Catching Up

On Saturday (13 June) our King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. There were live TV broadcasts from Stockholm most of the day; but I didn't remember until rather late in the afternoon. In the evening I watched a special one hour concert for them from the Royal Opera House, though (also broadcasted live). 

A royal boat used only on special occasions.

 
They were lucky with the weather in Stockholm that day, and had a beautiful day for the celebration. 

Down here in the south-west it was a rather grey weekend with frequent rain showers; but I managed one or two short walks in the nearby cemetery. The azaleas are past their prime now, but most of the rhododendron are still magnificent:

And new summer flowers had been planted here and there.
 

Today (Tuesday) there seemed to be a chance to get through the day without rain, so I decided to seize the opportunity, and called my hairdresser to ask if she could fit me in for a haircut. She could; so I walked into town for that, and afterwards to the pharmacy for a few items. Before I went back home, I also went by my optician's too book an appointment for an eye exam - as  yesterday I got a text message from them which was not just reminder, but an offer of a free test (for being a long term customer).  

It's been a while, and even if I haven't really felt any deterioration, I had it in mind already last autumn - but then I had that accident with my knee, which left me rather handicapped all winter. (And the optician's examination room is "upstairs"...) And then more recently, I broke a tooth and needed a new crown, so that took priority!

A couple of years ago I was also diagnosed with macular degeneration (but the slow kind, and I haven't felt it getting worse). So I've also been hesitating if best to start a new checkup at the eye doctor's, or with the optician. I had actually just come to the decision that I'd probably better ask about that - when this offer turned up. With a free test at the optician's, nothing to lose by starting there! 

  

Catching Up

 

I'm still waiting for proper outdoor Signs of Spring to tempt my camera. The streets nearby have been cleaned from winter sand and grit, and I think my itchy eyes are probably telling me that there's pollen in the air (alder, hazel) - but that's about it...

So instead I just give you some bananas resting on my old kitchen scales (inherited from my grandmother), symbolising that today was Delivery Day from the supermarket. A service I've been appreciating for over 11 years now; and I still feel grateful every time. Since a few weeks back, I'm also relieved that the 24/7 locked entrance door policy that was introduced here last summer has now been lifted. I no longer need to go down and open the entrance for the delivery guys, but only my own front door! (It has been a bit of a hassle over winter, as because of my bad knee I've not been able to use the stairs, but have had to use the lift/elevator. On the other hand, I am of course grateful to have access to a lift, or else I don't know how I'd have managed at all...) 

To turn time back to Tuesday, I then took a bus part of the way into town (and walked the rest), primarily to collect my digitized old slides from the photography shop: about 80 photos from a trip to Germany back in 1983; plus about a dozen from England in 1972 that I had even forgotten that I had. (I think they were given to me by the family I stayed with then.) I hadn't looked at any of them for over 20 years. 

I've now copied the digitised ones to my computer and had a look. Alas I found that they have not really kept the original colour much better than the printed colour photos in my old albums. While the paper photos have faded towards beige, the slides seem to have turned blueish, though... 

I may be able to improve some of them a bit by editing, but I'm not expecting miracles. (I've never bothered to learn to use any very "advanced" photo editors...) Anyway - so far, it makes me think it's probably not worth the money to also have the rest of my old slides digitised. But I'll see what I can do with the ones I got now; and hope to be able to use some of them in some future "time travelling" blogposts. 

On my way back home from the photography shop, I briefly visited a couple of clothes shops - simply because it's something I hadn't done in about six months! In the first shop, on a whim, I bought a long-sleeved t-shirt without trying it on - which proved a mistake. When I tried it on at home, the neckline turned out to be uncomfortable for me... But I knew I could take than one back and get a refund, so never mind... In the second shop, I found a zipper sweatshirt on 50% sale. That one I did try on before buying - and it fit. It's of the kind that I can use both indoors in winter, and outdoors on a chilly day in the warmer season.

Yesterday was another good day to be out for a while, so I went back into town again and returned the other top. Didn't go into any other shops. Better wait until a bit closer to summer to look at more clothes, I think... ;)

Today I got my grocery delivery around noon, and then in the afternoon (semi-sunny) went for a walk to the main post office down by the railway to post a couple of birthday cards to friends. (One of them will arrive late, the other early!) That's another way I haven't walked since back in the early autumn. Actually writing/posting snail mail at all is another thing I almost got out of the habit of doing this winter, as even the nearest postbox felt "out of the way" for me... 

Catching Up

 

I asked Bing Image Creator for "Two 70 year old women with short grey hair and wearing glasses, holding tea cups, sitting and chatting, in the style  of Matisse". None of these images really resemble neither me nor my friend very much at all - but I find the "Matisse" twist a refreshing change from the "cartoon" style that I've usually asked Bing for! :)

A friend of mine since nearly 50 years got in touch recently and said she'd be in my town for a few days, working. She's an optician by profession; retired since a few years, but substituting now and then. And the chain she used to work for has shops in various cities; so sometimes she makes it into a kind of "working holiday" to go and help out somewhere different than in her own home town, for a week or so. 

