The origin of April Fool's Day is somewhat of a mystery, but whatever the origin, it's traditionally a day in which to have fun and play pranks. Even the family cat can join in the fun.




I quite like Mark Twain's take on the whole concept when he wrote that "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." (all except me of course!).

It seems that spring has again paid us all for fools as we woke up bright and early yesterday morning, so that we'd be dressed and decent before the builders arrived to be greeted by this charming sight:




It was such a shock after the last few days of promise. See, I told you what would happen if I dared to hope that winter was gone for good. Perhaps it was a badly timed April Fool's joke. I was reminded of the old Byrds hit Turn! Turn! Turn! I felt like rushing out like the mad proverbial March hare and shouting at Spring, demanding that it take notice and start to oust winter.

A fellow sailor in Britain, who sails in Sweden during the summer with his boat Kissen emailed me this week about a couple of things and mentioned that he was amused by the contrast between my recent blog entries (all about Swedish winter) and that of my husband (all about boats and toilets). I guess it does say something about our respective obsessions. Lars-Göran has been beavering away in the boat making sure she is shipshape for our summer sailing and for that he deserves a medal as who wants to be out in the snow and ice doing work? And of yesterday, he reports that the toilet is finished and tested (I don't even want to think about what he means by that!) and we can set sail on time. I'll post about our plans next week when I get it all sorted in my head.

We had a bit of excitement here on Thursday night.




We had seen several cars with blue flashing lights go by during the evening and then heard the chopper come at around 10.30pm. We thought it might be something worth looking at and so wandered down the road to find someone being loaded into the chopper which had landed in the supermarket car park. Not the exciting Waco-style siege we were hoping for, but certainly it was eerie to watch a helicopter come swooping down through the dead quiet suburban streets. I think there was too much snow for it to land in its usual landing spot in the park, so this was the next best thing.

The other weird bit of parking we saw this week was a moped parked on the water. Maybe it was Jesus a couple of weeks early for the resurrection...




Today we are back to sunshine and warmth which is a joy. At this time of year, the woods are a bursting with frantic activity: streams, creeks, waterfalls and springs are opening everywhere, swollen by the flow from the melting ice and making their musical way among the stones.




Among the groves of almost budding trees, berguv or Eurasian Eagle Owls are hooting from their nests in the old oaks, the first cuckoo calls ring through the trees and the ducks and geese are flying overhead and voicing their return greetings and pairing up for the coming season.




The male ducks look so beautiful. There is glorious golden sunlight everywhere again and even the brisk north April wind sings of warmer days and greening time. Looking out on the water across to Yttre Gården you can see that the ice layer is breaking up quickly in the warmth.




There is real hope for better days to come and I suddenly felt in a better mood than I've felt in weeks. So much so that we've had some new friends over for fika and passed a pleasant few hours chatting (all in Swedish, which can be tiring but getting easier by the day) and getting to know them. Both Stefan and Maria are artists and are going through that sea-change stage of life and thinking of ditching the rat race of Stockholm for the relative peace of Nynäshamn and the ready access to the open water and archipelago. That's something I can totally relate to!

Stefan befriended Lars-Göran recently and both of them came here yesterday, bringing with them an original watercolour painted by Maria as a gift. It is a beautiful water scene and I'll take a picture of it once we have it framed. Both of them are keen sailors and have a ketch that will be moored at our pier over the summer, so there was a lot to talk about. Branching out and making friends is just another step along the way to my feeling more at home and settled in the town.