Tosra & The Auction, day 9

Wheelbarrows.

To have a bit of change form the norm, I will spend a lot of the next few days writing things down on paper and in books, as that is much easier now that I know I can charge whenever I want, how much I want. And I can still can use the solar panel for extra power.

I'm also starting to make the first real drawings of a flintlock weapon and its mechanism. I am thinking of four models, single barrel musket for both shotgun pellets and a solid slug, a double barreled shotgun, a rifled barrel in combination with a shotgun barrel, and 'just' a rifle. All primarily for hunting. The rifling of a long barrel is a huge problem, and I do not know which technique is best. Making a machine to drill out and rifle a barrel feels unnecessary as I don't intend to mass produce weapons, but it may be the only way to make a good enough straight barrel. I want to hit a target at a distance, not just send a slug 'that way'. I am a little surprised at how good the barrels for my boomstick turned out, but they are much shorter.

Since I now see the work that is going on so much more than before I lived here, I realize that moving stone or soil is hard work. They also use a couple of wagons that are bad, both horse drawn and by hand, but most soil and stone is usually carried by hand between two people, basically a small wooden hand barrow with carrying handles at the ends. They have a couple of bad wheelbarrows with the wheel far in front of the load, as it is basically just a wheel where one should carry the hand barrow, which makes it strenuous to use as the angle is bad and they are basically just lifting the weight with leverage to the wheel axle. There are many slaves just carrying loads in the hand barrows.

So I make sketches and get carpenter Engdrid to make four new wheelbarrows, and it is only then that I understand that wheelbarrows are a novelty, and he and Pedr are surprised by my creations. As usual. But I show a more modern design with the wheel further back and closer under the load, which also gives the ability to tip forward. The wheelbarrow becomes more unstable, but the design improve load carrying capacity, can take narrower turns, and have support so it can stand on its own and be far more ergonomic to move and use. Another design is somewhere between their existing and the more modern, only better designed, balanced and with support and ergonomic.

But the last two will be a classic Chinese wheelbarrow with a large wheel in the middle and loads on the sides. Such wheelbarrows were what built China and also served as simpler taxis with passengers on the sides or passenger on one side and cargo on the other side. If the load is centered over the wheel's axis in line and balanced laterally, there is minimal force to move the wheelbarrow and the large wheel makes it easier. In rural China, it was common to see finer roads between rice fields and up mountains that were only wide enough for one person to walk with such a wheelbarrow. It was easier to build and still makes it possible to move large loads. They even had carts with small sails to help if the wind was right. When the rest of the world switched to pack animals, carts and wagons, in many cases China continued with its wheelbarrows because a wheelbarrow don't require food or shelter, can move large loads, and there were plenty of people in China, while animals were valuable. The reason I designed two different Chinese wheelbarrows is that I don't know what is best. The difference is mostly in the wheel diameter. One that is 1 meter, the other is 1.5m.

The idea is that the construction workers will try them all, but I also intend to lend wheelbarrows out so the farmers can try them on the islands farms. I want to know what the workers and farmers think about the wheelbarrows for different jobs.

For now, I ask a couple of workers to try using a lifting pole or over the shoulder with rope loops down to the barrow they carry, so at least some of the weight will be taken by the shoulders, instead of everything by the hands.

Caecilia reminded me that she exists, and that I need to get door locks for the interior doors made. I only got the carpenter who made the doors to prepare for it, but did not make the locks themselves. I had just started showering when Caecilia just walked in. So I stood there with my hands in front of my groin and turned away, surprised and a taken back, and Caecilia had such a devious sexy smile when she shrugged her shoulders so her thin bathrobe-like garment slowly and seductively slid off her body. Then she seductively stepped forward, stretched, and with her hand around my neck pulled my head down towards hers and gave me a sensual kiss, while she let her other hand slide behind mine. Why do I still feel like a deer in headlights and don't really know what to do or say when such things happen? Why do I feel so exposed and naked?

Not that I whine, because it was damn enjoyable in several ways and I just have to admit that I like to do it more times, but it is a bit disrespectful to my privacy. Until the door locks are finished, simple hooks will be manufactured for important doors.

