Raspberry fields forever - how to spend the last day of leave!!

Good evening!

This morning we decided to take advantage of the sunlight and this sundays eveningservices, 
and head for Gladys's raspberryfields.  Raspberries are easier than strawberries, especially when you have such an akward hip that won't allow any deep crouching or kneestanding
without protesting .  I believed it all would go away after surgery but somehow I think they stitched me up the wrong way round and when they nailed my leg back on it took
a turn so now my foot is going inwards. I am a few inches taller too on that side so if I hurt
sometimes its only natural!!!  BUT I am alive aren't I??  Sun is shining, isn't it??
The Lord is merciful and gentle and we got 4 kilos of raspberry and about as much close encounter with nettles. Ouch. 

                   Picking along endless lines like these, side by side in friendly conversation, getting nettled twice a minute!!

It was a bit hard to stop picking, but since my husband is working today, we had to. This is some of
the treasures, now its up to me to preserve them for winter. Apples and blackberries comming up next.

In the line next to us an elderly couple was picking and we talked about sundays when the
church had a say on working and openinghours and peoples habits . We agreed it wouldn't hurt a bit if we could gather in church more often and how badly we need the commandments and the golden rule. We also agreed that it was a beautiful sunday and wished each other the best of it.
There are a great many lines of bushes, it takes more time than you expect and husband was soon in a bit of a hurry, working 13-20 today, christenings and musicalservices all afternoon.

Back at home husband got his lunch, I took some action against the horrible bananaflies, and
now some rest before jamming away!

Jamming away, that is what this is, some jars for winter, not much no, but there is the apples and the lingonberry to deal with later on. Lingonberryjam is hard currency in our family.

The eveningskye is absolutely wonderful where we live.

So, after baking  raspberrypie and storing some berries in the freezer, I went off for the eveningprayer in our closebye chapel. The eveningskye was colourful and astonishing, the
sea was calm without ripples.  Above you can listen to one of this evenings song, the lyrics are from the book of Psalms. "Only in thee my soul can find its peace, my rock and my salvation"

Forever a cineast! Maybe you'll find some favourites??

                 Goodafternoon to you, filmlovers!

Since I always had a great interest in film and tv-series I have been thinking of listing some of my very favourite moments of film and tv.
For about six years we lived in a rather small and old apartment, 1,5 rooms with a curtain between livingroom and bedroom. Small kitchen with gasstove, no bathtub but the one shared by the tennants, coldwatertap only and a tv-set that operated on coins and if you didn't have any, you couldn't see the end of tonights show. Screen went black at ten o' clock with the flag and national anthem.  For children there was a wee piece of film, cartoon or something from the eastern Europe with dolls mostly. 20 minutes from 6.30, then bedtime. But since we only had a curtain I could hear my way through some action. So I learned about Mission Impossibe, with Leonard Nimoy and Martin Landau, and I heard the Star Trek- theme and Frank Cannon. Never saw anything of course, only a few years later on reruns.

My big crush from early years was Elvis, and those films I was allowed to watch, OH joy!!

The Disney cartoons where my first cinemaexperiences, so they are on my list too:
Bambi, Snow white, Djunglebook and Aristocats.

Other cartoons and animated stories:
Lion King, Beauty and the beast, Toy Story, Ice Age except number 4, Shrek 1-2, Monster Inc,
Brisby and Nimh, Watership Down ( love it),  Happy feet, Aladdin

Next on my list - Star Wars 1977, I was 14 and I am not able to count the number of times I
have seen all the films in the series. However - Empire strikes back is a favourite.

