Recently, Blogger refuses to let me post twice in a row; it claims I’ve posted and then the posting is gone. Ah well, it wasn’t a marvellous posting I had last night, just some stuff about how I’d led flerdle all over Uppsala in the rain. It’s a small town, particularly the centre; you can see where most of the interesting things are in a few hours and have time for hot chocolate at Kaffekorgen, too.

Then we watched Turkey-South Korea and I’ve got to say — again — that I don’t care who plays as long as the game is good, which this one was. Very fun to watch. In 20 minutes, we’ll watch the finals. . .

It’s my own fault, I know.

I was the one who asked flerdle to bring TimTams in the first place (thereby, I suppose, being the unwitting cause of the TimTammery at the Pilg… no, I refuse to assume responsibility for that!) and she did — and now I find I can’t live without them. Aargh! There’s nowhere to get them in Sweden. . .

(note to self: fewer exclamation marks…)

flerdle comes to visit today!!

Glassnostalgi! Big Top! Boccia! Lakritspuck!

I’ve been toying a little with the idea of adding a comment feature to the blog, to let people write back at me for each posting (as seen, for instance in How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons.) It’s tempting in a way, but then again this is my place, and on the whole I think I like to talk uninterrupted, as it were. And there’s always the guest book.

Reasoned and calm opinions on Titus Groan posted to Good Books. Now I’ve started a real brick of a book: The Years of Rice and Salt. Am sceptical after 2 chapters, but think it’s just a matter of style, and that will change.

The figure in the background would appear to be me. Don’t ask. Or don’t ask me at any rate… *glares*

© James Thurber 1944

Last night, I read the last chapter of Sent i november (Moominvalley in November) to Johan, and thereby closed the reading of the Moomin books. I can’t remember when I started reading the first one to him, but we had a long hiatus in the middle of Det osynliga barnet so I’m sure it’s more than two years.

I think everybody should read the Moomin books. . . some of you have heard me say this before, repeatedly, but I mean it! Even if you can’t read them in the original Swedish the content is still the same; I believe that the translations are quite ok if not wonderful. An interesting aside is that most of the English translations are fairly early, and several of the books have come in new versions with slightly different titles in Swedish since, so for instance Comet in Moominland is rather different from Kometen kommer, being a translation of the first version of the book, Kometjakten! (It’s a cat, really, not a monkey. Now you know.) New translations should be made, I think — they are such wonderful, wonderful books and deserve to be read.

The modern cartoons, on the other hand, are pretty dreadful, but there’s a comic strip that Tove Jansson and her brother Lars made for London Evening News from 1954 until 1975 IIRC; that is one wonderful comic, which was published in 20 languages. Today it’s frequently being re-run in Swedish dailies and has been published in comic books in Swedish — but the original English version can’t be found anywhere as far as I understand!

Moomin illustrations. The coloured ones at the bottom of the page are the modern versions — disregard those. . .

Currently reading Titus Groan. Why haven’t I read it before? Can’t write more now, must read….