New description for Néablog—more like a motto, really. It's up on the left, above the archive links. Bet you never read the old one. . . in any case, thanks to Watty for coming up with this one.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 21:21 0 comments

 
Today I did something I've never done before: took my bike apart, cleaned and oiled it and put it back together. I got all parts back to where they were before, and the bike runs much better now. I'm way proud, actually, for I'm used to thinking of myself as having nothing but thumbs, and being ambisinister to boot. The only mishap was dropping a spanner on the very toe a swan trod on last summer, but that's ok -- I have 9 other toes.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 22:43 0 comments

 
The phone rang, and I heard Johan answer it. A minute later, he came into the room. "Something for Néablog, this", he said, with a slightly bewildered expression on his face.

Thus went the call:
"Johan speaking."
Silence.
"Er. . . yes. . . I called to find out what time it is. To whom am I speaking?"
"My name is Johan, and it's ten minutes to one."
"OK, thanks." click

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 13:51 0 comments

 
While we're on the topic of underrated Swedish fish edibles: Johan's nieces and nephew show good taste, in that they love the Swedish caviare disdainfully known among visiting Brits and Australians as "pink stuff". So it's not just me.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 11:17 0 comments

 
Oops. I got the name wrong a few posts back—Karin Björkelid is actually Karin Väremo. Though perhaps there is a Karin Björkelid as well, somewhere; perhaps she is related to Gustaf Björkelid. . .

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 16:05 0 comments

 
Last night it was time. It had been too, too long—three years, in fact. But last night, I finally got to eat it again.

Fermented herring.

It is not rotten, it is not spoiled. It's soured—fermented—under carefully controlled conditions. Many people are turned off by the smell. This is understandable, but unfortunate. Many others don't like the taste. That's ok—there's no disputing taste. But don't try to claim that it is inedible because it's rotten fish, for that is simply not true!

I first had it when I was 14, at a camp in northern Sweden. Almost all the other kids were locals, and I have my mother's family up there so felt like a half-local myself, and was determined not to be the squeamish southerner kid who refused the sour herring (even if a bunch of the northerners did, that wasn't the point.) I rather thought I wouldn't like it, even before I'd felt the smell; when I smelt the air in the dining room I was convinced I wouldn't, but still set in my determination to eat. And I did, and found I liked it!

I haven't had it more than perhaps a dozen times in my life, it is very much a seasonal fare, eaten in August-September, and not very frequently down here. Last night, I found that I liked the smell. It's still a bad smell, but when I felt it it made my mouth water. Isn't that odd?

I never have a lot, though; two herrings was yesterday's tally, divided on three slices of thin flat unleavened bread covered with potatoes and onions and folded over into a sandwich. Heavenly. The pre-filleted fish was rather wimpy, but the newbies liked it (which proves that they are of the right stuff and just need to get used to it—nowt wrong with that) while the rest of us agreed that the jar from 1998 was much better than the one from 2002. There's something I'd never known: even sour herring has its vintage!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:34 0 comments

 
Contact lens update: I'll go back next week and bring the lenses, and then I'll get a new examination for free and new lenses, also. They didn't even pause to think about it. So that's all right, except that it would have been nice to have the lenses now, given that the weather is very hot and sunny and it would be nice to be able to wear sunglasses. But that's a mild annoyance—I mostly stay in the shade anyway.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:08 0 comments

 
This is annoying. Last week I forked out quite a lot of money for a year's worth of contact lenses, from my usually very reliable optician. I was tested, and told that my eyes seemed to be pretty much the same as last year, even a little bit less near-sighted, so I got slightly weaker lenses. The first couple of times I used them I thought I had rather weaker eyesight than usual but put it down to being unused to the new prescription; after four days however I realised that the lenses simply weren't strong enough. When Johan and I were out dining with Anders and Stina the other night, we compared the distances we could read various signs from, and I constantly had to stand 10-20 metres closer to the sign than the rest of them. Grmbl. I'll go talk to my optician now; they are a serious company, fortunately, so I envisage no difficulties in handing the unused lenses back. Still, it's a drag.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:47 0 comments

 
Off in a minute to the first choir practice of the season, and the first time we meet our new conductor. It's quite exciting, really!

