2020-10 Driving Licence, Gravel, and Mice

I made sure to exchange my UK driving licence for a Swedish one before Brexit. If I didn’t, I might have to retake the entire test, which would be expensive. The exchange took a long time but after 3 months of silence, I got notified to stop asking. The transport agency said they had posted the paperwork two days ago. Awesome. As part of this, I had to visit the nearest larger town/small city in order to be photographed for the license. We hadn’t been there before so it was a cautious day out for us.

Visit the City

As it was during COVID we were not keen on being on a small bus with many others. We also were not familiar with the bus mobile application that creates QR codes that passengers scan. Passengers buy tickets using a Din Tur mobile app. The app then gives you a countdown to the bus you’ve chosen arriving at your stop. It then shows a barcode that you scan as you get on midway up the bus, well away from the driver. There is sometimes a technique for getting the barcode reader to wake up.

On arrival, the town/city was busy but not aggressive. There were a lot fewer people than in most cities in the UK. I’m not sure if it would be called a large town or a small city. Everything seemed well maintained. We got the driving license work done and walked around to get an idea of what shops we could come back to in the future.

Garage Foundation Investigation

I started a project to add a gravel path around the garage. The idea was it would be a small project to build confidence whilst also fixing some problems. Currently, some insulation was exposed and plants grew up against the garage. The vegetation would cause the woodwork at the base of the wall to deteriorate faster. The idea was to dig around the garage and put in gravel, whilst also practising good techniques such as putting in ground control fabric (fiberduk). It was also a voyage of discovery. The garage foundation is apparently two halves of a lorry trailer. The sides had been separated and a steel beam welded across the ends. This must have created the “form” with the inside then filled with concrete. The giveaway was when I discovered the 24v orange side lights halfway down the buried metalwork.

I got some gravel delivered, which was a crash course into the world of gravel. I had initially asked for the wrong type of gravel accidentally. The word I should have used was for the larger drainage gravel (makadam 8-16mm). I always asked for the correct gravel after this.

Sludge

We also had a council (kommune) tanker arrive to pump out the sewage cistern, the bill is about £200 a year for this. It is a little higher for our house as they charge about £15 for having to use longer hoses for some houses like ours. There’s no arranged time or involvement from the homeowner directly. So when it first arrived I wasn’t fully sure what the vehicle did or what our cistern did or did not do. I asked the council (kommune) about the operation of the cistern. They said it was for sludge removal. I asked what sludge was (I wasn’t sure if it was sewage or if the cistern was a settling tank for collecting soil from the drainage). The reply was that “sludge is sludge”. I gave up at that point.

Cleanup

The property had a big pile of old wood offcuts and waste on it that had been outside for a long time. I was very visible and I was a bit worried we might get a complaint. When it was colder and darker we had a big bonfire and burnt it all. It felt good to remove one more concern.

Who’s Got the Herb

I put some herbs under grow lights in the garage to see if it would be warm enough to grow plants over winter. This eventually led to a local community member representative happening to pass by and making a gentle query about the lights. I later delivered them my first crop of Parsley.

The First Mouse War

As the nights got colder, the mice in the fields and forests seek out shelter. I now know that October is the usual month for this. As this was our first winter, we were surprised by the sound of small claws inside the walls.

We quickly realised we weren’t imagining it and there were mice about, moving inside the timber frame, especially at night. After about a week it was clearly a lot of mice (three or more). The light fittings overhead would move. One night especially they were running around within the floor joists under the bed, which sounds exactly like a mouse in the room with you. It is difficult to sleep with the sound of a mouse running under you.

We tried non-kill traps for a few days and setup a webcam next to them to help confirm what was going on. These didn’t work and we had to switch to kill traps. This turned into an all-out war and by the end of November. The final tally for this year would be 1 mouse alive (using a plastic type of trap not shown in the photo) and 9 dead.