The Blue Bird

 "The Bluebird of Happiness" seems to be a wide-spread symbol across several cultures, representing "hope, love, renewal, and the beauty of life". References to it can be found in old mythology and folklore from various corners of the world, as well as in modern popular culture. 

 

This little blue glass bird used to belong to my paternal grandmother. I remember it sitting in one of the windows of her glazed veranda. Nowadays it lives in my bedroom window. 

In Maurice Maeterlinck's 1908 stage play named The Blue Bird, two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, are sent out by the fairy Bérylune to search for the Bluebird of Happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their house all along and they create great happiness for another by giving their pet bird to the sick neighbor child. (Source: Wikipedia)

Homefront Sleuths Mysteries - (Audio) Book Reviews

 

 

The Blackout Murders
(The Homefront Sleuths Cozy Mystery Series, Book 1)

By Anna Elliott, Charles Veley
Narrated by Iona Campbell

England, 1941. The tranquil village of Crofter’s Green seems like a haven from the chaos of wartime. But when a local air raid warden is found dead in the village churchyard, five villagers decide they need to uncover the truth:

Evie Harris, recently widowed, is new in the village, where she is opening a tea shop (in spite of the difficulty of finding ingredients in wartime).
Dorothy Baker is a young mother who is helping her 
Alice Greenleaf, the village herbalist.
Blake Collins, a schoolteacher, wounded in the war (and with a talent to see patterns that others might miss).
Harry Jenkins, a retired detective. 

 

(The setup of characters reminds me a bit of "The Thursday Murder Club" which I watched as film some time around Christmas, and then also listened to as audio book - but found my impressions of the two clashing a bit in my head, so did not get round to writing a review.)

 

As I'd never heard of this book/series before, and it was included for free, I didn't expect all that much from it. But I found it entertaining enough to keep me company through the first week of my recent cold - even if I also frequently kept dozing off to it, so for that reason did not find it all easy to keep track of all details. 

 

And when I had finished the first, the next one in the series turned up for me as well - so why not continue...

 

 

 

The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor 

(The Homefront Sleuths Cozy Mystery Series, Book 2)

By Anna Elliott, Charles Veley
Narrated by Iona Campbell 

 

"England, 1941: Evie Harris doesn’t believe in ghosts—not even when she spots a glowing figure outside her bedroom window in the quiet village of Crofter’s Green. But when the same eerie spectre is seen by Lord Hawthorne, tied to a long-buried family scandal, even Evie starts to wonder if the past is haunting Hawthorne Manor.

Before she can investigate, Lord Hawthorne is found dead at the bottom of his grand staircase. An accident? Not likely. When the glowing figure begins tormenting Lady Gwendolyn, Evie rallies the Homefront Sleuths to unravel the manor’s secrets.

As the sleuths dig deeper, the twists keep coming:

    A furious daughter returns for the reading of the will.
    Priceless antiques vanish from the estate.
    And Lady Gwendolyn’s strange behavior hints at dangers far beyond ghostly hauntings.

With hidden passageways, family feuds, and wartime schemes at every turn, the sleuths must race to uncover the truth. Is the danger truly from the dead—or the living?"¨

(Just quoting the Audible presentation in full with this one.)

Having got to know the characters a bit better now, I think I'll also continue with No 3 in the series - which also automatically popped up as soon I had finished No 2...

 

 

 

For those who prefer reading with the eyes rather than listening, I see that the books are also available for Kindle at rather reasonable prices.

Following the Tracks

 

The combination of winter sun and freshly fallen snow does often tempt me to go out for a little while, even if at present I prefer not to stray very far from home. It was on Friday that it snowed all day. By now (Monday) it's obvious that where no official paths have been  cleared, people still make their own... Like across the lawns to the playground (above)!

But humans are not the only ones leaving tracks in the snow! Here, for example, a big bird or two seem to have been out walking in the company of two hares... 

Tracks like these always make me think of a chapter in Winnie the Pooh, where Pooh and Piglet go following some tracks, which they suspect may have been made by a Woozle...

 ... but the tracks keep multiplying, so that after a while it seems there must be at least two Woozles, now also joined by, perhaps, a Wizzle... 

 

... and after yet another turn around the same bush, the two friends begin to fear that there are even more potentially dangerous animals about...

 But of course all is explained when Christopher Robin turns up:

'Silly old Bear,' he said, 'what were you doing? First you went round the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth time - '

 

Shadow Shot Sunday

Today started with a view of blue sky and white fluffy clouds - a rather rare sight lately.

 

Also quite a lot of white fluffy stuff on the ground again, since the snowstorm on Friday. The rectangular spots of light are reflections from windows on the building across the lawn. 

