“Strangled in Paris”

This is the cover I would have loved my book to have had! Much nicer than the boring one my came with. Perhaps it would have been a funnier book to read, had it had a pretty cover? I usually love these books, set in Paris in the 1890s, but this sixth one in the series, was a disappointment. Difficult to say what was so disappointing with it, since I thought it would be great. The main character Victor Legris, finally managed to persuade his mistress to marry him, in the previous volume which is something that has just been so annoying in the first five books, her refusing to give up her independence! Her not caring about that people judge them both, for being a disgrace, which to her meant nothing, since she is an artist, but to Victor Legris, the main character, who owns a book shop and is supposed to be respectable, it was not the best for his reputation and book shop. Now they are married, in this book, since the autumn of 1893. This book taking place in February 1894.

I also thought it would be great since Victor’s sister Iris, also got married in the autumn, to the shop assistant, Joseph Pignot, that helps Victor solve crimes. But these two facts, the two couples now being married, ruined the book. It made it tedious reading and made me long for the end, after just a couple of chapters. I don’t pick up a murder mystery, to read about the main characters’ sex life. I really couldn’t care less! The previous book had precious little of it, so I thought the two sisters that write under the pseudonym Claude Izner, had finally abandoned people’s bedroom actions, and was very pleased with it. Now it was back full force! Both for Victor and Joseph and the third main character, Kenji Mori, step-father of Victor and father-in-law of Joseph, who runs around trying to decide whether he wants to start an affair with Victor’s mother-in-law. Boring! Please, spare us more personal details of the main characters’ personal lives! I can not take Joseph’s mother’s nouveau rich attitude, since her son’s marriage above his class. I can not take any more of Joseph’s bragging and high thoughts about himself. And pregnant Iris’ vegetarianism is driving me completely crazy. Nice that she took up to writing children’s stories though and having Tasha illustrate them, sad though that she doesn’t dare to show them to anyone! And Victor and Tasha, living completely separate lives except in bed for the sex act. They do not even have time to BE a married couple! Double boring!

As if this was not bad enough, Victor is sick and tired of the book shop. He wants to spend all his time on photographing even though he earns nothing on that! And Kenji Mori is sick and tired of the book shop. He even gets his own extra flat, away from the book shop, so he can start an affair with Djina Kherson, if she is up for it. And Joseph Pignot, the shop assistant doesn’t really seem to like his job anymore either, preferring to write his silly gothic tales for the magazine Le Passe-partout. In other words, what made the book series fun, all the tales from the Elzevir Book shop, all the customers and their little quirks, are becoming more and more absent as the three main characters do everything to stay away from there! It’s just a place where they run in to each other, and lie about where they are heading to next. Triple boring!

The mystery in this book? Not as well thought through as previous ones. Lots of names as usual. Lots of running around, lying to people to extract information. The book starts in Normandy. We get to follow a crippled sea-captain, that has had to come ashore, after a bad accident aboard a ship. He is not the happiest of men. He loved the sea. And he still mourns that his cousin never loved him back, getting involved with another man and getting pregnant by that man. He can not forget her and how she died, after terminating her pregnancy. One morning there has been a shipwreck almost on his doorstep and he finds a beautiful woman in the water, that he brings home to nurse. While she is unconscious he falls for her and reads her diaries. After taking her to a convent, he decides to go to Paris. That is where she is heading, when she is well enough. He spends his days spying on a candy shop, where she is staying with the owner. He is determined to make sure that nothing happens to this Sophie Clairsange.

One day, he sees her coming out in the evening, going to a meeting with a man, who strangles her. Only, when he afterwards runs up to the corpse, he realises that it is not Sophie after all, only someone who has coloured her hair, to look like her. But Victor Legris, soon finds out who the dead woman is. His wife Tasha’s scandalous painter friend Laumier comes to ask him to solve the murder of his mistress’ Mimi’s cousin, Louise Fontaine. She used to work as a seamstress to the famous Richard Gaétan, couturier. Then she suddenly had quit to go live with Sophie Clairsange. A witness to the strangulation, gives Victor a necklace with a unicorn. So for a majority of the book, he and Joseph runs around trying to find out about this secret society of the Black Unicorn, that follows Nicholas Flamel, trying to find the Philosopher’s Stone. But it is just a red herring and a very poor one, from the authors’ side. It has nothing to do with the murder and it felt like a waste of time, to had followed them down that dead-end. More could have been done to this story, than what it ended up being. Three men using young girls or raping them, people wanting revenge. And in the middle of this, an old abortion trial with hundreds of women charged, but only the abortionist going down for the crime. Add to this a woman falling in love with one man, while his friend was in love with her as well, her getting pregnant, and then marrying a third man, only to become a widow with debts, who needed help from the infatuated man, and then the first man appearing on the scene again, after many years absence.

