Sunday, July 22

 
 
YEAR:  2018 | Tags:  | | | | |
 
 

 
 
 

Sundö, 14:23

 
 

We woke at about 10:00 and leapt out of bed because in one hour’s time Gerda will host Cake Day. We left without breakfast and got there about 11:30. We found less cakes than in previous years. We did, however, sample two savoury cakes: one a sandwich cake, and then other involving shrimps and roe. One of these ended up winning, although I voted for a wonderfully sticky mud cake.

After we finished with the cakes we walked to Ann-Maj’s where we had a glass of sparkling wine to celebrate thirty years of her nursery. We met Janne and his wife there and had a long chat with them. We also had a long chat with Erika about her Korean guests, and her plans for encouraging more visitors without ruining the village.

On the way home we found a small loppis where we bought two plastic paddles for the inflatable raft we had. Auo broke or lost one of the paddles that came with it, and now we have replaced it. We also bought a glass bell that Irma plans to give to Michael in Kerala as a Christmas present.

When we get home Irma decides to go swimming and I decide to take photographs of this. She swims for about twenty minutes while I get bored with taking pictures after about five.

After this Irma will mow and I will read the first two thirds of Bluebeard, the Kurt Vonnegut novel that I bought for 50c in Borgå last week. Reading it will prove a startling contrast to reading I See You. Although Bluebeard seems a very simple story that wanders where it will, it has a powerful emotional effect that the other book simply did not. In em>I See You the characters consisted of bundles of simplistic problems capable of getting solved with a phone call, or by someone else acting in an unlikely manner. In Vomegut’s novel the apparent digressions prove central to the point of the novel, and the characters never become neat and tidy.

Guess which I prefer?

Irma will have a second swim, and we will both see lots of fish swimming around the jetty: shoals of small ahven and others that people will attempt to catch and eat once they have grown.

We will have an early dinner and I will spend the evening picking blackcurrants.