 

Low sun casting long shadows

 

In the afternoon, I decided to venture out for a short walk to catch a few of the rare rays of sunshine, and to get a "feeling " for how slippery or not it felt on the ground. It wasn't "too" bad, but I still felt that even using two walking poles I had better keep my eyes on the ground with every step. I did go over to the old cemetery, but only went in far enough to snap this photo of a path that had not been ploughed:

 

  

Life in a Snow Globe

 

 Photo edited in "HDR-ish" mode in Picasa3. 

After a couple of weeks of the weather staying cold, windy and dry, but without throwing more snow at us - yesterday (Friday), it was in snow-globe mood again, the whole day. So we're back to be being pretty much covered in the white stuff again. 

The head cold that hit me from "nowhere" about 1½ week ago has pretty much kept me indoors since then, and I haven't been doing much at all unless you count using up about a ton of paper tissues and cough drops. (The inside of my head has kind of been feeling blurry like a snow globe all on its own, much of the time...) 

(istock image - not my own photo)

Luckily, I had ordered my usual bi-weekly grocery delivery for Thursday - when the weather was still on good behaviour and did not cause any delays. (Besides groceries, I also stocked up on paper tissues and cough drops...) And after I got the delivery sorted, I even managed a short walk to get rid of a couple of weeks of recyclable waste in the right bins; before Nature started throwing the next lot of snow at us. So yesterday I could just stay in and watch the snow-globe-like weather from the comfort of my own home. 

On the whole it's been a long period of "doing" very little. A lot of the time I've just been half-dozing to radio, TV and audio books; with a few excursions into Blogland now and then in between, when I've felt up for it. 

I have got through the whole original B&W Forsyte Saga TV series that I managed to find available on YouTube (mentioned in some earlier post). I watched the 26th and last episode today. I did enjoy being able to see "the original" again, as this was probably one of the first TV series of "grown-up" kind that I ever watched back in my youth. In 1967, I was still only 12 years old, so I'm not entirely sure if I did see it then (might depend on what day of the week and what time of night it was broadcasted?) - or perhaps not until it was rerun again here in 1970? But even so. I don't think any of us back then would have been able to imagine the explosion of various ways we'd have 55 years later of watching pretty much anything, at any time...

A Full Moon for Skywatch Friday

 

Looking out of my kitchen window on Sunday afternoon, I noticed the full moon, and went to grab my camera. I think the photo below is probably the best shot of the moon I've ever managed with my little Sony DSC HX 80 compact camera.

31/01/2026, 16:46

Linking to Skywatch Friday

Window Ornaments

 

Today the February Sun drew my attention to another kind of "bling". I have two window ornaments made of horseshoe nails and glass. One (above) hangs in my study, and the other (below) in my bedroom. (Not easy to tell from the photos, but the one below is smaller, only about 1/3 of the size of the one above.)

I've been racking my brain to remember their history, but the details aren't really clear in my my memory any more. I think that both may have been bought on some family holiday trip in the south of Sweden in my early teens or so - and that orginally, one was kept by us/me while the other was given to my p. grandmother. One reason why the details are blurred in my memory now is probably that later on, my parents moved to live in my dad's childhood home - and I seem to have memories of both ornaments from different windows over time. The only thing I'm sure about now is that at least since 2014, they have both been residing with me! 

Faux Bling

 

The sun happened to shine on my "fake" jewellery on display on the side of a bookcase next to my wardrobes, and tempted me to snap a couple of photos. 

The word that first sprang to mind for me was "bling". But when checking up on it, "bling" seems to actually denote "expensive, ostentatious clothing and jewellery" - rather than cheap imitations that never in their life pretended to be anything else but just that...

I searched on, and found some more definitions:

• Costume Jewelry / Fashion Jewelry: The standard terms for items designed to complement outfits rather than serve as investment pieces.
• Trinkets: Small, inexpensive jewelry items or baubles.
• Faux Jewelry: Jewelry that mimics real, high-end pieces.
• Junk Jewelry: A derogatory term for very low-quality items.
• Base Metal Jewelry: Jewelry made from metals like brass, copper, or aluminum.

I give up. The items on display above are probably a mix of all that - unless perhaps some of them are so old now that they've become some sort of faux antiques? They're all made of materials like wood, glass beads, ceramics, leather and base metals, though... (The few pieces I have of possibly somewhat higher value are not hanging out on daily display.)

I wear very little jewellery at all except on special occasions - and special occasions these days are becoming rather rare! I look at these items every now and then and think that I should give most of them away to some charity shop, as I so rarely use them. The main reason that they're still hanging where they're hanging, though, is that a lot of them are still associated with memories. (And they aren't really in the way either...)

