The rain was pretty intense first thing this morning. I woke to torrents. Then, as I was about to leave for the shops, it stopped. Of course, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still far too hot to change from shorts and t-shirt. While I wasn’t the only person to think so, we were in the vast minority as people completely covered in rain gear populated the streets between our place and the ICA.
I should add that I managed to get saturated on the walk home.
As well as shopping, I had a special mission this morning. I decided to try and use the ICA free wifi to download some more Netflix content as we’ve run out. Fortunately, we finished the two things we were watching but would like to continue with something new. After today, I’m not sure how we are going to.
The thing is, the free wifi at the ICA wouldn’t let me download to my laptop. It did to my phone but, as for my laptop, I couldn’t even get the Netflix app to work let alone download anything. I sat drinking a latte and eating a cinnamon bun while nothing was downloaded.
Eventually I gave up and headed into the supermarket where I ran into Harald, the first person I’ve known and bumped into in the shop. Harald is a builder/handyman/plumber who, basically, does anything except electricity. He indicated my attire, with a look of surprise on his face. I explained that it was still summer. He smiled and shook his head. I wanted to explain that skin was waterproof enough, but I didn’t think his English was enough to understand me.
Mirinda has been arranging for him to improve our showers as well as pick up furniture she wins at auction and, to hear them speaking in a combination of English and Swedish, is extraordinary. I do wonder what the bathrooms are going to look like following any linguistic misunderstandings.
Speaking of auctions, after lunch we headed into Nyköping to pick up a small dining table she had won and which is now in the guest house.
While it looks too small, it has two flaps either side which make it twice as long. It’ll be fine and, I think, looks pretty good with two of Nicoline’s chairs keeping it company. I make no excuse for the chair skirts.
We accidentally took a new route to Nyköping. We managed to drive through lots of beautiful, yet to be explored (by us) views of fields, lakes and forests. There were also a couple of enticing churches. Eventually, though, we found the on-ramp to the E4 and arrived at the auction house without any problems.
We discovered, last time, that the easiest way to reach the auction house at Nyköping is via the E4. The off-ramp is almost directly opposite the building. And, given it’s the other side of the town means we don’t have to drive through the centre. It’s an ideal kind of by-pass.
Of course, we go back through town in order to take our favourite road home.
Except we didn’t go straight home. Instead, we headed for the library in order to try and download Netflix content using their free wifi. And that was also a waste of time.
Mind you, actually connecting to the free wifi was horrendous as well. There’s a whole rigmarole which, while it worked on my phone, didn’t work on my laptop. This meant having to use my logged on phone as a mobile hotspot, which is never very good for file transfer.
Consequently, while Mirinda went to Ankaret and had a glass of wine called ‘Don’t Tell Gary’ I sat and watched a number of painstakingly slow downloads while staring at shelves full of books I couldn’t read.
At home, after dinner, when it came time to watch the downloads, they didn’t work. Every few minutes, the sound and picture started travelling at different speeds. If I turned it all off and started them again, it was fine for a while, but then, a few minutes later, it all started diverging again.
We gave up and went back to listening to podcasts.
