On Wellies, Wilderness, and a View of the World.

Today was utterly boring apart from the fact that I wore my new wellies for the first time. It came at a price, of course, because new wellies – along with all new shoes – react with the ground differently and force you to move your legs in a slightly different way. And then your legs ache and you’ve still got two more miles to walk until you can take them off again. Perseverance becomes the watchword and life is about nothing if not trials.

And then I cleared the lane grids of leaves and other debris again. I kept encountering patches of crunchiness on the road surface where it was littered with acorns and beech mast and the winged seeds of ash and sycamore. It brought up that old dream of mine in which I’m twenty years old and in possession of a vast tract of farmland in the manicured lowlands of England. I would stop all human activity on it and let nature have free rein to do what it will. And then I would leave it alone for fifty years before returning to marvel at the wilderness.

*  *  *

But I’m not here to talk about wellies and wildernesses. I’m here to talk about foreigners. I like them, you know; I really do. I think it’s because I was brought up in the English working class at a time when nobody I knew ever went abroad. I was considered posh among my classmates because my stepfather had an office job and so we went on holiday to Devon and Cornwall instead of Blackpool. The closest most of us got to a foreign trip was a sojourn to Rhyl in Wales on the office summer outing. Even Scotland was considered exotic, and Ireland was a truly mysterious place somewhere beyond the mist you could see hanging around Morecombe Bay. The Spanish Costas hadn’t yet been invented and we didn’t even know that Italians ate spaghetti which didn’t come out of a can.

And so all things foreign – including the people – held, for me, the promise of mystery and adventure. They still do, believe it or not, because some early impressions never completely leave you.

So now I want to broaden my horizons by meeting a foreigner, preferably a Swede, and even more preferably a pretty young lady Swede who exudes the fabled Swedish glumness from every pore and can talk for at least half an hour about the hidden symbolism of hard boiled eggs. If anyone feels inclined to apply for the position, I have to say that I’m in no position to offer pecuniary compensation. But I will freely undertake to engage my undivided attention until my perception of the hard boiled egg is educated to a level hitherto unknown.

A Few Notes for a Thursday in August.

I had another frustrating day yesterday trying to get several issues sorted out with British Telecom. I spent a whole hour on the phone being told one thing by one person, having it contradicted by another, and then being given a garbled explanation to a query by a man from billing. I worked his explanation out for myself and read it back to him. ‘Is that correct?’ I asked. ‘Well, sort of,’ he replied. In consequence, I was a little concerned about the contents of my bill which I received in the mail this morning. I fully expected to have to spend another hour on the phone arguing again, but no. The bill was just as I knew it should be and it’s already been paid. Why does life have to be like this? (The phone line fault, however, is still extant. Engineer booked for Saturday.)

*  *  *

On a brighter note, I finally saw a flock of house martins hunting over the garden this evening. They left it late this year. I used to be able to watch them on a daily basis over the whole summer, but tonight’s show was this year’s first. I expect it’s all to do with climate change. (I wonder whether BT are going to start using that as an excuse for their ineptitude in the matter of customer service before too long.)

*  *  *

There’s an ad on my email inbox page for EDF, one of the UK’s power suppliers. It’s obviously in response to mounting concern over the insane rise in fuel prices which are bad and about to get a lot worse. It says: Our handy app lets you manage your account on the go, and we’re here for you on WhatsApp and SMS. Note the classic corporate claim: ‘we’re here for you.’ This is typical smoke-screening. The fact is that energy prices are rising at a crazy rate which is unmanageable for very many people and will cause horrendous debt issues, and no amount of 'managing' it on an app is going to make any difference.

*  *  *

Today’s good news is that we had some proper rain – over an hour of reasonably heavy stuff which we badly needed. And its timing was impeccable. It started just as I was shutting the door to go for my walk, and ended a few minutes after I got back. Since I was wearing a good quality raincoat and wellington boots, only my knees got wet so I didn’t complain.

