Mirinda had a rotten work day today. It was packed with various horrid things. Because she was busy all day, we didn’t get to talk about it. We need the time to disseminate and disintegrate, but it was denied us tonight. This, of course, means she’ll not sleep well tonight. I tried distracting her but, as usual, my attempts were not completely successful.
Another result of the busy work day was the fact that I had to go shopping at Tyresö Centrum early if we were going to have lunch at Norrby’s. Mirinda drove me down to the bus stop just after 9am and she continued on and walked the girls around a lake.
Most of the shops open at 10am so I walked into an almost deserted centre. I entered the ICA which was pretty much empty of shoppers and managed to shop in record time.
In passing, I learned a new Swedish word. Literally. I mean literally in passing. I walked past the fish counter and my favourite fishmonger said “Tjena!” which she then told me meant “Hi!” I repeated it and told her I’d try and remember for next week.
I have since discovered that tjena is an informal greeting, used instead of hej or hej hej. It actually means more like hey than hi given that hej is hi and hej hej is hello. My confusion is that tjena is longer than hej which, to an Australian, is an odd way to carry on. The informal is always shorter.
I was going to try out my new word on Fanny when I reached Espresso House. She just went straight into speaking English and, effectively, blind-sided me a bit. Her first words were “You’re very early today!” and it went on from there.
Of course, Fanny is the boss for the next few weeks while Norah basks by a lake somewhere, so we discussed that and the fact that Fanny will be taking the whole of July off for her lake basking. She claims she’ll sleep for the first week.
Then, the Friendly Security Guard came over to say good morning and the two of them exchanged some rapid Swedish. As she made my latte I said I keep forgetting she’s Swedish then she suddenly surprises me.
I also told her I’d watched her Instagram video for the centre. She raised her eyes and said she’d been blackmailed into doing it. I assured her she looked very natural though, of course, I had no idea what she was talking about. Well, apart from making an iced drink.
I was waiting for the Systembolaget to open, so I sat and read and sipped my latte while the clock ticked slowly round.
Of course, this all meant I managed to get home well in advance of the 12:30 deadline so we were able to drive up to Norrby’s for the usual delicious Wednesday lunch, taken al fresco because the weather was so perfect.
We eventually moved to the table above as the sun just became too much for us.
One bit of very good news today is that Hated Chainsaw Guy seems to have broken his aural torture device. He couldn’t get it started today. Bliss.