Other scifi? Yes:
Star Trek - well it deserves a chapter of its own but ,Voyage Home and Into darkness .
Terminator 2, Alien and Aliens,  Independence day, Blade Runner, 

Fantasy?  Well, yes:
Edward Scissorshands, Harry Potter - all, Narnia,  Lord of the rings- trilogy, Hobbit -trilogy,
Timebandits, The wizard of Oz- 1939 version,  Life of Pi,  Mary Poppins, ET,  Big,  Splash

Adventure? Mhm:
Indiana Jones 1,3,  A view to a kill, Gold Finger, Spider Man - with Toby Mcguire, Superman-
with Chris Reeve, Jurassic Park,  Dark knight rises, Twister

Thrillers, oh yes:
Frantic, Witness, The Fugitive,  The man who knew to much, Vertigo,  Jaws, 

Classics, my mother was a big fan:
South Pacific,  Sound of music,  Gone with the wind,  High society, Wuthering heights, The hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton,  Cabaret, Jailhouse Rock,  Forrest Gump,
Rain man,  The elephantman

Humour:
Life of Brian,  Blazing saddles, Space Balls, Bruce Allmighty, The Mask, Blues Brothers, My big fat greek wedding,  Groundhog day,  Young Frankenstein,  Little miss Sunshine,  Four Weddings and a funeral,  The full monty, Ace Ventura, Hotel Marigold, 

Drama, yes:
Lost in translation, Whats eating Gilbert Grape, As good as it gets, Billy Elliot, Truman Show,
Slumdog Millionaire, Bridge over the river Kwai, Lunch Box

Well, that's enough for today, I will end with this trailer from As good as it gets!!

Blessings to you all, I hope your week will be a good one!!!

Ghostbusters and cinnamonbuns, somewhat edited and pictures added!!

John 11:25    " I am the Resurrection and the Life"
Those are the encouraging words I look upon when leading service in S.t Gertrud.

    Goodmorning!! Or rather, goodafternoon!!!

    This morning I for once had the time to join the morningprayer-group in the nearby chapel,       but for some reason it was cancelled, probably due to the concert with the Gospelstompers
    that took place there last night, and no, I didn't attend it. I intended to when I saw the add
    some weeks ago but the youngest daughter, a bit of a loner from time to time, wanted to
    see the Ghostbusters with us and we couldn't say no to such an invitation.

   So this morning I went for a prayerwalk instead in this humid and suffocating weather.
   It seems that praying is needed all around the clock,  we must not lose our hope and turn to
   other sources of power and peace, that won't hold. Not as the sole focus of our attention and 
   affection anyway. Praying is a way of communicating with someone very much alive, loving 
   and powerful. If you forget the "loving" part, the prayer might actually be harmful and lead 
   to darker thoughts than was intended. The times are dark enough as it is, even now when    creation stands in its prime and flourishing sundaybest.  Hope must prevail!
  Praying is kind of a ghostbusting, but for real,  if you excuse the bad parable.

   There is a change in the weather coming up, the swallows are extremly swift and brisky
   in the air above me, they tend to narrow up in the dives and I'm crouching although I don't 
   have to.  Much higher up the greylag geese are powering up for the coming longflight,
   they do a lot of that all autumn and so do other birds. The crane and the heron are not so
   common in our part of the country but they can be both seen and heard occasionally
   when they are mowing on. The crane is beautiful, sitting on his pole like a port guardian.
   There was none in the harbour today so I headed back to our garden.

The moist glittering in the hydrangea, these grow larger every year, but this spring my husband cut them
down so bitterly that I feared they would never recover, but, behold!!!

If you have good eyes you can see the little fellow working inside the hollyhock.

   













    

This week we have something called Roadchurch, a phenomena that was much larger some
    years ago with maps to follow all over the country. It basically means that the church is
    open in daytime, and someone is there to guide and welcome visitors. Sad enough, many of
    our countryside churches are closed, there are not enough  people to take care of them and
    if they are left open and unattended much harm have been done to them from time to time,
    and irreplaceable artefacts have been stolen or broken. I know, it's only things, but still.
   

This is a very typical churchyard for a countryside church. Some of the headstones can't tell any stories since the letters are all gone.

         

Yes, you have seen it before, this old churchwall!!

