If you watch the news a lot these days you will be depressed by the cruelty, death and destruction we humans are wreaking on one another. You would have thought we’d come further now that we are in the future. At least what I thought would be the future when I was young.
So we leave the big world behind, turn off the news and throw ourselves at summer. Friends, family, swimming, dogs, eating and drinking, and just being. There isn’t a better place to be when the sun is shining and living is easy. Occasionally some wind and rain but thankfully it passes and the sun returns.
A visit to Flatön and Handelsman Flink and moules frites on the terrace followed by a swim. Happy dogs chasing sticks in the water, shaking it off and soaking the landcrabs.
Back at the summer house the doors are open and the warm summer breeze flows through unhindered. We sleep until we wake up and have breakfast on the terrace. Coffee is poured in thermoses and sandwiches are packed for a day at “Nabbarna” swimming, chasing sticks (Cooper), having fika, and just being.
The sun dips below the horizon for a few hours every night and it never really gets dark. Sunset and the sunrise lasts for hours. Getting up for a pee in the early hours is a spiritual experience as the low sun makes the world glow warm in the cool morning.
More swimming at “Nabbarna”, a piece of rock by the water that we have almost to ourselves. We walk down in the morning and stay for hours. We bring fika – coffee, cake and sandwich – and it tastes so good after a swim in the sea. Cooper cuts his paw on the oysters that grow on the waterline and have been picked open by the seagulls. He has to wear bathing shoes on his injured paw but it doesn’t slow him down. Clouds build on the horizon but they never reach us. We’re in paradise.
A local tradition is Tractor Day at the Myckleby Parish not far from here. It’s a day of tractors, farmers, summer guests, vintage cars, homemade jams and cordials, flea markets, hotdogs and horse and buggy rides. This year it was a warm and pleasant day and it coincided with a visit from friends from rural Australia who were thrilled to experience som genuine Swedish rural life.
That was the summer of 2024.
