Peaceful Days, Restful nights

When one takes a year off, one thinks that all hassle and rush will be over.  Life will consist of swanning around with cocktails and long walks in the forest, preferable also with cocktails. Pah, and again I say, pah! After 7 months of recovering from the NHS, gazing at the walls and gibbering ,with occasional long walks on a therapeutic basis, one returns to normal energy levels, looks around at said walls and thinks, hum, they need redecoration, and that curtain isn’t straight and I’d quite like to get out now please.

Of course, what we’ve done in the last few days would have been the work of but a few hours back in the old days, but, in mitigation, we are slightly out of practice.

Last week, I got a nasty, but short lived virus, so after being sofa bound (back to the ole comforting walls) for a few days, we went to my grandmother’s on Friday afternoon and met up with my uncle and his family including a dog and a four year old.  After a few hours of that we went to help out at a local youth group.  I’ve never played on one of those dance mat things before.  Apart from the “I’ve so got to have one of these” factor, they are jolly tiring.  I randomly threw my feet around more or less willy-nilly and quite, quite astoundingly, they landed on some of the circles at the right time!  Amazing what they will come up with nowadays... Perhaps they should market a Tant Dance.  Ooh how will that translate? let’s see...... Mad Aunt Dance!  The Youth (we have youth here, not yut) were pleased to inform me that my pigtails were hyper fashionable and not too young for me – RESULT!

 After several hours of hangin’ (oh it took me back!) we all trooped upstairs for a gig with a chap playing a guitar and his dad talking about Forgotten Children. At 11pm we trooped downstairs again.  I thought that everyone here went to bed at 9.30!!  What happens? Does everyone suddenly get a sensiblesness transplant when they reach 21? There’s probably some sort of government department with regulations and own bureaucracy.

AND THEN the next day we trotted off to view a house, went to the local market for plants and got some tickets for a concert that evening!  What??? What were we doing?? Still he did very well for a white boy from Norway singing jazz soul.  In fact, the bass player was almost as good as Ben Reed, but not quite, obviously! And it was the first time I’d danced since coming here (yesterday could not be described as dancing, I’ll have you know).  Just as well I’ve reached the age where I don’t care what I look like; such a relief.

The Sunday service next day made me wonder how such a musical people can come up with and stay with such crap for their worship songs. So that was something to talk about with God as I sat on the sofa and downed tonnes of painkillers for the muscle induced headache (too much flinging, it would seem).

And as a grand finale, we had the Beth Sewing Mafia with Added Grandmother around here on Monday evening.  So that entailed a complete redecoration of the house and relandscaping whilst cooking a pavlova and slicing fruit, veg, meat, cheese, bread, random cats and anything else that strayed across the worksurface.  (the cat won’t do that again!).

I tell you, when I got my glasses muddled up and downed a pint of wine as I sat and breathed again, I said Never Again...... quothe the raven...........

The Perfect Home...?

We’ve been here 7 months now and I’m quite sure that I’m not yet a captain of industry because of the inordinate amount of time that housework seems to take up.  There’s the sweeping, rug shaking, dusting, composting, washing sinking as well as hovering and scrubbing.  I’m sure I never did this much in London, well, I didn’t cos I had a cleaner. But it took me about 25 years to realise that the skies would not fall in, volcanoes wouldn’t explode in the street and the entire Western civilisation would not collapse in a smouldering ruin if I didn’t wash the bathroom at least 3 times a week.  This is because ‘doing housework’ is genetically programmed into Swedes and the houses are generally immaculate and incredibly neat, if a little, errh, frou-frou (depending on the class).  Back in the 50s, my mother was learning how to clean a house properly, in sixth form college, in between her astrophysics and eugenic gene manipulation classes.  (Incidentally, if you do a lot of housework properly, quantum does begin to make sense).

The average Swedish woman (ASW) would love Martha Stewart’s website, if they could get over the complete insulting patronising implications of the word “homemaker”. Most houses I’ve been in in London would be used as a practice house for the ASW as a ‘before’ example.  They are what my grandmother’s was like when she couldn’t see and had her heart complaint.  My house is cleaner than most in London, but I feel hopelessly inadequate here.