Meanwhile, Cassandra has caught a dragonfly. She is so talented! She doesn't quite appear to know what to do with it when it flutters around, though. . .

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 18:32 0 comments

 
En bättre länk till Walter.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 16:59 0 comments

 
A couple of pictures from Stina & Anders' wedding: first the happy couple coming out from the church and then a really nice closeup of them.





I believe the pictures were taken by Karin Väremo. Click the thumbnails for larger versions.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:36 0 comments

 
Some things don't change—it is rather reassuring. . .

I was going to Orvars Krog with Walter tonight; it's been a long time since we were out drinking beer together, so I was rather looking forward to it. I was slightly late due to the bus, but Walter wasn't there yet; when he arrived it turned out he didn't have his student ID with him so we couldn't get in at Orvar. Good old Walter—still as absent-minded as ever! (And that's an endearment.) Instead we went to O'Connor's which was nice and empty, and had a couple of beers and some pubgrub there instead; Walter being a gentleman picked up the bill since it was his fault we couldn't go to the pub with the student prices on beer. In any case, it was really good to see him; we talked about old times and the present, about geocaching and horse-riding and the infamous trip to Ireland in 1993.

I realise I must tell the story of that trip; it's too good not to be told. I was going to Galway for a few weeks, and had asked my friend PD if he'd like to fly me there; PD acquiesced provided we could fill the four-seater plane, and Walter and Jon were recruited. We left Uppsala on a Thursday; I was supposed to be in Galway on the following Wednesday, which left us with a few days to explore Connemara by air.

Thursday's flight plan was for Uppsala to London, where we planned to land at Biggin Hill airport and stay for two nights at a B&B, giving us one day in London. At Malmö airport, at the very southern end of Sweden, we landed to refuel. Here we discovered that the weather in northern Germany was bad, and PD who is nothing if not a cautious pilot, decided we had to stay overnight. We repaired to a hotel in Malmö. On Friday we returned to the airport and looked at the forecast, which told of low clouds over Holland. . . all day. We stayed at the airport, requesting weather reports every half hour, all Friday—and all Saturday. I read the book Walter had brought with him (Ian Banks' Walking on Glass) from cover to cover, and we played Scrabble and other games, and learnt to hate Malmö airport intensely.

On Sunday we finally, finally got a favourable weather report, and flew from Malmö to London/Biggin Hill, landing in Bremen and Groeningen to refuel. In Bremen, the airport security people didn't want to allow PD the Swiss army knife he was carrying in his pocket until he managed to convince them that he was actually the pilot of our flight and as such exceedingly unlikely to hijack the plane! Once we'd landed at Biggin Hill—a magical place for me, reared as I am on Battle of Britain books—we found a very pleasant bed&breakfast place, and went to the local pub for dinner. I had a ploughman's lunch, with a very generous piece of cheese and quite a lot of salad.

I shouldn't have eaten the salad.

That night, I got very, very sick. I puked my guts out, to put it plainly. It was out of the question to continue our trip on the following day, which was Monday; the guys went into London whilst I stayed at the B&B, vomiting gall every fifteen minutes. I haven't been quite that sick, neither before nor after; the kind hostess at the B&B gave me some kind of vile-tasting concoction that actually worked quite well, and Walter got me various kinds of meds as well, one of which made me quite happy and content with life. (It contained morphine.) By Tuesday morning I was able to walk on rather trembling legs to the airplane.

The airplane didn't start. One of the magnetoes had given up, and we had to get a new one. The mechanic at Biggin Hill was very sorry, but he had to order one, and it wouldn't get there until that afternoon at the earliest—no flying for us that day. I was quite happy to get another day of rest, but I was getting slightly nervous about getting to Galway on time!

But on Wednesday morning the engine started, the plane got into the air, and we got to the west of Ireland, only four days later than we'd intended.

In Galway, I said goodbye to the others, who travelled around for a few days and then returned home. After a week, I got a postcard from Malmö airport, where PD, Jon and Walter sat waiting for the weather to change.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 23:33 0 comments

 
The truth about the dark plans of librarians. We always hoped it wouldn't be revealed. . .

