Vårsalongen, “The Spring Salon”, is an annual art event where anyone in Sweden can send in their works to be considered for inclusion. The result is always eclectic and varied. The works range from paintings, drawings and sculpture to video installations, and more. This year all the works can be seen online.

I was happy to see quite a few pieces of textile art, even though I didn’t particularly like any one of them. Another memorable works this year was Vintern 2021/22 by Mårten the dog, which consisted of all the gloves and mittens that the artist had carried home from his walks during one season.

Ingrid is a budding artist and it wasn’t hard to convince her to come with us, and Eric is always up for art exhibitions. Adrian was perhaps a bit less enthusiastic, but I was pretty sure even he would enjoy it. The exhibition is so democratic and relatable – there’s even a “Young Spring Salon” section for sixteen to eighteen-year-olds – that there’s always something for everyone.

Predictably, Adrian enjoyed the sculptures the most. When given a choice, he always prefers to work three-dimensionally, whether with paper or clay or Legos.

Liljevalchs was recently expanded and now has several new galleries which I hadn’t visited before. The upstairs ones had amazing ceilings.

Those galleries currently exhibited works by Jockum Nordström, whose graphical works I didn’t find particularly interesting. But his mobile sculptures were nice: agglomerations of objects and pieces of wood, with a weight attached to a rotating arm of metal wire, and something noise-making for that weight to hit on each pass around the circle: a zither, or a broken violin, or a bicycle bell.

Afterwards we had lunch at Liljevalchs’ new vegetarian restaurant. The food wasn’t bad but they were badly understaffed so we waited a long time for our food, only to find out that they had lost half of our order, so half of us had to re-order and wait again.

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 logo at the far end of a corridor, and a glass meeting room wall.

Nysse is in raptures about the spring. He’s out all day, playing with his friend Morris or watching birds. He comes in only to eat and sleep, and does both with more vigour than he’s shown all winter, and soon goes out again. He’s also shedding like crazy.

Here he is, enjoying the sun to the max, like a little cat rag.

Moped season has started! And it has involved a lot of disassembly, fixing, re-assembly, re-disassembly and re-fixing, to get the thing to run. Good thing Ingrid has lots of motor-interested friends, including one who goes to a specialized motor sports high school, to help her.

The pink shoots of bleeding hearts.

Paskha – as good this year as it has been every year.

Painted eggs, and then herring and devilled eggs and potatoes for lunch, and paella for dinner, and paskha and a lemon merengue pie.

The same procedure as last year? The same procedure as every year.

It’s the best time of the year.

When I signed up to take care of the scout club’s accounting, I thought at first I’d do it from home. I’d forgotten just how much paperwork and printouts is involved, though. My desk at home is covered with computer peripherals and unread magazines, leaving no room to spread out all the paper. So I do it at the scout club.

Initially I went there while there were others present, but now I’m realizing I get more done, faster and more conveniently, when it’s just me.

There are actual desks in various parts of the building, but mostly located at places inconveniently distant from the printer room, like the attic meeting rooms. So I just sprawl out in the main hall. The floor is more than clean enough to sit on.