*  *  *

And here’s a little oddity to finish the post: I’ve started to have warm feelings towards Sweden and the Swedes for some reason. I still think they have a tendency to exude glumness in the matter of films and TV dramas, but their general demeanour and attitudes have begun to appeal to me. From what I’ve seen and heard, both of and from them, it appears to be calm, considerate, open-minded, intelligent, commendably lacking ego, and altogether agreeable. It’s odd to think that in all my life I’ve never met a Swede, and I’ve certainly never been there, so maybe I’m just imagining it all. Maybe it’s the fact that of all the Nordic nations, theirs is the only flag to have yellow on it. That sort of thing matters to me. Or maybe it was that outrageous back-heeled goal scored by Alicia ‘Mad Dog’ Russo in the Euro semi-final against Sweden, and I just feel sorry for them. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow.

Two Notes on Matters European.

I’ve occasionally made light-hearted references to the glumness of the Swede. Well, tonight it was no joke because they lost 4-0 to England in the semi-final of the Women’s European championship.

They did me a favour, though. At the end of the game I didn’t see a single Swedish girl engulfed in lachrymatory lament, so there was no need for me to feel guilty about my team winning. Well done Swedish ladies. Valhalla awaits and you may share my sauna on the way there. (That bit really is a joke.)

*  *  *

On the political front, I gather Europe now has a first rate narrow nationalist (some of his compatriots say ‘neo-Nazi’) in the form of Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Oh good; that’s all we needed. But here’s what’s odd:

I gather he’s a friend of Mr Putin, and one of Putin’s strange excuses for invading Ukraine was the justifiable excising of a Nazi-oriented country from the environs of Russia (even though Zelensky is a Jew.) So shouldn’t he be invading Hungary instead of Ukraine? Maybe he will. Just speculating.

On Statistics, Stereotypes and My Aunt's Ire.

I just watched another women’s footie match. This one was between the Scintillating Seductresses from Sweden (every one of them 5ft 9 and slim, and all with blonde hair or blonde highlights – they reminded me of the cabin crew on a United Airlines flight I took once) and the Glorious Gallics of Belgium (all shapes, sizes and hairstyles – one of them even appeared to be wearing a Harpo Marx wig – and all the more supportable for the fact.) The Gallics lost, however, to the only goal of the game scored in time added on at the end, which was a shame.

What I found annoying was the nature of the statistics. They were all about things like territory, possession, shots at goal, shots on target, and other such meaningless nonsense. What they should actually have been comparing was who had the most come-hither eyes, which team had the best aggregate length of pony tails, and whether Swedish or Belgian legs had the deepest sun tans. That’s pretty much what I was noticing since nobody was scoring any goals.

Jeffrey!

Yes, aunt.

You’re doing it again.

Am I?

Yes.

Doing what?

Objectifying women.

Oh, that.

You know it’s wrong, don’t you? I've told you so before and you said you were trying to get better.

Yes, aunt.

Should I presume that you were only joking on this occasion?

Erm…

*  *  *

Tell you what, though. By the end of the game, the Swedish girls all looked as though they’d just spent ninety minutes in a sauna. But then, I suppose they usually do.

On a Famous Swede and Looks in General.

In furtherance of my current interest in Sweden, Swedes and all things Swedish, I decided last night to find out a bit about King Gustavus Adolphus (or Adolph the Great as he is officially known, not to be confused with Adolph the Infamous about whom the less said the better.) Most of it boiled down to two inescapable facts:

 

1. He was a military genius.

2. He wasn’t the best looking bloke, and probably had difficulty getting even a Swedish woman to share a sauna with him.

What interested me most, however, was the fact that he was killed in battle in 1632. This is surprising to an Englishman because by 1632 English kings had long ceased to put their bodies on the line when there were nasty sharp things and destructive heavy things flying around. As far as I’m aware, the last English king to die in battle was Richard III in 1485. Take King Charles I, for example, a more-or-less contemporary of Gustavus. His method was to sit on a speedy horse on a hill with a good view of the playing field so he could hightail it back to Oxford (or even Scotland) if the day failed to go well. And so he did after the Battle of Naseby in 1645.

