In the space of twenty four hours, we have been greeted with the fickle face of early spring that plunged us from sunshine and hope back to the grey, depressing colours of February and November.

Winter in Sweden can be totally beautiful so I am always a little sad to say farewell. It is really a fairy tale beauty that gives you a feeling of peace. The darkness and snow etc, can dampen the noises around you, cocoon and isolate you. It's really nice to sit down with some tea or chocolate, by the gentle glow of candlelight to keep that darkness at bay. At the same time, of course, it's cold, it's snowy and everything becomes a struggle. When you need to go to the shop, it takes 15 minutes just to get dressed to get outside. Everything feels as though it has to be planned, which make you tend to do less. But there is still the beauty when you do go out.




While its sunny enough to enjoy a picnic, not many are brave enough to try it out for some reason. On the weekend it was sunny and everything glistened in the first real warmth of the season. The roads were crammed with people out walking around and enjoying the first signs of spring. Even the thaw which created large pools of water on the roads looked magical in the sunlight, especially with the bare trees reflected in them and flanked by the snowbanks.




The beach is still covered in snow and the shallow inlets are icy, though the ice is cracking into large pieces that will soon break free in the sunshine and drift away, gradually being absorbed back into the sea. It is so good to watch the seasons change like this and I was hopeful that we were about to look forward to a season of sunshine and growth. When we moved the clocks forward to summer time and the evenings lengthened overnight, it felt like we'd turned the corner.




That however was Sunday! On Monday, everything changed. Early Spring strikes again, reminding me that generally I don't like it at all. It's muddy as the snow disappears and the trees and hedges are bare and naked - almost dead looking. The colours of early spring are yellow (the grass as it is uncovered after three months under snow) or grey. I forgot that one day it can be rain, the next it can be hot and then it can snow the day after. It's all about creating false hopes, then crushing them. That's what I thought when I looked out at town this morning.




What has made the scene even more dispiriting is the damp fog and the fact that the council has trimmed the trees rather drastically making everything look so dead. What a contrast to the same scene just a week ago. I peer from my favourite look out and cannot even see the harbour a few metres away. The end of winter is hard. The days lighten but still it is cold. The shops are full of summer clothes but still it is cold. Girls dress optimistically, in light jackets and flirty skirts, but still it is cold. And damp.




There is probably no day greeted with greater joy and anticipation than the first days of spring -- especially after a Swedish winter. When spring arrives we anticipate the gifts of sun filled days, flower scented breezes and a warmth to the air that has been missing since September. Sometimes, the only thing that gets us through February is knowing that better days are on the way. So when March springs a February day on us, it feels doubly bad as we feel we ought to be past that. So I find my mood nosediving with the advent of days like this and it can be hard to motivate myself to actually attack my long to-do list.




We have a busy schedule from now until when we leave in mid-May. As well as preparing the boat, organising charts etc we have birthday parties, drinks, dinners and fikas with friends and family to jam in somewhere. It will be Easter in a few weeks as well and we are looking forward to Madde coming home from India in mid April. In between I need to bribe Annelie to watch Lambi so we can go along to the National Museum of Fine Arts and see the new exhibition featuring the nineteenth century works of the so-called Skagen painters Anna and Michael Ancher, the Norwegian artists Oda and Christian Krohg, Karin and Carl Larsson, the Scottish artists Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh plus Sigrid Hjertén and Isaac Grünewald and the English artists Vanessa Bell och Duncan Grant. It's on until May 14th if anyone in Stockholm is interested in going (entrance fee 80kr).

Honestly, I look at what I have to do and the remaining time I have at my disposal and want to crawl under my quilt and hide. Luckily, my sweet man is here to keep up my spirits and encourage me to smile. Today he came home with a bunch of sunny, yellow tulips and Andrea Bocelli's new CD Amore.

Maybe good weather and fun times are really on the way.