There was too much going on in this book. And in the end, one realises that Corentin Jourdan, the sea-captain, remains as much a question mark in the end of the book, as he was in the beginning. He gets the girl in the end, the authors ending the book with them having sex! But why? Why did he end up with her? They didn’t even know each other! Not the best of plot lines here when it comes to anything.

Vexing is that the authors also have a disdain for their readers or are just sloppy, when it comes to dates and so forth. In the previous book, they seem to have forgot when a certain person that had information, would be back in Paris for questioning. I as a reader remembered though and got vexed with them not keeping to that. In this book they make the same mistake. The 8 November 1889, Sophie Clairsange, got raped. The 30 November she writes in her diary that she is three weeks late! That is impossible! If she was raped in the evening of the 8th November, she got pregnant at the earliest, the 9th November! Her expected date of menstruation would have been 23rd November, which means that the 30th November, she was only one week late. Not until the 14th December could she say that she was three weeks late!!!! And of course she continues that on the 20th December she is nearly 6 weeks late. Not so in other words. Trust me, I am an experts on this after 10 pregnancies, (two miscarriages and one missed abortion of these) and oodles of ovulation tests through the years. I am an expert in the field!!! Why do the authors think that the reader is stupid and don’t pay attention?

“Scotty beam me up!”

I’m not even sure I want to remember yesterday’s utter fiasco! Tuesday evening at 23:00, I wanted a divorce! That is when T. says “So you are taking the car to the garage tomorrow at 7:00?!”. I could not believe what I was hearing. I know that he does not want the car fixed. What problem is it of his? I am the one that drive it! I am the one that get caught by the police! It is me that everyone give a dirty stare because it sounds so bad! He just wants to act like his mother did: Go shopping with money that we do not have, throw up that VISA card, and then turn a blind eye to how it is going to be paid. He saw a car at Toyota when he was there and got the verdict on the car weeks ago. 120 000 Swedish kronor We would be in debt for 5 years! But he wants it. Says the man who gets furious every month because we have hardly anything to live on after the bills are paid. I am supposed to pay the bills and still magically see to that there are lots left in the account afterwards! Well, I have told him we can not buy that expensive car. I don’t care if it has AC, is an automatic and uses diesel! His dream, not mine!

So, let’s say we had words Tuesday evening after the Eurovision Song Contest semi-final. No way, that I was going to go in to a male-chauvinist-pig-place like a garage, with our car! I do not deserve to be humiliated by those men with low self-confidence, who hold women in such low esteem! He can deal with them! At 7:00 I stand in our kitchen ironing and nagging our boys to eat, get dressed, get their rucksack packed for school. How on Earth could I be in two places at the same time? It was ridiculous to even suggest it. Let’s say, he had to stay home and work yesterday while I did my usual thing of looking after the children. Which meant that I had to keep “Sparky” home from pre-school since it is too dangerous to walk on the big road with a pram. There is no room on the sides to walk and they drive with big lorries there, full of stones, VERY fast. At 13:00 I had to put him in the pram and walk to the bus station and we had to take the slow bus to town to fetch his brothers. At first he thought it was fun, but then he got sleepy and I had to tell him to stay awake or sit in his pram. He didn’t want to sit in his pram during the bus ride so… We got to the school at about 14:00 and “Kitty’s” teacher was furious with him since he has been “speeded” all week. And “Boo” was very excited about the evening’s “show”, so he had not paid attention to where he had put down his jacket and trousers. (Having changed in to shorts during the day.) I had to leave without them since we had to catch a bus at 14:13. We went all the way home again and were able to eat a little before we headed back to school at 16:30.