I can’t help but feel that this obsession with ‘house-work’ is self-inflicted by women. When they weren’t allowed to work, the state of the home was the only way they had to display their marvellousness, together with handiwork and cooking.  My grandmother tells of a woman who was forgiven for only shaking her rugs once a week because her lace was so wonderful.  Forgiven? Forgiven by whom?  It was the women of course, who bought into the myth given them by men that it was the only thing they could do and so had to do it incredibly well to justify their existence.  Implied in this myth is that the family or the Man needs to have the house ‘looking good’.  Pah!  The average man wouldn’t know if something hadn’t been dusted for a day or a year.  And what of today, where we do have other things to do, like full time employment?  It comes down, of course, to doing what is comfortable for yourself, which also means not noticing what others do in their homes (oooh not so much fun there!). 

Here, I keep the dust bunnies from getting above adolescence and shake the rugs a couple of times a week, but I haven’t yet got back into the once a week major clean, which includes the attic or the twice a year wall washing etc or the daily dust.  So I have been corrupted by the UK, where the standards of housework are, quite frankly, slovenly, but there is so much more interesting stuff to do than dusting!

Just don’t get me started on the word “House wife”....

Driving

I hadn’t realised that my driving style was genetically determined, but I realised how much viability this theory had two years ago when I got to a town in the time the Swedish guy told me it would take (this was 3/4hr faster than Graham thought).  I think that driving style has evolved to bounce off elks, before Volvo was invented (and will now be revived now that they have been compromised by foreign buy-outs). Ironically, just before the crash I was driving within the guidelines (rules, whatever).  Such is life. 

There is one thing that I have absorbed from the UK and that’s braking distances.  Marvellous things, but if you thought people don’t keep to them in the UK, they don’t exist at all here.  So when a great big, galumping lorry is parked up your backside at 100km/hr, they are not being aggressive, really!   I say 100km, the speed limit is viewed as being a guideline, as are the road markings, indicators and other bits and pieces someone insists on. 

Of course, I shouldn’t make generalisations.  The rest of the country consists of little old ladies or chaps, and now, me.  We drive at 30km below the speed limit and towards the middle of the road.  We also hold the steering wheel at the correct position very, very hard, but, unlike the UK, we don’t hunch over the wheel, we sit very upright and posturally correct.  After all, there is no need to relax standards, is there!

There is something that makes you realise that you are in an alien place and that is the behaviour of the drivers in the towns.  The first time, we were on the kerb looking to cross the road (main, mark you) and the cars stopped.  We looked up the street and down the street, for little green flashing men, for prone zebras, for some other sort of road sign or flashing light from the sky, but nothing, absolutely nothing. We looked at the driver, he looked at us, we looked at the driver, he looked at us.  After about half an hour of this, we crossed the road and he continued on his way.  In the interest of scientific enquiry, we tried crossing the next road.  The same thing happened with slightly less bemusement, this time with a Merc!!!!  Gosh.....  So I have been forced to take a more Graham approach to things (when he had a white van, he used to let people out.  It’s well worth doing for the look on their face alone!). 

Swedish drivers don’t get so het up about things.  I haven’t heard one horn honked since we’ve been here, which is no mean feat, given the number of times I've forgotten I don't need to drive London-stylee and dive out into a 2cm gap.

Lower your blood pressure and drive in Sweden!

Things to do that don’t get done in Perivale.

1.       Get the wood in. From the Wood Shed – I’m still waiting to see something traumatic in the woodshed, but maybe I’m too old, or maybe too influenced by Stella Gibbons.  Disappointingly, all that is in the woodshed is wood and a few plant pots left by my parents, which are slightly traumatising in their own little way as there is a perfectly good potting shed just around the corner.

      The wood comes from Edgar, who is a lovely chap of few words.  He has reached the pinnacle of Swedish Manhood and owns his own sawmill.

2.       Light the fire and keep it going.  A log or two has to be put on every 40 min or so.  If not the fire will go out and we will have to use the eco air con. And it makes a noise. Whilst being eco, it uses electricity, the pollution of which you have to pay evil corporations for, unlike the wood, which is not as expensive, but more local (and Edgar gets the money - much better) and smells nicer. 