But maybe the matter of looks has to be taken into account here. Being not the best looking bloke on the block, Gustave probably didn’t think it mattered too much if he came to a sticky end with things sticking into him which shouldn’t have been there (although I was much saddened to learn that his horse also got injured in the affair, and he was probably very good looking as all horses are. I met one today which proves it.) Charles I, on the other hand, was rather more favoured in that regard and so probably thought that it mattered a very great deal.

But nemesis is full of little tricks, and so it proved with poor old Charles. Less than four years after escaping the mob at Naseby, his much favoured features (along with the rest of his head) were severed from the rest of him in the only judicial execution of an English king. And who should have been the main mover in this dastardly act? Why, none other than Oliver Cromwell Esq who was even uglier than Gustavus Adolphus. This is one of history’s great ironies, or so it seems to me.

Two connected notes:

1. Watching Crystelle Pereira on the TV this evening brought into sharp focus something I’ve known for a long time: It isn’t so much the physical features which make a face attractive, it’s how the incumbent uses it.

2. The local squirrels have taught me that:

• They are probably unique in the world of wild animals in having an instinctive understanding of right and wrong.
• They much prefer to do wrong than right, and are capable of running away at lightning speed when caught in the act.

Squirrels actually have a number of unsavoury and destructive characteristics, but everybody likes them anyway because they’re so good looking. Have I made my point yet?

Keeping in Touch.

This week I’ve been very busy doing things that didn’t seem worth writing about, so that's why I haven't written anything. Take today for example:

I drove to the doctor’s to find out why they’ve been trying to contact me, and also to pick up my meds. The first was discovered but unresolved; the second was unsuccessful because the pharmacy was closed for lunch. So then I drove to the hospital in Derby for my CT scans, only to find that the mobile CT scanner unit wasn’t where the starchy admin woman on the phone told me it would be. (She treated me like a naughty little boy but was easily dismissed. Such people usually are.) I found it eventually and was put through the usual process of sliding in and out of something like a washing machine just as the spin cycle is starting. It was about as much fun as it usually is, but I did meet a woman from the Philippines, a man from Nigeria, and another man from Sri Lanka. I quite like meeting people who come from somewhere else.

Then it was back to Ashbourne to pick up my meds from the pharmacist, who I quite like because she has good energies and understands my sense of humour. Off into town next to get my week’s groceries. The checkout operator was one I haven’t seen before and appeared to be inexperienced because she failed to charge me for one of the fancy bread rolls I’m planning to have with my home-made soup later in the week. If only I hadn’t used all that petrol driving nearly fifty miles I would be 45p in profit on the day. But I did, so I’m not.

See? Not really worth writing about, apart from the fact that driving past the signpost for the village of Shirley reminded me of the odd fact that the name has attained a level of elevated significance over the past few years because of the people associated with it – two authors and a light bearer.

Tonight I watched the penultimate episode of Wallander. He went jetting off to Latvia and met probably the best looking of his several belles (and nearly got shot for his efforts.) Latvia looked even glummer than Sweden, but it probably isn’t. Wallander’s new Volvo isn’t black, by the way. It’s dark grey, which might or might not be the director’s signal that spring has arrived in Sweden.

Oh, and my smarty-pants desk lamp – which looks decidedly Scandinavian – broke down tonight. I sense a pattern emerging.

Sweden and the Matter of Skies.

I was watching an episode of Wallander last night in which there was a long tracking shot of the sky. It caused me to wonder how many people spend as much time as I do looking at the sky to get a sense of its personality (‘personality’ was deliberately chosen over ‘mood’ for reasons which might or might not be obvious.) And so I wrote to the priestess, who currently lives in Sweden, to ask whether she’d studied the Swedish sky and noted any differences between them and the Australian skies with which she grew up. I’ve had no reply yet.

