We went to see The Real Group in concert. I was thinking we would all love it, and instead we came home quite disappointed.

We saw/heard them live two years ago, together with The Swingles. That concert (which I now see I didn’t write about) was a mixed bag – some songs I really liked, others were unimpressive.

I was hoping we would this time get more of the good stuff. Unfortunately I feel that TRG has moved in the wrong direction since then.

The two best songs today, by far, were two folk songs, one Swedish “gångarlåt” and one Latvian. There was depth and emotion in them. The rest of the repertoire… less so. The songs newly written by members of TRG themselves were the least interesting. Possibly they were technically impressive, but I don’t have the ear or the knowledge to appreciate that. To me, these songs just sounded light-weight, superficially cheery. Tra-la-la, and an hour later I’ve forgotten them already.

We went to a concert with The Real Group at Sorunda church, a medieval church south of Stockholm.

I love old churches – Romanesque, Gothic, late medieval country churches. I love the shapes, the spaces, the vaults and pillars and arches, the stained glass windows, the gravestone floors and the painted walls.

Sorunda church had all of that, and beautiful painted patterns on the walls in particular. I love the natural flow of the shapes. Were someone to paint a similar decorative pattern today, they would aim to make the curls as identical as possible, and lose the liveliness.

Every time we sit down for a meal out on the deck, a wasp arrives, within minutes. It circles us and inspects the food for a while and then flies away.

The one time the wasp (or at least a wasp, I have no way of knowing if it was the same one) found our food worth eating was back in June when I the food was served with boiled eggs. We could see it cutting off pieces of egg white and flying away with them.

Since then, it comes, it looks, it leaves.

I’m puzzled. Surely the wasp arrives because it has smelled the food, so it must have a good sense of smell. But can’t it detect from the smell whether the food is anything it would actually want to eat?

The Tranebergsbron bridge is the highest point but not the high point of my bike commute. Today, with my muscles sore and tired after the first week of biking and the first week of gym workouts, and with a strong headwind, it feels steeper than usual.

When I cycle, I gauge “opposition” in number of gears. I have cycled my daily route so many times now that I know what gear I normally use in various places. When I’m having to work harder than usual, for whatever reason, I notice it because I need to use a different gear than usual. (My bike only has eight gears so it’s not too much to remember.)

Back on the bike after six weeks of vacation and not cycling: one to two gears’ difference.
Today’s headwind: between one-half and one gear.

Redcurrants also go well with feta cheese, melon, cucumber and mint leaves.

It is mind-numbingly hot and a salad is the only thing that I could imagine actually eating for dinner.

This July was the hottest July in Sweden since records began 260 years ago, and thus far August isn’t turning out much better. My feet are swollen, my brain is working at half power, and I wish we could have normal summer weather instead.

I have more redcurrants right now than I know what to do with, so I’m trying them on everything. For dinner today, I made an aubergine, onion, coconut and cashew something that was (according to the recipe) supposed to be served with pomegranate seeds, which I replaced with redcurrants. It came out great; redcurrants are a perfect replacement for pomegranate.

I also discovered that if you photograph food – not ingredients but cooked food – up close enough, it begins to look alien and almost icky. Like insect macros. We never see food at that scale, so it doesn’t look like food any more. You’ll have to trust me when I say that it tasted way better than it looks here.

First day at work.

The new office has excellent facilities for cyclists. There are secure parking rooms for bikes, and clean, spacious showers. No more parking under the bridge!

The lawn has been dead for a long while. Now even large trees are being affected by this summer’s drought. This is what several nearby birches look like: the leaves all dead and yellow, even though autumn is still far away.

Our cherry tree is still green but all the leaves are wilting, and the cherries themselves have dried on the tree. The new hedge only survives (mostly) because of diligent watering. The flowers on the deck are dead; I gave up trying to keep them alive.

The utter bliss of having dry, clean feet.

The weather during the past week was so hot that rubber boots or hiking shoes were out of the question for my feet at least. So sandals it was, and I now have a serious sandal tan.

But we also had heavy rain, muddy streams, dusty roads, and last but not least, plenty of horse turds – and those don’t go well with sandals. As soon as I got my feet dry and clean, they got wet and dirty again. It feels wonderful to have them clean and dry not just for a moment but a whole day.

Less nice is how swollen they are, due to the constant heat… My feet are normally not this pudgy.

I made myself a traditional Spånga woggle, and learned that it is called a “woggle” in English.