SWEDEN Little dog in the woods

This afternoon’s outing was to some forest in the hills. Southern Sweden is pretty flat –actually all the lands surrounding the Baltic are thus – but there are some decent rises around Bastad. Munson had a good old romp and sniff through the trees – there was nothing to disturb but the legion of tiny frogs, each about the size of a finger segment, making a living on the forest floor. In the morning I’d made a visit to the local IKEA, which dwarfed any I’ve been in hitherto in UK, USA, France or Australia. I had a “sign”when playing Words With Friends that morning that today would be the right day to visit:

My mission was to get some metal kitchen shelves for Jean back at the farm. The Toulouse branch has been out of them consistently since last year. Even when we’d scheduled our visit to Toulouse for days when their online inventory said they were in-stock, it always turned out to be an inventory error. Today’s mission was largely successful although the pieces took some hunting down; I was at least mollified to find that the local computer system was no more competent at tracking items in the store then it is in overseas branches. Then the checkout system had a minor meltdown when I put in my IKEA Family Card – apparently it doesn’t work across borders. The cashier looked at me as if I’d poohed in her handbag after discovering what I’d done, so I was glad to make my escape with an armful of Grundtals.