I also have an ash pail! An ash pail!! – they had those in the 1950s and we aren’t even in New Zealand/Tasmania. I have to say that it’s so much easier to use the ash pail on the veranda than to go to the ash pile every morning in your dressing gown when it’s -19C – long live ash pails :-) (lovely yellow from IKEA, I think it was originally intended as brewing equipment, oh well.)

3.       Change the cat litter.  This isn’t strictly so different, BUT,  here, so far, the cat comes in from the outside to go to the loo inside....???  Once, when I was very depressed, (probably brought on by the lack of relentless pressure and having to find my own direction, always a test of character) Graham told me I had to stay alive because I could change the cat litter. The fact that it was the first thing he thought of was, erhh, interesting  and shows interesting stuff about the male brain...

4.       Sweep.  It’s very nice having lots of trees around, but they drop things; constantly, incessantly and relentlessly.  As do the clouds. If the snow is swept up before trodden down, you don’t get those slippy ice bits on the steps, and not slipping is almost always good (cross-reference skiing).  There is also the perfect housewife thing.  Swedish women manage to have families, jobs and keep their houses immaculate. How, how, how????  My one contribution to decent and upright womanhood is sweeping the steps and the wooden floors as often as is feasible to my poor pathetic excuse for humanity.

5.       Take the recycling to the dump: this has to happen once a week at least, or the kitchen gets overrun by plastic and tetrapak and we get replaced by the life forms growing in the aforementioned.  We only pay council tax if we use council services, so my Mother (whose house this is) doesn’t pay for rubbish collection.  Fortunately, almost everything is recyclable.  We have a bucket for “other” and that hasn’t been full enough to empty in the six months we’ve been here and, I sorry to say, has mainly British rubbish in.

6.       Stop and stare: “what is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare”.

A Swedish Car Crash

Note to self, which will also work as a Word of Warning – never think that you can do what a Volvo can do if you’re not driving one.  Such as, for example, overtaking a lorry going up a hill when it was begun to snow and the road hasn’t been salted for a while.  Sliding headlong into an on-coming lorry is not a particularly good life move, though I am quite proud that I did manage the skid so I didn’t go into the lorry on our side.  When in Sweden, managing skids is very, very important.  Being only half Swedish, I only did half a skid, but I’ll work on it!

With typical Swedish practicality, there were people on the scene immediately, including a tow truck crew.  Lovely chap called Patrick, who called the emergency services.  All of whom turned up with amazing promptness, given that we had completely blocked the road – whoops... and remove the roof and doors, talk soothingly etc, etc. Think on how long it takes for roads to reopen in the UK after an accident. Here, within 1 hour of the accident, you would never have known that anything had happened on that spot. We had often remarked on it and it certainly makes it easier passing the spot later.

I think that the Swedish health system requires a whole blog of its very own, but it works far, far better than ours, and all the “buts” aren’t actually that applicable, so nah! The sign above my head as I was wheeled, shivering, and somewhat confused, cheered me up and the UK hospitals should follow suit – Katastrophvård.  Mind you, maybe most people would instead be rather upset, which wouldn’t be particularly helpful, such a missed opportunity.

The tow-truck man, phoned me up a few days later to find out how I was and to tell me where he’d taken the car – bless him!  Ooooh, going to see the car was fun.  Various people had been in and out, picking up crow-bars, tax discs, rucksacks. You know, the normal sort of stuff you keep in a car, but I thought that I’d better empty the car myself, especially as the insurance company had asked.  The man in charge of the yard was terribly impressed that I had been in the car and pointed out various items of interest just in case I missed them, like the radio being pushed out by the engine, how the door wouldn’t close etc and then gave me the first aid box, which was untouched.  I’m sure he was just being helpful.

Graham and I, being reliant on the Swedish system, are now home and attempting to find another car.  Emma and Simon, being reliant on the British system, are still in hospital trying to get home. And yes, they had all the right insurances. 

Of Mice and Cats and Men.

Of Mice and Men.