When we arrived home, the car was parked in the parking lot! I hardly dared to ask IF it had been fixed and for how MUCH! It was fixed, great relief!!! And I could hardly believe the sum: 100 Pounds/120 Euros/154 Dollars. Now I know that prayer really works, even if it doesn’t work when I pray for another baby!

So we traveled in the car to town, BUT without “Sparky”. He refused to go in a car or a bus again, after spending two hours in one, earlier. “Cookie” took him to the playground instead and “Dollie” practised the piano, when we left. We arrived on time and I was all excited to see “Boo” sing and say his line. Well, the other children stood in a row on stage and sang. Except “The German” lady’s daughter and a half-American boy. They joined “Boo” in silence. But at least they stood up. He sat on the floor, in the row, and INSPECTED HIS TOES throughout the show. It lasted only 30 minutes. Then he was to tell us all to go to the dining room and there we would get cinnamon rolls and chocolate balls. Well, he whispered his line and then dived behind a curtain. So noone heard what he said. The teacher had to tell us what to do. So I drove all that way to see him pick his toes!

While the other parents ran down, T. and I ran around searching for the trousers and jacket, since there would be a queue anyway. But when I got down, there was no queue. “Boo” was sitting all alone, munching away on his cinnamon roll and chocolate ball and went for seconds when it was allowed.  “Kitty” had sat down with friends, of course not inviting his little brother. Deep sigh!

I had not meant to eat anything but he was so proud of having helped baking, that I felt I had to make sure he saw me eating. I wish I could say that it all ended well but it did not. Soon the teacher said that she would take one parent with her from each family and have a parenting meeting and that the rest of us could stay mingling and eating. It had been said that all children should go home, so I was surprised but I thought, “fine, then T. doesn’t have to take the bus home!”. So while I cleared our part of the table, “Kitty” and “Boo” ran out to play in the school ground, OR SO THEY SAID. I started talking to this dad, who is my daughters’ English teacher, about “Dollie’s” new British flag shoes. That is when “Kitty” runs in and screams that “Boo” is throwing stools off the “grandstand” in the chapel! I ran upstairs but he wasn’t there. But I was met by screaming children pointing this and that direction. He went that way, no that way… I ran around searching all over. And then I was met by the gestapo! The German lady that was screaming in her usual hysterical way, that he had thrown this stool. She was carrying the stool around to prove her point! And she was clinging to me like a leech, telling me the same thing over and over again. Then when I am up on the grandstand, I see T. down in the chapel searching for “Boo”. He is angry because the German had dragged him out of the parenting meeting totally hysterical. She screams at me “well, I couldn’t find you!”. I was so hard to find that “Kitty” found me right away in the dining room where we had all been moments earlier!!! No, she kept on saying, “He was wild, throwing stools off the stage, knocking down the trees, trying to throw the drum and then he threw this stool off the grandstand!”. Interesting how he could be in two places at the same time but all the same. Finally I got hold of him and all the children stood there expecting to hear a wonderful bawling out. I started but then I thought, NO, I just took him out to the car and there we sat and waited, getting sweatier by the minute. Oh, I bawled him out alright. “I can understand that you were shy and did not dare to sing or anything. Fine. A wasted evening watching you pick your toes which I could have done at home. BUT acting like a complete lunatic, THAT was NOT acceptable.” Yes, all the children were running wild, but he was five times worse than the others. So when “Kitty” and T. came out, I drove home, and spent the rest of the evening being upset, since I did not see any other parents coming out of the school, so I assume they all stayed behind to discuss the problem of horrible “Boo” and how to get rid of him! The German lady taking the lead no doubt.

Today, I received my code to log in to the University page and it was worse than I thought. They have nothing recorded on me what so ever! I even have to prove that I have gone to gymnasium. I just feel like ripping all my hair out and scream. I don’t want to be here anymore… I don’t even know where to start trying to track everything down, and how can I? Many things are before they put things on computers!!!! Yes, I am a dinosaur. Suddenly I feel completely and utterly, a waste of space.

Back to the University?

My family are nagging on me to go back to the University and finish my studies. Daniel wants me to finish my thesis, which was the only thing missing for my degree. I haven’t told them that with all the changes at the University, they might have changed everything, so that my points don’t count anymore. That is what I fear the most, that all those years were entirely wasted. The whole student loan still unpaid. What a nightmare! What if I will have to start all over again, from the beginning, because the old and the new system might not be compatible. I just took a look at the courses in the history department and I am clueless as to what is going on there. The new point-system does not make any sense at all to me.

