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! 

  

The First Week of June

 

The first week of June offered rather "mixed" weather, with high risk of showers most days - so I've mostly been keeping to short walks. On Wednesday 3rd June, I managed a walk into town for a few errands and back again without getting wet, though. 

 

On my way  home, I passed by this really massive hedge of purple rhododendron in the park (photos above and below):

 

Besides stocking up on tea from my favourite tea shop, and a few minor things from the pharmacy - all of which I managed to fit into my small backpack - I also visited a flower shop to buy two flowering pelargoniums. Maneuvering a walking stick with one hand these days, one extra bag is as much as much as I can manage!

As I'm not (at least not yet) sitting on the balcony much, I placed the pelargoniums indoors for now. One in the living room (above) and the other one in the kitchen (below).

 

 

 

This time of year, I have a very green view from the spot at the kitchen table where I always sit - for example at breakfast. 

 

I bought a new black tea blend with strawberries, mango and lemon in it to try out. (I like it!) (A direct translation of the Swedish name to English would be "strawberry straw"...) 

 

Thursday afternoon was laundry day for me and I don't think I went outdoors at all - but from the laundry room down in the basement I could enjoy this "different" view of the rhododendrons outside (through a small window high up on the wall):

 

 

Friday the 5th was rather rainy, but dressed in a raincoat I managed my usual "recycling walk" + a visit to a small shop on the way back to buy some fruit & veg. (Fresh strawberries included! I think probably Dutch rather than Swedish, though.)

 

6th June is Sweden's National Day and a public holiday with  traditions attached. There are usually celebrations in the city park in the afternoon and I assume that was probably the case this year as well. The weather that afternoon also turned out rather good. But personally I didn't quite feel up for a walk into town just to mix with crowds of people this year. So I just went for a quiet stroll on my own in the cemetery, where the azaleas were still in full bloom:

 

 

 

 

And in the evening I watched parts of the national celebrations in Stockholm on TV. Below is an official photo I copied from the royal family's website, of them traditionally joining the crowds at the open air museum Skansen in Stockholm:

Princess Madeleine and her husband Chris O'Neill; Prince Carl Philip with his wife Princess Sofia; King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia; MrAndreas Norlén (Speaker of the Parliament), Crown Princess Victoria with son Prince Oscar and husband Prince Daniel. The queen and the princesses all wearing a national folk costume in yellow and blue (the colours of the Swedish flag).

Busy times for the royal family just now, as the King and Queen will also be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary next weekend. (They got married 19th June 1976, but as in 2026 that date happens to be Midsummer Eve, the official celebration will be held the weekend before.) 

 

Lucia / St Lucy's Day, 13 December

Saint Lucy's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Lucy, is a Christian feast day observed on 13 December. The observance commemorates Lucia of Syracuse, an early-fourth-century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution. According to legend, she brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way, leaving both hands free to carry as much food as possible. 

Because her name means "light" and her feast day had at one time coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, it is now widely celebrated as a festival of light. Falling within the Advent season, Saint Lucy's Day is viewed as a precursor of Christmastide, pointing to the arrival of the Light of Christ in the calendar on 25 December, Christmas Day. 

In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Santa/Sankta Lucia, she is represented as a woman in a white dress symbolizing a baptismal robe and a red sash symbolizing the blood of her martyrdom, with a crown or wreath of candles on her head.

In Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, as songs are sung, girls dressed as Saint Lucy carry cookies and saffron buns in procession, which symbolizes bringing the Light of Christ into the world's darkness. (Wikipedia)

 

Not sure if the video below will work for everyone world-wide, but I thought I'd give that a test. (Let me know if it works!) It's this year's (2025) Lucia Morning by Swedish Television (SVT); from Visby on the island Gotland, off the east coast of Sweden. 

It's a 1 hour show, and in Swedish. But of course you can choose for yourself how much of it to watch/listen to. It will give you an idea of the typical atmosphere, anyway.

"Inside the city walls of wintry Visby, this year’s Lucia brings atmosphere and warmth with choirs from Sankta Maria Youth Choir, Voices of Hope, and Gotland Boys’ Choir. In the ruins of St. Karin and Helge And, the Christmas songs ring out, and we also get to enjoy several soloists, the Gotland Wind Quintet, and a children’s choir in the historic surroundings."

    

https://youtu.be/QVc5rAzMQCs?si=toSBG8tjXE-Urfmg

70

I'm not quite done with posting about our road trip yet; but I've kind of been taking a break from that this weekend, to celebrate my own 70th birthday. 

Somehow any birthday marking the end of a full decade tends to cause more "fuss" than those in between.

One friend of mine (living elsewhere), who also turned 70 in August, celebrated by escaping with her husband, children and their respective parnters, plus a bunch of grandchildren, to the Canary Islands. She said she was not planning to have any extra party when they got back; but whether she succeeded in keeping that intention, I don't know.  

