Dreaming of Freedom » Things to do

A dreamy mild November

Suzi — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:58:57 +0000

It’s been a remarkably mild November. The fireworks on Midsummer Common on the 5th were of course lovely. Kate and I avoided the crowds quite successfully and still got a super view. We even managed to get a drink, though not a seat, afterwards in the Free Press.

We had the second ever meeting of the Bookends at the Elm Tree on the 14th where we talked long and hard about Island by Aldous Huxley.

The Christmas lights were switched on on the 20th which did seem a little early but as Michaelmas Term finishes on the 2nd of December I guess it wasn’t. They were accompanied by all sorts of singing and dancing which included Mam’s little girl and a small boy who was very good on the sax. The music drifted all over the marketplace. Lion’s Yard was full of tap dancing, choirs and proud parents holding up phones trying to store the memories. Andy and I escaped the excitement to sit on a tree trunk near the Mill Pond with a couple of coffees and some great conversation.

On the 26th Tim graduated. There was much wearing of gowns, lunch at Churchill and leaning over the balcony in the Senate House and then after all that Tim was no longer just Tim but Doctor Tim. Many congratulations and celebrations! Jon spent the whole day taking photos and Mum was so proud she couldn’t speak. As it was graduation day we all got to walk around on the Senate House lawn which we made the most of as I guess it will be the only time I will be allowed. Such fun!

All in all November has whished by smoothly in a blaze of easy weather and fun. I’ve even managed to get a lot of work done and a couple of poems written!

Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam – Riley, Vermeer and Redouté

Suzi — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:10:21 +0000

There is a super Bridget Riley exhibition on at Kettle’s Yard – be warned your head will be spinning! Kettle’s Yard is the place to be as term has started again there are the usual lunchtime concerts to look forward to.

The current exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam are a must – Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence and Flower Drawings: Redouté and his Pupils. The Vermeer exhibition has the The Lacemaker on loan to the UK for the first time ever. The painting has a dream like quality to it – so clear and yet when you look again it seems the lines and features are elusively slipping from distinctness.

Food for free

Suzi — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:22:15 +0000

Apple season is upon us and yes I have been scrumping and yes my kitchen is now full of apples. All going brown! In fact I can’t believe I’m wasting time writing this and not getting on with making hundreds of apple crumbles and then eating them.

All in all it’s turning out to be a very satisfactory kind of September – wind and fallen leaves yes but also bright sunshine and sandal wearing warmth has been noted. The hedgerows are full of things this year. Ellie has been round filling up my kitchen with damsons, blackberries, pears and apples. It’s been a veritable bonanza. For those of you interested in free food all year you should read Food for Free by Richard Mabey.

In between climbing trees, oh alright, reaching up to pick apples from trees, I’ve managed to write an article for Now or Never, almost write the minutes for my residents association, write some more poems and been to work. Wow I hear you say!

A weekend in Oxford

Suzi — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:00:08 +0000

We spent the weekend in the Other University town! After work on Friday Tim and I drove our hire van packed with bikes, laptops and several different types of shoes southwards. We arrived at Culham at the end of the day – just in time for a guided tour of the fusion research center. Then headed to Jon’s place for a bye bye summer BBQ in the garden and a tour of his house. As it was Friday we also found time to walk down to the river and grab a quick drink at a pub overlooking the silent black water and almost silent house boats working their way through the lock.

Saturday dawned bright and rainless and we cycled the few miles into Oxford to join the tourists. Oxford is choc full of museums and sadly I just didn’t have enough time to visit all of them. I spent a very pleasant day in the Ashmolean Museum and got to enjoy two of their free tours. You can go on a general tour of the museum at 11am and then a more in-depth look at one or two pieces at 2.15pm. They have an excellent dining room on the top floor of the museum where I stopped for a cup of tea. You don’t get much of a view but you do get a breath of fresh air! In between tours I popped into the Pitt Rivers museum to see the oddest collection of curiosities – from model houses to animal skeletons and gruesome shrunken heads.

Tim, Jon and I then wandered the streets of Oxford taking in the colleges, the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre, the rose garden outside the Botanical Gardens and the two great rivers that flow into the city – Cherwell and Thames – complete of course with rowers.

