Ingrid and Adrian have both had their last test of this school year. School may not be over, but what’s left is just coasting downhill.

There’s a lot of talk about “borders” in this year’s campaign for the EU parliament elections in Sweden.

The Centre party at least say what their “borders” or limits are about = against Putin, against animal cruelty, for climate action. The Christian Democrats just promise “borders and freedom”. Umm. Ok? Sounds good?

I got to spend today with one of Sortera’s trucks, picking up bags of waste for recycling.

Here’s John, the driver, ready to start the day, bright and early at 7 o’clock.

And here’s me, kitted with a hard hat and high-viz vest.

I always thought that they’d attach a hook to the straps of the bag and lift it that way. Ain’t no one got time for that! Turns out they use the scoop to grab and lift the bag. And it can be a delicate job, when the bag is right next to a building facade, or in between trees and lamp posts and other obstacles.

One of the jobs involved lifting the bag over a dense 3.5-metre hedge. A little bit challenging.

The truck has a veeery long arm.

When the container started filling up, John had to climb up into it so he could see where he was placing each bag, so he could use the container to its maximum.

When it was all full, we drove to the sorting facility, where we dumped all the bags. Another guy with a tractor took over and sorted the bags into their respective piles.

We drove off again to a fire-damaged school building to pick up chunks of roof metal. For John this was the best job of the day because he got to put his crane skills to good use, trying to pick everything up in as few lifts as possible.

And then back to the facility again, to dump all the metal in the metal pile.

Look what we found on a shelf, dusty and forgotten – a gingerbread house.

It’s “health week” at tretton37, which includes both a step challenge and group activities, one of which is a hike of the first stage of Sörmlandsleden (which gave us plenty of steps for the step challenge).


The leader of our group had prepared and packed a picnic dinner for us all, which we ate on a pleasantly secluded little cliff shelf by Sandasjön lake.


On our way out we spotted a sleepy slowworm on the gravel road. The first one I’ve seen in many years.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stadsteatern. This time the actual Shakespeare play, not a ballet, and this time the whole family went. Eric and I obviously knew roughly what we were in for; Ingrid enjoyed it; Adrian was mostly restless and not particularly spell-bound.

I found it all pleasantly modern while still true to the spirit of the original. (No microphones!) And of course Shakespeare would have wanted battery-driven hobby horses for his actors, if he had had access to them.

I will remember the wonderfully zany costumes. A bizarre mixture of fashion from Shakespeare’s era (ruff collars and puffy knee-length trousers) and Greek-themed decorations. Lysander and Demetrius wore sweatshirts, one a souvenir shirt from Athens and the other with University of Athens branding. Exaggerated face paintings reminded me of the masks used in Greek tragedies.

There were no photos allowed during the performance of course, so the photos below are official press photos from Stadsteatern.

Went bouldering as an after-work activity with my team.

It was a lot more fun than I had expected, mostly because I had expected the roped kind of climbing. With bouldering there is no harness, no rope, no queueing (at least not at the centre where we were) and no standing around half the time securing your partner. Just climbing.

It was hard work as well. Especially for a beginner like me – when you can’t rely so much on skill, you have to fall back on brute force more often. My shoulders are sore.

A new plum tree, to replace the one that our neighbour crushed. This time the variety I wanted was in stock so I didn’t even have to wait half a year to get one. Let’s see if it gets a better chance than the previous one.

Ingrid bought two chili plants last summer. They grew, produced a few flowers, and even a couple of fruit each. And then they dropped most of their leaves – but not all! – and somehow stayed barely alive. Occasionally a handful of new tiny leaves appear in some fork, and even new flowers occasionally. They look mostly dead, except for that fruit still hanging on, but according to Ingrid, that counts as still alive, so we’re not allowed to throw them out.