1st April / April Fools' Day

 

My calendar photo for the month of April - from 11th April, 2025. 

Caroli Church (Caroli kyrka) in Borås is a parish church belonging to the Church of Sweden, and the oldest preserved building in our city, dated from the 13th-century. It was rebuilt and repaired after fires in 1681 (when the tower was also added), 1727 and 1822; and went through some further renovations in 1914-1915 and 1938-1940. If I go to a church service during the major holidays like Christmas and Easter, this is usually where I go. 

1st April today, and "April Fools' Day" - which I understand is quite an international tradition. For me it's been Laundry Day, meaning I have not been out; and as far as I know, I don't think I've come across any fake news - although I kind of wished that one of the things announced on national TV this evening would turn out to be... (It's election year, and political parties are as usual conspiring to try and make new deals to convince voters that they'll be able to form a "stable " government...)

 

The probably most famous April Fools' joke from Swedish television goes way back to 1962, when they claimed that if you pulled a nylon stocking over your black and white TV, you'd be able to watch colour TV! And it's said that some people actually tried... (I remember it, but I don't think my parents fell for it!) 

 

  

The actual introduction of official, regular colour TV in Sweden started on 1 april 1970. No joke this time, but only six hours per week to begin with!

 

The first time I watched colour TV was at my maternal grandfather's house when there was an ice hockey world championship going on - I think it must have been 1971. I was not really all that impressed, because when the players were skating fast over the ice, they kind of left the colours of their costumes behind them on the screen! 

 

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...

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!) 

Radio

 

Above: A drawing my mum made of me and the radio in our living room, c. 1957.

Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio)  is celebrating 100 years this year. Their very first radio program broadcasted in Sweden was a church service from a church in Stockholm (St Jacob) at 11 am on 1st January, 1925, and it could be received by about 44.000 radio receivers. (100 years later, services from different churches around the country are still broadcasted at 11 o'clock every Sunday.)

In the first year, SR only broadcasted in the evenings. In 1926, they added a half hour in the middle of the day. In 1933, you could listen to the radio for about 8 hours per day. 

In 1937, they reached 1 million radio licences issued. (Sweden had around 6 300 000 inhabitants at the time.)

In 1938, for the first time, a woman read the news on the radio. (Until then, they were always read by men.) The SR telephone exchange broke down because of all the upset people calling to complain...

In 1955 (the year I was born), a second national radio channel was added. 

In 1956, SR also started broadcasting television. My parents did not get aTV of their own until probably 1960, though (when we moved from the flat where I lived the first five years of my life, to a house of our own). The first time I ever saw a TV was probably at my maternal grandfather's house, in 1957 (when I was two years old). Evidence found in my first photo album:

Under this photo, from the autumn of 1957, my mum has written: Child in the age of television - or "Look, it's snowing..." (referring to the fact that most of the time, there was nothing to be seen, just a blur on the screen)...

In 1962, a third radio channel was introduced. In 1966, the three channels each got their own profile, which they have basically kept to this day. P1 for news and other talking programs. P2 for educational programs and classical music. P3 for popular music. (In 1987, P4 was added as a separate channel for local radio.)

In December 1969, a second TV channel was added. 

In 1970, regular colour broadcasts were introduced. I think my maternal grandfather was (again) among the first to get one. My own first experience of watching colour TV was in his house, and it was an ice hockey match. I think it must have been from the world cup in 1970. I remember the hockey players skating so fast that they kind of left the colour of their clothes behind on the screen! (The quality was not yet very good...)

In 1978, Radio and TV were separated into two different companies (SR and SVT - Swedish Radio, and Swedish Television). 

The first TV channel financed by advertising here (TV4) was introduced in 1990. And in 1992 they were allowed to broadcast via the terrestial network rather than satellite/cable.

In 2005, internet radio broadcasting and podcasting were introduced.

 ...

