Of roads and lakes

It's been raining a lot lately. Well, to be entirely honest, not a lot. But a fair bit. Although that's probably a good thing, all things considered. A bit of rain now might help later on in the summer. Then again, it might never get nearly as hot as last year anyway, and then I'd be left thinking this has been a terrible summer :). Meh.

Been driving around a bit recently though! After being good residents in the land of brown cheese and attending 17th of May celebrations and barbecue parties for the last few years, we decided to escape to Sweden for the long weekend this time :). Actually it was more of a lack of concrete plans added to the realisation that this year one cannot just up and head off on a road trip whenever, because, you know, day job :).

We were initially thinking about Stockholm, 'cos, basically, why not. But that would have been too far to drive in an evening. Then we noticed Kristinehamn, neatly halfway between Oslo and Stockholm, on the coast of the largest lake in the EU. Pretty place by all accounts, and to top it all, there was a seemingly perfect little cottage available for the weekend! So that's where we spend a few days, enjoying the sunshine, lazing around.

One of the interesting things about Kristinehamn is the Picasso sculpture. On the perfect sunny day with an amazing breeze to keep things from getting too warm, the walk along the edge of the water as the river emptied out into the lake definitely added to the experience! The sculpture stands at the river mouth. And unless you read the blurb about how Picasso's wife served as inspiration for the sculpture, a woman is not the first thing that it brings to mind. The whole sculpted concrete thing is kinda cool though!

Since then it's been mostly the occasional walk when the sun's been out, but otherwise a quiet start to the summer. One proper big positive though was the 10 year visa for the UK! Don't need to worry if Brexit happens or not, or what that entails, for at least a decade! Of course, they might still not have figured that out the way this is going, but oh well. We'll keep politics out of this blog :). Definitely cause for celebration though! Although, as someone I was sharing my joy with wondered: what would the world even look like in 10 years?!

Probably not that different to be honest. In some ways. In other ways probably a bit different.

In the mean time, another month another Malazan book of the Fallen :). I'm pretty much out of superlatives at this point! The only thing is that now that we're properly in the thick of things, I'm beginning to wonder if I should persist in ignoring the Malazan Empire novels. Hmm. Bit of a moot point though, I have the book eight of the Fallen series, none of the Empire novels.

Things to look forward to then. Back to Darujhistan in Toll the Hounds. And finally hopefully some more direct involvement from Anomander Rake. The trouble with that of course is, if a character is involved, he or she might end up dead! But at the same time, if they're dead, they could always come back to life... Then there's the Champions' League final this weekend. The cricket world cup is under way and so's the French Open! Exciting times :).