Tuesday, July 31
Sundö, 15:00
Yesterday evening we played with the paddleboard for the first time, and realised that I had not inflated it fully. Naa could ride it properly, although she said that it felt more difficult than it should, but Irma and I could barely manage kneeling on it.
This morning we got up at 10:00 and had breakfast outside. Naa had opted to sleep in her room rather than the tent, and joined us after she woke up. We hadn’t quite finished eating when she arrived.
I began to put up the blinds until we decided that I should really move the blind from the kitchen (where it serves no real function at all, since nobody sleeps there anymore) to the bedroom, and leave the new blind in its packaging for returning to Ikea or use elsewhere.
So I did just that, and the blind worked much better in the bedroom anyway, because I could place it on a fully-flat surface, which I couldn’t in the kitchen (where from time to time it would fall down).
After this I wander out for some fresh air. I see some sheep and photograph them. I have not seen them very much this summer because, unlike the last few years, Camilla has put them in fields away from our house. I walk up and some of them run away and some do not.
We will spend much of the afternoon in the hot sun reading. I will continue my way through Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories. Later we will go to the village shop and then to Benita’s for water. We will stop for awhile and Naa will eat her way through two hot dogs.
When we come home we will get the board out. Again. We will find Mika and the Swiss family renting the cottage by the sea, on the jetty helping an old man to cast off his boat. The Swiss will join in and the young woman will prove almost as good as Naa, as she navigates her way round the bay. Mika will add a float to the paddle to prevent it sinking and disappearing forever..
At 19:00 we will eat dinner indoors: cauliflower cheese, which will feel exactly right.