After some scout activity or other – probably from a Christmas market – we have a pile of cash in the house, that we (= Eric) took upon us to deposit. The scouts got their bank transfer, but we haven’t gotten around to doing anything with the cash, because it’s such a giant hassle.

We pay for all our normal purchases by card, so the cash isn’t going to get used naturally. You might think that I could take it to a bank, but no. Swedish banks don’t work with cash any more. Cash is a valid means of payment but banks don’t like dealing with it, and apparently they are allowed to just say no.

I managed to deposit the banknotes today. There’s about a twenty ATMs in Stockholm where you can deposit banknotes, and an online map to help you find them. I located one near the office, put in my tidy piles of sorted and aligned banknotes, and that was that.

A large amount of coins on the other hand is near impossible to get rid of. There appear to be no banks – not a single one – in Stockholm that handles coins. The website of a foreign exchange chain hints that they might be able to take them off our hands – for a 15% fee. That just feels so greedy that I don’t even want to consider it. I’d rather give the money to charity.

My next hope is that one of the local supermarkets might be willing to take the coins in large enough batches to make it worth the effort of carrying them with me. (For small-denomination coins, the balance of value vs weight and volume is silly.) I know the supermarkets generally do handle cash, but even they might have limits – I’m not sure any of them would be happy to accept, say, half a kilogram of 1-krona coins in a single payment.

My standard 30-minute walk takes me through Starboparken in two directions.

Returning from my daily walk, pleased to be welcomed by all this greenery. Almost every day I’m reminded of how much I love having a garden – even in a year I haven’t had any energy to plant anything new, the investments of time and effort from past years are paying off.

Adrian and I went out walking. I wanted someplace new, so we picked a walk from a book I recently bought, and walked around lake Albysjön, about 10 km. There are two lakes by this name, both just south of Stockholm but in different counties. This was the one in Tyresö.

Following the guidance of a route description in a book feels very different from simply following signposts or markings on trees. It takes more attention from the walking itself – having to keep the book at hand, trying to figure out where we are in relation to the landmarks described, how far we’ve gotten, have we missed the turn they described… I liked seeing a new place, but I do like following a single well-marked trail better.

The walk itself was nice. The first kilometre or so went along asphalt roads among houses, which we (especially Adrian) didn’t particularly enjoy, but thereafter it was mostly forest paths and some narrow gravel trails through a lot of greenery.

We found a nice clifftop spot for our lunch, with wide views over Albysjön. Halfway through our meal we got a tiny bit of rain – just enough to make Adrian seek shelter under a pine tree, and to get everything slightly wet, but luckily no more than that.

With just the two of us, we could take breaks whenever we wanted for whatever reason – such as finding a small jetty in the middle of a profusion of water lily leaves, which Adrian could throw pine cones at.

At the rapids at Nyfors, we saw a small, dark, furry animal run away across the stones. I can’t keep all the weasel-otter-marten-mink-polecat species straight: there are so many and they’re all so similar, small and slim and dark and furry. This one was on the larger side, and I couldn’t see any light-coloured markings at all, so afterwards, with the help of the internet, I tentatively identified it as maybe a mink.

At the end of our circular walk there was a little café where we had a lovely blueberry pie.

The cardigan is looking good. The fade is all done, now it should be smooth sailing from here onwards.

I’ve reached middle age, or something. Some time earlier this year, there was a step change in my caloric needs. All of a sudden I couldn’t finish what used to be normal portions. In the end I had to switch to a smaller serving bowl, because I kept serving myself more food than I could eat.

That’s my bowl of salad on the left, and Adrian’s on the right. It’s Friday movie night, so dinner is served on the chest that does double duty as a sofa table in front of the TV.

I’ve also stopped eating breakfast on weekdays, because I realized I no longer need all that food. I still haven’t quite learned to manage restaurant meals yet, and keep ordering as if nothing had changed. I made the mistake of ordering an entire pizza in Slovenia and had to send half of it back.

My work laptop is starting to show its age. I got it after the house was burgled, in early 2018, so it’s almost 5 years old. The battery is becoming unreliable, and after the last round of Windows updates, some parts of the dock stopped working. Which is bizarre, to my mind – the dock is a box which translates signals from many cables into one, and its functionality should have nothing whatsoever to do with the OS version of the computer listening to its signals, but it is what it is.

I put in a request for a new computer, and today I picked up my replacement laptop at the 13|37 office. And then realized I’d have to bring it home somehow. It came in an ordinary cardboard shipping box, and at first I thought I’d just tuck the box under my arm. Then I realized that I’d surely be tempted to put it down at some point during all the standing and waiting of my commute, and last time I did that with an extra piece of luggage that I don’t usually have to keep track of, I forgot it on the train… It would be quite unfortunate to lose my computer on the first day. So I repacked my backpack until I could fit both my usual equipment and the new stuff inside. Had to leave some other things in the office, but I managed to fit all the essentials.

Walking around with it in public was uncomfortable for body and mind, given that its contents weighed a tonne and were worth about 40,000 SEK or thereabouts. I imagined walking around with 40,000 SEK of cash on me, and kept anxiously hugging the backpack to myself when I sat on the train. It was a relief to get home and put down the weight, literal and figurative.

Wednesday is office day, which also means a restaurant lunch. I had a vegan burger for my lunch. And I don’t know what they put in there, but it gave me so much gas that I was basically laid up for the rest of the day. I managed to get through the afternoon’s work, tottered home, and then stayed horizontal as much as I could in the evening. I haven’t felt this awful since I went lactose-free. If the burger hadn’t been vegan, I’d maybe have suspected milk – but you can’t even squeeze that much milk products into a simple burger, so I’ve no idea what was in there. I won’t be going back to that place any time soon, in any case.

I’ve been collecting coins since high school. Whenever I travel to a new country, I come home with coins from that country. I also have coins from Eric’s travels, and my mum’s. Some I’ve swapped for, when meeting people from other countries. But all are naturally, organically acquired – none are bought.

These days I rarely get new ones, so it’s a low-pace hobby now. All sorts of forces work against my collecting. Most of Europe uses euros. I travel less, and avoid long flights which might otherwise take me outside of Europe. And cash is becoming less and less common – faster in Sweden than in other countries, and in Slovenia we did run across places that only accepted cash, but nevertheless cash transactions are getting rare. Who knows – in another few decades, the whole idea of coins might be a quaint, antiquated one.

The coins that I’ve had longest date back to before I was collecting – old Soviet rouble coins from my childhood piggy bank.

The newest coins are three euro coins with Slovenian designs on the rear. Euro coins do travel to some extent, and I have some from countries where I haven’t been since they switched to the euro, but it’s still most common to get the local country’s designs.

It feels like it was just a week ago that we had 25-degree weather and were enjoying meals outside. But now all of a sudden it’s 12 degrees outside and I’m wearing socks and actual shoes! The change of seasons was very abrupt.