So I decided to go to a site where you can see what is recorded on you. It saying that everything might not have been logged in to the new system. Great! How will I be able to prove things this many years after the fact? Why was I such an idiot and went to the US instead of getting a degree here at home first? Complete idiot! I created an account on the site but still can’t get in. Now I have to wait for a code to arrive in the post. Then I can log in to see what is recorded on me. I fear the worse. The Religion History Department were so sloppy! I bet they never got it recorded that any of us took that course in Judaism autumn 1994, 20 entire points. While I loved the course, I refuse to take it once again!

But who am I fooling? How could I go back to school? Only having a couple of free hours each day. Less so next year, when “Dollie” starts gymnasium, and can’t take her brothers on the bus to school, in the morning. “Cookie” has such a low self-esteem that she picks a fight with them ALL the time. She can not be in charge. She could never ever handle “Kitty”. I really am fed up with the situation. It has occured to me to perhaps look for help and see if he is entitled to taxi since he is “handicapped”. But they might just tell me to place him in a local school instead. In a way, I am tempted. To just give in and put him on medication and then let him sink or swim in the council school. 30 children or more in every class. Him getting thrown out when he misbehaves or doesn’t do as told. Then they would send him to a “special ed” school with retarded children, Down’s Syndrome and other “letter children”. His ADHD is no blessing but cheer hell to live with. Going back to the University might be the last straw that would break me. The stress of studying at the same time as looking after three boys that need me A LOT. Not to mention the others that need me from time to time, for assignments and everything else that a mother is needed for, even if they have entered the teenage years and feel that I’m a useless old bag. Well, “Cookie” is not a teenager yet, but soon, and has not said anything of the sort. But she ignores what I tell her. And Daniel, well he hasn’t been unappreciative either. But one teenager treating you like a turd is enough!

It looks like it’s too late to apply for anything for the autumn now anyway, but I might as well find out what my chances are for going back, and what will be required. If it looks like it is hopeless, then I guess I will have to continue knowing that I wasted my life away, having been only ten points away, one thesis away from my degree. And continue looking at the student loan statements just growing every year. A loan that was pointless without a degree.

“Edwardians in Love”

Not a single person on Amazon.co.uk had reviewed this book and only one, on its American sister shop. That review was not particularly informative, so I made the mistake of purchasing this book. It was very disappointing! To me, Edwardians are people living in King Edward VII’s Britain, and he being king between 1901 and 1910, I wrongly assumed that it was this time period I was going to get to read about. We are talking “Downton Abbey” times, “Mr. Selfridge” times, “The Bolter” times, or getting in to Idina Sackville’s times anyways… But this is not what the book is about at all. When Albert Edward became king, he was really past it and all the people who Anita Leslie calls Edwardians, likewise. They were by 1901-1910, fat, old, boring people.

No, what she calls Edwardian times and Edwardians, spans Albert Edward’s lifetime! Who has ever heard of such a stupid idea? He was born 1841 and from the time Queen Victoria took over the crown till her day of death, we have the Victorian Era, not the Edwardian. But what you have to suffer through in this book, is Albert Edward’s life and alternative lifestyle. Like the one and only reviewer from the US said, Anita Leslie was the grand-daughter of Leonie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother Jennie’s sister. So, in a backhanded way, the book is really a book about her. She enters basically every chapter. She is Leslie’s main source for all information, all stories. In a way, the book is a version of, if you had been a child sitting on Leonie’s lap, and her telling you ALL the gossip of her day.

Hearing gossip, can be fun for a little while, but not for 340 pages of an ill-smelling book! It’s only available second-hand nowadays. May it never be re-printed! I think that if it had been a well researched book on Edward VII, it could have been somewhat interesting. IF one is interested in this disgusting man!? But I can’t even say that it is a biography on him. It’s more loose stories, where he is either involved or on the side lines. Likewise Leonie Leslie. What is described is the way he lived, making all his friends kiss up to him, splurge on him, giving him the sun and the moon, and he subsequently bankrupting a lot of them. His most famous mistresses are described. And some of his infamous friends. But nothing is described in detail, so it is just loose gossip, all of it.

