September 20, 2009

Departure day. We leave early in the morning through Wales on its narrow, winding roads towards England. Uneventful except for a stop at a toilet. It is the most disgusting, yet interesting toilet I have seen. A dull shed, not tidied since long ago, sharp odor, rude graffiti. Perhaps an odd hobby I have is to study toilets. We pull into a motorway restaurant in England for lunch. A huge building, complicated way in, lots of people causing bedlam. We leave without lunch, a confusing exit means that we barely find our way out from there. On the road around London (the 'London orbital')it is chaotic and a mess. The trafic going the other way is stop and go with long queues. How do they stand it, day in and day out? We take some wrong turns, and have to turn back a few times. My simple small town brain switches off. After the 'Queen Elisabeth II bridge', we take the direction towards Dover and the traffic calms down. My brain starts up again. We find a quiet spot for a lunch break. Strange eating habits here in England, French fries with the sandwich! There is a text message on my cellular phone: "HIF - Kirseberg 1-4". The loss means degradation for my team Hässleholms IF. It has not been easy to be a supporter of the club for the last 30 years. We are at Dover at 16.30, the ferry is at 17.50. Dinner on the boat, "meat and mushroom pie" rather good. The sun sets red over England.

In the evening darkness we drive to Dunkirk, where we have booked rooms in an Etap hotel. It is a modern hotel without staff. Trust technology? One should not! Our booking number is not working to open the gate to the parking lot. We may borrow another guest's card. Then we should get the room key codes to our booked rooms from a vending machine, which simply says that we do not exist. After persuasion by A and J and a credit card, we get codes to the rooms. The code for J and K's room works, but not the code to mine and A's. The door remains locked. A night porter shows up from nowhere, staff are still existing! He can open the door with his secret code. In "Frenglish" we understand that he does not have access to the computer to see what is wrong. We should not close the door again. The night porter excuses himself with "Modern Technique". Better in the old days without computers, but with ordinary physical keys.

September 21, 2008

We skip the hotel breakfast, to my surprise is there actually breakfast and staff at the hotel. We take breakfast at a place on the highway instead. It is an uneventful journey, A and K take turns to drive, J reads the AA's instructions, I am half asleep as usual, so I do not remember the road. Eating a "Riesenbratwurst" for lunch. We arrive at J and K's home at five. We eat a pizza before A and I continue, now in A's car. It remains an uneventful journey, I send a message to my neighbour who takes care of my appartment that I will be home tonight. A drives me home despite it being a detour for him, I'm at home at 22.00 Something is missing! There is no cat who welcome me. There has been a happy cat after every journey since 1991. Now she lies in her grave beneath her favorite climbing tree. I sit at the grave and tell her about the trip.

September 22, 2008

The refrigerator is empty. I cycle down to Ebba's pantry and eat their breakfast buffet for 65 crowns. At the same time I write the diary for the 19th.,20th. and 21st. I have been lazy with it the last days. I had also brought a book, 'Beyond Sleep', which I got from a friend but I did not read more than four pages in it. These pages seem promising, in addition it is printed in large type so I can see it.

September 25, 2008

The cat's birthday. As a birthday present I put the stone from Wales on the grave. Now there is only one stone missing for the "grave stone" to be like a paw imprint. I eat our favorite dish, prawns with egg and bread. I ate the egg and bread, she the prawns. Today I eat the prawns as well, but they do not taste good today.

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