A Sunny Day

Over the past week or so, thaw and rain have been working away at the thick layer of snow we had before that. It's been a slow process though, and the nearby surroundings have been such a mess of slush and ice that some days even the few steps to the dustbins at the corner of the building have not seemed worth the risk. 

 

Yesterday, I manged a somewhat longer "reconnaissance tour" in the immediate neighbourhood, though, trying to assess the general situation - and I found the streets now for the most part fairly ice-free and dry. And with the forecasts for the beginning of this week suggesting temperatures to remain around freezing point, but no further rain/snow falling, I gathered up my courage to at last try to get myself into the city centre for a by now seriously overdue haircut. (The combination of my unfortunate fall and knee injury in early October, and the snowy winter following, has made it difficult for me to walk much; and even to try taking a bus part of the way hasn't felt safe.)

 

Today even seemed to promise some sunshine, and after having washed my hair in the shower in the morning, I decided to call my hairdresser. I was in luck: she could fit me in at 11:40. I decided that my best option was probably to walk along a major street towards the railway station/travel center (about half-way), because if I felt too tired when getting that far, I'd be able to take a bus from there to a place closer to my goal. However, having reached the intersection where I needed to make that choice, I felt ok to continue walking. I also found I had time before the hairdressing appointment to visit a nearby pharmacy (for a few non-prescription things). I arrived at the hairdresser's at 11:30, and found her ready for me. She was efficient as usual, and when she was done, I felt relieved to "be myself" again. Actually I almost felt like about ten years younger...!  (Not in the sense back to 60, but at least back to my actual age, from lately having felt more like 80!) 

 

AI image reused from some previous occasion.

 

Thus rejuvenated, from the hairdresser's I walked to a nearby bus stop, prepared to take any of three buses passing by there back to the travel center. One came in just as I arrived to the stop; and as it turned out, at the travel center I could then change directly to another bus taking me a further two stops closer to home; with only ~10 min left to walk from there. 

 

I had left home at 10:45, and was back at 12:15; and the whole adventure went more smoothly (and with less knee pain) than I had dared hope for. 

 

The photo at the top is the only one I snapped on my outing: Looking back at the street where my hairdresser's salon is situated, before I walked on to take the bus back home.

 

 

The Correspondent - (Audio) Book Review

 

 

The Correspondent - A Novel
by Virginia Evans (2025)

Audio book (8 hours 36 min) narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed + 13 more

The format of this book is  rather unusual for our time and age, as it consists only of letters (and e-mails), written to and from the main character (Sybil Van Anwerp) over a number of years, in her old age. Sybil has obviously been a letter-writer all her life, and still enjoys writing letters by hand - but also uses email when that is required or more convenient. 

The selection of letters is not restricted to her correspondence with just one other person, but involves quite a wide variety of people - like her brother, an old friend since way back, a current neighbour, a couple of authors she never met in person but whose books she read, someone at a university refusing to let her to audit a class in English literature - and a certain staff member at the customer service of a company handling DNA analysis results... 

Through this variety, we gradually get to know Sybil quite well, and learn a lot about her past as well as her current situation - which also involves being in a slow process of losing her eye-sight. 

I was a little bit sceptical about how a book of this structure would work as audio book - but it actually works extremely well, thanks to the variety of voices reading the different letters. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, and getting to know Sybil; and I did not find it difficult to keep track of who was writing what.

In some ways, it also reminds me a bit of how one gets to know some people through blogging - gradually learning from "bits and pieces" both about their current life and their past, and how they interact with others.

The book was on the New York Times' Bestseller list for 2025. 

Audible's summary about the author:
Virginia Evans is from the east coast of the United States. She attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature. After starting a family, she went back to school for her master’s of philosophy in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Mark, two children, Jack and Mae, and her Red Labrador, Brigid.

 

 

 

Thaw

 

Over the past few days, we've gone from really cold weather to thaw, slush and ice here. Lots of daily reports about really slippery conditions and road accidents for the whole area - and definitely not looking good for walking just outside my own windows either. It's four days in a row now that I've just been staying in. (Haven't even been out to the bins since Monday...) 

The best I can hope for just now is really that it will keep on raining and thawing until the old snow is all gone, before it starts over...

Meanwhile, indoors, I have continued to take down most of my holiday decorations. But the electric candles and window stars will stay up for a while yet; and I usually also keep some red table runners and other textiles until mid February or so - for a warmer feeling while it's cold and colourless outside. 

Triple reflections in my triple glazed windows...

The Forsytes (2025 vs 1967)

 

 Around Christmas, the new 2025 TV series version of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy was broadcasted on Swedish Television (SVT). I watched it, but wasn't overly impressed - and some things "disturbed me", as they seemed to clash with my memories from the first TV adaptation from1967 - which must have been one of the earliest "grown up" TV series I was allowed to watch (I was 12 years old in 1967); plus I'm pretty sure I also watched it when it was shown here again in 1970 and 1986. 