February

 

Photo from 13 February, 2025 - Greenfinch 

A week or so ago I mentioned my habit of using my own photos to have personal calendars printed, and showed the January image I used for this year. Inspired by Ginny I'll try to make a habit of showing the rest at the start of each month. For February I chose another bird photo, this time a greenfinch sitting on the red bird feeder in the old cemetery. That feeder was a new addition there last winter, but is still there and in use. No doubt appreciated by several kinds of birds, as we've been having a persistently cold start to 2026.

My paternal grandmother Sally was born 3 February, 1900.
My maternal grandfather Hugo was born 4 February, 1901.
My mother was born 20 February, 1930.  

Lift Adventures

Dear Diary,

I'm still in the grip of the Cold, and reality still feels a bit blurry. 

Yesterday I might possibly have managed to pass the virus on to strangers myself. (Hopefully neither they nor I will ever know.) 

When stepping into the lift to go down to the laundry room in the basement, instead of taking me straight down there, the lift (very confusingly) took me UP to the 3rd floor - where I was joined by a youngish couple whom I can't recall ever having seen before. Presumably living here, though, as they weren't dressed to go outdoors. Their destination was the basement as well. (The ride down only takes half a minute, which did not really allow for more conversation than to establish that fact.) 

Down there, our ways parted. The couple disappeared down the corridor towards some storage space. I had the laundry room to myself; and over the next 2-3 hours also managed to go up/down in the lift on my own a few more times without interference... Until finally I was going back up with my last bag of dry clothes...

When the lift came down, and the door opened, it was empty of people - but its floor covered with Stuff. I could also hear voices from the entrance floor above. Obviously someone was in the process of moving things (perhaps also themselves?) either in or out of the building.

Not yet having walked the whole set of stairs up to my flat since before my knee accident, I really did not want my first attempt to be with the extra burden of a heavy bag - and who knows, maybe even encountering other people carrying things or furniture as well... 

On the other hand: Stepping into a lift half full of someone else's stuff didn't seem like a super idea either. So I didn't. But left the lift go back up without me.

There's a door to the stairwell next to the lift. I opened that; and caught sight of a couple of people handling more "stuff" up at the entrance. One of them was (I think) the same man who had been in the lift with me when I first went down. Luckily it seemed they were moving things out of the lift rather than into it. I called their attention; and soon the man said that the lift had been emptied now so that I could use it.

Looking out of my window when I got back up to my flat, there was no removal van parked outside, though. Only an ordinary car. Not having known for quite a while now who lives in one of the flats upstairs, I'm still not sure if anyone was really moving out (or in). Perhaps they were just having a bit of a clearout. 

It did strike me that it was the 31st of the month, though. So note to self for the future: Avoid booking laundry room on the last (or first) day (or weekend) of the month... 

Cold

 

The cold incubation period is the time from catching a cold virus to the first symptoms, typically 1 to 3 days, though it can range from 12 hours to a week. (Google AI)  

Yesterday, I started to feel like I had a cold coming on: I had a couple of violent sneeze attacks, and felt a bit congested and generally "weird". I dismissed the idea, though - because where (or who) on earth would I have caught it from?? I haven't been anywhere recently, nor had any vistitors. Could it perhaps be an allergic reaction rather than a cold? But since January has been such a chilly month here (temperatures below zero), that didn't make sense either. I know pollen can drift  with the winds from further south in Europe even before the season really starts here, but still... 

Today, no doubt any more: However I managed to catch it, it is definitely a cold. It's kept me in bed most of the day, half-slumbering to an audio book - and falling properly asleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon. (Just now trying to keep myself sitting upright at the computer for a while, though.) 

This is the extent of my off-line human interaction over the past week: 

Last Thursday I had groceries delievered. I went down to open the entrance door for the delivery girl (it was a young woman this time), and we rode up in the lift together. I live on the 2nd floor, so that only takes seconds. She then put the bags down in the hall just inside my front door and left. We exchanged one or two sentences, no more. She seemed healthy to me - and it also really seems a bit too long ago to be of relevance. 

On Saturday, I spoke to a neighbour in the basement corridor outside the laundry room (looking at the booking board). But we probably stood like two meters apart and only exchanged a few words. (She had booked the slot after me, and I told her that as it seemed like I'd able to start an hour early, she could count on doing the same. We did not meet again.) 

I have gone up and down in the lift a few more times during the past week, but then without meeting anyone. I can't think where else I might have come across some lingering virus though! (The laundry room, possibly - but it's rather "airy" down there, and I wear rubber gloves most of the time, and always start by wiping the surfaces...)

I can't actually recall when I last had a winter cold. Having had flu and covid shots every autumn has in later years seemed to protect me fairly well throughout the winters!

No doubt I'll survive this one too - it just still puzzles me when/where/how I picked it up!

The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side

 

"Suddenly I'm having a strange feeling of being watched..."

