Saturday, August 11

Sandholmsudden, 8:30

This morning was cold, but not as cold as yesterday. Auo stayed asleep and the rest of us drove to the market at 7:45. As usual setting up the stall involved having two coffees and two egg breads from Benita, and buying several bags of fish, bread and cakes for later.

Now the stall is ready for business. Naa is helping Mikael set up the vegetables, and Irma is chatting to Johanna Kellgren.

In a couple of hours I will drive home to give Auo her breakfast – two of Olga’s fish cakes – and drive her to the market. She will immediately start helping in Mikael’s stall, and promote herself from assistant to full helper. When I ask her afterwards whether she was dealing with customers in Finnish or Swedish she will say “Both actually”.

We will have a drink at Benita’s with Ville, Margit, and Ville’s sister and husband who are visiting from Greece. Then we will drive home to have a snack to find that Sunshine has caught another water rat and is happily playing with it. After all this Irma and Naa will lie down and go to sleep.

They will wake up for a food-from-the-market dinner, and we will spend a couple of hours picking blackcurrants and gooseberries from Camilla’s garden.

We will spend the evening at Mikael and Camilla’s saying goodbye to Islie, who is returning to Switzerland tomorrow at dawn. Barnard, Gita, Hanna and her girls, Björn, Liisa and Johan will be there, and finally Mona, who sells her handmade scarves, socks and clothes at the market, will turn up.