I am glad that I oversized the showerhead and its wall mount enough to easily handle a body weight, even though Caecilia is hardly overweight. It won't be the last time Caecilia helps to lift herself up with the showerhead, because she seems to love being pushed against the wall and locking her legs around my hips to be able to engage her abdomen muscles, and neither of us whine about her breasts being closer to my mouth.

Just as the last time after we have had sex, I feel slightly dirty about her age, but hopefully it will pass in the near future, and I hope she does feel anguish for my age in 5-10 years. They are all so young, but people don't live that long here, and don't go to school until they are 18-24 years old. It is selfish of me to wish that Caecilia should be 3 years older and even aged with Iselin, just because it would feel better for my morals and self-image. She have passed age of consent according to Swedish and most of Europes laws, and here there isn't really any age limit, but generally the youngest suitable age of marriage is seen, and there by sex, as 12 years and when the girl has started menstruating. It is a legal requirement here that the married couple have sex on the wedding night in front of witnesses, at least at the beginning of the act. Even 12 years here is a few years better than some countries in Midgård, but just like there, a 12-14 year old girl can be married off to a 40 year old man, and not surprisingly there is common folklore that a really young woman will be more fertile and might make an older man blossom again, so really young concubines to older men are not rare, and Radgeirrsons feast was not just for sex, pedophilia and worship - some guest might have hoped they might regain fertility to make their wifes pregnant.

Many alliance marriages take place at the age of 13-15. It is an advantage for the girls family to not have to unnecessarily support her for several years more, and to benefit more quickly from the alliance that marriage often is. Marriages can also be planned before those who are to marry are born, to bind the families together or cement a family friendship between fathers. At the same time, it can be a problem if one family doesn't give birth to the child for many years or the child dies in childhood, because it is interpreted as a sign to the gods that the alliance is undesirable.

It must be a hell of an experience for a really young girl to be brought by her family to her new husbands household, then married of and taken to bed with what might be a much older man, and after the marriage feast her family leave, and she might never see her parents or siblings again. She is then suppose to be adult and take care of the household, and start having children. Commonly if her family is 'far' away according to the travel time and routes here, they might just meet for a short while at a larger Ting. It must be a hell of a thing for a parent to do too.

15-20 years is otherwise the adult age for a man and 13-17 years for a woman and normally to start a family as long as nothing else comes in between as services or duties, if there is enough wealth and will to create a family. I can only imagine what it is like for a couple at the age of 14-15 who have just met, to take care of a farm themselves, have children and build a life. They have been trained and expected this since they were little - but still.

Over the age of 25, the person is increasingly considered 'too old' if the person does not already have property and wealth, especially when it comes to women. If she has not married before she is 25 years old and have children, then there must be something wrong with her or her family. Not desirable enough in appearance, status, wealth or kinship, or considered infertile, no matter how true it is.

Ciara, Alith, Hillevi and Jalida are witnesses when I officially accept Caecilia's offer to be my personal servant and courtesan, as I technically havn't done so yet, as she so helpfully pointed out in the bathroom when we relaxed after sex. Caecilia is happy and serious when she swears to keep all my secrets when it comes to sejd and other things. She sees it as an honor and pleasure to keep my secrets - to know she is trusted and I have taken her into my confidence. It is inevitable that she will discover a lot as time goes by, and she is not blind and already knows that Jane and I come from Midgård. She has played with my ears several times, both with fingers, tongue and teeth, and she seems to love caressing my hair on my chest or arms as well, although she is hardly alone in that.

So alone in my bedroom I do the same introduction with music to her as my sambos and showed her my compact camera and tell her my abreviated story. Caecilia had already guessed some, but not how advanced Midgård has become compared to Alfheimr, although she really can not understand exactly how advanced Midgård is. Magical things are magical things.

That is followed be a session of increasingly sexy photos as Caecilia wants to see what she really looks like when she tries to be stately, or seductive and sexy, and she fetch a bunch of different clothes and gives me a seductive show while she changes, and she has several sexy thin dresses, even one completely in lace. That she is trying to entice me into more sex was obvious when she asked for the pictures, and I knew I wouldn't have enough self-control to say 'no' for long. It is good that Ciara won't expect sex later tonight and is just happy to be cuddling and sleeping.

In the way Caecilia again emphasizes we can have sex wherever and whenever I want, reinforces my thought that I think the idea appeals to her. Or is it just because we should have more sex, and not let something unimportant like geography limit when it happens.