An inflated bubble

Lappis beach: 5 minutes from my apartment

A few, very welcome, hints of normality have returned over the past 7 weeks; our little dinner parties have been reinstated, flaming June provided ample opportunities for outdoor meetups in the form of picnics, BBQs and swimming, and I’m now spending a few days a week in the (exceptionally quiet – covid + Swedish summer) office. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very aware of the ongoing crisis, but on a day-to-day level, these small expansions of the social bubble make everything that bit brighter.

A very British evening with Eva, Abhay and Felicity

This increase in human interaction has provided ample opportunities for me to practice my favourite pastimes: eating and feeding. On my first day back in the office, both Eva (my officemate who sits 2 metres away from me) and I had decided to mark the occasion with some home-baked cake; from there on in we’ve each been bringing in baked goods in the form of focaccia bread, cookies, quiche or cinnamon buns to help us through the slightly monotonous days. The slight monotony comes from a lack of events to break up the hours of reading, processing and writing, and on my part, a lack of data to

Simon and Stefan 'Field teaching' in Tumba

get stuck in to; just packing up the broken GPR antenna with Benny to post off to the manufacturers provided an exciting change to the usual working day. I did however, back at the end of May, have a particularly radical event workwise: an actual day in the field! I had been scheduled to help on a course, teaching students to study sediments by digging pits and coring bogs. Unfortunately, due to covid-restrictions, the usual field trip was not possible, so instead, Stefan, Simon and I headed out to a bog just south of Stockholm to make a video explaining how to use a Russian coring device and classify sediments. Luckily, the video needed to be in Swedish, so I was mostly tucked behind the camera, only taking on a cameo role as ‘pit-digger’.

Outside of work, and back on the feeding and eating theme, I’ve been taking a world tour through the medium of food. This kicked off with a very British evening of toad-in-the-hole, sticky toffee pudding and Pimm’s (accompanied by much obligatory rain) at my place. For many months, Eva had been

BBQ on the beach with Felicity, Yan and Sonia

putting in strong requests for these two dishes, so Felicity and I finally relented and divided the tasks – Felicity took sweet (I don’t actually like sticky toffee pudding) and I took savoury. Both Eva and Abhay were apparently very pleased with their tastes of our classically brown British cuisine. Over the following weeks, my taste buds took a trip across to Japan with carefully crafted ramen at Abhay’s place and my first attempt a sushi making with a friend (surprisingly simple once you’ve got the rice mastered). The flavours then returned to the Mediterranean with Greek, Turkish, Italian, and Moroccan nights at mine or down on the beach; I think we’ll have to head west next! On 19^th June, we remained resolutely in Sweden. This was midsommarafton (the Friday before midsummer), a day usually celebrated with great feasts, much aquavit and dancing to traditional songs around the may pole (the little frog dance being a

Abhay's ramen with 24 hr stock

particular highlight!). Of course, this year was a little different, there was no may-pole dancing or big parties, but we marked the occasion with some typical inlagd sill (pickled herring), new potatoes and caviar topped eggs during in our post-swim picnic.

Beyond working and eating, sunny days have been spent out on lake-side walks or pedalling my (now fully functional) bike through Stockholm’s numerous parks and I’ve occupied the wet and windy days building/painting Ikea furniture for my little apartment (so good to finally have a sofa), attempting to keep up my Swedish studies and now planning for the arrival of my brother next Wednesday (keeping my fingers tightly crossed they don’t cancel his flight!).