As for the author’s grandmother, well lots is said about her and I must say that this is where I started to smell, a sour smell. She describes her grandmother as being loved by everyone in London, her having sooooo much influence, her being the unofficial mistress of the Duke of Connaught and his wife’s intimate friend, who could not function without Leslie… Since Leonie Leslie has not gone to history as anything, hardly anyone knowing who she was, I think that poor Anita Leslie, fails to see who was important back then and not. I think she has been brought up in the upper classes and doesn’t have a real clue about anything really. The proof of this is when she says that Britons forgave their beloved Albert Edward EVERYTHING, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted, no matter how scandalous, and they just adored him for being who he was. If you like to look at the world through a pink cloud, accept what she says, but I doubt that Victorian Britain felt proud of their Crown Prince and later King! They kept their Victorian values and NOONE in their right mind can agree that bedhopping is a great idea, nor spending money on luxuries when most of the nation is starving to death and ending up in the workhouses. Yes, he and his wife were glamorous alright, but the masses rarely look up to people who have done nothing to deserve it, who lives a scandalous life.

The book shows that what Albert Edward got up to, became his mates’ pattern of behaviour as well. I guess, that is how one learns about how bedhopping came about. But I would say that the title of this book is very misfitting. And Leslie really wants to push the idea that their way of life, was a great one, to be admired by us. She also wants us to strongly dislike Queen Alexandra, mainly because she was, in her view, boring. Instead of looking at what the poor woman had to face, she judges her on account of her not wanting to marry her daughters off. Two of them still got married but one remained unmarried, thanks to her mother, says Leslie. A couple of ideas just entered my mind: 1) What if Alexandra wanted to spare her beloved daughter the same fate as she had to go through. The man who did want to marry her daughter, was no prince, so holy unsuitable in those days, and he of course would not have been faithful. Why would he? 2) What if Alexandra did what my mother did? Punished the person that she dared to punish? My father cheated on my mother for 22 years and no doubt would have continued, had he not had an accident. She took his cheating out on me! Alexandra must have been equally unhappy and having a low self-esteem just like mother, thanks to the infidelity, so what says that she did not take her frustration out on her sensitive daughter, just like my mother did! The one weaker than herself?

I really regret having spent an entire week on this book! When I could have read something good instead. I thought it would be a good social history that would explain something of what Idina Sackville had to go through, during WWI, in her first marriage. The background to what happened to her and why. Not so! And when I think about it, I wonder what a person would do when reading this book, if they have not read all the books that I have, on many of these people. I have visited some of the country houses mentioned, have walked on guided tours, hearing about their scandalous lives, and have read books on many of them, as main characters in the books, or side characters. But I still had a difficult time to remember who was who… If one is a novice to the time period and top layer of British society at the end of the 19th Century, then one would be completely lost. Not a nice feeling to have when one is reading a book.

Hospital visits etc.

I’ve got behind in my blogging as usual. Taking “Sparky” to the hospital takes all the energy out of me for days. Last Monday, the 6th May, it was time again for a Mag 3, which is when they put contrast fluid in him and study the flow through his kidneys. I was rather upset this time, since they usually plan for the two things, to happen the same day, Mag 3 and Ultrasound, but not this time. Which meant two trips on two separate days and parking twice… I felt so bad for him Monday since when we got there, he ran all the way from the children’s hospital part to the lifts of the main hospital. He KNEW where to go and was happy! He pushed for the lift to come and I told him which button to push. The problem was that he thought he was going for an ultrasound, so he pulled up his T-shirt, when we got in to the technicians. He became worried when they started putting the numbing cream on strategic points and holding his arms hard to see which veins might work. They put the EMLA on four spots and he was NOT happy. Nor was I,  since I had been bawled out for not having signed him in. I have gone there for the last 4 1/2 years and we have never ever had to sign him in before. But this unpleasant technician insisted that we must always do that! Fine I will in the future, now when I know, but how was I supposed to know that they have changed procedure???

