Day 4 - Day after Midsommar
Despite the fact that many of us had been up until very
late (or early, depending on how you look at it), most of us were still up around 9am.
For some, this was due to parental duties, for myself, I
tend to wake up early after a big night - my body
informing me in no uncertain terms that I need to get
some water.
I grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, and sat down
outside with Lagertha and Aslaug, the three of us slightly
the worse for wear but prepared to tackle the day ahead.
A trip to the beach was planned, with Aslaug, Loki, Floki,
Thorsten and several other parents taking the horde of
children with us.
It was a short walk from the house to the beach, and
much to the delight of the children, a man rode past on a
penny farthing bike.
All sorts of questions were asked of the adults, most
notably how he got up and would get down.
One of the kids asked if he had a step ladder hidden
somewhere, or if he was a gymnast and able to leap up
and off the bike.
It was a beautiful sandy beach, with the weather a sunny
26 degrees. I was one of the last to arrive, and headed to
the water to have a swim.
Despite the warm weather we had experienced over the
past couple of days, I expected the water to be cold, and
boy did it deliver.
I have found that when hung over, a swim in the ocean is
a fortifying experience and goes a long way to reviving
me... once I get past the first 5 minutes of being freezing
and feeling god-awful.
After the swim, with one of the other adults and several
of the children I played a game called Gris, or Pigs, where
you stand in a circle and throw a tennis ball to each other.
Every time you drop the ball, you get a letter. If you drop
the ball 4 times, you are out. I was kind on the kids, and
allowed myself to go out early and let them win the day.
Plus there was talk of going to get some ice creams, which
sounded like music to my ears.
I also played with a few of the kids on a series of rocks at
the shore line (placed there to help stop erosion), helping
them move from rock to rock by holding their hands or
pointing to a good rock for them to move to.
I tell you, those kids were little spider monkies - my role
was mostly supervisory, and I think they kept their
balance better than I did.
Aslaug and I headed back early with 2 of the kids, as she
was feeling a bit poorly and also needed to catch up with
her parents in Helsingborg.
I was given the option of staying at Lagertha’s for another
night, or going back with Aslaug to maybe catch up with
A2 and Heinz before they headed up to Stockholm.
I was torn as to what I should do, but I chose to let Aslaug
head back home, grab a tactical snooze, and have a quiet
night with her parents (who were staying at her place),
while I stayed on.
When the others had returned from the beach, we feasted
on left overs from the previous day, and then Floki drove
Aslaug and myself to the train station.
I went along to say farewell (until tomorrow) to Aslaug,
and give Floki a hand bringing 2 of Loki’s bikes that were
at the train station back to the house.
They both had baskets on the front, and one had a child’s
seat on the back. The other one was pink, so I chose to
ride the red one with the child seat.
I’d prefer to be thought of as a father than ride a pink
bike.
Floki headed on to the supermarket and to pick up his
mother and bring her over for dinner, while I mounted
the bike and started to ride back.
This was an interesting journey.
The temperature was about 28 degrees, the sun beating
down, I had thongs on my feet (or flip flops for the
non-Aussies - not g strings) and within about 50 meters I remembered that I hadn’t ridden a bike in probably 20 years, if not longer.
I had forgotten how gears work on a bike, and couldn’t
seem to find a good gear that was easy to ride with -
the bike was making some horrible squeaking noises,
and it was a terrible struggle.
As the saying goes “It’s like riding a bike”...
Sure, you may not forget how to do it, but that doesn’t
mean it is easy to pick up again.
The ride was shorter than I expected it to be, and when I
arrived back at the house, I told everybody with a few
laughs about the trip.
Loki approached me with a look of chagrin on his face
and asked “You rode the red bike? No wonder you had
such a hard time - the wheel is broken and rubs against
the rim.”
This made the story even funnier in the eyes of everyone
there.
An afternoon journey to the beach was planned, so while almost everybody else went, Thorsten and I played a few
games of Pingers - I wasn’t getting any better - and we
fired up the bbq and cooked some meat up for the return
of the others.
While we relaxing at the table just after eating, I noticed
something that I pointed out to Loki, who was sitting next to me.
Loki and Lagertha’s youngest son was rolling down the
hill in their backyard with his pants and underpants
around his ankles with 3 of the girls running along after
him.
Loki laughed, saying that his son just needed to pee,
and told him to go and pee against a tree.
The girl’s mothers told the girls to give him some privacy,
and as the girls wandered back over to the group of
children, they were obviously asked what was happening.
One of the girls (who was about 5) thrust her hips
forwards and made a jiggling motion, mimicking what
the young lad was doing.
This caused both parents and children to all laugh.
After dinner, the Pingers table was put to use again, with a round robin style of game being played.
The guys and the older children all grabbed paddles,
mobile phones, thongs (flip flops) - whatever was at hand - and made a circle around the table.
When you hit the ball, you had to keep moving anti-clockwise around the table, waiting your turn until you
came to the other end, where you hit the ball again,
until you were knocked out.
The children had 3 lives, but the adults only had 1.
I was quite often the first one knocked out, but I did
manage to win one game against Loki and Lagertha’s
eldest son. After winning, I yelled out “I’m the king of
the world!”.
He didn’t look impressed, even though he had already
won 6 games.
I stepped inside at one point to grab a drink, and saw that one of the kids had picked up my ukulele and was chasing one of the other kids around, trying to use it as a weapon and bash him over the head.
With wide eyes I started chasing after the offender saying “no no no no no no no no”.
Despite the language barrier, I’m pretty sure he knew
what I was saying, as, with a cheeky grin, he and the
other boy started playing a game of keepings off with
me.
I only managed to get the uke back into my hands
once I had picked one of the boys up and then caught
the other one.
Around 9pm, Floki and Loki asked for my help taking
down the tents, as a massive thunder storm was rolling
across Germany and was headed our way - they didn’t
want the tents to act as a lightning rod or to be blown
away.
We got them both packed up within about 30 minutes
and the Pingers table put under cover just as a few
drops of rain fell.
We had been able to see the lightning in the distance
for a while, and I was excited to continue drinking
under cover and see what this storm had to give us.
Sadly, those few drops of rain were all that we got,
although we could see the lightning in the distance
for most of the night as it blew over Sweden to the
north of us.
I was to find out the next day that the lightning caused
some havoc with the rail lines, damaging some signals
and causing delays.
A handful of us continued drinking, I broke out the
ukulele again for some late night music, while Thorsten
played a few songs that would make good additions to
my uke library.
We turned in between 2 and 3am, with myself thanking
everyone as they headed off to bed for making me feel
so welcome.
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