Friday, July 28

Irma decided to paint one side of the house and I decided to repair the flat tyre on the old bicycle we have here.

To my surprise the tyre turned out to work fine: I just needed to use the correct pump, which Irma had brought from Helsinki. In the last few weeks, as part of this process, I have learned that bicycle inner-tubes come in three sorts: Schrader, Presta and Dunlop. To make it more confusing they all have alternative names, and all require different pumps. I had (wrongly) assumed that the so-called Dunlop inner-tubes used the kind of bicycle pump I used as a boy. It turns out that the “English-style” pump works with Schrader inner-tubes.

The old bicycle now has two working wheels and an oiled chain. I tested it up and down the farm and it seemed perfectly fine. I decided to next week if I could ride it to Benita’s and back.

We packed up some rubbish and set off to the bins at the far end of the islands. Having dropped our rubbish off we have come to Söderby. We stop at Lillbodan and I find another book to buy. Then we go to Erika’s shop where I drop off a bag of books for her daughters to put together into bundles and sell. Outside Lillbodan we spot an assemblage on the wall. It looks like something from an early episode of Doctor Who: a machine for dialling up alien help, perhaps.

We will drive to Benita’s for water and on the way back we will measure the distance from Benita’s to Sundö. Five kilometres seems about right.

We will spend much of the rest of the day in the garden reading. I will start a book by Frances Fyfield, and wonder whether I will like it. By bedtime I will have got about a third of the way through it, and I will still wonder whether I will like it.