Both of us being unhappy, he and I went to get some rolls for lunch, and he thought that it was ice creams we had come for, so he pointed at what he wanted and I felt bad for saying no, that he would get that after the whole ordeal instead. Going back up, we sat and read his new Alfons Åberg books for a while and he played with the cars I had brought, since the waiting room has a fun parking house but no cars for the children to play with. He was not entirely happy though and when different nurses came walking, he ran up to them and asked them “Can you help me?”, wanting them to take the plasters that held the  EMLA in place, off. One nurse crouched down and he immediately sat down on her lap, using her as a chair. She thought that it was fun, how trusting, loving and affectionate he is. But I knew how scared he was for what was to come. One nurse picked him up, when he stretched his arms for her to do so, so she carried him in to the room where they set the needle and they asked if we knew those two nurses and I said “No, he just wants help to get out of here!”. There is one technician that knows that he loves “Finding Nemo”. She always put that on for him to watch when they set the needle but she wasn’t there, just a student, that put on Rorri race car, instead, that he for some reason is not fond of watching at all. So, he did not watch that, but sat and watched them manhandling his arm instead and screamed. Afterwards they offered him to choose something from their cupboard and he chose a car and a ring, that we put on his finger. He was a good boy and went and peed as they told him and then it was time to be on the gamma camera, but his arm hurt. He refused to stretch his arms out to his sides but had them bunched up by his chest. And he would not let them take the remaining EMLA plasters off, since the head technician had ripped off the one, which also had made him scream. I had to bend out his arms and I had to hold down his “needle” arm by his side through the whole procedure while he held the other to his chest, holding on to the car. He was not happy! Nor was I, since they did not even offer me a chair, like the one does, that knows him so well! I had to stand there for over 30 minutes. When we waited for the still picture to be taken, the student wanted to take off the EMLA plasters and he just said “NO!” and waved her hands away. HE wanted to take them off himself, in a very slow and painful looking way, but I agree with him, better inflicting the pain on yourself than others doing so! He got two off, and I helped him with the third, that would not come off, trying to push his skin down and pulling slowly, like I want it to be done myself. He screamed when they took the needle out. I wish the person that knows him so well, had been there instead. She cares about children and have good bedside manners! We were both happy when it was all over and they gave him an ice cream as a reward.

I have already blogged about, Tuesday’s misadventure with the police. We now have an appointment with a local garage, Wednesday, and I don’t know what I fear most: The fee for fixing the exhaust system OR that they might refuse to do anything about is, just like at Toyota. Wednesday, it was time to drive “Kitty” to the train statio,n since his class was going to a farm, for the day. Typical that his teacher had asked us all to drop the children right across from the police station! Let’s say, I said a prayer that all police men would be inside the station, so they could not HEAR my car and run out with pen and ticket pad!!! After dropping everyone off at different locations in Lund, I drove my youngest son to Skrylle forest, where he was going on a hike with the pre-school. All week we had had summer weather and sunshine, but this day, it was cold and rainy. How very typical. I worried about him till 13:15 when it was time for me to fetch him there, early, in order to get to my other two boys on time. It was funny actually. I really needed to go to the lavatory and when I was finally going to get in to one, I saw one of the teachers coming walking hand in hand with someone I knew! He looked so adorable in “Boo’s” orange sun hat, sky blue furry fleece jacket and his orange “Tigger” rucksack. He begged to go on the slides and I dreaded it. My other six children have always been fetched at this yearly excursion the pre-school does, at 15:00, at the Skrylle playground, and they have screamed and refused to leave. I told him, that mummy needed the loo and that we were having ice cream first. The teacher gave me the money for the ice cream and then she left to get back to the others, out in the forest, them not going back till 14:30, to eat ice cream at the play ground. I let “Sparky” choose which ever ice cream he wanted and he chose a big cone. He is so cute when he eats! I sat and admired my son and relaxed in the sun shine that had suddenly arrived. It took him 20 minutes to eat the cone and then I REALLY needed the loo. But I had promised him to go on the slide, so we walked over there after my little visit, me taking a risk, since we had to be in Lund at 14:00 and what if he refused to come with me? I stood in front of the slide and told him that he could go once on the big one, and once on the second little one, and THEN we must leave and go fetch “Boo” and “Kitty”. He first went down the big one, and then the little one, and then came the moment of truth: He took my hand and we walked to the car! This little boy is amazing! He is a true darling!!! I love all the little things he does, and sometimes I hate myself for getting so disappointed five years ago, when they looked on the ultra sound and told me, that he was a little boy, when we had all expected a little girl. This boy is SO precious! So special!