It’s a fact that I’m affected to a surprising degree by the personality of skies. I can stare at them for quite long periods, trying to describe them to myself with words. When I do come up with words, though, they’re usually inadequate. What I do know is that they’re capable of pushing my mood all over the place, which is probably why the only time I come anywhere close to feeling relaxed is after dark when I’m in the house with the curtains drawn. So maybe I should now stop accusing the Swedes of being glum, and instead blame the personality of the skies over which they have no control.

And on the subject of moods, I’ve now performed eight blood pressure tests with my trusty new BP monitor (which cost me the princely sum of £24.99) and am currently declaring myself to be very nearly normal. Being normal is something to which I’m relatively unaccustomed, but I’ll live with it for now.

Off to the north country in a few minutes to tag along with my favourite Swedish detective and luxuriate in the glumness engendered by the gory goings-on in Ystad. Wallander drives a Volvo, you know. A black one.

Educating Rupert.

My walk today took in another part of the Shire to which my steps have been a stranger for the past year and a half – a little (and relatively little known) copse which has an enchanted pool in it. (To most people it would be seen as a depression in the ground which fills with water for most of the year, but it’s an enchanted pool to me because I haven’t yet stopped trying to live my life like Rupert Bear. I still entertain the suspicion that I would gain access to a mysterious other world if only I had the courage to jump into it.)

And therein I found another change from the good old days – two notices pinned to trees which say: Private Land. No public right of way. You wouldn’t think there’d be so many changes in a mere year and a half, would you? And all of them, so far, being deleterious.

But a little way further on – just as I was communing with my favourite copper beech tree in Church Lane – a woman walked past and engaged me in conversation. Noticing the slight hint of something vaguely Germanic in her accent, I asked her:

‘Where are you from? Are you German?’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘Nordic.’

‘From Norway?’ I continued (because in Britain we generally associate the adjective ‘Nordic’ with Norway, preferring ‘Scandinavian’ for the other parts.)

‘No, Sweden.’

‘So why Nordic and not Swedish?’

‘Because I’m part Swedish and part Finnish.’

Ah, right. So that led the conversation into the subject of Finland, and I mentioned a young Finnish woman I once met who was physically striking because of her near-white hair and extremely pale blue eyes.

‘She was probably Karelian,’ said the Nordic woman.

I pretended to understand, of course, because that’s what people who’ve never grown out of Rupert Bear do, but I didn’t really. My only experience of ‘Karelian’ came from the piece by Sibelius entitled The Karelia Suite. I didn’t even know it was a place. I looked it up when I got back and discovered that it’s a region in the north of the Northern Lands which stretches from Finland across Sweden to the north of Norway.

So there you are: walking can be educational as well as healthy. Point taken; lesson learned.

 

My mentor. He always managed to get home

in time for tea, a fact of which I greatly approve

Swedes Out of Line.

I understand that Sweden is taking a rather more relaxed approach to the coronavirus crisis than the rest of Europe. People are being advised to carry on more or less as normal, but to observe a range of relatively simple precautions. This is provoking heated debate there, with some arguing that the country will fare better this way in the long run, while others are getting very angry and claiming that Sweden is a major disaster waiting to happen. Time will tell, of course, and times might change everything.

Meanwhile, I heard this morning that road blocks are now being set up in Britain, and the army are starting to patrol beaches to disperse people. I wonder whether the Swedish official had a point when he said that locking people in is also bad for their health. Try arguing around that one. But Sweden always did have a reputation for introducing psychological implications to an argument where others are inclined to ignore them.

What continues to attract my attention is the fact that I’ve seen no reference anywhere to the plight of the homeless. With most catering establishments closed, I assume there will be far less gash food to scavenge. And how do you stop homeless people congregating? And will they receive the attention of the health services? Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough.

A Little Swedish Epiphany.

I was never one for regarding lager as beer. For me, lager was a pale imitation of beer. Beer needed to have colour, body and a strong, hoppy taste, and my taste was for a good British bitter beer. And if it was brewed in my home county of Staffordshire, so much the better. (I made an exception for Guinness so I suppose it must be connected with the water. The Liffey and the Trent clearly have something going for them.)

