Back in action

 

Somehow, we’re already nearing the end of April and I never got around to my March update, so here’s an overview of what the past couple of months have involved. As Spring slowly arrives in fits and starts, with it comes opportunities for lunch time picnics, ice creams in the park, and my first, very short, post-ankle-break run. Not only have the past couple of months brought about my first run of 2021 but also Emil and I’s first (and second) restaurant experience of the year, and a brief return to field teaching down in Småland (southern Sweden).

Cocktails and tuna at Asian Post Office

Despite March being an exceptionally busy month for Emil work-wise, we managed to book in our first meal out together since our pizza the previous July. This time around we plugged for Asian-fusion sharing dishes at the ‘Asian Post Office’. Making the most of our dining experience we tried 6 delectable dishes between us, including miso cod, duck dumplings, and raw tuna with roasted corn. Just over a month later, to celebrate the end of Emil’s hectic month, we had another Asian dining experience. This time we stuck with Sichuan inspired dishes at the restaurant ‘Surfers’, one that Emil had been wanting to take me to since we first met over 9 months earlier. Here we upped our spice levels with some zingy chicken and dried chillies, pull apart lamb and slurpy noodles, silky yet fiery aubergine, and both meat and veggie bao buns – yum. On both occasions, while the tables were spread out so there were fewer people than in pre-covid times, the restaurants still had that hum of background chatter which we just don’t hear these days. The buzz of multiple conversations was disconcerting for the first few minutes, but I soon grew reaccustomed to it and found it to be an oddly comforting reminder of normal day-to-day life.

Toasties at Lappis beach (5 mins from mine)

Beyond our restaurant experiences, back in my little apartment, we’ve been experimenting with a number of new Ottolenghi recipes, including an Easter dinner of lamb with harissa carrots and crushed pea and coriander new potatoes. This meal rounded off a weekend of Eastery activities including hot-cross bun baking (they’re not a thing in Sweden so I was delighted when these worked!), dinner, drinks, and games with Emil’s friend Bäcker, a sunny picnic, and cryptic egg hunts to guide us to each of our Easter gifts. Other weekends have included cooking toasted sandwiches over a fire on Lappis beach, chicken parmigiana and some Swedish chatter at Mattias’, a cycle to Stikkinikki’s for scrumptious ice cream and a fair few walks in the surrounding parks. My usual Monday evening dinners with Felicity have taken a bit of a break due to Easter, Felicity contracting Covid (she lost her taste but is now ok), and finally my week away.

This week away was something I had both craved and feared. I’d been assigned to teach on a master’s course about sedimentology – the study of dirt and what it can tell us about the past environment in a particular location. As part of this course, we take the students down to southern Sweden for them to learn the steps involved in studying these sediments and figure out how they got there – in Sweden this generally involves some sort of glacial action. In most cases this year, any field teaching has been cancelled and classes are instead held online over Zoom. However, the leader of this course, Martina, decided the trip should go ahead so the students could get some real fieldwork experience. So, this past Monday I headed into town to collect my shiny Volvo V60 ready for the week ahead. We had 11 students coming on the trip so to make sure we could spread out a bit, we travelled around in 2 minibuses and a car (luckily, I was assigned the car!) and for our accommodation we’d booked out the hostel in Hultsfred and four of us spilled over into the nearby hotel.

My hotel room decor

The trip down was in glorious sunshine, so my two car companions, Liza and Klara, and I took our time stopping for ice cream then lunch on the edge of a lake. With most of the students checked into the hostel, Martina, Erik, Liza and I headed over to the rock music themed hotel. It turns out Hultsfred is well-known for the music festival which used to take place there up until 2008 and the hotel we were staying in were obviously very proud of this, so the walls were covered in festival memorabilia, including floor to ceiling pictures of selected acts in each of the rooms. Having made sure that we were all spread out so no one would have to share bedrooms, it turned out there had been a mix up in the booking meaning Liza and I had to buddy up and share our ‘Mary J. Blige’ themed room until the Wednesday.  

From Tuesday to Thursday our days were spent outdoors. Having stocked up at the hotel’s buffet breakfast we travelled to various features where we could access the sediments for the students to dig, draw, explore, and collect samples and sediment cores. My main role seemed to be driver and equipment carrier as I didn’t know all that much about sedimentology, so while the students got to work, I sat on rocks and munched on snacks with Martina or went for little strolls in the surrounding area. The frequency and energy levels of my strolls increased over the three days as the weather quickly deteriorated from bright, sunny, t-shirt weather on the Tuesday to negative temperatures, snow and bitter winds on the Thursday: a classic April experience. On returning from the field each day, the students in the hostel cooked up together while our hotel gang sampled each of Hultsfred’s culinary delights. Being a typical small Swedish town, this comprised of a Pizzeria, a generic ‘Asian’ restaurant, and the hotel bar; a far cry from my two Stockholm dining experiences over the previous months, but nice to have a break from the washing up!

In spite of my fears about going away in such a big group during the height of a pandemic, the trip seemed fairly successful overall; just one student needed to go to hospital for a swollen foot and the one that spent 2 days in quarantine due to a sore throat received a negative covid test results before the journey back. I think the students really appreciated the opportunity to learn away from their computer screens and I enjoyed the change of scenery and abundant fresh air. The trip actually came at a good time for me. The first paper of my PhD had been rejected the previous week, with the reviewers telling me it had good content but wasn’t the right fit for the chosen journal. This means plenty of work ahead changing the scope of the article so that hopefully my next submission is a little more successful. Taking a step away for the week means I can tackle that one with a fresh mindset come Monday.

I’m so glad to see the covid situation improving over in the UK meaning things can start to open up again and friends and families can be reunited in open spaces. That and the arrival of some sunny days bring hope for the months ahead. After a slightly bumpy start to the year, I hope the renewed opportunities for outdoor socialisation lifts everyone’s spirits and makes for some engaging months ahead.