My four grandparents were all born between 1900-1904. The oldest of them was my paternal grandmother, born in February 1900. She grew up on a farm, where she lived until she got married to my grandfather in 1930. I doubt they ever got a radio on the farm; and in spite of my grandfather being a (local) journalist when they got married, I think it probably took a while before they got a radio of their own in their new house too.

I have known about that; but somehow it never really "hit" me until I started thinking about it all now, that there were no public radio broadcasts yet during WWI. Back then, people depended on the newspapers for news - and not everyone had access to those either.

The world has certainly changed a lot in the last 100 years.

I still listen quite a lot to radio, and especially our P1 channel - the one keeping us up to date with world wide news every hour, and other "talking" programs in between.

...

(Main source for the facts and dates in this post: Wikipedia)

Looking Back on Christmas Eve

 

In Sweden, for most people - and especially the children - it's Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day that is the "main" day of Christmas celebrations - not least because that is when Jultomten (Father Christmas) comes bearing gifts here (or, if we have outgrown believing in that, we just open those that we bought for each other...) 

In my childhood, Christmas usually involved visiting both sets of grandparents (living around 100 km away from us), and no church services were included in the schedule. Nowadays, spending Christmas on my own, I often try include at least one church service - and my favourite has come to be the one at 11 a.m. on Christmas Eve, in the church above (the oldest in town, from the 17th century). 

I can't say I have attended it every year - for one thing, it depends a great deal on the weather conditions if I feel up for the walk. This year, it was a grey day, but neither rainy nor icy, so no problem with that. The service is rather short one, centered on the Nativity of Jesus, in a way that also actively involves the attending children, who get to help with bringing the various figurines up to the nativity scene; between readings of the texts from the gospels, and traditional Christmas hymns sung. This year, the Bible texts were also actually read by two quite young children (who did it very well!). 

(I took my photos before the service began, which is why the stable is still empty.) 

 Christmas tree in the foyer.

One rather strange Christmas Eve tradition here in Sweden is a certain TV program, a Disney special (From All of Us to All of You), that has been broadcasted at 3 pm every Christmas Eve ever since 1960. (Parts of it have been exchanged over the decades, but most of it remains the same.) 1960 was the year that my parents bought their first house and we moved in there, and I think that's also probably the year when they bought their first TV (a bulgy b&w thing, and there was only one channel back in those days, so the only choice was to watch whatever was on, or not watch at all).  

 

My maternal grandparents had got their first TV a couple of years earlier (my m. grandpa was always quick to get whatever was new - he was also the first in our extended family to get a colour TV when those were introduced). My paternal grandparents did not have a TV, though - I think it wasn't until after my p. grandpa died (1969) that my parents bought one for my grandma. So depending on in which home we happened to be at 3 pm on Christmas Eve, I may possibly have missed the Disney special a few times. But if there was a TV, we watched it - even in later years when there were no longer any young children in the company. And even now I still find myself turning it on, even if these days, I'm likely to keep nodding off to it as much as I "watch"...

 

A bit later, around 4:30 pm, I turned my TV into a fireplace (it's a DVD), and spent about 1½ hour with my brother via a Skype video call. It's a tradition we created after our parents died and we stopped actually getting together IRL for Christmas. And after that, I also talked for a while with my aunt (on the phone, no video). Also a tradition. (While my mum was still living, it was the two of them who used to call each other.)

A more recent TV tradition (only since a few years) is that on Christmas Eve, we get to see/hear our Crown Princess Victoria reading the Nativity text from the gospel of Luke, from the church/chapel in the royal castle in Stockholm. (I don't think that's broadcasted live, but pre-recorded. But recorded anew each year, though.)

Later in the evening, this year, I ended up watching Downton Abbey - the Movie (from 2019), also broadcasted on our 'SVT1' channel. The movie is about the family at Downton expecting a visit from the king and queen. Many of you have probably seen it. I too have seen it before, but only remembered the main theme. And it soon became clear that I had indeed forgotten the details of the plot - so it kept me awake throughout... ;-) 

All Saints' Weekend

 

We had a wet and grey All Saints' Weekend. On Friday afternoon (All Saint's Eve) there was a break in the rain, though, and I manged a walk to the nearby cemetery and the one family grave we have there (my maternal great-grandparents), to light a candle.

