Showing posts with label coping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coping. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 June 2020

Home Sweet Home


The Midsummer weekend here has been "up and down" with a mix of sun, rain and thunder, and varying degrees of humidity. In my neighbourhood, quite a few people besides myself seem to have been spending it at home; which in turn means it tends to get noisy, especially in the afternoons and evenings, with all the windows and balcony doors kept open because of the heat, people talking, and kids out playing etc. 

I find a bit hard to cope with the afternoons sometimes, as in hot summer weather that's neither the best time of day for me to be out, nor to stay in - and I can't really think of a third alternative! (And of course, this year, the corona situation adds to the frustration for everyone.) On the other hand, the morning seems the best time for me for anything and everything from sleeping in, being lazy, reading, going out, sitting on the balcony (before the sun hits) - and for cleaning and cooking and doing computer work etc indoors. As I'm not exactly an early bird by nature to begin with, that means my active time of day is rather limited (between late breakfast and lunch!) And the rest... Phew, well, never mind! (Today I managed to fit in a nice nap while heavy rain was drumming away on my windows, though. And with the rain, no need to keep thinking that perhaps I should be out instead...)

This morning (seems like a long time ago now), I woke up with fragments of a dream lingering in my head - and thought I might blog about that later. Now is later, but of course now, my vague recollections of the dream seem even more fragmentary and blurry. Copying the photo of the bird houses from my camera to the computer reminded me of it again, though, because I know it was all somehow to do with "home" - and including some feelings of frustration. However, I can't really recapture the dream itself now, and only vaguely some of my thoughts while thinking about it back in the morning.

For one thing, the audio book I'm listening to at the moment is Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher. It's a 'coming of age' story set in Cornwall before and during WWII. A young girl (Judith) is left behind at a British boarding school while her mother and baby sister go to Singapore to join the father working there. The war means Judith cannot travel to visit or join them later as intended either. She had two aunts in Britain but her main substitute family becomes that of a classmate of hers, living on a big estate. I haven't finished the book yet (it's a long one - 40 hours as audio!) so not sure yet where it will end. Sometimes I'm finding it a bit long-winded, but here and there it does make interesting points - like about family, friends and what else equals "home" to us, but also how we are affected by various crises, both on personal and national level (like the War, back then - and, reading it just now, also bringing to mind the pandemic which is now the Enemy to all of us, where ever we happen to live).

I know that this morning, I also had more thoughts in my head connecting to this, but now I can't recreate them. I think some were probably to do with other people's blogs I'd been reading, too. I think a lot of us have been struggling a bit extra with coming up with ideas to blog about while being ''@home" more than usual this spring! Alas, it seems that having time on our hands does not necessarily mean also feeling inspired and creative...

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

C for Charlottenberg (ABC Wednesday)

Just as with the letter Z, at first I could not think of any locality in Sweden beginning with C , but when I looked it up, I did find one:

Charlottenberg with about 3000 inhabitants is situated about 7 km from the Norwegian border and is the seat of Eda Municipality in the province of Värmland.

It was named after the wife of the founder of an ironworks there back in 1827.

Charlottenberg railway station is the last station in Sweden before the Norwegian border, and serves as the frontier point between the Swedish and Norwegian railway systems. The town is also situated on Swedish national road 61, which becomes Norwegian national road 2 at the border.

As a border town, Charlottenberg benefits from the border trade encouraged by the difference in retail prices between Norway and Sweden. The influx of Norwegian shoppers is so great in the period leading up to Christmas that many Charlottenberg locals prefer to do their own shopping in other towns that time of year.

Charlottenberg shopping mall (photo from an advertising site)

I must have passed through Charlottenberg when going on a mini-holiday to Norway from Karlstad way back in 1978. (I lived in K. then.) There is no photo from C. in my photo album – but there is evidence consisting of a small map glued into the album where I marked our route (the X added digitally now):

Norge karta 2

Just possibly we may have stopped at C. to buy food before crossing the border into Norway. More likely we bought what we needed before we started, but never mind… Let’s assume we did buy our tin of sausages in Charlottenberg, ‘cos that gives me a reason to insert this photo of our advanced roadside cooking (somewhere along the river Glomma in Norway):

Norge 1979_0001

Yep. That’s me back in 1978, aged 23. And below is a photo of my friend opening that tin of sausages with a knife, because we had forgotten to bring a tin opener…
Another C for coping! Winking smile

morakniv

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