Harvest every morning

Picked from round the side of the house, and popped straight onto our yoghurt! What a treat these blackberries are, the canes are so heavy with berries. So that was the morning's thrill. I felt I should leave the garden and actually drive to town for a couple of hours, but Keith offered to drive me there. Once we were underway I was very pleased not to be driving, my head is a bit woolly still.

We did our shopping and as I'm writing I realise the one thing I really wanted to get at Lidl - their crispy ice cream cones - was forgotten! Ice cream in a bowl is not as tasty somehow. But I've had my ration for today, in the new café in the center of the town, where they make their own Italian style ice cream from scratch using genuine berries for flavouring. It is exquisitely delicious, an everyday treat if I lived in town... probably a good job I don't.

I got sweaty as I walked about, although it wasn't hot really - so I guess I'm not 100% and will continue to take things slowly & quietly - or "piano" as they say in Swedish. Keith is currently out on his paddle board, the original was recalled due to a production fault, and has been replaced by an even posher one. I await a blow by blow on how good it was. I sat in the sunshine at the front door and drew for a while. Yawning.

My thoughts were with the people of Ukraine all day today, their independence day, uncelebrated in any formal way due to the high risk of the Russians attacking civilian gatherings. They are still managing to attack old people's homes and kill innocent people, even so. The destruction in this war is horrible, but the determination of the Ukranians to be in charge of their own country, their own system of government is inspiring to witness. They know what awaits any country subsumed into the black hole of a Putin dictatorship, and will fight and die to stop that happening.

I just have to fight to get some food made for tea, and fight my way upstairs to sleep. Our circumstances are so different. I'm reading Sapiens again now my brain is engaging, and the take-away from last night's pages concerns "normal". That if our biology makes a behaviour possible, it is normal for human beings. That the concepts of abnormal, deviant and despicable are culturally determined, not biologically determined. It falls apart when you get to gangs of soldiers raping women, humiliating and torturing people before finally killing them, children being abused, cruelty in general - and so on. It's biologically possible (since it happens and we humans are doing it) but it is in no way normal in my head. Things might become clearer in the next few pages, but this has exercised my mind this afternoon.