Anyway, this time her stay also included a work free Sunday. So I invited her to spend part of that day with me. She came to me for lunch, and as we had a lot to catch up on, she also stayed on for afternoon tea before she went back to her hotel.

We got to know one another in our early twenties up in Karlstad (where we both lived back then), via a church and a youth gospel choir there. Now we are both turning 70 in August. Hard to grasp!! 

The last time we met was a couple of years "before the pandemic". During the course of our conversation this afternoon we found ourselves using "before/after the pandemic" as a time marker so many times that it struck us both that covid really did bring about quite a few changes in people's social lives (both our own and other friends'). 

Over the last seven years or so, we have also both lost quite a few mutual old friends (although not actually to covid, I think). So there was a lot to reminisce about.

And as many times before in later years (whenever getting together with other old friends approaching 70), I was once again reminded of Simon & Garfunkel's song Old Friends/Bookends. Even if today was a summer Sunday, and we were sitting indoors rather than outdoors on a park bench (and it was definitely not cold outside either!)

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
 

---

Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy 


Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears

Time it was
And what a time it was
It was . . .
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago . . . it must be . . .
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

From 'Old Friends' by Paul Simon

Related posts:

Seeking Shadow (2020) 

Old Friends (2024)

Revisiting and Catching Up

I suppose you might be wondering what I’ve been up to since my last post on Midsummer Eve… I’m kind of wondering myself where the time has gone to.

The rest of the Midsummer weekend was kind of chilly and I spent much of it indoors, catching up with an abandoned book, a bit of paperwork and “whatever”.

I’ve also let myself get wrapped up in revisiting (on DVD) the classic British TV series Brideshead Revisited from 1981 (adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel from 1945). There’s something kind of hypnotic about the tempo in which it’s told; and even more so when one is able to choose one’s own pace of watching (not having to wait a week or whatever for the next episode)…

Then on Monday I revisited the exhibition of sculptures in and around the Textile Fashion Center, together with my aunt and uncle, who were in town for the day. We also had lunch at the restaurant within the Center.

This is Michael by Xavier Veilhan.  It’s supposed to be “reminiscent of early Modernism’s endeavours for reduction, to portray the human body as a regular structure – man as architechture”. The artist is the same who made the sculpture Vibration  which I’ve shown in an earlier post (blue horse and wagon).

Why this one is called Michael, the brochure does not tell. Thinking about it now, I come to the conclusion that it must include a reference to Michaelangelo (who was good at angles as well as bodies). I had to think in English to come up with that, because in Swedish that play on words (angel/angle) does not apply!

Later on Monday I got my HP Slate Book back from the “computer hospital” where I had to send it a couple of weeks ago when it suddenly collapsed and refused to recharge its batteries (after I’d only had it a few weeks).

As I suspected, the fault turned out to be in the AC charger, and all it needed was a new cord. But of course they would not take my word for that, so I had to send the whole thing to the repair shop. And before I did that, I thought it best to uninstall the personal apps and accounts I was logged into… Which means that when I got it back, I had to start everything over more or less from scratch. So no wonder perhaps that yesterday seemed to swish by rather quickly too.

Today I’ve basically had a householdy day of washing and cleaning; but also managed to slip away to revisit a nearby shoe shop and catch up with their sale…

 

 

Catching Up

Visiting Ginny’s post All Ears yesterday made me realize that perhaps for the first time (?) I put up no Easter decorations at all in my flat this year. Not that I have a lot of them, but usually I do take out the few items that I have. This year, I completely forgot about them!

I think it was the fact that Easter was so late, and that Nature decided to provide outdoor decorations of its own. Starting with the blue canvas of the sky, the sun as its brush, and bird song for encouragement, over Easter it painted the treetops green, and added splashes of colour in every glade, park and garden: white wood anemones, blue hepatica, yellow daffodils and forsythia bushes, pink cherry blossoms, and lots of others besides. 

It was perhaps also the fact that my brother and I spent most of Friday and Saturday at The House outside town which has been standing empty since last summer (when dad had to go into hospital and from there moved to a geriatric care center). N.b. “empty” refers to absence of residents – not “stuff”…

Our grandparents built the original house in 1930. Dad grew up there. In our childhood and youth, our grandparents still lived there. Then for a while it was kept as summer cottage. In the early 90s an extension was added, and our parents moved in, and lived there for  17 years. There’s also an outbuilding as old as the original house. (Full of… Not sure what, but full!)

We’re planning to hire a rubbish container for a week in the summer, but even that will just mean making a start. (The only things burning in this picture are branches that had fallen from the trees in the winter.)

In the meantime we’ve at least managed to secure the services of the same guy who mowed the lawns and did some other outdoor jobs for us last summer. Just to basically try to stop the garden from getting totally overgrown.

We also visited dad where he is living now. (Unfortunately he is in need of too much help now for it to be possible for us to take him with us to his old home even for a short visit.)

And we stopped by the cemetery where mum is buried, and several ancestor’s on dad’s side of the family.

So it was a strange kind of Easter in some ways; but the fine weather did help.

I also had to spend some time on tax declaration forms this week; and tomorrow I’m expecting a visit from friends who will be staying the night. So if I’m not around visiting other blogs as much as usual (or even my own) just now… that’s why!