(St. Johannes cemetery)

Visited Tre brudar, a nearby shop that sells foodstuff from the Baltic countries. Ingrid was hoping for Merekivid candy, but they didn’t have any. Instead we came home with Estonian dark rye bread and Kohuke quark sweets.

This week, when I get up at 6:30, the street lights are still on. Last week they were out before I got up.

By the time I leave for work half an hour later, it’s mostly light outside.

A brief moment of magic, with a full rainbow over Spånga.

A minute before, there was light drizzle from a grey sky. Two minutes later, same again. Rain, no bow.

Lucky me happened to be outside at the right moment. Too bad that the corner of Spånga where I happened to be at was a recycling station with views of nothing but a parking lot and train tracks beyond it.

The local Facebook group had a post offering plums. Almost discreetly begging people to come and pick more. So I went and picked some. The plums were small, but juicy and flavourful.

When I saw the tree in question, I understood the near-begging. The tree was overloaded with plums – and of course anything that doesn’t get picked ends up falling on the lawn and then rotting there. Cherries, like we have in our garden, are small and can almost disappear into the ground, whereas squished overripe plums make the whole lawn rather slimy.

I’m challenging myself to get as much as possible done from my to-do list today, including running a bunch of errands in town. New baking “paper” (is there a word for the reusable kind?), embroidery yarn, knitting yarn and knitting needles, and chocolate.

I’m more and more disappointed with what used to be my favourite specialist chocolate shop. First they ran out of my favourite kind of chocolate, at least a year ago, or has it been two years already? They kept promising that it would be back in stock soon. It still isn’t. I tried an alternative, and now they don’t have that one in stock either. In fact the shelves were more empty than full today. “Well, we just came back from our summer break” was their explanation. Maybe spend some time actually getting ready to open, then?

Later I remembered that there is a Chokladfabriken store near the knitting store and went there. They make excellent pralines, but they don’t have much in the way of chocolate tablets. I got something, at least. And they offered free tasting portions of hot chocolate (delicious) and they sold ice cream, including a lemon and ginger sorbet (also delicious) which did a lot to alleviate my disappointment.

I walked through the churchyard of Katarinakyrkan on my way back across Södermalm towards the train station, and stopped to finish my ice cream there. I happened to be standing right next to the church when the bells rang for five o’clock.

It’s the perfect season for bicycle commuting. I leave home at around seven, at which point the sun is well up. My commuting route is in a south-easterly direction most of the way. Slightly more south first, which leaves much of the road in the shade. From Brommaplan on (that’s just short of halfway for me) I bike along the Drottningholmsvägen in a more easterly direction. The bike lane there is next to a wide four-lane road, which gives us cyclists plenty of morning sun.

The Drottningholmsvägen is a major bike thoroughfare with a lot of traffic. I’m normally early enough to miss peak bike traffic. Half an hour later, there will be clumps of twenty, thirty cyclists waiting at each red light. It never gets too bad, but it’s enough that I make sure not to sleep late or dawdle at home.

I’ve only got just over two kilometres of the wide, smooth, crowded bike lane if I’m going to the Sortera office. At Alvik almost all of the crowd continues east towards the city, whereas I turn off onto quieter roads towards the south-east again. By that time I’m warm enough that I don’t even notice whether I’m in the sun or not.

I really don’t like cycling in the rain. If I wear rain clothes, I get all sweaty; if I don’t, I get wet and cold. I don’t like either of those. On rainy days I take the train.

Several times this season, the weather app has forecast a rainy day, and I’ve taken the train, and then there’s barely been any rain at all, and I feel vaguely cheated. A cool, cloudy day without rain is pretty perfect for cycling.

Today was going to be another one of those days. To heck with it, I thought. I don’t want to regret my choice for a fourth time. I’ll take my chances with the weather, and cycle.

Weather forecasts are impressively detailed these days. Radar maps of precipitation in particular are great. I have a fair bit of flexibility in the afternoon I could leave work at any time between, like, three and six, depending on what the radar shows. Rain for the next 30 minutes, and then dry for an hour? Great, I’ll leave in 30 minutes.

In the morning I got to the office without a single drop of rain. In the afternoon I caught what must have been the edge of a rain shower – enough rain that I covered my backpack, but also so little that I was dry by the time I got home. Didn’t even need to hang my clothes up to dry.

One time is no time, as the Swedes (and Germans) say. But this was successful enough that I’ll try again the next time the forecast is iffy.

Vaguely toying with the idea of making elderflower cordial. Went reconnoitring for elders. A bit too early, still: the tops of the bushes are in full bloom, but at the bottom, which is the part that you can actually reach for picking, they’re not all open yet. Maybe in another week or so. Or maybe I’ll just try to reach the ones that are slightly higher up so I can do it this weekend.

Gymnasium graduation season is upon us. Truck bed parties (studentflak) which involve lots of beer and screaming and squealing passed by the Active Solution office yesterday, and the Sortera office today.

There must be some school very close to us – we went out to eat our lunch on the quay, and there were clumps of students with their families everywhere. And traces of inebriated celebration.

I was afraid I’d have to carry my bicycle across this field of broken bottles in the evening, but by then, someone had cleared away all traces of the party.