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:55 0 comments

 
Of course I support the Banned Books Project. Go there. Read about it. Support it. Banning books is wrong.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:58 0 comments

 
Well. We were going to have a quiet night at home, since Johan was out last night and we're not going to be home tomorrow or Friday evening. Instead I had to phone Dad to drive me to the animal hospital with a heavily limping Bonadea. She was bleeding from her right foreleg (just over the joint) and when we tried to touch the leg she screamed. We thought the leg was maybe broken; truth to tell I was very worried. Our little furbrained tortoiseshelled Bonadea!

It turned out, however, to be nothing worse than a cut, although a fairly large one. . . we have to keep her inside and with a big plastic funnel-collar on for a few days, until the wound has started to heal and we can be certain the joint wasn't hurt. So it looked much worse than it was, but it took a while for me to unwind. Poor furry one, she is still feeling a little dizzy from the sedatives, and not allowed to eat until tomorrow. I wonder how she got wounded. We suspect a shard of glass somewhere.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 23:20 0 comments

 
I have heard people claim that such and such a supernatural entity made them do things, but never before have I encountered the assertion that "Jane Austen made me do it!" Still, it caused me to get a very nice postcard from Bath, so why not. . .

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 18:13 0 comments

 
I bought books today!! Two Edward Gorey compilations: Amphigorey and Amphigorey Also (almost buying Amphigorey Too as well) ; the last Calvin and Hobbes collection There is Treasure Everywhere ; and Acid Row by Minette Walters.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 18:39 0 comments

 
Oh, and I do have time for reading now, for I'm finally on holiday. Three weeks off, as of yesterday. . . I don't anticipate any major breaks in blogging though, for we haven't planned any long trips. I really need this vacation; the last few weeks at work I started feeling kind of tired.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:26 0 comments

 
I finished reading It last week; thoughts about it will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, I keep reading Eddison and Frank Kermode—the former is a delicacy to be savoured, I want to read it as slowly as possible; as for the latter, I try reading the relevant plays in parallel and that kind of slows the reading down. It's fun to read Shakespeare, it really is, but apart from those plays I know well (and those aren't many!) they are very slow reading. Oh, and I'm not reading all of them, far from it. . . but Kermode makes so many references to passages he assumes his readers know by heart, it really is necessary for me to familiarise myself more with them.

Meanwhile I've started reading a book by Lynn Flewelling, an author I've had recommended very highly. So far it feels like pretty standard fantasy—well-written but not particularly novel, but I haven't got more than a few pages into it yet. I notice that I keep writing down first impressions of books here, which is a good thing; I didn't consciously plan to do so but I think I'll keep doing it, for once you have finished reading a book your first impressions of it have dissipated like yesterday's mist, and I like being able to go back and see what I thought at first and if these thoughts hold true.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:20 0 comments

 
Since it should now be an established fact and known to all relatives etc, I think I may reveal who it was that got married in secret last Wednesday—it's Jenny Zaine, who is known to at least some of you. Yay Jenny!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 23:21 0 comments

 
Did I say the Moomin comic isn't available in English? I was wrong—here is one episode of it; I got the link from Christof, for which I am very grateful. And there are four episodes in German here!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:26 0 comments

 
There may be things that are more satisfying than having your best friend tell you, by the end of her wedding dinner (which you've been co-responsible for the smooth running of and entertainment during), that "this was everything I had hoped it would be and even more".
There may be things that are more satisfying, but I'm darned if I can think of any.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:03 0 comments

 
Am really stressed now with wedding preparations, even though there isn't really that much that I have to do—the most pressing duty right now is cleaning house so people staying over here won't be too shocked. All the same, there is this irrational, constant low-level stress leaving me with little inspiration for witty blog postings. Bear with me, gentle readers.

Meanwhile, there's a quote I've been meaning to post here for some time, because I think it's quite wonderful: it is from Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Book, the chapter on copyediting (which I have read with especial care as it's pretty much what my VIE duties consist of.) The discussion concerns the serial comma—"Tom, Dick, and Harry" or "Tom, Dick and Harry" which is a difficult matter. And TNH writes:

[sometimes] one ought to use the serial comma to avoid forcing an undue intimacy upon Dick and Harry*. [footnote:] Or anyone else, for that matter; as witness the dedication which read, "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

 
As I narrowly missed the bus from town to work this morning (due to the driver of the bus into town letting a couple of tourists off at the wrong stop, and laboriously explaining to them how to get to the place they actually wanted to go—the man must have had no sense of direction!) I ran into an old schoolfriend. She told me she's getting married tomorrow, but it's a secret so I'm not telling you who it is. . .