Friday, we were off again to the Ultrasound appointment, while all his siblings had the day off, it being a “squeeze day”. Thursday was red in the almanac, being Ascension Day, so basically everyone in Sweden had Friday off as well. I could tell he was apprehensive this time. He did not want to skip ahead, but sat down in his pram all the way up to the X-ray floor, at the hospital. I think he relaxed when he saw the waiting room though, and saw that it was not the same one, where they hurt him with needles! For once, the appointment went swiftly. We arrived early and they got us in 10 minutes early. The ultra sound itself did not take very long and I had prepared well with a chocolate bribe, which he knows is part of the drill, so he enjoyed himself! And they were showing him “Emil in Lönneberga” on their TV screen up in the ceiling. One of my favourite episodes, when Emil goes to the fair in Vimmerby. He tries out stiltches and falls through a window, which makes this woman faint, since everyone expected the comet to arrive that day. To wake the poor fainted woman, Emil empties a bowl of blueberry soup over her face, which is the scene in the picture. While his father repairs the window, he tells Emil to disappear and I love what he says to him “Try no to knock down all of Vimmerby. But I guess you can’t go through the desert in Sahara without bumping in to things!”. I love Emil’s dad! He is so funny! Well, the actor was. His facial expressions were priceless, his body language. He was perfect for playing Emil’s dad but was also used for many other of the dramatizations of Astrid Lindgren’s books! I guess he did his most famous international part, when he played Alexander’s father in Ingemar Bergman’s Oscar-winning film “Fanny & Alexander”. He died soon after that! Sad! Because he wasn’t old and he was a most talented actor but also singer.

Friday afternoon, was spent in the shoe shop in Hurva. “Boo’s” shoes have been a disgrace for a while and “Cookie’s” shoes haven’t looked that great either. So, I brought them and “Sparky” up there and we came home with sandals for the boys and canvas shoes for “Cookie”. One pair of sneakers that are high tops and then a pair of funny orange canvas shoes with flowers on them. They were on sale and what one would call “dirt cheap”. For “Dollie” I bought a pair of Converse-looking canvas shoes with the Union Jack all over them. I would have loved a pair but they were sold out of all small sizes. Lucky that she has such big feet, because size 40 still remained. But it was risky to buy without her having tried them on. She spent the entire holiday on a camping trip with Church, so she had to try them when she arrived home. I thought she would hate the shoes since she is drawn to the American flag and her younger sister is the Anglophile. I expected her to be jealous since the canvas shoes I bought for “Cookie”, were covered with the US flag, a funny version, with narrow stripes on the shoe part, and the blue part with the stars, was the tongue of the shoe. There were no “British” shoes for “Cookie” that would have loved that. But believe it or not, both girls were pleased with the shoes they received. So now my daughters walk around with flag shoes!

Stopped by police AGAIN!!!!

Alright! If I was paranoid, I would start thinking that the police is after me in some way! That driving a Toyota Hiace naturally means that you are supposed to be a person driving under the influence! Because every time, and I mean every time they stand out on the road to do random intoxication testing, THEY STOP ME! I don’t know how many times in the past months that I have been stopped. They stand in the small villages, on the small roads and why? To get a suntan or what? Or be an absolute nuisance? Today it’s a very hot day. Our winter has suddenly turned in to summer. 25 degrees Celsius. Dressed in black trousers, linen blouse and no air-conditioning, I thought I was going to float away in a tide of perspiration. I fetched the boys, and they fought as usual all the way to the village. And me sitting screaming that if they do not stop it, I will halt the car and they can get out and walk home. Stupidly, I stopped at the village library to hear if my ordered book, that was supposed to have come in Friday, had arrived. It had not! “New Contacts” by Sophie Kinsella turns out to be the most difficult book to get in to the library. It had been sent to the wrong library! So, I come in to the village, on a road I don’t usually take unless I’ve been to the library. Right opposite the church, behind a red house, I see a dreaded yellow dressed police man. I was driving the speed limit but saw no camera. Then he steps out in the road, when he sees me. He didn’t when he saw the tiny car in front of me! And he waves me in to the tiny road beside the red house. There is his colleague. I draw a long sigh.

