A Winter Walk

There's a lot of Olympics on TV at the moment (and not much else!). Personally, I have to confess I've never taken much interest in sports of any kind. The only winter sports that can sometimes keep me entranced in front of the TV for as long as an hour or two is usually figure skating, and especially ice dance. (I did watch the whole ice dance final the other night.) That has nothing whatsoever to do with any skating skills of my own, though - I never even learned to stand on them, and even less to move about...!

Friday the 13th* was another cold, grey winter day here - of the kind with a flurry of snow in the air all day, even if not actually adding very much to the amount already on the ground. I decided to defy *superstition though, so manged my usual weekly "recycling walk" (about 20 minutes). But I did not feel tempted to extend it any further. (Cold winds blowing...)

Yesterday, I expected to wake up to much the same kind of weather, but was pleasantly surprised to instead find the sun shining from a clear blue sky - inspiring me to actually try a walk into town. Winter seems to be planning to keep us in its grip next week as well (possilby including throwing even more snow at us), and I did need some stuff from the pharmacy again. Besides a refill of some prescription medicines, my recent cold "caught from nowhere" had also more or less emptied my basic stock of various over-the-counter stuff...!

Ever since my unfortunate fall and knee injury back in October, with the long, cold and snowy winter following, it still feels like a long way to walk to the city centre, though. So when I set out, I was thinking that I'd probably better choose the same way into town that I did last time - allowing me to catch a bus part of the way, if I should feel the need for it... 

However - once I got out, it seemed that my legs must have been conferring separately with some braver part of my brain. Because as soon as I had crossed the first street, instead of continuing towards the travel center, I found myself turning down to the river, and my favourite path into town that I have not walked since early October - as it does not include any "escape options" along the way...

It all turned out for the best, though. With the cold dry weather we've been having for weeks now, the gravel path along the river, even with a bit of snow and ice on it, was probably actually a better choice for walking than the pavements along the streets.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the river all frozen, which doesn't always happen - but as I've already pointed out, we've had an unusually long period of temperatures staying well below freezing point both day and night lately.

 

 

 After my visit to the pharmacy, I also paid a visit to my favourite little tea shop by the square (pretty much "just around the corner" from the pharmacy), as I had also again run out of my favourite black tea blends from there. I actually can't recall when (before this winter) I last had to "resort to" buying prepackaged loose leaf tea from the supermarket! ;)  I've been buying nearly all my teas from that shop by the square for 40 years - i.e. for as long as I've lived in this town...

After that, no room in my backpack for any more purchases. But as my knee still wasn't signalling any serious protests, I decided I was likely to be able to walk back home the same way as I had come - through the park and along the river. 

When I reached the cemetery hill (up to the right from the view above) I decided to take the "shortcut" across there. (When walking in the other direction, I had taken a bit of a detour to avoid having to walk down a rather steep hill. But uphill is somewhat less challenging.) 

 

 

Not all paths on the cemetery have been ploughed, but the major ones have. 

 

 

I parked my poles and my backpack on a bench for a photo stop. (Didn't sit down myself, though - too cold for that!) (All photos in this post taken with my phone, btw.)

 

All in all, I was out and "on my feet" for two hours (including the time spent in the two shops). My knee injury back in the autumn happened on October 10th. Four months later, this is the first time since then that I walked all the way both to and from the city centre. With the kind of winter we've been having, I had really given up hope of even trying this until spring. But my knee does not seem to have got any worse from it. I'm still wearing a compression knee sleeve whenever I go out (and a softer bamboo one all night), and use at least one walking pole outdoors (just now both!) And I may have to continue to do that. But being able to walk into town and back has been my primary goal, and having achieved that "already" feels like an unexpected victory! Kind of like my own personal "olympic" achievement - even if it doesn't come with a medal... :)

 

Bringing In Spring

It may be too early yet to start looking for proper signs of spring outside… But as usual around this time of year, I try to bring some spring feeling into my kitchen.

Nothing much going on otherwise – except I’m almost getting dizzy from watching hours of Olympic figure ice skating (going round-and-round-and-round). I really don’t know why I got so mesmerized by it this year. (I guess partly because it happens to have been on at a time of day – late afternoon/early evening – when I’ve been home but too tired to do much else anyway.)

Alexander Majorov did well for Sweden today in the men’s short program (no 10 out of 30 and flawless performance).

Well Done, London

Last night … er, correction … Early this morning just before I went to bed, I posted the following to Facebook from my phone, just before I tumbled into bed:

Believe it or not. I ended up watching the whole Olympic opening ceremony on TV. First time in my life. And staying up until 2am! Well done London. And good night... :-o

Some of you who read this probably know by now that I consider myself to be born with a ‘sports filter’. The way this works is that most sports news to me remain a distant mumble in the background, or induce me to automatically switch channels, or turn off the TV/radio. And when reading the paper, I automatically flicker through the sports section without even noticing headlines. It really has to be front page news to have the slightest chance of catching my attention.

As for the opening ceremonies of the Olympiad, I’ve never watched more than summaries or glimpses of that before either.

This year, however, since it was after all London (and I had just been reminded through the blog posts of British bloggers Scriptor Senex and Jenny Woolf) I decided to watch a bit until I got tired and felt ready for bed.

I should add that as we’re one hour ahead of London time, it started at 22:00 (10 pm) here; and my usual bedtime this time of year is around an hour later. The only night of the year I’m in the habit of staying up after midnight is New Year’s Eve (when I usually have guests to help keep me awake and alert, and the noise of fireworks all around the neighbourhood goes on until around 1 am anyway.)

I’m telling you this just so you’ll understand I had not expected or intended to remain glued to the opening of the Olympics for four hours in the middle of the night – which is what happened.

Firstly, I was absolutely fascinated with the first theatrical /historical /entertainment part of the show; so impressive! So after that I still felt wide awake, and decided to also watch a bit of the parade. This made me realize how many nations in the world there are that I know next to nothing about. And as Sweden was No 177 out of the … 208 or whatever, I just popped out into the kitchen for a while somewhere well before that to make myself another cup of tea and a midnight snack; and then returned...

And by the time all those people had passed by, in their fascinating variety of costumes, of course I could not  miss the climax of it all - especially since the commentators kept going on about how they still had no clue to exactly how or where within the arena the olympic fire was to be lit… So I just had to stay and see the finale as well. Once again I was mightily impressed. All in all, I found the whole opening ceremony an absolutely spectacular show. And I just loved all the British humour intertwined in it, soft-pedalling the pretentiousness.

Well done, London. Well done, Queen Elizabeth and actors and children and musicians and technical staff and whoever played their part in getting that huge show to run smoothly.

I probably (?) won’t be watching a lot of the actual sports games (well who knows, since these seem to be the days of miracles and wonders!) but I certainly enjoyed the opening.

Saturday morning here in SW Sweden has started with rain and thunder… I think I’d better turn off the computer for a while after posting this. I hope the weather in London is better – I haven’t checked!