Life in Motala

Today Ingrid didn’t want to go to school. The weather is beautiful here today, so I think we will go for a swim and read out loud from Danny the Champion of the World. This is my absolute favourite Roald Dahl book. I loved it as a kid. I wanted to live in a gypsy caravan and have a totally reliable dad like Danny had.

Monday night we had a crayfish party with my brother. It is tradition in Sweden to wear a silly hat for this special occasion.

Before that - on Saturday evening  - we rowed out onto Boren and laid traps. I had won a fishing lottery that let me fish for crayfish for 4 hours on the lake. The prize included 10 traps and the use of a rowboat.

Later the same night we went out and pulled up the traps. It was a windy night with a full moon, the water was choppy and we had to row over 2 kilometers so it was pretty exciting! Luckily my brother did all the rowing on this last shift. I held a flashlight and hoped nothing would bump into us. Ingrid pulled up all the traps, which took a lot of patience as the lines had to be unhooked from each trap and rewound.   

The crayfish lived in our bathtub for two days and then got popped into a pan of boiling salt water mixed with a bottle of beer and lots of dill. They tasted fantastic!

Here is me in my new t-shirt with the artwork of Mike Biskup. I really like his art, it is so full of the joy of doodling, the joy of life!

I just signed up for some university courses in the fall. One of them is pre-historic archeology. I am looking forward to it! On the subject of doodling, here is a picture of some pre-historic doodling (borrowed here). There are a lot of ideas on why people made these marks. I think a big part of it was about experiencing the joy in motion that characterizes doodling (also called ‘aimless scribbling’). Kids use their fingers to doodle on all sorts of surfaces. I suspect that doodling is anything but aimless.

Vättern is full of crayfish and on Friday the official crayfishing season started. Friday night we waded out and laid traps that we emptied very early in the morning the next day. It was fun! Ingrid really enjoyed it too. We had help from visitors from Malmo who were here for the weekend, on their way to Urvision, a gathering in the woods of a very diverse group of people interested in outdoor life.
Otherwise the weekend was a lot about sailing, as Ingrid had a follow-up weekend with her dinghy class. This time she sailed solo right across Motala bay and back again and then went out on Vättern on a high speed Rescue boat.

Here is a fun site about crayfishing around the world! Some good tips there I am going to try.

who bought Ingrid the super huge ice-cream Vättern? Several people have wondered. Here he is again. 
Adam calls himself a hippie (as do I about myself sometimes). I think the word hippie originally comes from being "hip" but I tell Ingrid that it is short for Happy, Interested, People.

My allotment is producing a lot of squash (zucchini) now. I love squash, I eat it almost everyday. Here is a great breakfast: diced cooked squash with bacon. Yummy!

An old school friend came for a visit and invited us out for ice-creams before he left (that’s him fixing with his hair). He told Ingrid she could have anything on the menu so she went for Vättern, their largest ice-cream. 16 scoops of gourmet ice-cream. She was so pleased!
I asked the staff how often they sell those and they said 1 or 2 a week. They also told me there is an ice-cream place in Söderköping where they have an ice-cream that is twice as large as Vättern. Hmmm… maybe worth a trip?