The tower wasn't built until 1861, the vaults in the church were built in the 15th century.
Before the vaults the ceiling was all flat and the windows small. We still use real candles,
especially in winter and christmastime. The service today was bright and many people attended.

The altarpiece of our oldest church, as you can see parts of it from 14th century. 

    So for a week or two churches that are normally closed weekdays now open up. A service
    and some invited guests to sing and play, prayer and hymns and then some coffee with the
    traditional homebaked wheatbread, spongecake and shortbread served by volunteering
    ladies in the parish house. Our oldest church is located close to a larger road so.....
    

Cinnamonbuns ready to be served!!

    This monday I was there with a friend of mine, cantor in the neighbouring parish, and we
    had a program with songs, both in church and afterwards.  I enjoy singing , in two different 
    choirs, and sometimes solo. I am no Birgit Nilsson, but it's sufficient. Today, two of my   
    colleagues, one with her daughter and one with her sister, played and sang, it was very lovely!

    And perhaps you now wonder, did we enjoy the film???
    Well, leaving all sensible thinking aside, keeping only two hours of good and childish fun: Yes
    indeed we did!  It stands on its own, although it refers to the 1984-piece frequently, something
    only a filmnerd can appreciate I suppose.  The cast is actually brilliant, the plot, well...
    My girls seem to appreciate Chris Hemsworth as receptionist, quite a lot...
    Maybe next post will be a memorylane for some of my favourite films through the years..?
    
    
   

Am I getting old??

                                               Happy, sunny thursday to you!

This is just a post about the thoughts that goes on inside my mind. I wonder every now and then about age, and it strikes me that age is just a figure. Or is it perhaps a way of being?
Some weeks ago I went to celebrate one of our oldest in the congregation, S that turned 95.
When people turn 90, 95 and 100 they get a visit from the minister or vicar, dressed in our best kaftan, and holding a bunch of flowers. I always sing a birthdaysong the sisters at Ersta Diaconal institute used to sing, from 1885 something. Yes, sometimes its good to be hard of hearing, I imagine...
S was dressed up and sat in her room. She greated me, somewhat wondering, saw the flowers and heard the song and then said:" Well, you know, those are nice flowers, you just skip along and give them to someone old and sick."

Seeing my parishioners grow old and grey, and eventually disappear from their place in church, I tend to get melancholy, which is very swedish.  The bible holds some interesting notes about time and aging, emptyness is a word often used, pointing to the fact that we have limited lifespan. Gods time is always now. Don't look back, Jesus says. But we do.
I turned 53 and had my hip replaced, now the doctor tells me I need an eyesurgery to replace my clouded lenses. What next?  My oldest daughter laugh hysterically at some jokes on internet, I want to keep up so I ask what it is and she says: You wouldn't understand Mum, you are too old! Or rather she says: you are the wrong generation. That is nicely put!
When I was a child, people of 50 seemed close to death, same goes for our daughters, they refer to people as being VERY old, meaning over 30.
It has always been like this, I think. Old litterature and old poets , old thinkers, philosophers, all say the same: They don't understand the young, they are horrible, nosy, noisy and irresponsible. The young accuse the older to be stubborn, backwards, thickheaded and conservative. From Aristoteles an onward.
Thats me. I see fears everywhere. I look at the ever increasing pace of development and desperately want to bring things to a hold. I often feel that things are happening too fast because we have means to make them happend.  I have concerns and fears about many things today and claim that we really need to get together and think things through before we say YES to every new invention and way of thinking. 
So am I getting old and grumpy? Yes, perhaps. What do you think? Am I seeing ghosts where there are none?  Am I the only one haunted sometimes with the "What ifs"??
We must cope with the worries of our times, there really is no time for the old What If I...
Regret choices and actions are pointless unless we learn from it.
Today we have to lean on what is not changing, the road laid , the peace settled, the truths that holds. 
And for that matter, I must stop moaning about age, age is but a figure, see here the beauty of age, the church with its 15th century interior, paintings found and lovingly restored. 