After nipping home for a quick supper and a catch up on the footie results for the boys – we cycled back into Oxford and went to the Eagle and Child. Famous as the place where the Inklings met it was full of people but we managed to get a table and three pints – after all it was Saturday night!

Cambridge – Saturday 9th July

Suzi — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:50:44 +0000

A very pleasant day spent punting from St John’s College to The Doubletree – yes we did get to push our punt up the rollers – that was the best bit. We saw the EDL march and ignored it. Surrounded by police the you could really only see some England flags poking above the helmets and some hooligan like chants emitting from the walls of fluorescent yellow. It did give the city centre a horrid sort of feeling – like it was under attack. I think everyone in Cambridge was sort of embarrassed to have that sort of demonstration here. On Tuesday there was a public meeting and today a demonstration all against the EDL and what they stand for.

The Big Weekend is on of course but I have to say I avoided it and sent Mum off to it instead. She seemed keen on the crowds of people and live music. Tim spent last night there and saw the fireworks which sounded fun. I spent the afternoon relaxing and creating something colourful with oil pastels. Last weekend I did the ‘Jackson Pollack’ I’ve been meaning to do for ages and I’m almost happy with it. It was an amazing feeling splattering that paint on the canvas I can tell you! I plan to do as many of them as I can! Until I run out of money for canvases or my neighbours get fed up with paint on their clean washing!

The evening saw the Free Inkers at the ADC in their first ever trip to the theatre. We went to see Alan Ayckbourn’s Improbable Fiction and what fun it was. We sat in the audience laughing and wearing pashminas and spent to interval eating ice cream and quaffing wine. We wanted to get the full theatre experience and we did. What fun!

Tomorrow – yoga, garden party and with any luck Sunday Lunch!

Meeting up with old friends

Suzi — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:32:26 +0000

One of the nicest things about coming back to Sweden has been meeting up with old friends. Monday morning I met up with Karin and little Ted and we had a pleasant stroll around Slottsskogen and took in the children’s zoo halfway up one of the hills.

Monday evening I met up with Moragh and spent the evening supping wine outside the cinnema on Linnégatan and chatting about everything that has happened over the last two years. Two years ago the area outside the cinema was a bit of a building site but you can now sit outside under huge white umbrellas. The outside bar gives the place an oddly temporary feel and the clientèle tend towards the alternative – maybe it was this or perhaps it was the rain that started as we sat down but I almost felt myself at a festival drinking there. It was good to catch up with a glass of something sitting outside – rain or no rain – you’ve got to take in the summer as soon as it starts.

Today Cheri, Janne, Samson and I enjoyed a fika together in a new French cafe on Linnégatan in good old Swedish style – kids, coffee and chat! Melody Bakery is in a conveniently located spot near the Hempkop. It has a warm friendly feel, modern decor and whole lot of food to nosh from sandwiches and salad to cake. We sat in the window supping lattes and munching bowls of salad, cheese and olives , holding the door open for Mums with pushchairs and smiling back at the friendly cafe staff. After we strolled through Haga stopping at toy shops and antique shops and enjoying the afternoon sun. I’ll be sad to get back on a plane to England tomorrow.

For anyone planning on coming out to Gothenburg this summer – here are a couple of websites for all those who like me enjoy Sweden in English!
www.thelocal.se
www.monthly.se

Brännö

Suzi — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:24:08 +0000

Wednesday seemed like the sort of day to nip out to an island so we day tripped to Brännö – a island on Göteborg’s southern archipelago. It’s easy enough to cycle to from the centre of Gothenburg – it takes about an hour. Or if you find yourself bike-less then catch the number 11 tram. Ferries depart frequently from Saltholmen to the nearest harbour on the island – Brännö Rödsten. They take about 20 minutes You can also get ferries to Brännö Husvik but these take about 45 minutes.

It’s one of the smaller islands – not much going on for visitors if you’re looking for shops and cafes. In the centre of the island you can find Brännö Värdshus and Pensionat Baggen – a restaurant and one of the few places to stayin the southern archipelago. There is also a small shop on the island as well as a museum. In the garden of one of the houses you can find Ingrids Bloomer and Plantor and stock up on little pots of green things. We arrived too late to take full advantage of any of these delights so we just walked around peacefully enjoying the late afternoon sun enjoying the car free, idyllic, peaceful spot. Once a farming community, most of the islanders now work in Gothenburg and commute on the ferries. We spent a good deal of our time there deciding if we could ever live somewhere like that. Feeling slightly sick from the ferry ride we decided against it even though it would be great fun to ride around on one of those motorised scooters with a huge tray in front.

