First Week in October

October has started out wet, windy and unpredictable; and yet the first week seems to have blown past very fast.

Last Saturday, 1 October, I went for a walk into town in the afternoon and half-attended the inauguration of a new 'plaza' along the river. (I say 'half' because I arrived late and left early...)

Stopped here and there to take photos...

 

Approaching the new 'plaza' along the river. It has been named 'Post Office Place' (Swedish: Post-torget) because the building next to it used to be the post office. It hasn't been for years, though, as nowadays post office services are spread out to small shops who-knows-where all over town; and if you ask someone on the street where the nearest one may be, they'll most likely have no idea, and refer you to Google. (I wonder how many future tourists will end up disappointed when not finding one by the Place bearing its name?)

If any explanation was given why the new piece of art adorning the Post Office Place is a philosophical wolf speaking English, I was too late to find out!

But with a restaurant or café on the ground floor in the old post office building (the yellow one on the right), I suppose it will probably be a nice Place in summer.

I didn't linger there long on this first day of October, though, as it started raining again!

Monday, 3 October, offered nicer weather on my afternoon walk:

(These are Rowan trees.)

Tuesday was another grey day, but without rain - for which I was thankful, as I had then booked an appointment at the vaccination centre "across town" to get my 5th covid jab. Getting across town by bus is still complicated, as they're still working away at redesigning the former central meeting place for the buses in town. (Feels like they've been at it for ages, at the rate of one cobble-stone per day...) 

So like last time, back in May, I walked from home to the railway station (15 min), waited there for a while (10 min), got on a roundabout bus (10 min) to a place not "too" far from my destination; finishing off with another walk from there to the actual place (10 min). Beginning to feel like "routine" now... 

The vaccination place is close to the shopping malls in that part of the city, so afterwards I also looked in briefly at four different shops for minor errands. As it wasn't raining, I also decided to walk all the way back home. On the way, I passed by the university building, and snapped some photos of the new mural there. I recently showed one photo of it in a post from the Textile Museum (in September); but walking past the whole length of it, one gets a better idea of the complexity involved in painting it:

On Wednesday it rained all day, and I also felt rather tired from the day before (and the vaccination itself, perhaps). I had the laundry roomed booked in the afternoon, but besides that (two loads of washing), I didn't really do anything else.

Thursday view from my window

On Thursday I went for a walk to the Supermarket for a few things. On my way there, it was windy, but didn't rain. On my way back, though, it did...

 
On Friday, much the same story, except then my walk went into town for a quick pharmacy errand. It didn't rain on my way there... But it did on my way back!

Today, Saturday, I've been out twice - but both times briefly. In the (late) morning, I thought I might make it to the recycling bins and back without getting wet. But before I was even half way there, it started pouring down. At the bins, I and two men out on similar errands did quite a complicated little rain dance trying to sort the contents of our bags into the right containers, while simultaneously juggling umbrellas!

In the late afternoon when I looked out of the window, the rain clouds seemed to have gone away. The sun was shining in through my living room windows, and I could see clear blue sky on both sides of my flat. So I decided on another little walk. I didn't even take an umbrella, because when I left home, and for the first five minutes, the sky looked like this:

Then, out of nowhere, it suddenly started to pour down again, the sky back to all grey! Nothing for it but to just turn back home again - and take a hot shower, and get changed...

Coming back out of the bathroom after my hot shower - there was the sun was again warmly shining in through my living room windows, as if wondering what I was making such a fuss about!