There was also a second version made in 2002-2003, and I know I watched that one too - but when I think back, it's still the 1967 TV version that sticks in my memory, while I can't really recall the 2002 version at all. 

Having watched the new six episodes now, I still find myself comparing everyone and everything to my memories from the 1967 version (and thinking things like "but surely Irene wasn't a ballet dancer, but a pianist??"). So I decided to go back and re-listen to the original novels, written between 1906-1921 by John Galsworthy (English novelist, 1867-1933). In 1932  Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.   

I have listened to this audio book version (narrated by John Williams, and lasting 42+ hours) once before, in 2021, and also mentioned it on my blog back then.

  

Blackstone Audiobooks introduction from 2005: 

"The three novels that make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.

The Forsyte Saga is a sequence of novels comprising The Man of Property (1906), In Chancery (1920), and To Let (1921) with two interludes, "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (1918) and "Awakening", published together in 1922.

The saga begins with Soames Forsyte, a successful solicitor who buys land at Robin Hill on which to build a house for his wife Irene and future family. Eventually, the Forsyte family begins to disintegrate when Timothy Forsyte, the last of the old generation, dies at the age of 100.

In these novels, John Galsworthy documented a departed way of life, that of the affluent middle class that ruled England before the 1914 war. The class is criticized on account of its possessiveness, but there is also nostalgia because Galsworthy, as a man born into the class, could also appreciate its virtues."

In my review from 2021, I wrote:

---  I'm guessing that many of my blogging friends around my own age probably remember the old TV-series - I'm talking of the 1967 black & white one, not the one from 2002-03. While I listened to original novel now, it was the characters from the 1967 one that I kept seeing in my head. I do think that first TV series must have kept rather close to the novel. 
--- If you're not familiar with the story, it spans over three generations of a "commercial upper-middle class" family in London, starting in the Victorian era during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. It's a lot about their relationship to money and social status, but also deals with the general developments within society during that time - and not least the changing position of women. 

And to answer one of my own "but surely..." questions from the latest TV version: No, in the book Irene is not a ballerina, and she does play the piano. And I still can't figure out why on earth they'd change that... (To me, the new Irene does not at all match my impressions of her, neither from the 1967 TV series nor from the books. And neither does Soames, really.)

 

Irene and Soames 1967 vs 2025

 

Undecorating and Defrosting

 

The amaryllis that I bought just before Christmas is now in bloom - just as it's time to start taking down other kinds of decorations... 

The traditional date in Sweden for "throwing out Christmas" is 13th January. Back in my childhood, it was still common to have what we called julgransplundring ("Christmas tree looting") around this date. I thing the origin is that further back in history, the tree was often decorated with edible things - like gingerbread cookies, candy and apples - and before throwing it out after Christmas, one had a party where the guests were invited to help strip and throw out the tree - and eat the leftover decorations.  In my childhood, it was no longer all that common to use edible decorations in the Christmas tree; but there were games, and sometimes dancing around the tree (if the space allowed!), and cookies and cake etc to eat - and at the end of the party when the guests left, each child also got a "goodie bag" with a few sweets to take home with them. 

Below is a photo from my very first such party, I think from 1960, which was the year when we moved from a flat in town to a house of our own in a village. I'm the one to the right (5 years old), and the three other girls were friends of around my own age living in the neighbouring houses on the same street. Whether parents nowadays still manage to find time to throw "throwing out" parties, I don't know... Back in those days, there was no preschool or kindergarten, though  (or at least not in the village where we lived). So all the mums in our street were stay-at-home housewives (or possibly worked part time when the children were old enough to go to school).

 

Nowadays I tend to take my Christmas decorations down gradually, pretty much in reversed order to how I put them up in December - and no party... (I still have some gingerbread biscuits left, though. Bought, not home baked, this year...) 

Yesterday I put various "gnomes" and "santas" (Swedish: tomtar) back to bed; and will continue packing angels and whatnot later in the week. My electric candles may be staying for a while longer, though.

Today it struck me that as the weather (according to forecasts) may be about to change to somewhat milder temperatures again, I should probably take the opportunity to defrost my freezer - as just now it was fairly easy to just put the contents of the freezer in bags out on the balcony while the indoors thawing was going on. 

My freezer is in a tricky position though, as it's fitted into a cupboard with another ordinary cupboard underneath it. So defrosting requires an intricate arrangement of pots and pans and towels, in order to stop melting ice from falling/dripping down where one doesn't want it... So that took pretty much all afternoon today. The photo below is from another year, but it looked very similar this year.