This content is protected against AI scraping.
It was a big day for the girls today. They weren’t that keen when we walked in the door and another dog started making strange, unearthly noises from atop a metal table. They looked up at me, accusations of cruelty on their little faces. I smiled and left them in the more than capable hands of the dog groomer.
When I returned a few hours later, they were transformed from ragamuffins to fluffballs of delight. Mind you, I think we left a lot of the dogs behind at La Voff. At least that’s what it looked like.
After dropping them off, Mirinda suggested we pop into Trosa to a café. We decided that Mekka would be perfect. It’s the place that everyone else calls Nilssons, because that was the original name but we call Mekka because that’s what it’s always been to us.
And it was such an excellent idea.
We spotted Torben there, and Roger came in for his morning coffee shortly after us. Then there was the couple from California who visit Sweden every summer for six months, living and sailing on a yacht. Mirinda spent some time chatting to them about how wonderful Trosa is, while I swapped stories with Roger.
One story he told me was about the Russian Tsar who, when drawing a straight line with his ruler, accidentally draw around a finger, creating a little bump. It was the planned route for the Moscow to St Petersburg railway line.
When it came time to build the railway, the little bump remained; mainly because no-one dared to criticise the wisdom of the cruel and unreasonable emperor. Built up to scale, it meant a diversion of around five kilometres.
It’s a delightful little story but, unfortunately, not true. The real reason has more to do with elevation, steep climbs and railway brake pads rather than errant, misplaced fingers. Read it here.
And, to be fair, I spun a bit of a yarn about the Nullabour plain which, these days anyway, is also not exactly true. Still, it’s what males have done since males existed so that makes it perfectly fine.
All up, it made for a lovely break before we had to go back to La Voff and pick up the girls. Freya, especially, looked the best she’s ever looked.
Now, all we have to do is keep her looking like that for as long as possible.
Speaking of next to impossible feats, yesterday I passed the 3.5 million word mark for this blog. That’s a lot of words. Mostly about nothing, often interesting, not always funny.
