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.

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 18^th Century and early 19^th.  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.......

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.

The First Snow

Fir trees, on the whole, aren’t good for much.  They are thick, dark green and, unless you are a small beetle or a survivalist, are boring, boring, boring. Until the first snow falls. They then get transformed into a clump of magic and from every single one you expect to find a singing dwarf or growling troll.  Fortunately, life is full of disappointment.  On one of my walks there is a stand of firs, surrounded by birch trees.  It’s normally on the boring bit of the walk, but when the sun was glistening on the lattice of the birch branches and the white edged firs were sparkling against the pale blue sky yesterday, it was so beautiful that one had to sit down and appreciate it.  Obviously, that would be stand for a few minutes, cos sitting in the snow is not really to be recommended, being somewhat cold and wet.

The first snow cheers everyone up.  It’s what people have been waiting for, the reason for the winter tyres and the other equipment and, of course, the opportunity to have more outdoor fun.  By this the Swedes mean winter sports, which, in my experience mean sitting in the snow a lot.  We all know that the first snow will melt before long, but the beauty and hope is still there.  They will also say that everything is so gray until the snow comes, but this is only in their heads.  It is certainly more sparkly, in the sun, but in the clouds, the landscape has just shades of white going through to black.  Although, looking out of the window now, the chestnut brown of the wet pine trunks glows against the pearl grey sky, so I guess everything depends on how you look at it.

The kitten certainly enjoys the snow and is out-doors more now in minus temperatures than when it was 3 degrees and rainy. I think I’ll have to train her to get the wood and stuff as it requires to my horror, a different type of dressing.  Trouser legs have to be tucked in and it will will have to be fur-lined wellies at the back door from now on. The snow goes over the top of the clogs – ghastly. I also have to dive out of the front door before Graham goes to the car.  This isn’t some sort of marriage survival technique, but the snow has to be swept off the steps before it’s trodden in and becomes bobbly ice (technical term).

Well, it’s minus one, 4 cm of snow on the ground and some more in the air. Do I go for a walk or do I put another log on the fire, dig out the cocoa and put the Wii Sport on?  Excuse me, whilst I hitch the cat to the wood sled and decide what to do next.