Hey, I worked out what those birds were doing on the trees the other day. They were waiting for the pub to open. Don't believe me? Well take a look at this story that a friend in Karlstad sent me this morning. I'm sure those birds were lining up to feast on the rönnbär (rowan berries) that are everywhere at the moment.

We were even more certain when Lars-Göran snapped a photo of a flock of these waxwings (or sidensvans) happily gorging themselves on a bush near the boat club.



You have to peer carefully at the picture to see them blended in among the foilage. And those blurry shapes are even more of them cashing in on the free feed. Lars-Göran thinks that they are stocking up on energy for their long flights south, but I'm not so sure. I think I see these little birds around during winter, feeding on the talgbollar that people leave out for them. I'm thinking of putting some on my balcony this winter and see if we can get some visitors to photograph. I know when Lars-Göran reads this I'll be getting the hairy eyeball and a lecture about bird droppings.

Nåväl...

There is an amazing house for sale over by the boat club. So what do you think?



It's called Villa Sjövik and is available for only 15,000,000kr (about $AU3,000,000). Isn't it a great looking property? And the view from there across Fagerviken is also beautiful. You can see interior pictures of the house if you look at this link on Hemnet, then click on the property at Oskarsgatan 16, then press the button saying Visa fler bilder. We were looking at the house ad in the local real estate office window when some friends stopped and we all joked together about how we'd buy the house. Though we worried that with nine bedrooms we'd have a problem with constant guests.

Lars-Göran said that it wouldn't cramp his lifestyle living there, so if anyone would like to send donations to fund this lifestyle, it would be greatly appreciated.
I wouldn't mind waking up to this backyard view.



I know. Dream on!

I have to tell you about an encounter I had with a Swedish woman this week. She was delighted to find out that I came from Australia. Generally, we have a reputation in Sweden as fun, easy going people from a lovely country. She was excited because her very favourite tv program came from Australia. She wanted to know if I'd ever watched it - Kvinnofangelset. Hmm... I thought - "The Women's Prison". It didn't ring any bells and I was explaining to her that I'd left Australia a while ago now, so I wasn't up to date with tv there, when she mentioned a few names - Bea, Lizzie, Frankie. On my God! She meant that awful 1970's Reg Grundy soapie Prisoner! Apparently it's something of a cult series here, can you believe?

And now I want to kill her because I've got that awful, saccharine theme song stuck in my head. Do you remember it? It goes a little something like this:

He used to give me roses

Ha! Ha! You can suffer with me!

This picture was taken at about 6pm outside the back of our apartments. It is certainly getting dark early these days.



Soon it will look like that at 3.30pm! Not a pleasant thought. Better add candles to my shopping list. :)