I often take the dogs for a walk past this little timber yard that has been set up by the local council. Unemployed people can have temporary jobs chopping down trees and chopping up wood, which is then bagged and sold as firewood — very good firewood, it’s mostly ash and other hardwood that they have cleared from adjacent council-administered land. It’s a good idea, I suppose, but the irony is that about ten years ago the council put up the sign in the foreground; it says ‘Hundremetersskogen‘, a loose metric translation into Norwegian of The Hundred-Acre Wood, from Winnie The Pooh. In those days, the authorities must have envisaged this spot as a wooded glade for children; I don’t know what made them change their minds.
Opposite the sign I saw these blåveis and they put me back in a good mood. I think they are hepatica, in English — also called liverwort, they’re a kind of anemone. Quite soon the woods will be covered with them.
A Bad Guide 