Why isn’t a dog welcome in a shopping centre? Noisy, messy, delinquent kids are allowed but not obedient, cute dogs. I don’t get it. But that’s definitely the case in Nyköping centrum. They are banned from the Systembolaget as well. I’m not sure what sort of havoc they could cause in a bottle shop unless it’s the fact that the whole shop is full of bottles. If a couple of dogs had a disagreement in the red wine aisle, it could look like a sea of blood in very short time.
We were in Nyköping this afternoon to buy some over-door hooks, having already visited the auction house to check out a small table for the guest house. For a change, we went via the E4 motorway which proved faster and more direct though, of course, not nearly as picturesque. We opted for the scenic on the way back home.
As well as a drive into the country, we also had a few visitors today. Ismore brought over the fifth dining chair and we met our neighbour, Beth. She was the one that Joakim had told us to wait for her to make the first move. She seemed very nice, bringing Mirinda a potted cyclamen. I’m not sure what the story is between Beth and Joakim but she seemed a bit surprised that he hadn’t said goodbye when they left.
We also had a scheduled visit from Harald, who is going to build some shelves in my office as well as a few other odd jobs. Listening to him and Mirinda have a conversation in some bastardized version of English, Swedish and German, was highly amusing.
We then had a lovely sit in the glass room, watching the sun stream through the trees onto our front garden. Having a late afternoon drink seemed perfectly civil and necessary.

Our final visitor for the day, arrived just after 7:30 and is now with us for a week. Amanda flew into Arlanda and caught the train out to Vagnhärad. She dumped her stuff in the guest house before we all sat down to dinner.