Monthly Archives: July 2006

Summer Holidays: A Journey In To Town

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9.13 Leave home, full of joy and anticipation over what our journey will bring.

9.18 Unusually, we are overtaken (by a red Citreon van). It comes to light that Inger has some information about our assailants: they are ex-druggies from a neighbouring village. Driving as fast as they were, I’m not so sure.

9.24 Inger posts a (rather large) envelope.

9.25 There is a small incident involving Inger’s sunglasses, followed by the singing of the Postman Pat theme (see 9.24).

9.28 Stop for petrol. I try to take a picture to capture the moment, but my phone is turned off. I miss the window of opportunity, resigning myself to turning on the mobile, smugly aware that the same mistake will not be made twice.

9.33 Jo yawns.

9.34 We pass a garden which has a line of flags, hung at waist height, along one of the sides. Placed in front of the flags is a chair; on the chair stands a blue parking sign. A long and humourous conversation ensues which really doesn’t translate well. Though it was amusing, and passed several minutes.

9.38 Jo possibly bored. She begins to sing Sandra‘s Maria Magdalena

9.44 An insect loses its life flying into the windscreen. A sorrow-filled moment made light by the mildly amusing sound it caused from its death: tschk

9.59 As if to bring in the new hour, Inger’s phone rings, Freya gets a biscuit, and a few drops of rain fall serenely onto the windscreen, though not enough to erase the memory of our departed insect friend.

10.02 Inspired by Freya’s confectionary consumption, Inger takes out the first banana of the day.

10.04 Our daughter chokes on a sandwich, Jo says.

10.06 Freya requests Dr Bombay. Fortuitously, my mobile phone is now turned on; much less fortuitously, Dr Bombay’s CD is stored on it. Freya is content.

10.13 The car in front of us is driving just 5km/h slower than the speed limit, which irritates Inger intensely. I try to assuage her animosity by telling her to imagine the limit is 90, and not 110, but this fails to help.

10.17 I wonder what kind of insect it was. The splat size suggests a medium-sized fly, but there are many strange flying things this summer, so a wild guess is the best I can offer.

10.27 We have essentially arrived at our destination.

Summer Holidays: Thoughts From The Garden

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Finally, after literally years of waiting, it’s the summer holidays again. As usual we’re spending it at our house in the north, where the weather has thus far been an uncomfortable 29 degrees, which means that two sweaty days working in the garden has made me a beacon for the midges, mosquitos and horse-flies (aka gadflies) to take their sumptuous morsels of Jon.

And so, with much greenery of different varities and obscure Latin names drowning my field of vision, I’ve been thinking a bit about grass.

I have always thought that grass is a weed. I have yet to check this out, as I do not have a computer nearby (this entry has been written using the traditional method of pen and paper, to be transfered at a later date), so in order not to have wasted this hitherto titilating insight into my life I shall just presume it to be so.

Anyway, in Swedish the word grass is”gräs”; the word for weed is “ogräs”, using the prefix “o”, which basically means “un”; thus ogräs means ungrass.

What struck me about this Orwellian building of words was that if you take gräs, and plant it purposefully in a well-kept border of exotic plants and flowers, does it become ogräs? Or is it still gräs? Or is it both gräs and ogräs?

I wonder, then, if there are tempestuous debates in the forums of Swedish horticultural sites, where ogräs supporters vehemently brandish the followers of Gräs as simple-minded, asinine sheep-shaggers, whilst the gräs clan mock their nemeses as self-involved, ostentatious fools.

I wonder, also, if I should be spending less time in the sun.

N.B. According to Wikipedia, a weed is an unwanted plant, which means that my theory about grass is wrong; however, on the same page, Cannabis is stated as a possible weed, so I’m not sure I should believe anything from this particular wiki entry.