                                         This is one of the many St Nicholas churches we have along our coasts,
                                         the oldest parts of it from the 15th century, this part from 1672.

Since the oldest parts were from the catholic area, paintings were covered for centuries.
These were discovered and restored, lovely in their ancient kind of way, notice the clothing
and buildings . 

Underneath the Saviors feet a churchmouse resides, a modern contribution
to make children notice and ask questions.
"The old ragged cross" -   A song often played by the local church jazzband.
So, the question of age is really not important , we get older, we are supposed to, and how beautiful an old person can be.  Yes I am slowly getting older, but why bother? It won't matter in eternity.

The occasional vacation - Stockholm!

Goodafternoon!!!

I would like to break in through the horrors and sadness of recent events, and invite you to share some of our short holidaytrip to Stockholm.

                                When travelling, you must pay attention to the clouds, they keep your                thoughts in the heavens when you get too exited about worldly pleasures....

Going by bus means seeing lots of lakes and farmland. Lots of forests as well actually, since Sweden have several vast areas of both farmingland and forests. Wood is one large export merchandise.

Whoever built this barn must have had great love for his native church, they are so close that you can sit milking and singing hymns at the same time.

                                         Blessed be the rock of my salvation! The further north you get in Sweden,
                                         the more solid rock you stumble on. Many of our main roads have been                                                built by dynamiting through the rock. The mines become plenty up north.
                                       

                                          The farmhouses in this region are rather beautiful, built more than hundred
                                          years ago.

 Closing in to Stockholm you see the Globe, a music and sportsarena they are very proud of for some reason, it holds a great amount of visitors, I have listened to Elton John in here f.i. Above you can also see the proud announcement of one of the larger suburbs, Hägersten, translated.....Heron!!!!!

                                         Water surrounds Stockholm, salt and sweet. Part of the town is built on
                                         water and several islands in the great archipelago are included.

 This is the current royal castle, the Royals have flats here but normally lives at Drottningholm, Haga or like just now, Solliden on the island Öland. One of the princesses lives in the states. The old castle, Tre kronor - Three Crowns ( from the three kings in the gospel ) burnt down 1697, was more of a fortification but rather beautiful. Here you see the daily parade. In the castle official visits take place, parties and celebrations. You can visit with guides in certain parts of the building.

 Stockholm is often referred to as City of Islands, but you could also say City of Churches, because you'll find one spectacular church after the other in every part of the city. Old, older, large, larger, beautiful or just big. This red one is the St Jacobs church located in Kungsträdgården, close to the castle.

What is one to eat in Sweden? Well, pickled herring, egg, potatoes, cheese and hard bread.

                                         One popular spot in Stockholm is Djurgården that used to be closed for public and only used by the royals for hunting. Animals were imported and disposed of in merry hunting games. Today it holds galleries, museums, embassies and the amusementpark Gröna Lund. But for me Skansen is the greatest park. In Skansen you'll find an impressive collection of houses and buildings being moved and restored from all over Sweden. It also holds animals, both nordic and exotic. Handcraft and good food you can find here, as well as music and folklore. But above you see something VERY swedish - Allsång.

  It means people gathering in hundreds to sing . The two largest are broadcasted on national tv since there are artists as well. But every village holds one in summertime. We love to sing!!!
   We got no seats beacuse of the artists being so popular, f.i Laleh and some norwegian twins....
                                         

                                         Since we got no seats and standing up for seven hours was a bit too much
                                         for me, I took some walks and pictures.
                                         Here the south part of Stockholm and the Finland-ferry majestically gliding.

 Past the waffle and candystands you will find some of the buildings, this here is the interior of Seglora kyrka, from the county of Dalarna, rich in colour, poor in size.

The organ is not so impressive, but oh how beautiful!!

The ancient writings found in our churches tells of important people having done something , donated something or simply been burried in the church. This one tells of the building of the church in 1814.

