The Swenglish Home

Conservatory

- as English as kidney pie?

First of all, Happy Mother's day to all you UK mums! For a foreigner, it is very confusing trying to keep up with these celebratory parental days, as they fall on completely different days in Sweden and the UK. But today I was celebrated in style, with flowers and hand-made cards, handed over by four proud little hands. And right on cue, I went all soft and gooey inside and attacked the card authors with so many kisses they fled across the room to their father to be rescued. Mums have to do that sometimes. Kiss their boys until they beg for mercy.



The time has come to visit our conservatory. Before moving to the UK, I had not realised what a conservatorial country this is, but soon saw how these glazed extensions stick out like shiny appendixes wherever you look, in every neighbourhood. And after my first long, wet and windy winter here, I definitely came to understand their beauty. Regardless of weather, it is the one place in the house that is always bright. It therefore quickly and quite naturally became the playroom, where to date uncountable space rockets have blasted off into space, train tracks have negotiated the green round rug and small and big people have tumbled around and been lost in mountains of cushions.

This youthful living has taken a toll on the room, whose walls are in dire need of new (and I hope different coloured - ) paint, whose armchairs have such big fabric wounds that they can barely be covered up with blankets any longer, whose toy baskets are falling apart by the minute, but whose purpose is still a well-suited canvas for imaginary play of the most inventive kind.

Space journey, anyone?