Coping with Changes

  

Ill: Tove Jansson

In coping with various changes in life, I often find my thoughts wandering off to the Moomin Valley and the characters living there. The Moomins were created by Tove Jansson, a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She wrote several books about them, and later also comic strips. Drawing the comic strip adventures was later continued by her brother Lars Jansson. Back in my childhood/youth, these comic strips were published in the daily newspaper my parents subscribed to. Later on, I bought some of the comic strips adventures collected in albums. From early childhood I also remember some of Tove's illustrated children's books; and a bit later on in life, I collected her novels about the same characters. 

Anyway. One of the comic strip adventures (by Lars Jansson) that tend to turn up in my head in times of change is one where some strangers turn up in the Moomin Valley, and persuade Moominpappa that it would be a good idea to turn their valley into a "nature park". It also turns out that there are certain requirements to make this happen, though. One of those is that a nature park ought to include "hot springs". So Moominpappa sets out to arrange that - "borrowing some hot water from Gaffsie" (while covering up his intent with lies).

It works, and the hot water comes up at a hot spring outside; but at the same time, Gaffsie's shower stops working, while she's using it. However, when she goes out to investigate, she sees the"hot spring", and decides that this will work just as well for her needs - and just puts up a shower curtain in front of it, outdoors. Her comment: "I have always believed in Providence - although not this much..."

Various other troubles turn up with the idea of creating a Nature Park as well, though; and in the end, it is not approved, and Moominpappa decides to restore things to their natural order - including getting rid of the "hot spring".

 

Of course this happens just as Gaffsie is using the "hot spring" for her shower. Her reaction: "Oops, now the hot water ran out here too! ... But perhaps the shower is working again? ... Providence must really like me!"

I'm sure there are more examples of similar attitudes to life to be found in the Moomin books and comics, but this is a favourite of mine that for some reason I keep coming back to - like when something I've been used to changes, and I need to find new routines... 

Time for a Change

 

 

Waiting for the roofers to get to my building, I've been hesitating about when to do my usual seasonal change of curtains/colour scheme in the kitchen. Still not sure if my building will be next in turn or not; but with this weekend offering sunny weather (and the roofers not at work on weekends), I felt inspired to go ahead and "make spring" indoors anyway - just skipping the window cleaning for now (as there does not seem much point in that if they're soon going to put up scaffolding outside). 

 

Every time I turn on the radio or TV, everything is still about the situation in Ukraine, so I decided to go with yellow and blue this spring... Well - besides being the colours of the Ukranian flag, blue and yellow are of course also the colours of the Swedish flag...

 

 

Ukraine

 

Sweden

 

 

Another place in the flat where I also change colours with the seasons (or whenever I'm the mood for it) is this chest in the living room. The large needlework on the wall hangs there all year round, though. It was made for me by my mum back in the mid 1970s when I moved into my first proper flat (not counting my first year away from home in a small student bedsitter).

The Times They Are A'Changin'

 

On my way home from the city centre on Midsummer Eve, I snapped this photo of an old lady with a walker, moving very slowly into a part of town that is going through a major transformation compared to what it used to be. When I moved to this town to live in the mid 1980s, this was a rather deserted area of old industrial buildings. Now only a couple of those still preserved, while others are being replaced by one 'skyscraper' after the other of new apartment blocks.  

I know nothing about the old woman; but watching her, I could not help thinking that if she has perhaps lived all her life in this town, it must all seem even more strange to her. Even to me (not yet in need of a walker, but recently 'old age' pensioner), the world seems to be spinning ever faster these days, while I keep slowing down...

A couple of weeks ago I took some more photos of what is going on:

 

 

(this photo from back in April, hence no leaves on the tree)

 

I know the population is growing and that we need housing, but I have to say that this "densification" with more and more tower blocks close to the city centre does not appeal to me... In the flats at the top, or facing the river, I suppose some lucky people are or will be enjoying great views. But with so many tall buildings so close to one another now, a lot  of other people must just be staring straight at their neighbours in the next building...

I live in a flat myself, but on the 2nd floor of a 3-storey building, and with quite wide green lawns between the buildings. It's not a high status area (built in the 1940s and the flats rather small) but I keep praying/wishing they'll continue to keep it like this - with low buildings and spacious green areas in between. 

Here I should have some photos to insert for comparison, but although I must have taken plenty over the years, they prove difficult to find in my archives... Oh, found a couple of old ones at last that should prove the point: Distance between the buildings, and a larger park/playground area in the middle of the estate. And plenty of trees and flowers.

 

Linking to Weekend Street

Things Going On

I have learned this week that there are things going on "behind my back" that I did not know about.

For one thing, having a new tablet to explore (see previous post) is very educational. One of my discoveries while downloading and checking apps on the new device is that in Google Photos, I had immediate access there to photos taken with my phone. 

This made me go to the computer later and check Google Photos there as well. Then I got confused at first, because there I found different photos, which seemed to be camera photos I used on my blog in the past - but not the most recent ones, and not those from my phone. A bit of thinking required... 

But then it hit me that I use two different accounts, and each of them has their own set of photos. On the computer I also use two different browsers (to save me from the trouble of logging in and out of certain places). One Google Photos account has the photos from my mobile phone. The other seems to have been collecting photos I used when blogging via Open Live Writer. However, some time back around New Year, I ran into problems with OLW (for some reason, it wouldn't post to Blogger). So I switched to preparing posts directly in Blogger, and have kept on doing that since. And those photos seem not to get stored in Google Photos. (I haven't been bothered to check OLW for a while, but did so just now, and it seems to be working again. But I'm writing this in Blogger as I've kind of got used to that again. Too many decisions just now...) Strikes me that possibly that's got something to do with Blogger leaving Google+ (?). But as I never joined G+ in the first place, I haven't bothered to explore much what's involved in that. (Neither have I tried to dig deeper into which of all my photos from the past ten years that are stored in the Cloud or not...)

Phew. I felt I'd had enough of the digital world for a while and went out for a walk. I decided to walk some streets/paths where I hadn't walked all winter; and it turned out I was in for another surprise. When I last went that way, a certain path down by the river would take me past a tennis court, and a club house. Now both the tennis court and the club house are gone, and at the moment the area looks like an odd kind of desert (with a few park benches planted). But it's probably going to be an open park with generous lawn areas.

Anyway, when I got back from my walk... I was able to access these phone-photos directly from my computer.

 

In the Right Direction

Thursday, 8 March – relapse into winter

“There is nothing wrong with change,
if it is in the right direction.”
~ Winston Churchill ~

Sunday, 11 March – Snow gone, and first snowdrop sighted!

I’ve been finding it hard to keep up with the rapid weather changes over the past week, being thrown back into full winter for a couple of days… But now we seem to be on the right track again! Spotting the first spring flowers today cheered me up!