 How about this old harrow, Weaver?  Horsepower and farmerpower required!!

                                         This is a farmerhouse from around 1820, built once in our county,                                                    Kyrkhult ,Blekinge.

   The traditional way to stack heyfences, today they roll it into large plastic balls.

Let us take a quick look at more recent events now!

Among the more recent events in Stockholm, there is the murder of our Primeminister Olof Palme in 1986. I remember the shock that morning. We have been happily spared this kind of political actions in modern times. Here you have the exact location on Sveavägen. This was very unexpected as was the murder of one of our ministers, Anna Lindh, 2003. 

Here you have Palmes headstone in the Adolf Fredrik churchyard. People still visit and sometimes put flowers. Several celebrities have headstones in the churchyards here, poets, composers like Carl Michael Bellman and Evert Taube, Cornelis Vreeswijk and others.

A landmark of the more modern kind is the Globe, an arena. The annual Eurovision song contest is located here. You can also ride on the outside, a pleasure I gladly refrained since I payed for the London Eye horror last year!!! The rest of the family is inside that bulb!

Now for the oldest part of the town, Old Town and Drottningholm.

The Old Town is located south of the  Royal castle and the Parliamentbuilding. Its built on water and in wintertime its held free of ice and snow to protect the narrow alleys and old houses, such as these. As you can see, the resemblance is great with cities like Amsterdam or Prague. Since our royalties were imported mostly from Germany but also from France, the local culture was moulded into something new and quite unique. By this I refer to the royalties of the 18th century. Before that we had swedish and danish kings roaming all over the country, claiming land and power and sovereignity . Those were confusing days but there is an enormous treasure of castles and monasteries from that period. Not in Stockholm though.

Narrow alleys everywhere in Old Town, beautiful houses, mysterious gaps and decorations and all of u sudden - there is indeed the loved swedish composer Evert Taube, located in Järntorget.

Evert Taube, a very popular statue for selfie-nerds!!

Now lets find the old steamship Drottningholm and visit the Archepelago of Stockholm!!

Further out you can find Björkö, Birka, a tradingplace for the vikings and the very spot where the monk Ansgar began his mission. Lots of history here!!

We travel for about one hour until we reach the old castle where the royal family mostly resides. 

The palace of Drottningholm is now in sight, with beautiful parks, the ancient theatre and yet another castle called he China castle, China was very fashionable. France as well!!

 As I mentioned, we imported our kings. This story begins with Adolf Fredrik on the right. He came from Germany and was married to Lovisa Ulrika, also from Germany, he was crowned 1751. She was very fond of culture and demanded a theatre and a castle of her own, hence Drottningholm. Actually she first got the castle of Ulriksdal but wasn't satisfied. The theatre was built , in wood, plaster and other flammable material and burnt down in may 1762. The audience was alright but several stageworkers died, something that didn't bother the queen much. She demanded a new theatre.  1766 it was finished, and though it may look solid, it too was built with wood, plaster and ---papier maché instead of marble. Well, it was absolutely more solid than the king, who literally ate himself to death and they had to send for the partyprince, Gustav, the left portrait. He became Gustav the third, well known for his love of the theatre and the music. In his court Carl Michael Bellman was a part. 

 No electric lights and no camera flashes. The machinery behind and underneath is still he same!!!
The decorations at the time where the same all over Europe and used in all the plays, about 6-7 sets.
The actors always played the same parts and payed for their costumes themselves and had their quarters behind the scene and underneath. Gustav the third was not allowed to act anymore so he began writing instead.

 Balconies of all kinds, for secret meetings and for showing off but careful, the pillars holding it is made out of papier maché!!!

 This was the living quarters of prominent guests, the wallpaper was nailed to the walls and could easily be replaced and moved!! This is the original wallpaper!

The servants held more simpler quarters but better than the stageworkers and actors!!!

Well, this was just a quick glance through our capitol, some history, some scenery, some fun and some horrors. I hope you enjoyed this little tour!!!