 

Larch trees

"Weeping birch"

Giant horse chestnut leaf
stuck on a bush beneath the tree

Empty playground...

I got out for short walks on Saturday and Sunday as well, but for the most part, it was a weekend to just "stay in and read" (cf. my previous book review post)... 

Not a whole lot of interest on TV either, so I've picked up what has almost become an annual tradition of mine this time of year: Re-watching Gilmore Girls, a favourite American TV-series of mine from 2000-2007 that since a number of years back now runs on Netflix. (I also have it on old DVDs, but on Netflix it has been adjusted to modern flatscreen TV format. There's also a 4-part sequel from 2016.) I never really get tired of it because it's so full of quirky details and characters and clever repartee - and hints and references to like a million classic books and films. (It also goes totally overboard in making fun of American small town life - but in a very loving way.)

Have you got any favourites like that to which you keep returning over and over...?

The Repair Shop

 

"The base looks a bit crooked"
"Then I add a bit more glue at the Maldives"

  

 

One of my favourite TV programmes lately is a British series entitled The Repair Shop, where people bring in broken old objects of various kind - often family heirlooms - to be repaired and restored to their former glory by a team of experts, each with their own speciality (and loving their job!)

The past few days, on my main TV channels, most of the regular programmes seem to have been exchanged for constant and repeated updates and discussions of the increasingly despressing situation in Ukraine. Which of course deserves to be in focus; but when there is very little one can actually "do" about it, from time to time one can also feel overloaded by all the speculations to a degree where one is no longer able to take in any more...  

Then I've sometimes switched to The Repair Shop (on the "play" channel where it's found here), catching up with missed episodes. Today, I watched one where they were repairing an old broken globe. It felt rather therapeutic watching a careful and loving healing process of the planet, rather than attempts to destroy it.

Merry-go-rounds

Seems like way too much of my time lately has been spent on “roundabouts”. Not the kind above (photo from the recent autumn fair). But more like this:

I sighed about the Windows Anniversary update in a post back in mid September. Basically I spent one anxiety-filled day on a failed update; and then another whole day on a more successful attempt.

More recently – 1st October – I had a bit of a déjà vu feeling when it all seemed to start all over again… Turned out this time to just be a smaller update of the update, which took less than half an hour… But as I did not know that until afterwards, it was enough to break my flow in whatever it was I had intended to do.

Then, yesterday evening, I was just going to print something out before turning off… and my printer refused to cooperate. So instead of a few seconds’ printout, I ended up with a late hour or so of trying to figure out why on earth… Of course to no avail. (Once again had to give up and go to bed with a problem unsolved at the back of my mind.)

This morning the printer was still refusing to print – and it required another two hours or more of my time and brainpower to sort it out. The printer is a combined printer/copier/scanner. It was still able to make copies, and to scan things TO the computer. It just refused to print anything coming FROM the computer... After trying just about everything else, I finally uninstalled it from my Windows settings, and then reinstalled it. That did the trick. It’s now acting all innocent and working properly again. (Whether the problem had anything to do with that last Windows update update or not, I’ll probably never know… I’m just feeling very suspicious!)

When not sorting out computer problems, I’ve been busy sorting TV channels. Yes, you’re right - I blogged about this last month as well. That was when I had just been to pick up my new cable box, and in connection with switching to the new cable got 130+ something channels free for a month. Well, that free month ran by pretty fast; and then I had to decide which package I wanted to keep (as in pay for). And then when the free channels were removed, I had to (re)sort the remaining ones again (to get them in the right place on my remote)…

Having been forced into sorting mode/mood anyway, this seemed to rub off on other things as well. Like, when picking up my Kindle, instead of reading, I started (re)sorting my digital bookshelves /categories (by now hundreds of books, and way too many of them on a “to read” list, just making me feel stressed!)

