Dearest mormor

Swedish is great in that you can immediately understand that mormor means grandmother on your mother's side and morfar means grandfather on your mother's side. The same goes for uncle and aunt on the mother's side which would be moster (aunt) and morbror (uncle). Then it is the same on your father's side with farmor and farfar and faster and farbror. End of your weekly Swedish lesson. It was just so I could explain what the title meant.

The reason I was thinking of my dear mormor the other day was that my neighbour said that "It will soon be the time when your tree changes colour and the leaves fall. My grandkids love collecting the leaves and jumping in the pile." My thoughts immediately went to mormor who always saw great danger in very ordinary things. So if you jumped into a pile of autumn leaves you could get polio, it was very dangerous and deprived us of that little pleasure. Another thing, maybe less dangerous but still unpleasant was that if you were making horrible faces and the wind changed you would stay that way, for ever and ever. Needless to say, we could never go swimming after having eaten, we had  to wait for hours.

My mormor was looking after my sister and me after my parents split up and our mother went back to work. Mormor obviously had to retort to some weird threats. When it got really desperate she would make pretend phone calls to a special school for unruly kids and explain that we had been very bad and then she would ask if they could take us on. We would be ready to do anything to get out of that and she would forgive us and all was well, for a while.

Please don't worry, I think no harm was done and it was just her way to deal with difficult situations.

This is taken just about the time when mormor started looking
after us full time.

This is taken at mormor's confirmation when
she was fifteen years old.

The last thing before I leave the subject of mormor is that,  especially in the winter, my sister and me would sit on each side of my mormor's arm chair and she would sing for us. It was not very happy songs but something that was called  "Skilling tryck" in Swedish. It was mainly sad songs about people suffering terrible hardship, famine and death. The mother often died and the father was often a drinker. Another theme was unhappy love, where one or the other died tragically.  The result was that when my mother came home from work she would find me and my sister crying our hearts out.

On to another subject, we have had visitors from Melbourne, which was very nice. We drank a bottle of wine that they bought in France when they came to visit us there from 1989. I will not make any comments here on that since I am not a great wine connoisseur, but it was very dark. There was also an Australian wine from 1974. Don't get me wrong, I like wine but I can't get all the little nuances, like banana skin, vanilla, berry, licorice, or sunlight through a stained glass window. I am a little simple when it comes to this, it is either red or white and sometimes rosé.

It is a sad day today because one of my favorite singers died unexpectantly at the age of 57.
I saw a weather report from Newtown that said that today would be cloudy and grey with Purple Rain. RIP Prince!

Great week-end

It started with Friday when I lost my handbag in our local shopping center. 'How is that great?', you may ask yourself.  Well, I didn't realize it until I got home and unloaded the groceries in front of the door and when I went to get my bag from its usual spot in the car, the handbag wasn't there. So back to the shopping centre, running around to the different possible places where someone might have handed it in, while getting more and more panicky. I have everything in my handbag, passport, ticket back to Europe, all my cards, driver's license etc, so losing it would be a real problem.

I figured out that it must have happened when I was just leaving and putting my trolley away, since I did have the car keys in my hand and had been able to load in the groceries and drive home. So I had probably left the bag in the trolley. Someone wanted my parking spot so I was trying to be quick and efficient and that's probably how it happened.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, while I was in the bank cancelling my card, the bank teller asked if I wanted to call someone and I rang hubby. He was unusually chirpy and started making a joke which I had to interrupt since I was struggling to hold back tears. Finally when I actually listened to what he was saying he told me that a colleague had rang up and said that his brother had rung him to say that is wife, i.e. his sister-in-law, had found a handbag in a trolley and it had a card in the wallet for hubby at his workplace. So he met up with his colleague's brother and picked up the bag. As simple as that! Meanwhile younger daughter had rang hubby about something and he asked her if she could come and pick up the bag and take it to me. I was sitting outside the bank waiting, and she and her boyfriend turned up with my bag and all was finally well. So, back to the house to get the food into the fridge. Fortunately it was a cool day so I don't think anything had gone off.

Well, that was Friday, then on Saturday morning we flew down to Melbourne to surprise hubby's brother and sister-in-law who both had turned 60 recently. It was planned for Sunday, so Saturday we got picked up at our hotel by hubby's old friend Peter and taken to their house for drinks and to see their twin girls whom we haven't seen since they came to visit in France when they were young.
We had a great meal in a Sri Lankan restaurant with some other old friends as well. It was great catching up, and a great meal. Then back to Peter and Libby's place for more drinks and cheese.

 

Sunday was a very long day, since we changed the time here in Australia, which means you can fit in a lot. We started with the craft market in St Kilda and a walk along on what I call the cake street - Acland Street. They sell other things too but is most famous for their cake shops, very Olde Worlde, and people come from far away to see and taste. We managed to hold back since we still had not digested the food from the night before and also knew we were going to an Italian place for lunch.

Selfie outside one of the cake shops
in Acland Street

Outside the famous Luna Park in St
Kilda

Anyway, back on one of Melbourne's famous trams again and off to the Art Centre where we were supposed to sit and wait in the restaurant and surprise hubby's brother and sister-in-law when they arrived. All this was booked and organized by hubby's sister and would have been perfect except we met them outside on the bridge by accident. This didn't make the surprise any less surprising, though. Hubby's brother did not recognise him at first.

After a delicious meal we separated and the three boys went to see a football game (Aussie Rules, of course) at the famous MCG, and we girls went to see an exhibition called 200 years of Australian Fashion

We girls had the time to do several things. We visited St Paul's Cathedral and a market, and we also went to Hosier Lane to check out the graffiti artists at work, great stuff!

Eat your heart out Sydney, here is the Yarra River!

Graffiti artist at work.

Lunch at Tutto Bene, Southbank.

The three siblings having drinks at Young and Jackson's.

I used to think that Melbourne was a bit grey and boring, but after this visit I have completely changed my tune. It was helped by the glorious weather of course, but also the vibrant and accessible art scene with so much going on. I really recommend a visit!