Gamla stan, Stockholm’s Old Town, at midday. Even at noon, the streets here get no sunlight.

We drove to Mos for some late evening shopping. Halfway there we noticed the car was making an inordinate amount of noise. Turned out we had a flat tire. We ended up changing the tire in the (gradually emptying) Mos car park. More excitement than I really want out of a normal Thursday night.

Mall of Scandinavia, colloquially known as MoS (which means “mush” or “mash”) is the latest, greatest mall to open on our side of town. It is huge. Which is good in a way, because it means the mall has so much choice, including several stores that we’d otherwise have to go all the way to central Stockholm for. And it has a good choice of restaurants, which many other nearby malls and shopping centres really neglect. (I’m talking about you, Barkarby!)

But I just don’t feel comfortable there. Even though it has small seating areas and plants and cafés, and a fountain, and cool decorations, it’s just so large that I end up feeling lost.

And somehow, despite its size, it often manages to be overcrowded. I suspect it’s due to the equally giant arena next door. Today we happened to visit MoS together with hundreds and hundreds of football fans, because it turned out that a major game was due to start in the arena a few hours later. Nice for the shops, not so nice for the shoppers. I found it really stressful.

The one argument for going to MoS rather than any of the alternatives is the multitude of Pokemon Go gyms and stops. Mos is littered with sponsored pokestops, and many of the people walking around don’t appear to be doing any shopping at all, just catching Pokemons. You can recognize them by their distracted air, and the fact that they all have their phones connected to power banks.

I have mixed feelings about autumn. I love the beautiful autumn colours, but I cannot help noticing how each day is shorter and darker than the previous one, and remembering the gray, dull months that we have ahead of us.

I’m cycling to work almost every day, because current conditions at work rarely leave any room for lunchtime gym sessions. Our number one focus right now is knowledge transfer to a team in India, and with their office hours and our office hours being as they are, our meetings often end up being scheduled just before lunch.

I’ve only been to the gym once in the two weeks since I started working, which is a bit disappointing. But on the plus side, the cycling is very pleasant at this time of the year – the mornings are cool, bright and dry, and the afternoons are not too hot.

Occasionally I suffer from restless legs in the evening when I’m trying to fall asleep. I’ve noticed that this is most likely to happen if I follow vigorous exercise by around three days of unusually idle life. Case in point: today.

Thursday was a public holiday so I missed my gym workout; Friday was a so-called “squeeze day” so I didn’t cycle to work; today we drove to Sala to visit the silver mine so I’ve mostly been sitting or walking today. Already on the way back from Sala, when I was about to nod off in the car, I was woken from my nodding by a creeping, itching, restless feeling in my legs. The evening was bound to be worse.

So while the family was at home having dinner, I went out and cycled. From home to Drottningholm, then a little circuit on Lovö, back to Drottningholm where I walked around and photographed for a while, and then home. Those 30 km got all the twitches out of my legs.

As a bonus I got to see a very cute swan family in one of the ponds at Drottningholm. The cygnets can’t have been more than a few days old – all downy and wobbly and weak. Soon after I got close to the pond, the family were about to get out of water. The parents got out onto the bank easily; the babies were almost falling over trying to get up the little slope, flapping their almost non-existent wing stubs. When they got, mum and dad were preening and cleaning their feathers, while some of the babies seemed to fall asleep from the effort of climbing those few steps.

Morning view from the top of Tranebergsbron.

May mornings are beautiful. I love the trees especially – all in leaf at this time of the year, but still fresh, tender, semi-transparent. In summer all trees are equally green, but in May, when the leaves are still young, their greenery has a lot more character. Some are bright green, others have a yellow tone, still others are coppery.

Stacks of sacks of fertilizer make a perfect playground for kids with too much energy and no fear of getting dirty.

Normally Eric drops Adrian off at school in the morning and I pick up both kids in the afternoon. Once a week we swap, so I get a free afternoon/evening. Today was such a day.

I use these afternoons in various ways. Sometimes I go to a movie. I may go book shopping. Or I may simply work late, digging into some fun project.

Right now I feel no inclination whatsoever to invest more in work than I absolutely have to. I also don’t think I could focus on a movie. So I simply cycled home via a slow, scenic, circuitous route, through parts of town that I rarely visit.

The area around Bällstaviken is an interesting mixture of modern housing (including cool all-wooden modern apartment buildings), greenery that is still mostly dead at this time of the year, scruffy boat yards, and views of industrial buildings across the water.