… This in turn led on to a bit of clearing out in my (overfull) physical shelves as well. Because, really – with all the English classics now available for free for Kindle, and that +audio being my preferred ways of reading these days anyway… Do I really need to keep every old paperback copy of the same books as well…? (No, I don’t. But some are emotionally harder to part from than others …)

Listen to Moya Brennan on YouTube singing her song Merry Go Round ♫

How Many Channels…

… and remote controls can one person handle? …

(free image from Pixabay)

That question pretty much sums up what’s been keeping me busy this past week. The building (or rather the whole estate) where I live is changing cable TV system. It’s been a couple of years since we got the fiber cable installed (for broadband); and one year has passed since I bought my own new “smart” TV. But until now, the TV has still been on another, older cable. They’ve been making the switch to fiber district by district; but now finally it’s our turn.

So last Thursday I went to collect the special TV box needed for the purpose (it belongs to the apartment rather than to me personally); and since then I’ve been pretty busy reading manuals and figuring things out again - connections and settings and options and remote control buttons etc... (Last year when I got the new TV + receiver and speakers etc, my brother set it all up for me. This time I had to figure it out for myself!)

… and then browsing the 130 channels I currently have on free trial for a month; to decide what I want to keep (and pay for)…

On the old cable I had around 16 channels – out of which I usually only watched half a dozen. Having browsed through what’s on offer now, I think I’ll probably end up with just about the same package as before. (Because  the only possibility to get the ones I most want is to get them in a package with some others that I could just as well do without!) And I’ll still have to pay quite a bit more than I used to. But, admittedly, with better visual quality + the possibility to watch online on my tablet or phone as well.

Your options will of course differ depending on where you live; but I’m curious to know: How many channels do you have? And how many of those do you normally actually watch/keep a check on?? (Considering the offers I have to choose from, I really can’t see how I could possibly ever find the time to make use of, for example, 60 different channels!)

As for remote controls, I’m now back to five... (I was down to four for a while!) So I also wonder: How much time do you think the average person usually wastes every week on pressing the wrong buttons (either on the right or on the wrong control) and then having to figure out why it didn’t give the desired result? (Sorry – I don’t have a right answer!)

… Ah well. At least now you know why I haven’t found much time for blogging this week …

Books, Films, TV & Nature

Besides manuals for the new TV and other appliances I did not read a whole lot in the month of September…

The novels I did read, were in the form of audio books.
Earlier in the summer (I’m not sure if I mentioned it before) I read Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by Lady Fiona Carnarvon of Highclere Castle  (=the setting for the TV series "Downton Abbey"). In September, I also listened to the sequel, Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey. If you like Downton Abbey, there’s a good chance you’ll be just as fascinated by the real life stories – or even more so!

I also listened to two books by Alexander McCall Smith. One was Bertie plays the blues, which is the 7th in the 44 Scotland Street series. I’m not sure I’ve read all the previous ones, but I doubt that matters much. They’re rather like a TV soap opera in the sense that if you miss an episode (or a season), it’s not all that hard to catch up, as things are repeated a lot… 

On the whole, I think I enjoy his No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (set in Botswana) more – even if those tend to be a bit repetitive as well by now. The Handsome Man’s De Lux Café, which I listened to last, is the 15th(!) in that series.

On TV, I’m following Poldark, a “new old” British drama broadcasted here this autumn (on Saturday nights). I missed the first episodes but was able to catch up on my new “smart” TV (once I’d got the internet etc sorted…) Breathtaking background scenery from Cornwall in HD.

I’m also looking forward to re-watching some of my favourite DVD’s on the new TV. Started with the Harry Potter films… Last night The Goblet of Fire (=No. 4).

Meanwhile, Nature is putting up quite a show of its own outdoors though, this time of year – so I can’t spend all the time watching TV!