With my world so shrunken and small these days, I’m glad that Spånga looks so nice, with the young cherry trees and the seasonal tubs of flowers.

A mama deer with its kid passed through the garden again this evening. They nibbled at various things (cherry branches, the round thujas, hydrangea flowers). Interestingly they ignored the clover patch.

The kid has lost its spots by now and simply looks like a smaller version of the adult one, though it lifts its back “feet” extra high when walking through grass.

I wonder if this is the same mama deer who was here with its two kids earlier, and she’s lost one. Or maybe it’s a different pair; there’s probably more than one deer family roaming around Spånga.

One of the neighbourhood cats is thirsty, and has discovered that there is water in our pool. Several times now I’ve seen it jump up on the pool edge to drink. Its thirst has got to be pretty bad if the pool water – which is clean for a pool, but chlorinated and not sparkling fresh – is the best it can get.

I don’t like this much. I worry that the cat will slip and fall in and won’t be able to get out. At first I also worried that its claws would puncture the pool edge, which is made of rubber and already has a few (non-cat-related) leaks that we’ve patched. But if it hasn’t done so yet, it’s probably not going to, and in any case, we could probably patch those holes, too.

I’m also impressed that it found the water. It must have smelled the water with enough precision to realize that jumping up on that blue/gray thing would help it reach the invisible water.

Anyway, I bought a bowl for the cat – and for any other thirsty cats or creatures. I forgot to fill it up since the weekend, though, and it was mostly empty today, so I found the cat back at the pool. Now I’ve filled up the bowl again.

If you have an outdoors cat, make sure you provide it with water during the day, and preferably in a shaded place!

Adrian’s class has been working with the theme of “Stockholm” for the past few months.

In a normal year, the class would have made several trips to various parts of Stockholm to see all the things they have been talking about: the Old Town, the City Hall, and so on. The coronavirus pandemic put a stop to all that, so the kids have been limited to theory.

Today Adrian and I made a trip to the city to at least see the Old Town. Old Town is normally so full of tourists that it’s no fun – all those families of five walking side by side, foreign tourists spreading cigarette smoke, etc. But today is a working day so there won’t be many locals walking around, and all the tourists are staying away anyway. So it should be really empty, I thought. Let’s seize the opportunity!

It turned out exactly as well as I had hoped. Beautiful sunshine, no people, clean streets… We almost had Old Town to ourselves. This was a great way to see Old Town.

We visited a few of the most famous sights: the royal palace, the Riksdag buildings, Stortorget (where a famous bloodbath took place five hundred years ago), and the narrowest alley in town. But also the street where the executioner used to live, as Adrian told me, and Slussen, which did not look like Adrian had expected at all.

There were lots of little shops to look at as well. Mostly souvenir shops with various kinds of viking- and moose-themed objects, and Pippi Longstocking – but also little odd crafts and design shops. This is the shop of HildaHilda, who make textile goods with quirky designs of pigs, dachshunds, daisies and other nice things. I really tried to find something we needed or at least could use but couldn’t think of anything, but I think we’ll be coming back here to buy presents for people.

We had excellent though expensive pizzas for lunch at Stortorget, at a nearly empty restaurant. (And within great hearing range of the church bells of Storkyrkan.) We’ll likely never get another chance at that!

There’s a new young cat in the neighbourhood. Looks like it might have been let out of the house for the first time: it’s exploring, discovering, cautiously but curiously poking its nose in all sorts of places. I had to shoo it out of the basement twice, and keep the doors closed to keep it out of the house.

We’ve seen its like before. One spring, a young cat out for the first time when its family had gone away from the day, came into our house looking completely lost and abandoned. So much so that we thought it might have run away and took it to a nearby vet to scan its chip and find out who it belonged to. He turned out to be called Sid, and lived just two houses away from us.

Sid and his family have moved away, but there are several other cats whom I recognize by sight. They are all older and feel more at home in the neighbourhood. They walk in a very different manner – more confidently and purposefully.

One thing the young and old cats apparently all have in common is a love of birds. Not our kind of love, but the kind that expresses itself in hunting and eating the birds. This kitty quickly discovered the bird nest box up in our cherry tree and decided to go fish for baby birds. Climbed up and poked its paw inside the box and tried to catch things.

When I had chased it down from the tree with a broom twice over, I had enough and decided to saw off the branch that seemed to offer it best access to the nest box. (It was mostly dead anyway.) I’m hoping that this will make bird-fishing less comfortable for the cat, so the cat will find some other fun activity and leave the box alone.

I left ten minutes earlier this morning, and that was early enough that the street lights were still on as I walked to the train station.

Breathing extra deeply when walking down the street, to get more of that intoxicating lilac smell.

Stora mossen tube station is the halfway point of my bike commute, both literally and figuratively.

The first 7 km from Spånga to Stora mossen feels relaxing and suburban. Spångavägen and the outer parts of Drottningholmsvägen are lined first with detached houses and then with small apartment buildings. The bike paths are straight and wide and mostly empty.

The other 7 km from Stora mossen to the city begin with the traffic nexus at Alvik, with several traffic lights in a row and lots of cyclists queuing at each one, and then continues in the same vein: narrow bike lines shared with pedestrians, the Tranebergsbron bridge, and all kinds of other distractions.

I enjoy almost all of my bike commute (although Kungsgatan is a bit less nice) but it does feel nice to leave the city behind me on my way home and cruise along Spångavägen.

Cherry trees are blossoming in central Spånga.