Today, poor Lars-Göran had a blonde moment on the train. He was sitting next to a young girl reading a Robert Cormier book. He glanced at the title Anklagad (translates as "Accused", but the english title is different) and frowned. He later admitted that he failed to recognise the Swedish word at all and instead split it into two words and came up with Ank lagad, which translates as "Made by a duck". No wonder he looked so confused. I laughed when he told me, and it was also somewhat reassuring as I find I am losing my English skills and I think it only fair that my presence has some impact on his native language as well.

Yesterday it was April 1st and I saw a couple of stories in the local papers to mark the occasion. The main morning daily Dagens Nyheter printed a story about the people in the southern part of the country being hit with an extra 1,000kr a year energy tax (sorry, it's in Swedish only) because they are undermining the Swedish alcohol monopoly by slipping over to Denmark to buy their beer and spirits. You could of course register as a non-drinker, but then you'd be subject to random breath tests. The English paper, The Local printed a story about the government proposing moving Christmas to February in Sweden so there would be a bigger chance of deep snow and we'd not be competing with the rest of the world for Christmas tourists. Not to mention that you could buy your pressies in the January sales! Of course, the strange thing is that I could imagine both of those being seriously proposed, which is scary unto itself.

Today marks the anniversary of 200 years since the birth of Hans Christian Andersen and neighbouring Denmark is hosting a huge celebration to honour one of their most famous citizens. I avidly read his stories as a child and I still think of him whenever I see the wild swans fly overhead in formation. I also loved Thumbelina, The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Pea and The Ugly Duckling. And many more....

And who can forget the movie from the 1950's starring the wonderful Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Andersen? I know that it is mostly fictional as the man himself was depressive and morose a lot of the time, but the film did make me really want to go out and read his stories. And skip around the house singing

Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing,
Thumbelina, what's the difference if you're very small?
When your heart is full of love, you're nine feet tall!

Better stop that as Lars-Göran is looking at me like I'm nuts. (Quiet there in the back row!)

Today has been a day of mixed emotions. We finally had someone down to measure the dampness in Fiona's hull. Our friend Bosse had organised this for us and we were very confident that she was completely dry and we worried that this poor guy was making the trip from Tyresö to Nynäshamn unnecessarily. They picked up Lars-Göran this morning and all went off loaded with a picnic basket to the boat club. As this is Sweden, you must begin first with a coffee break - including buns and biscuits. Now I know this was early morning, but did Bosse really need to come in his pyjama top?



Peter then measured the hull with his dampness meter and discovered that she was still soaking wet in patches. Poor Lars-Göran was so depressed when he came home, especially as Peter had told him that it would take many more months to dry out if we left her to dry naturally. This is a huge blow as it would mean no summer sailing, keeping the boat on land (and paying for a summer land as well as pier space) and being homeless as we relied on living on the boat while our bathroom and kitchen are being renovated.



But once we talked about options, we decided to take Peter's advice and to get special infra-red heating lamps to run 24 hours a day for two weeks to dry her out properly, then re-measure and hopefully be able to apply the epoxy after that if we get the all clear. It's just a delay, but we will get her in the water. I guess we were in a bit of denial about the extent of the problem and also keyed up to finish the work and go sailing again. A couple of phone calls to friends and we located two heaters that we can borrow and we got permission from the wharf supervisor to use the electricity. Tomorrow we plug her in and continue with our plans to sail in the summer!