Riding and stormy weather
Jan. 10th, 2005 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frualeydisWe had an interesting weekend my family and I. We went to Falköping by train on friday, arrived around noon, and were picked up by my aunt and uncle and by my cousin's son. As soon as we got to Annelie it started raining. Vendela and Valeria still wanted to ride however so they went outside and we watched TV. They used to have hundreds of channels, but since she and her boyfriend (seems like a funny word for someone you've been living with for 15 years and have a child with, but they never were married) split up earlier this autumn (he was abusive and she should have split with him years ago, or better still; never gotten involved with him) she wan't interested in paying for that so now she only has four of the most common channels + a few odd free satellite channels. The latter includes Music box, a slovakian music channel (not to be confused with the original, british Music Box from the 80s). It was much like MTV used to be, i.e. they were playing music all the time and not having silly shows. The music was a mix of the international artists you see on MTV and slovakian and other central/east european artists and this made it so much funnier to watch. I have now seen more than one slovakian rap video, how many of you can say that? The music was just as bad as rap is (yes, I don't like rap music), but it was rather funny to hear it in slovakian and see how the videos tried to look like american rap videos.
Everybody except Rickard went to bed early, around nine. He stayed up and watched Gladiator which was on TV and none of us has seen. He said it was a typical "guy movie" and that the story was totally illogical so I don't feel that I have missed something.
The next morning it was raining and very windy. Not ideal riding weather, but fortunately the raining eased until it almost disappeared while we were out. Both my girls are fairly inexperienced riders (Vendela has been riding at a riding school for one semester, Valeria is starting next month) so we had to be with them. Annelie also has a 2 1/2 year old son who wants to be with his mummy so it took some planning to get the riding done. Rickard had Maja in the baby sling and also pushed Gabriel's (the little boy) sulky. Annelie held Vera (welsh), who Valeria was riding and I walked next to Vendela who was riding Laura, Annelie's very calm and friendly welsh cob. We made quite a little procession.
After we got back it started raining more and it got windier and windier. On the news they said that a storm was coming and that it would be the worst for at least six years.
Here is where we should have started to prepare for a power loss, filling buckets with water, boiling water and put in thermoses for Gabriel's food etc, but I haven't lived in the countryside since 1988 so I didn't think of it. Why Annelie didn't think of it I have no idea, I mean she has lived there for many years and the often have power losses when it storms or snows a lot. At six she was busy making waffles and had made two when the power went out. I started filling pitchers with water while we still had pressure in the pipes and we told the girls about not flushing the toilets or using water unnecessary. They only have self-circulatory heating in one room, the rest need electricity to be heated so we knew it would get colder. Fortunately the weather is very mild now so it never got cold indoors before we left yesterday afternoon and it shouldn't be too bad now either. The electricity isn't back now either and it might take some days, but she got water from my aunt who only lost power for half an hour but who lost the phone and had to use cell phone instead.
We played cards instead of watching TV and went to bed early and listened to the sound of the storm. The wind and the house made so much noise I'm surprised any of us could sleep but except Maja waking up very often everybody slept well.
We woke up to a bright and a little colder day with much less wind so it was really nice riding weather. The trains weren't running because trees had fallen over the tracks all over south Sweden so my uncle had to drive us all the way to Göteborg (at least 140 kilometres). We saw lots of trees that had fallen and a roof that had blown off a building, but the road were cleared. When we came home we saw that a piece of the wall (the outer layer, not the whole wall) on the local shop had been torn away so we could see the isolation material inside. Apparently the center of Göteborg had been flooded and the huge windows at Universeum,a museum close to where I live had broken. But we missed that.
And now I have wasted half an hour when I really should be working.
Everybody except Rickard went to bed early, around nine. He stayed up and watched Gladiator which was on TV and none of us has seen. He said it was a typical "guy movie" and that the story was totally illogical so I don't feel that I have missed something.
The next morning it was raining and very windy. Not ideal riding weather, but fortunately the raining eased until it almost disappeared while we were out. Both my girls are fairly inexperienced riders (Vendela has been riding at a riding school for one semester, Valeria is starting next month) so we had to be with them. Annelie also has a 2 1/2 year old son who wants to be with his mummy so it took some planning to get the riding done. Rickard had Maja in the baby sling and also pushed Gabriel's (the little boy) sulky. Annelie held Vera (welsh), who Valeria was riding and I walked next to Vendela who was riding Laura, Annelie's very calm and friendly welsh cob. We made quite a little procession.
After we got back it started raining more and it got windier and windier. On the news they said that a storm was coming and that it would be the worst for at least six years.
Here is where we should have started to prepare for a power loss, filling buckets with water, boiling water and put in thermoses for Gabriel's food etc, but I haven't lived in the countryside since 1988 so I didn't think of it. Why Annelie didn't think of it I have no idea, I mean she has lived there for many years and the often have power losses when it storms or snows a lot. At six she was busy making waffles and had made two when the power went out. I started filling pitchers with water while we still had pressure in the pipes and we told the girls about not flushing the toilets or using water unnecessary. They only have self-circulatory heating in one room, the rest need electricity to be heated so we knew it would get colder. Fortunately the weather is very mild now so it never got cold indoors before we left yesterday afternoon and it shouldn't be too bad now either. The electricity isn't back now either and it might take some days, but she got water from my aunt who only lost power for half an hour but who lost the phone and had to use cell phone instead.
We played cards instead of watching TV and went to bed early and listened to the sound of the storm. The wind and the house made so much noise I'm surprised any of us could sleep but except Maja waking up very often everybody slept well.
We woke up to a bright and a little colder day with much less wind so it was really nice riding weather. The trains weren't running because trees had fallen over the tracks all over south Sweden so my uncle had to drive us all the way to Göteborg (at least 140 kilometres). We saw lots of trees that had fallen and a roof that had blown off a building, but the road were cleared. When we came home we saw that a piece of the wall (the outer layer, not the whole wall) on the local shop had been torn away so we could see the isolation material inside. Apparently the center of Göteborg had been flooded and the huge windows at Universeum,a museum close to where I live had broken. But we missed that.
And now I have wasted half an hour when I really should be working.
