that?

I went for a haircut yesterday. I’ve been thinking for at least two weeks now that I desperately need one but somehow a meeting of some sort has cropped up almost every single afternoon around 2pm, just when I’ve been thinking of leaving. Well, yesterday I managed to leave on time and get it done.

On a whim I went to Frisörakademien (“haircutting academy”) which is what it sounds like: a hairdressing school. I pass it every morning on my way to work, and then again in the afternoon, and every day I see their sign advertising haircuts for 99kr which is dirt cheap. Worth a try.

The haircut I got was a good one. I got more care and attention from the guy than I normally do from a hairdresser. He was very focused on doing the best possible job, took note of the various whorls in my hair and so on. More experienced hairdressers are more likely to give me their Stock Haircut #14. I looked good when I walked out of there, and I still looked good this morning when I’d slept away his styling efforts.

It was interesting to hear them talk about haircutting technique, too. The whole process turned out to be more standardised and organised than I had realised.

What I gained in price and attention, though, I lost in time. The haircut took almost an hour and a half. I was all stiff and my bum was sore from sitting still for so long, and I was almost falling asleep there in the end. On balance, I don’t think I’ll be going back there… I’m willing to pay money for not sitting still for 85 minutes.

One thing I really miss from my London life is good sushi. I’ve sampled several sushi places near work, and been disappointed every single time. Tasteless fish on tasteless rice. And there’s never any variety: it’s always a few pieces of salmon nigiri, one prawn, and a few rolls (with salmon of course).

Just as I was ready to give up all hopes of good sushi lunches, one of my colleagues found one. It was delicious. Salmon and prawn, of course, but also 2 kinds of tuna, plus a macquerel or something. And really full of flavour, too.

Even better: that place is about halfway between our current office and the new office we’ll move to in February, so we can keep visiting it!

Sushi Devil on Tegnérgatan.

For the record, the weather here is now officially freezing. Yesterday we woke up to a frost-covered lawn. I am starting to realize that I will need to buy some sort of winter boots and a winter coat.

It was no surprise to us that Stockholm is greener than London. Both cities have green stuff, but in London it tends to be concentrated into parks, which are unevenly distributed. In some parts of town you can get long stretches of streets and housing with nothing green in sight. Stockholm has many more tree-lined streets. Of course, moving from inner-city apartment to a leafy suburb also made a difference

What I’d forgotten, though, is how beautiful Stockholm becomes in autumn. The majority of trees in London are London P. In autumn their leaves just go brown. But here in Stockholm there are maples, birches, chestnuts, and ah, the colours! Bright reds and dark reds, greenish yellows and fiery oranges. Every morning (and that’s no exaggeration) I look at the beautiful red maples along the road to the train station, and I cannot help smiling. Every evening on my way home they make me smile again. I’ve never wanted to take a photo of an ordinary London tree but here I’m often reaching for the camera.

And the skies. You might think they would be pretty much the same everywhere, but you’d be wrong. The London sky is generally either all blue or all grey – there seems to be some sort of local weather effect which turns all clouds into 100% even dull cover. But the sky over Stockholm is so much more varied and interesting. Wispy clouds, little fluffy clouds, looming dark grey mounds. I am in love with the clouds here.

Yesterday I bundled Ingrid into the bike trailer and then loaded in a large bag full of paper for recycling, and then we cycled to the recycling station. She quite enjoyed stuffing the magazines and cardboard boxes and packing paper into the container. I felt like quite the environerd.

Unexpected advantages of having a garden: I can decide at 10 o’clock at night that what my sick body and sore throat want most just now is baked apples with cinnamon, and walk out into the garden and pick 3 apples, and slice them and sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and butter and raisins, and shove them in the oven. And eat them half an hour later.