Another friend (living in the same town as I) who also turned 70 in August, decided early on to take the bull by the horns, so sent out invitations six months in advance to a big party in mid August - which I blogged about earlier this month. Considering how early she sent out the invitations, I suspect she must have started the planning shortly after her 69th...

As for myself, I probably started "worrying" at least a year in advance as well. But I arrived at the conclusion that my friends these days are so spread out that trying to gather them all at the same time and place would be impossible. And even if by some miracle I'd manage it with some of them, it wouldn't give me the time to catch up with them all properly anyway. So for my own part, I arrived at the compromise of an escape trip earlier in the month (the road trip with my brother); then kind of took advantage of my friend's party to catch up with some mutual old friends; and then spent the Actual Day just answering phone calls and messages and whatnot...

The friend who escaped to a  far-off island for her big day visited me at the end of July; and another friend, just recently retired from work in connection with her own 65th, took the bus here from from another town a few days before my actual BD for lunch + also came home with me for a while. She's another one I've known for nearly 50 years, and we managed to get a good long undisturbed conversation about all kinds of things. 

--- Having come that far in writing this post, my phone rang. It was the friend whose party I attended two weeks ago; wanting to come by. Visitors wasn't in my plan for today (either); and at 2 pm I still I hadn't even had lunch yet, nor been out. Hard to say no, though - and I had some photos (paper prints!) for her from her own party anyway. (She's one of those who miraculously still manage to get by without neither smartphone nor computer.) 

So I had a hasty lunch; and shortly after, she turned up, bringing a pretty pink begonia. Luckily at least I was able to offer her a cup of instant coffee (tea for myself) and a piece of cake. (I did bake one earlier in the week, a sort of mix between cake and pie, that can be eaten with whipped vanilla cream.) ... And a bit later I accompanied her part of her way home, and then extended my own walk a bit on the way back to mine - so got my own exercise in too, after all.

Now it's evening, and I can no longer recall my original plans for this post (if I had any). Ah well. I guess I'll just post it anyway. 

Tomorrow is a New Month. Remains to be seen what that will bring! (If nothing else, I  have some thank you notes to write...)

 

6th June, Sweden's National Day

 

Today is 6th June, Sweden's National Day, and this year "extra special" since it's exactly 500 years since Gustav Vasa / Gustav I was elected king here; which is considered the foundation of "modern" (?) Sweden. The day has only been called National Day since 1983, though - before that it was celebrated as 'Swedish Flag Day'. And it wasn't until as late as 2005 that 6th June also got the status of public holiday. 

This year it's also 50 years since our current king Carl XIV Gustaf ascended the throne on the death of his grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf (15 September 1973). So even more reasons to celebrate and wave flags about...

I remembered to put my small flag out on the balcony this morning (top photo); and there it's been waving in the wind all day.

We also got a perfect weather day for such celebrations: Summer temperatures around 23'C in the afternoon, and the sun shining from a clear blue sky.

There was a main celebration in our town park at 3 p.m. I took a little detour on the way there to buy myself an ice cream, as I suspected the queues to the café in the park itself would probably be endless (I didn't check once I got there, but no doubt they were). I arrived in the park just about when the program there started (a bit of music, and a few speeches), and I'm pretty sure there were more people gathered this year than I've ever seen before. There was no way to get close to the action on the stage, so I just kept way in the background. The music and the speakers could be heard even by us who couldn't see much, though. And I had both my cameras with me - the 'proper' camera as well as the phone - so I managed to get a variety of photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "Panorama view" shot with my separate camera. The stage is somewhere close to that black building (café) in the background between the trees...

 

From pretty much the same place where I was standing for the panorama view, my camera managed to zoom in this children's choir on the stage.

I didn't stay for the full program but left when I began to find it too tiring to stand still. 

Even Google is celebrating with us today,
I noticed when I turned on my computer at home:

 But I suppose that's just here in Sweden... (?)

 

Keeping the Celebrations Going

The past week somehow swept by very quickly... Monday was a holiday, followed by three weekdays involving various errands and things to do at home; and then this weekend I've had my brother visiting - with Saturday also being his birthday. The weather was grey, wet and and windy (again), so not encouraging much outdoor activity. But we drove across town to the same art museum that I visited last weekend. My brother had never been there before. For my own part (as I mentioned last week) I got an annual pass there as a Christmas present... So might just as well grab another opportunity to make use of that! So we spent a while there, looking at both temporary and permanent exhibitions; and afterwards we had lunch at a nearby café/restaurant. (It wouldn't exactly go on my top ten list of culinary experiences - but it was convenient, and a break from having every meal at home.) 

Most of the art shown at this museum are photographs and prints in limited editions; but they also have some award-winning original large works of textile art - which are my favourites.

With the rainy weather, we also ended up watching three films this weekend (on DVD)... Two "oldies" (comedies from the early 1990s) starring Bill Murray - Groundhog Day, and What About Bob. And then Paddington 2 (2017), which (for a change) my brother hadn't seen. (Generally, he's the superior cineast - not just comparing the two of us, but probably among all my friends...)

All in all, sort of an extra Christmas/New Year kind of weekend...