The Fashion In Shrouds

Visited friends in the country, some miles outside of Stockholm.



V's house. Cold weather again.

( Forgot the cut, great. )

Well, a tiny, insignificant one, at least - I'm touching up my roots with semi-permanent colour, no more permanent black hair dye for me. It's still a two component colour, so I'm not sure if it will make much of a difference, but I hope that it will make the process easier if/when I decide to go blonde.

Strictly speaking I can't do it before grandma dies, though. It's childish and stupid, but she would be so disgustingly smug and self-congratulatory if she saw me go back to blonde that I just can't face it. We have rubbed one another the wrong way since I was in kindergarten - there's this story about how I wanted to help grandpa dig up potatoes wearing a new skirt when I was five or so (some things never change, fun + pretty clothes = fun²), we got into an argument and it got so out of hand that grandpa intervened and told her to back off and let me get dirty. I must have been a horrible brat, of course, but our relationship is only slightly more civilized nowadays.

I am drunk. A is drunker, though, and although I'm pretty sure that's not the correct comparative form of drunk, I can't be bothered to look it up. Götterdämmerung was fantastic, anyway - having seen it I understand why it seems to be the one of the four days of the Ring des Nibelungen cycle that people go to as a stand-alone performance, besides Die Walküre. Almost six hours that definitely did not feel like six hours, and now I'm a little sad that we're done with it. I will miss my bi-weekly dose of Wagner. Must see if there are any tickets to be had for Die Walküre later this spring.

Then I went to Tech Noir, and because I haven't been to a proper Tech Noir since May last year I was a little shocked by how, well, Tech Noir it was - I'd forgotten some of it (how young and nearly naked people are, mostly). Met D, who is a very old and very good friend, made a bit of a tactical mistake when he said that he wasn't drunk enough for Tech Noir and I admitted that I wasn't either. Turned out D had access to free champagne, somehow, and, well, yes. I turned the buzz to good account by arranging a couple of coffee outings with people I like but don't see enough of, complimenting this insanely sexy girl I've been seeing about in the scene, undoing most of the shirt buttons on an old ex-lover and groping a. a couple of boys who are just barely two-thirds of my age, and b. a somewhat older friend who works out a lot. I'm always handsy with him, though, so no matter. Am fully convinced I'll be wearing animal prints in my 50's.

I think I may want to erase this tomorrow, but tonight I'm in a generous mood. Hope you lovely people have had a great Saturday night!

And tsores , Ville hälsar!

My grandmother wants all of her old photo albums scanned, so I will probably post a few old family photos here - there are great clothes in some of them. We haven't really got started properly yet, but I took the opportunity to have this photograph of my grandfather and my mother on his Matchless motorbike scanned - I think it is some version of the Matchless G3, but that's just a guess based on pictures and the fact that it was developed for military service. Grandpa is in his uniform, obviously, but the bike might be his private property, I suppose - as I remember it, he was in the cavalry, and I have a couple of photos of him on horseback with one of the Finnish refugee children who stayed with grandma and grandpa during the war, too. Must ask mom.
I don't have an exact date, but my mother was born in 1946, so -48 or -49, perhaps?



Great boots and motorcycle goggles. In other photos of grandfather and other guys in his regiment they are wearing jodhpurs with the M/39 furlough uniform, but these look almost like some kind of shorts - trick of the light, perhaps. The jacket has got to be the usual M/39 field tunic.

Grandpa died when I was twelve, and I don't remember him very well. He is one of those people who lives in other people's memories, though - he and my mother were very close, and he seems to have been something of a character. I'm often told anecdotes about him by my mother and grandmother, family friends and people in Kesudalen, where he is still present in many ways.

Great series of photographs from New Year's Eve:



V and I preparing the dessert after dinner, both of us gloriously tipsy. Love how these came out!
© Andreas Ingefjord.