At home alone!

A few weeks ago Margie's aunty Bid 'went away' (to use a translation of a Swedish euphemism for dying). The Funeral was today. This is the second family funeral this year, and the second one I haven't been to.

Aunty Bid was over 90. She'd lived the last time in a very nice home in St. Albans, where we saw her earlier this year.

Margie flew over to England on Sunday, and returns home tomorrow, so I've been at home alone. Nothing very remarkable about that really. I managed to get up this morning in time to ride over to the swimming pool (about 5km) swim a km and then on to work.

On Sunday evening I cooked a couple of pies after cleaning the several litres of mushrooms we picked on Saturday. Most of the mushrooms went into the pies, but we did have some for lunch before Margie caught her plane (or was it on Saturday, I forget now). I also made an Apple crumble, and a plum crumble, so if I can resist eating it all up there should be some over for the guests I am expecting on Friday.

This coming weekend is one of two occasions that the Mazer String Quartet Soc. organises a play-in at a nice place called Riddersvik. This time two of my friends from England are coming, as is a local cellist, so we'll be a quartet, although we will probably only play together for one or two sessions. The rest of the time we'll be mixed up with all the other members, play all sorts of music, and eat and drink and generally have a good time.

Well I'd better go home to be alone some more!

Weekend with Victor

Here are a few pictures taken while Victor stayed with us this weekend. They seem to be in reverse order.

When he arrived Margie got him helping her cleaning the bathroom!

I took him to the little playground in our area, where we investigated the sand-pit and all the toys there.

Margie was supposed to work both on Saturday evening, and Sunday morning, which would have left me to do most of the looking after, but she managed to change her Sunday morning shift, and didn't actually do a lot of her Saturday evening one either.

When Margie left to go to work on Saturday evening Victor cried, so I was glad when she re-emerged about an hour later, while I was showing him the Buddha statue which would probably have been very nice to play with (it has running, currently rather dirty, water). He was getting rather tired although it was a bit earlier than we expected him to got to bed. However Margie managed to settle him down and he slept right through until about 5 o'clock, when I gave him a bit of Velling and let him sleep with us for a few more hours!

We had to get up early on Sunday morning so that we could take him to Baby-Swimming, which he really enjoys. I was a bit nervous of this, but actually it was great fun splashing in the 37C water!

After he'd woken from his post-swimming sleep Margie and I both took him to the local playground again, this time Margie made little sand-castles for Victor to knock down! They both had a great time.

Unlike when Victor visited Edward and Julia a while back, we had a total of 6 dirty nappies to sort out! I must say that nappy technology has improved a great deal since I had to change them last. You just rip the sides of the little pants, try and avoid spreading the contents all over the place, clean up, and put new ones on like ordinary pants! No toweling, enormous 'safety' pins (which were lethally sharp and not very safe at all) nor plastic over-pants. Wonderful though all this is I'm happy to avoid the job as much as possible, they haven't done anything to improve the smell.

Yesterday he also helped Margie in the garden until his Mum and Dad returned. He was obviously glad to see them.

It was great to have him with us.

Very nice family weekend

We've just had a very nice family weekend. On Saturday Edward and Julia took different trains to Västerås because the bread Edward was baking took longer than her expected, and he missed the train that Julia caught!

Ruth, Johnnie and Victor collected Julia from the station, but I had to stay sober enough to collect Ed from the next train! Ed and I caught up anyway, so there wasn't a problem.

We all had a good eat, drink and chat. Everyone stayed the night so the the house was fuller than it has been for a long time.

On Sunday after Ruth, Johnnie and Victor had gone to baby-swimming, the rest of us went mushroom picking, and got a record 6 litres of 'forest-gold'.