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November 22, 2005
Stockholm: The Darkest Season
We had a lovely autumn but autumn is over. I took the photo above on November 7. On Saturday the first snow arrived, a glittery respite from the gray gray gray atmosphere created by the skeletal trees and the sun's stubborn refusal to rise at a decent hour and its unseemly haste to disappear entirely too early. Did I mention how gray it is? (And now the snow is melting. Yuck.)
The change in season means the national candle fetish is in full swing. This morning my kid and I munched our cereal by candlelight. I think it's the Swedish way of transforming an environment that could termed suicidally depressing into "cosy" and "warm." Swedes don't usually string up Christmas lights anywhere but on a tree. But I saw white Christmas lights everywhere during a February visit to Anchorage once and it was a swell idea. So this week I'll be stringing lights on just about anything not moving, so consider yourself warned.
With winter comes the need for winter boots, natch. The kid's boots are busted so we'll be buying new ones this afternoon. My old boots were fine--except for the zippers. The pull tabs were crap and disintegrated last season. (This despite the fact that in 1913 a Swede, Gideon Sundback, developed the modern zipper, the one with metal teeth. Where's the national pride in Sweden's rich zipper history?) Paper clips make lousy pull tabs, it turns out, and fall apart quickly but not before poking holes in your fingers when you pull up the zippers. Mr. Too Tall, my better half, suggested key rings. It will never work, I thought, but I tried it this morning and he was right.
There's an advantage to such wacky pull tabs. When you visit a friend and leave your boots in the hall (in the big pile of boots that are heaped in hallways in homes and schools all over Sweden this time of year), it's much easier to find them again on your way out. One time I had to find my boots in a collection of twelve or so pairs of black footware at a student performance and it was a bigger pain than you might imagine. Think black carry-on on an airport carosel of black carry-ons and you've got the idea. I'm ridiculously pleased that I won't have that problem now. Assuming the rest of the boots hold up!
Posted by Deborah Branscum at November 22, 2005 11:36 AM
Comments
I would think that after a while it'd get annoying to have a big plastic butterly banging against your ankle.
Posted by: Pete at November 27, 2005 12:10 AM