I have my own secrets to worry me right now, to do with Stina's wedding on Saturday. That is not a secret affair, but certain of our preparations are (well, you never know who reads this page.) I just found out I won't get Friday off as I'd counted on. That's a big problem, actually, but it will have to be got around somehow.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 13:09 0 comments

 
Bonadea just got in with a largeish butterfly in her mouth which she presented to me, putting a paw on it when it tried to flutter away and meowing proudly. When I took it from her she started purring like mad. I guess I'm all set for dinner, then!

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 13:16 0 comments

 
I am both attracted and repelled by the idea of reading all the books on a "Best 100" list. I read about such a project recently at Bookslut and it's been discussed elsewhere as well. . . and of course the thought has struck me in the past. Leaving aside the contents of such a list for the moment, the question is what the point would be. I read a lot of books, and many of them would never appear on the top 100 of the century list; of course I miss uot on a lot. And reading the same stuff a lot of others have read does give you some kind of increased general knowledge about the shared cultural heritage.

But then again, I don't tend to read books that I get recommended by people I don't know, even if a lot of people recommend them. Unless I know people's tastes, how can I tell if they will coincide with mine? And when I do read books I hear about in that way, I am disappointed more often than not. So what is there to say that my reading pleasure from going through any kind of Top 100 list would be greater than what comes of reading 100 books by authors I know I like, or that Johan or Stina or Ulrika or those people in the Good Books game I usually agree with taste-wise have read and liked? Or why would I necessarily be getting more new thoughts or widen my understanding of the world by reading what others perceive to be the best books of the century or whatever; there will always be millions of works that aren't even in the running because they are too obscure, or written by the wrong kind of author or something.

If I should embark on a project like that, it would be to read 'classics', or possibly to read something by each Nobel Prize winner. For even if those are not necessarily the best books in the world nor necessarily the ones that would give me the most, at least that would mean I could discuss them and know what I was talking about. Yes, I could envision doing something like that—but I don't really expect I'll be doing it any time very soon.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 12:22 0 comments

 
I liked this article (link found at Nicklas' place.) It's fun to read, but it is also quite true to life: we don't get Type 2 here, being too far outside the town, but the public library and Uppsala University library get them. Type 7 exists, I'm sure, but I also believe they must be much more common in the US; I have never encountered one, nor do I expect to. The other types. . . oh yes. Just another facet of this job.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:54 0 comments

 
I was 15 years old when I first read It. I was in my first year of high school (or rather its Swedish equivalent), and my Monday schedule was an odd one: after my German class in the morning I had five free periods. Nine Mondays out of ten I'd spend these hours in a sofa at the tea-drinkers' club: a small, cosy room under the eaves of the old school building, where no teacher would venture. There I learnt to play Mah-Jong and Bridge, had five cups of tea a day or more, wrote a lot of bad poetry (intentionally bad, mostly; we had a designated notebook for that) -- and read a lot. And It became the strongest reading experience of that semester; I hadn't really read any horror before, and deifnitely nothing by Stephen King. The last 100 or so pages I read in one sitting, on one of those Mondays when I had all the time in the world to sit reading. What I remember most about it is how the club room was filled with people when I started reading; when I put the book down, head swimming, it was empty and I honestly hadn't noticed them all leaving, though some of them must have been climbing over my seat. . . I haven't had many reading experiences quite that intense, although a memorable one is the last part of Lord of Emperors by G G Kay (the sequel to Sailing to Sarantium) ; that was during the 2000 Eastercon, and the 50 last pages or so I read at the dead dog party, with 300 happy fans milling, mingling and making merry around me (and throwing paper aeroplanes at each other.) I didn't notice, see or hear a thing; I was completely enthralled of the book and, I must admit, weeping by the end of it.

And now I'm rereading It for the first time in 14 years, and it is still very gripping, though maybe not quite so much so as it was in 1988. For one thing, 1985, when the book takes place, is so distant now.

  posted by Linnéa Anglemark at 15:47 0 comments