That neighbourhood cat that has made itself at home beneath our bird feeder has knocked it over repeatedly in his attempts to catch the birds. The whole stand itself is bent and some parts are just plain broken.

We’ve tried to make the ground beneath the feeder uncomfortable for it, and to to raise the feeder higher, and so on, but the cat hasn’t gotten the point. So we took a step back, considered our options, and then Eric constructed a new, hopefully cat-proof feeder stand.

The new stand is much more stable and should be really hard to knock over. At the same time it is super easy to disassemble and pack away for the summer. And cheaper and more environmentally friendly and more easy to dispose of than the old one, too. Just superior in all ways, basically.

It’s too easy to just go out and buy a solution to your problem. “I want to have a bird feeder in my garden. Therefore I should buy one.” And you can do it from your desk or your phone and it even comes delivered to a pick-up point near you so you barely have to leave the home to get it. If it had been harder, then we might have made one ourselves to begin with.

That lace edged curtain I finished some time ago.

I haven’t been outdoors properly since September. There’s always been something else that needs to be done, or I’ve been tired, or the weather has been crap.

I’ve given up hopes of a sunny day of walking (maybe even some snow!) when I could actually enjoy the scenery, perhaps take some nice photos. I just went out walking today for pure exercise. Ursvik, 10 km marked trail, just walk. At least it’s been cold enough to freeze the muddy ground so the paths were solid and not mucky. But the cloud cover was so thick that it was barely light in the middle of the day and the lamps along the trail were lit even at noon.

There has barely been any winter weather this year. It’s all just been gray since early November. We’re so far from having a white Christmas that there hasn’t even been talk of a chance of one.

But today was at least a brighter day, with even some weak sunshine, so we went out skating.

Adrian took the skates that Ingrid used last year (size 36) and Ingrid took mine (size 38) and I stayed on the sidelines and took photos. And walked in circles around the skating rink when I felt done with that.

Usually the large bandy rink at Spånga sports field is fully booked for various organized activities and the general public has to make do with the small field. This December though there was a leak in the refrigeration unit so all scheduled activities were cancelled or moved to other ice rinks. The leak was recently fixed but the schedule remained clear, and according to the web site the place was still closed, so we had the luxury of a large and nearly empty ice rink.

Cirque Alfonse, “Tabarnak”, at the Hangar at Subtopia.

Cirque Alfonse is a family circus from Quebec. Not the kind that is aimed at families, which mostly seems to mean silly clowns, but a circus that is a family.

Tabarnak was quirky, down-to-earth back-country circus. The scene design featured bare, undecorated timber frames and a colourful church window. The artists were dressed in loose gray trousers and long, loose white shirts.

There were various different kinds of acts, and also random entertaining things-between-acts. (Step dancing. Rhythmic whip cracking.) But their best numbers were strength acrobatics: climbing on top of each other. This was all accompanied by live music, written by/for the troupe.

I enjoyed this a lot.

Image from the web site of Cirque Alfonse.

Did nothing, took no photos. Recovered from Christmas.

Ingrid and Adrian got tickets to a musical, Snow White at Göta Lejon, as a birthday present. Today we saw the show.

We were incredibly disappointed. I can’t judge exactly how disappointed the others were but the feeling I walked away with was that this is the last time I want to see a Dröse & Norberg production, ever.

The songs were mediocre at best, with sloppily written texts that neither scanned nor rhymed well. Often I couldn’t hear what the actors were singing; I don’t know whether that was because they didn’t sing clearly enough or because the sound producers and engineers hadn’t done their job properly. All songs sounded pretty much the same, anyway, all bouncy and energetic but with no soul or feeling. After the show ended, I couldn’t recall a single line of a single song.

The actors (apart from Nanne Grönvall as the witch/queen) were all rather unimpressive. Snow White, the king, the hunter/herald and the prince were all bland and uninteresting. The dwarves were like weird twisted copies of the Disney dwarves, obviously the writers didn’t have any new ideas but couldn’t make them too close to get caught by copyright rules.

As an added insult, the story had been padded with random scenes (singing, dancing plushy toys?!) that contributed nothing apart from an opportunity to sell merchandise to children.

The only thing that I really liked about the show were the queen’s costumes, each more regal and extravagant than the previous ones. (Whoever designed the prince’s jacket, on the other hand, has obviously never looked at a men’s formal jacket up close, because they had cut it completely straight and quite narrow and with no vents, so it was pulling quite badly at the bottom button.)

After the performance we went for dinner at a nearby restaurant (Ri Cora) which has one of Stockholm’s best Asian buffets, and we all came home with much stronger and happier memories of the dinner than of the musical.

Decorating yesterday’s cookies.

My mum and my brother are here to celebrate Christmas with us. He doesn’t take up much space, but she is like a kid, and not in the best of ways. She needs constant entertainment and she expects us to provide it. If we don’t, she gets grumpy. So instead of relaxing, we need to make a plan to keep these days full of activities. Some of these we’d do anyway, like cooking extra delicious Christmas meals. In fact, it’s possible that we would do most of them. But it’s one thing to go out for a walk together because we feel like it, and another thing to do it because I have to keep other people’s moods up.

It didn’t use to be like this. Probably this is a large part of why I don’t enjoy Christmas any more.

The Christmas thing is in full swing.

Cookies were made, gifts were opened, plenty of food was eaten.

For the past few Christmases, I’ve had to make more and more of an effort to enjoy this circus at least somewhat. I used to be able to. Now it’s just a chore.