Marstrand

Suzi — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:57:18 +0000

The bus to Marstrand from Nils Ericson Terminalen takes about an hour. Catch the 302 or the 312. The bus takes you from mainland Sweden over a bridge to the island of Koön and from there you can catch a ferry to the island of Marstrand. Marstrand has sort of spread into Koön but despite that the number of inhabitants is something like 1500 people. Although tiny it has held city status since the C13th. You step off the ferry on to a cute little street of wooden houses and tourist shops. The tourist office is conveniently located directly in front of you and you can get a map from them for free. A walk around the island doesn’t take long – we ambled round in about 1 1/2 hours. The scenery is beautiful – especially the rocky western side of the island with the waves crashing against the sides and the sea birds swooping.

The houses are concentrated around the old port on the south of the island and the east and north are covered in lovely Swedish style forest and rocks In the centre of the island stands the forbidding stone Carlstens Fästning (Carlsten’s Fort). This military fortification once served as a prison. A prison sentence on the island was effectively a death sentence, subjected to the harshest manual labour some years as many as half died. There is a C13th church and the town hall is the oldest stone building in Sweden.

It’s a beautiful place to get away to if you’ve been cooped up in the city. There are places to eat and places to stay as well as little tourist shops to spend your hard earned cash in – with it being Sweden’s most popular guest harbour the prices are higher than on the mainland.

If you’re looking for a slice of paradise – look no further.

A trip to Lord’s Bridge

Suzi — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:19:40 +0000

Today being a Sunday and there not being a whole lot of stuff to do, Tim took us to Lord’s Bridge to show us round the telescopes there. He took advantage of it being a friends and family day so we got a guided tour of the site by Rosie, Bodie and for some of it Tim himself. It was my first time there and I drank in the sight of the huge white telescope that greeted us as we entered. Lord’s Bridge takes it’s name from the old abandoned railway station that once linked Oxford and Cambridge. It’s a wind swept flat ex-MOD site that is now home to a mixture of decommissioned and functioning telescopes.
When you enter the site there is a new looking recently repainted telescope that is owned by Manchester University. It links up to the telescopes at Jodrell Bank. You then follow the road round to find some defunct telescopes amongst which is the the 4-acre Array where the first pulsar was discovered. It just looks like a bunch of posts in a field. Originally wires were strung between them and this set-up acted like a giant dish to collect data. The now overgrown grass once had sheep grazing underneath to keep it short and out of the way of science. The area is now weed covered and under the 4C Radio Telescope wild orchids and strawberries grow amid the grasses and crow picked rabbit skulls.
Bodie showed us the only optical interferometer telescope on site, the rest being radio interferometer telescopes. Mirrors, tubes and a bunker were all carefully explained. The telescope is actually a prototype for the telescope at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico.
We ended the tour with a look at the AMI small and large Array that Tim works on. These white telescopes hummed and moved in their mechanical search of the sky and our cameras clicked, while with satisfaction we all nodded to each other that this was what we’d come to see, these were telescopes we’d imagined.

Strawberry Fair 2011

Suzi — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:18:30 +0000

Today was the long awaited Strawberry Fair on Midsummer Common. Cancelled last year for the first time since it started in 1974, it was back again this year with vigour. Thought to be originally started by Cambridge students as an alternative to the May Balls, it’s now one of largest free festivals in Europe and attracts people from all over the place.
You’ve got to have a strong stomach for crowds to enjoy the event. There is a good deal of alcohol being consumed, the whiff of cannabis and an unpleasant stench lurking around the corners of the common caused by those who couldn’t wait in the queues for the toilets. But if you can overlook those short comings and you enjoy sitting on the grass then it looks like it would be a good day out.
After I finally convinced myself to pop along to the Fair, I just headed straight to the Green Area to catch up with Tug, Mith and Youth Section and then escaped into the center, which seemed pleasantly quiet after all the fun on Midsummer Common. The revellers seem content to stay there all night and party on.