Welcome

Following the crowning of my NHS experience with a stint at a PCT and the resulting redundancy (traumatic, though much wanted and worked for), my husband and I are going back to my roots near a small village in Smaland, Sweden. These are our experiences.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

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.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Make a Joyful Noise

Make a joyful noise

It’s actually not suprising that Sweden is taking the music world by storm.  There’s not just ABBA, but everything from Swedish House Mafia and E Type to Lykke Li  and First Aid Kit, not to mention Frantic Amber and other assorted heavy rock.  Swedish folk music is quite tuneful, when you get past the accordions and beards, and has influenced a lot of American music because of the Emigration in the late 18th Century and early 19th.  It is also ultra-weird to see very Swedish blonde people doing hip hop really quite well.  Singing and playing is a hugely popular, almost every old house has a foot pump organ somewhere.   Personally,  I’ve always liked singing and one of the great things about church is that you can belt stuff out without worrying too much; Until your Swedish mother turns to you and says thoughtfully, “it’s a pity you can’t sing.....oh dear (once more with feeling and sigh effect)”.  Then I fortify myself with the bit where the psalm says “make a joyful noise to the Lord” with emphasis on ‘noise’ – cool!  God doesn’t care what I sound like as long as it’s got heart and He trumps everyone on the relevance of opinion board really, what with godness and stuff, so Ha! Mother.

Accordingly (?? What cos I can’t sing????), in my efforts to integrate into Swedishness, I said that I’d come to a choir day at church, with a concert thing in the evening.   For these sorts of things, they get choir masters in! Professionals!!! Oh well, I can mumble at the back.  ‘What part do you sing Karin?’ ‘Errh, technically speaking, alto, but..’, ‘right, sit over there then’, ‘erh, OK’.  Poor Maria, (PM) who had to sit next to me.  She was very kind and some notes were hit in the right kind of way.  The tenor sitting in front of me did turn around and grin, which widened when he saw it was me (dark, dark threaty thoughts about tenors ...).   We learnt 6 songs, 2 in English (yeah, only one thing to concentrate on!) in an afternoon.  I was absolutely dead, and PM kept laughing. I couldn’t half have done with a drink, possibly a quadruple gin, though thinking about it, it was just as well that I didn’t.

After a break with sarnies, cake and lots of coffee, hurray, we had a dress rehearsal.  People were very good and very kind... and stuck me in the middle near the front.

When we came to the actual service, we trooped in and I found to my horror that there was a microphone directly in front of me.  After fixing the sound man with a piercing stare, to which he returned a smirk and V sign (yes it was, I checked for cultural difference), I tilted it in the direction of my neighbour, who was good enough to do a solo and smirked back.  I did manage to hit a few more correct notes, I think, and blessed my ability to lip sync, which, even though I say it myself, is phenomenal.   

There were threats of a duet next concert, but I think PM was joking.......

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Way Here

I was going to write about our first Swedish Christmas, but the muse dictates that that will have to wait a while and I’m going to write about where we live.  You can, of course, Google Map it and even travel down the frightfully busy main road that runs just a hundred metres as the woodpecker flies from our little house.  When I say busy, G looks at me in a funny way, but I mean that there are cars passing at least once every few minutes at rush hour and about three per 15 min in the rest of the day.  The lorries (about 2x the tonnage of the largest UK trucks) are the loudest and are what we hear from the house even during the summer, when the green screens most of the noise.  The road had gotten to be so busy that it had to be widened by 1.5m each side last year, which did cause a bit of a fuss, but it is easier to walk and cycle along it now and, and and we have cycle path all the way to Nyhem. Of course, there is not that constant hum that is the background noise of London, and it’s definitely not the A40, which was about the same distance as the pigeon flies.  The road has become so much busier than in the golden days of my youth because it is a good cut through to the motorway from Stockholm to Göteborg (Gothenburg) and has the added attraction of general scenicness.  There is the added weight of the building explosion (oooh, I can feel G’s look from here).

Our drive starts with a gate, which Evil S put in and requires us to keep shut at all times, even when there are no cows in the field.  We know this, because it is wired shut if we leave it open. Fun, fun, fun!  The drive follows the ‘olde roade’, which was the main way to Mullsjö for about 3000 years and most of which E.S. has allowed to fall into disrepair and oblivion. The drive poodles along parallel to the road for about 100m and passes over 2 cattle grids, runs down the little valley and then wends its way up the hill, through the birch and pine trees to our little house for about 300m.  Near the house, it’s soft with pine needles and sandy mud that feels like silk on the feet.  Otherwise it’s mud and cow muck and stones.  It needs to be renewed quite often, cos Evil S keeps doing stupid things like putting the cow feeder at the bend in the valley, so the cows stop there and churn up the road.  He then complains that we are being unreasonable when we ask for it to be moved further away and can he now pay for the damage please... now, not next year!

The house is a little red ‘summer’ house, which stands on the top of a sandy hill (225m for those interested) overlooking the Stråken lake.  It’s next to the larger gray, round house of one of my aunts, contrasting the effects of architect vs kit rather effectively.  The houses are right up against the limit of building regs that say no new houses can be built nearer than 200m from lakes.  ES has planted firs on the (previously) protected environmentally significant sandy bank going down to the lake in an effort to stop us seeing the view, bless him...
 
Goodness, I do believe that my new obsession are roads!  Wonder how long that will last before I get beaten over the head by a kindly passer-by?  One can but hope.