Looking out of my kitchen window in the middle of the day, I saw the two hares "from the cemetery" out on adventures in among our human habitations again. (More often I see them in the cemetery, which is why I think of them as living there.)

 

"The grass is always greener on the other side" originates from the ancient Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), who wrote in Ars Amatoria (1 BC), "Fertilior seges est alienis semper in agris"—meaning "the harvest is always more fruitful in another man's fields". It highlights the human tendency to envy others' situations, believing them to be better than one's own. 
(Google AI)  

Apparently this does not apply only to humans, but to other creatures as well! ;)

Step By Step

 

Today the clouds seemed less "compact" than they've been lately, and before lunch I decided to go for a short walk over to the old cemetery. Almost a week since last time, but the weather and snow conditions are still pretty much the same. The temperature has steadily kept below zero even in the daytime, and the nearby streets and the major cemetery paths are for the most part dry and clear of snow and ice.

In the cemetery, I practiced a bit of walking without actively using my walking pole with every step. (I.e. from time to time I just held it hovering a few cm above ground for a while, without setting it down - but ready to do so if needed.) I also made mental note that my knee still does not like the slightest downhill tilt - while slightly uphill doesn't seem to bother it as much. (Worth remembering when choosing where to walk...) 

 "Mirror, mirror on the wall..."
Mirror portrait from the lift back home 
- me dressed in full winter gear...

Packing Up Christmas

 

Bedroom - Kitchen - Living Room

It hit me this morning that a whole month has gone by since Christmas, and as I had no special plans for the day, and the Great Outdoors was not looking very inviting (just grey and cold), I decided that it might be a good day to say thanks and goodbye (for this season) to the electric candle holders and stars in my windows; and put my regular window lamps back up instead. This has always been a job that takes some time - and now at age 70, it seems to have expanded to fill "a whole day". (How on earth back in a distant past I ever managed a full time job + a fairly active social life besides all the to-do's at home has long seemed a mystery!) 

 

I'm keeping some red textiles (table runners etc) for a while longer (as it's still very much winter here); and ended up moving the big poinsettia from the living room window to the kitchen to match the red ribbons around the curtains, and kind of make up for the "loss" of the red wooden candle holder. In the living room I'm also keeping some battery candles, as it still gets dark early and the evenings are long. 

 

 

I asked Google for some quotes about "old age and time": 

 

"Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. 
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." 
— Mark Twain 

 

 "It's important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle." 
— Unknown 

  

 "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely." 
— Unknown

 

 "To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am." 
— Francis Bacon

 

 

Everyday Life

 

Photo from 25 January 2025 (Female Mallard)

For nearly as long as I've been blogging, I've also been making a photo calendar from my own photos each year - just for myself +  as Christmas presents to family and one or two friends. (These days I'm down to just ordering three - for myself, my brother and my aunt.) 

The female mallard above, photo taken in January 2025, became my choice for January 2026. I'm really only showing it here now because I haven't been out much lately - so desperately turned back to last year for inspiration. But if I remember, I might continue to show my other chosen photos for my 2026 calendar month by month. 

Yesterday, my main achievement was that I managed to take another bag of recycling stuff to the designated containers, as enough snow had thawed away to make access possible. 

This morning, there was a new flurry of snow going on outside my windows, lasting all day - but not very much actually seems to have settled on the ground. I haven't been out for closer inspection, though. I had the laundry room booked for the afternoon, and in between turns down to the basement, watched the last two parts (of three) of a BBC documentary about Jane Austen. (Well worth watching, if available on some channel you have access to.)

Black, White and Sepia

 

The sun went into hiding again on Tuesday, and after my excursion to the city centre on Monday, "me and my knee" were quite content to mostly just stay in and rest again. (Just a few extra steps outdoors in connection with taking out some rubbish to the bins.) Today, still grey, just below freezing point and with some extra wind-chill; but the streets dry and mostly free of snow and ice. After lunch I persuaded myself to go for a short walk over to the old cemetery and check out the conditions there.The major paths turned out clear of snow, and dry - but snow still lingering on graves and grass and minor paths. I snapped the four photos above to show you. I kept to the ice-free paths, and 20-25 minutes felt enough. 

Last week, I wrote a post about my impressions of the latest TV version of The Forsytes vs the classic one from 1967. Having found the 1967 one to still be ruling the memories of it in my own head, it hit me to check if perhaps the old one might be available on YouTube. And actually the whole series is available there - 26 episodes, and restored in HD (still in black & white of course). If you're interested to check it out, just type "the forsyte saga 1967" into the search box on YouTube. (Since Saturday I have watched four episodes so far, and intend to continue. Already in the very first episode it struck me how clear the introduction of the characters was right from start, compared to later versions. But again - maybe that's just because it fits with my memories!) 

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.