Off the hook

M and I may take a trip to Rovaniemi some time soon. We were invited this weekend, but it won't work, so perhaps in two weeks.

If we dare...

M and I bought our fourth car today. Excessive? Well, we are going to get rid of the old C5.

We're going to Scania on Tuesday. Parents, my sister... We have planned it for months.

Except today the car died. I hope we can fix it tomorrow.

Two days ago, I picked up my new progressive glasses. Then I went to a singalong meeting*. I found that I move my head a lot more than I'm aware of when I sing. The table was bouncing about, even though I thought I was looking at one spot the whole time.

They say you get used to it after a few days. I sincerely hope that's true. These glasses exhaust me. I'm trying to get used to not looking the my tea mug as I put it down. Perhaps I should learn not look at the keyboard as well?

One thing that works fine (to my surprise) is driving. As far as I can tell, I see everything I need to see, without any ill effects. There's a slight blur at the side mirrors, but I can re-focus on them without moving my head.



* A friend holds these at local old people's homes. I go there to help the singing. It is usually needed.

M and I drove south (Ånge to Landskrona, about a thousand kilometres) on Monday. We started at seven o'clock, with a temperature of eight degrees below zero. The first tiny snowflakes came as we were packing the car. When we turned onto the E14 the air was thick. (E14, by the way, is known as a very accident-prone bit of road.)

As we approached the coast, the temperature rose, and finally settled at about freezing. At least it was light by then. We tried a new bit of motorway leading out of Sundsvall. Soon enough, we had to make do with the usual wire road, though. Most of the time the vehicle in front of us was visible.

Past Söderhamn we caught up with two large snowploughs. With perhaps fifty cars before us, we were slowed down to forty kilometres an hour. Then, somewhere between Gävle and Uppsala, the snow vanished. It was there, then it wasn't. It was at that point that we noticed that we had forgotten the tea...

The rest was easy. We stopped in Jönköping to visit my aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins, then went on, and arrived late in Landskrona.

The next day we drove to Lund and my parents. I managed to miss the first turn to Lund, but the second worked just as well, and we eventually found ourselves on Utmarksvägen, turning onto Sandbyvägen, eight hundred metres from my parents house.

Then the car said: "Kaboom, kachunk, ratatata". It went on for all of the eight hundred metres.

Merry Christmas, by the way.