HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Granny is 70 today, hip,hip hurray!
Enjoy the balloon ride.
Wish we could be there with you.

All Alone

This is not Sweden, but East Anglia, taken in January from the car window as Granny whizzed us on our way. But it will do to illustrate how we are feeling this weekend, cold and lonely. The children have left us and gone with the Scouts to ski in the mountains. The youngest rang this morning at 6.10 am just to let us know she had woken up. She rang again at 6.20 am to tell us that she had a tummy ache and that she loved us both very much. She called again at 6.30 am to say that the tummy ache might be due to hunger and once again at 6.40 am informing us that big sister had woken up. Since then things have been very quiet, so I guess they're having a good time. We have kept ourselves busy, shopping this morning and visiting art exhibitions this afternoon, well one of us did, the other slept. Paintings don't normally move me to tears, but this afternoon one by the artist Berta Hansson (1910-1994) did, together with these words next to it:

The Last Bird

This evening yet another bird landed
On my out stretched canvas.
One big and white.
The last one of all.
How do I know it is my last?
Well, these things cannot be mistaken.
These things are felt in the heart and in the marrow of the bones.
I fought long with the paint,
Conquered the black
With the white.
When the bells of Mary Magdalene
Rang dully twelve times
Then I left my easel for good.
Ending my life as a painter.
Without, I believe, self-pity.
But with, of course, trepidation.
Now all that remains is to wait.

Berta Hansson 1991

Happy Mothering Sunday

The weather wasn't perfect, wind and hail, but we still managed to skate a few miles this afternoon. Coming home with the wind behind us felt like we were sailing.

Too sick to ski :(

Last weekend I should have been skiing 30 km, instead I slept off a queasy tum and a blinding head ache and opted for more gentle means of transport in the crisp cold, minus 20 C.