He wants to see my driver’s license. I get it out and while I do this:

P: Good of you boys to sit fasten in!Kitty: Why? P: Because if you crash, then you would get terribly hurt! (The boys listening to him very intently.) Me: You can tell them to stop fighting in the back as well!!! P: Oh, just have them get out of the car and walk home instead. That will calm them down. (He takes my driver’s license:) P: Look just like the license! (Thanks! I look horribly ugly on that photo, like an escaped convict, a sicko! I should have said “just as ugly you mean?”.) Then he gives me the alco-meter. I blow in it as hard as I can and for once it worked. I guess I am finally getting the hang of it. I am so sweaty, it is so hot in the car. Then he asks me “Is this your car?”. Me: Well, it’s in my husband’s name. P: He has to have the muffler fixed. Me: Toyota refuses to fix it. They want 50 000 Kronor (see previous blogs) to fix it and they say at the same time, that they will not do it. They want us to buy a new car and drive this one till it falls to pieces! P: You have to have it fixed. It leaks in fumes in to the cabin making you drowsy and the children (Haven’t noticed anyone being drowsy. They are in top form for fighting!) and it can effect others around you. Beside the noise level is above the allowed. I will fine you the next time I catch you on the road and this isn’t fixed! Today I will be nice! Me: But Toyota refuses to fix it! The car came back from them sounding like this! P: Go to a small garage! They can weld a small piece of metal on top of the whole.

I finally get to drive off and I phone T. as soon as I come to our parking lot and tell him what has just happened. He says he is not sending money down the drain. Toyota says that problem cost 20 000 kronor. A small metal piece welded on to the pipe/muffler can not cost 20 000. This is just insane. I hung up on him in anger and then sent an SMS and told him to phone the police and ask them how much the fine is. Is that not sending money down the drain if anything???? Question now is, how can I avoid the police? I can’t make a quick getaway with a big bus? I can’t even make a U-turn!!! It’s on days like this, that I feel terribly upset about T.’s deceased mother, who among other things, gave away her 2 million dollar house, to her stockbroker and his wife. They took everything! We did not even inherit the family photos! Had we inherited ANYTHING, we could have bought a new used car! Now we are as financially strapped as one can be, while her stockbrokers sit happily divorced, and re-married in two houses. How can one not feel bitterness? I do not want to think Christian thoughts today, after the police encounter. Those two people had plenty of money before, but were greedy, and saw a chance of taking all her money since we could not afford a lawyer and don’t live in the US. Why are evil people allowed to have it all, and people that are just trying to survive, are getting kicked down over and over again? And they had the gall to pretend to be Christian! Where in the Bible does it approve of theft? And coveting of other people’s money? And adultery? Mrs. Hobgood filed for divorce before T,’s mother was even buried and got married soon thereafter to what I assume was a man already in the picture. She and Shelagh’s stockbroker, pretended to be happily married to get all that money and the house! Very honest indeed, very Christian. I call that HYPOCRACY! Thanks to them, we are always financially strapped and have nothing for emergencies.

Walpurgis continued…

According to the news, 27 000 people gathered in the park of Lund. T. drove in to fetch “the Diva” around 16:30, after she was out of school. She was waiting at the bus stop with 20 others, or more. Pretty far away from the park and all the drunkards. Four police cars were parked on the street. And yet, my tall, loud mouthed, tough daughter, that bites my head off every day and everyone else that she doesn’t like, phoned her dad and said “I am tiny and scared! I will get raped soon!”. Right! At a bus stop, in broad daylight, with 20 commuters around her, four police cars, a mouth that spits out tons of venom… If anyone had approached this tall, big girl, she would easily have punched them out. But suddenly she wasn’t so grown up after all. She who gave me the silent treatment for a week because I would not let her take the train by herself up to Stockholm and go to an unchaperoned writing course, where there would be LOTS of drinking! Right! She screamed at me that she is an ADULT!

Daniel thought she was ridiculous when they got to her. They parked across the street but she would not walk to the car. T. had to go and walk her over! She said lots of girls had been raped. Strange because the police say that there were only drunk brawls and they had filled their cells with people that needed to sober up. No rapes! Is she the drama queen or what!? Watch out Oscars, here is a future winner of the award.