Getting out of the supermarket today, it struck me how gray the parking lot was. There was a single car that was not white/gray/black, out of twenty-odd cars in total.

Even red cars are gone. A few years ago I remember thinking that all cars were either white/gray/black or bright red, and now the colour range is even narrower.

It’s the same with clothes. It feels like everyone is wearing either black or gray, or a combination of these. And jeans, of course.

I read an article recently that analysed a set of photos of historical objects, and made the same observation. Gray is taking up more and more space.

Our nearest large park, which my daily haven’t-done-an-actual-workout evening walk loops through, has been fenced off since April, because the ground was found to be contaminated with heavy metals. The paths are open but all access to the grassy areas is blocked. The city hasn’t been cutting the grass, either, to make it less tempting for people to sneak or force their way through the fences.

It feels prison-like and spooky like this.

Art installation in the Tensta underground station.

Commuter trains past Spånga have been suspended since the beginning of July, just like past summers, for engineering works. I’ve been doing a mixture of working from home, cycling to the office, and getting there by bus and metro. The weather forecast for today included a lot of rain from the storm named Hans, and I’m a wimp when it comes to cycling in bad weather, so the metro it was.

It takes quite a bit longer this way but it’s not too bad, now that I’ve found a good route. Spånga is surrounded by metro lines in several directions but not actually served by any one directly. If I ask the SL app, it usually has at least three alternatives for me. I could take the bus to the metro station at Brommaplan, or Tensta, or Rissne. The app mostly cares about how fast each alternative will get me there, but not so much about my comfort. I’ve realized that Tensta is the ideal one for me, even if it’s not always fastest with bus timings and whatnot. It’s one stop from the start/end of the line, so I can always get a seat on the metro.

A crumbling wall mended with Legos, found in Tartu.

There used to be a convenience store on that corner where the construction machinery and builders’ barracks stand right now. Apparently it wasn’t a real building but one of those removable ones that you lift with a crane onto a giant truck and suddenly it’s not there any more.

More apartments are being built in various places in Spånga, and I’m sure they’re making room for another one here.

Several large buildings with student apartments have been built (and more are on the way) in the other direction, and another one a few hundred metres to my left. And the buildings behind that tall one (barely visible at the right edge of the photo) got two storeys added to the top a few years ago; that’s why they’re a different colour.

Winter gravel has been cleared from many streets in central Spånga, but ours is clearly not prioritized yet. The street sweepers have reached the beginning of our hill but decided to turn back. Hopefully it’ll be our turn in a few more days.

The street is all dug up for engineering works, to prepare the ground for a new apartment block to be built just behind the blocked-off area. It looks empty now but there used to be a building there, a couple of stories high. It housed a cinema a long time ago, I’ve read, but had been converted to a Pentecostal church by the time we moved to Spånga.

The Sortera head office is in Liljeholmen.

I’m helping out Spånga scout club, with their everyday accounting and payments and such. I haven’t done any actual accounting since 1999. Mostly it’s like riding a bike – it came back to me quite fast. But I do have to use my 25-year-old mnemonic to remember whether I need to debit or credit an account.