Here, just as in London, you are never less than 2m from a rodent of some sort.  Well, perhaps not quite as infested as that, but there are plenty of mice in the farm and quite a lot of field mice generally lolling around living the life.  This would be especially true of the mice that found their way into my grandmother’s kitchen and had a fine time eating knäckerbröd and rice before she noticed that the bread had extra-frilly edges.  Out came the mouse trap and on went the cheese and oats, which they duly ate too, before becoming too fat to avoid the spring.  Two days after I’d cleaned up all the mouse droppings around the kitchen, my grandmother, being very fond of cats, presented me with an old flour bag and told me she had a present for my kitten.  Naively I thought how sweet it was and looked forward to Psychokitty playing with some of Grandmother’s old cat’s toys.  Then she said that she thought she’d left the trap in the bag and could I fish it out before I went.

......

You know all those good manners that your mother literally bangs into you as a child?  Parents – take note.  The glares, repetition, etc work!  Isn’t that nice?

Another lesson to learn is never to feed any cats you may find hanging around the place.  My father didn’t take any notice of this very good guidance and fed the black cat that was hanging around the veranda, even though they would only be there for 4 weeks.  As Evil S doesn’t believe in feeding cats (“it’s unnatural”), the mog hung around in the hope of nice food and kept the grounds mouse and pigeon free in the meanwhile.   In the ‘natural’ course of events, she had a kitten and then we turned up.  It is physically impossible to refuse to feed a kitten when it’s staring at you through the glass and winter is on the way.  Just. Totally. Impossible.  So, we have acquired a kitten in practice and, as ES doesn’t probably know it exists and for definite won’t have registered it, we now have it in actuality (this could be an American word, but is part of the evolution of the English language and it fits – so tough).

A cat mother will bring her kitten dead mice to give them a taste for it.  What my grandmother didn’t know was that Psycho had moved up from dead mice to live mice(such a nuisance cleaning the blood off the floor) and dead pigeons.  We’re trying to persuade Mog to skip the live pigeons and go onto dead deer, but are making little headway at the moment. 

Still, Psycho enjoyed her present from the house. Although I am a morning person, I confess that I can forget to examine the ground before I put my feet down at 6am, and I don’t always wear slippers.  Can I recommend stepping on a mouse’s rear end and squashing the liver for waking up thoroughly in the morning?  It is so effective and totally natural....

Just a touch of politics

Politics

The big news here, apart from the extreme economic difficulties that Sweden is undergoing (???  What???  That’s where the drive for perfection takes you!) is the leadership of the Social Democrats.  The leader has just resigned after numerous problems, like his partner being convicted of fraud and he didn’t tell anyone when he stood for leader, a ‘misunderstanding ‘ on claiming expenses when staying in her flat in Stockholm.  Bless him, he didn’t know the rules of this, despite chairing a parliamentary committee on parliamentary expenses.  Although thinking back to various chairs of various committees I’ve known, this isn’t entirely unbelievable, but, nevertheless.... He’s only been in post about 10 months and the previous recumbents were not that much more fortunate.  It’s bringing up lots of interesting cultural attitudes. Now I live ‘on the other side’, it’s fascinating to watch the feeling towards Stockholm, which verges on hatred in some circles.  It could be what the rest of teh country think about London, although in the UK we do have truly national newspapers.  I say this, but thinking about it, there are also criticism that the nationals are too London-centric (I do not speak of the red-tops).  Here the biggest newspapers are based in the biggest cities and everyone here reads the local paper. 

Anyway, even now on the radio equivalent of Radio 4, they are talking about the distance of the Stockholm-based politicians from the rest of the country.  The old SD leader was not from Stockholm, but from the country and there are accusations that the press hounded him because of this, and this is from the press!

Ho hum, you frown, why the problem?  A political party? Who cares?  Well, yes, in the UK there is an increasing lack of difference between the parties and in Sweden here there are at least 5 in the ruling alliance, so what’s the fuss?   The Social Democrats made Sweden what it is today, they were the ones who build the ultimate Social State, the one that comes nearest to perfection that one can achieve in this imperfect world.  They have formed modern Sweden and now the Right is in, some of the things they put in place are being dismantled.  And people are talking about what if basic principles are abandoned such as the essential equality of everyone.  I’ve noticed that the cabinet are now all wearing suits and ties, which they never used to do. People aren’t sloping around in jeans anymore in the bank head offices and, if you ask me, it’s a sign the country is going to the dogs.  If the Social Democrats can’t form a credible opposition, who will?  At the moment, it’s looking like the Communists and Greens, which means that ‘lagom’ is also going out of the window and then the world will end.