That all changed with the operation (which was exactly one year ago today, by the way.) After the operation I found bitter beer too heavy and moved over to lager for the lightness. The problem was that lager lacked colour, body and taste, but I persevered for practical reasons which I needn’t go into.

Tonight I tried a Swedish lager called Pistonhead which, although typically lacking taste and colour, at least has body and is more palatable than most of its genre. I found this surprising and a fit subject for a bout of musing: why would Swedish lager have more body than most of its ilk? And then the answer came to me in a flash:

The words 'body' and 'Sweden' match. See the following picture of a Swedish woman police officer making an off-duty arrest and you’ll see what I mean.

 

The Glumness of the Swede. A Retraction.

I think I’ve come up with a reasonable explanation for why the Swedes appear a little glum at times. My perception of them has now altered and I don’t think they’re glum at all. I was musing on people like Bergman and Garbo, and also the serial Black Lake and cop dramas like Wallander, and came to the tentative conclusion that Swedes are simply more aware of the human condition, with all its faults and frailties, than most people are. It’s probably their forte, and probably why 72% of Swedes have Masters degrees in psychology.

(OK, I made the number up, but it would probably be about right if only they’d put their mind to it instead of making Volvos and flat pack furniture and singing about the Battle of Waterloo.)

So, dear people of Sweden, I retract my earlier suspicion, apologise unreservedly, and applaud you. I might even consider coming to live there if only I could learn to say ‘OK’ with the correct inflection.

The Glum Swedish Drama: Epilogue.

The drama is done. The denouement tied the loose ends together reasonably well but unfortunately descended to a level of implausibility which I find irritating. Still, Minnie made it (albeit with a nasty knife wound to her lower abdomen which meant she should really have bled to death) but Mr Viking didn’t. His knife wound was fatal, and he wasn’t the bad guy after all. I think that just about ties up the glum Swedish drama thread.

If you should want to watch it, it’s called Black Lake and is best viewed subsequent to overdoing the coke and being in need of a little grounding. It’s unremittingly glum until the very final scene when a Volvo drives up to the quayside. They’re so very reassuring, aren’t they, Volvos?

What on earth am I going to do with future Saturday nights?

Post Epilogue

I forgot to mention that after the Volvo had drawn up on the quayside, an Abba tribute band jumped out and began a spirited rendition of Mama Mia. I suspect I might have been hallucinating at that point because it's pretty cold in my living room. (You try watching a glum Swedish drama in a cold living room on a cold Saturday night in January and see whether you can manage to stay entirely on the rails.)

It Was a Glum and Creepy Night.

Just a quick update on the last post:

I watched the glum Swedish drama as notified and now I’m glum. It wasn’t the concluding episode; there’s one more to come. I still don’t know whether Minnie is loopy or not, I still don’t know whether Mr Viking really is a bad egg (we know that he’s been cooking the books, but that just means he’s a fan of free market principles), and I still don’t know whether the creepy old housekeeper who clearly knows-something-but-isn’t-telling is complicit in the dastardly deed (whatever it may be) or merely a victim of her own glum history. But at least the frail little guy who never does anything but creep about creepily hasn’t shot anybody yet, even though he’s both the creepiest and glummest of the lot.

Oh well, here’s to next Saturday…

Meanwhile, my Blogger stats tracker reports that while I was away becoming glum, I had the strangest, most mysterious set of visits I’ve ever seen – thirteen of them, no less. Now, that is creepy. And the wind is moaning and howling even more than it does in glum Swedish dramas. Don't I just love atmosphere?

On Odd Numbers and the Swedish Question.

It’s an odd fact that while I know without thinking that 8+4 = 12, I have genuine difficulty remembering that 7+4 = 11 and 7+5 = 12. I think it must have something to do with odd numbers clashing with the oddness of my brain. And maybe that’s why I’m feeling ill for part of nearly every day at the moment. My current age is indivisible by 2, and that can’t be a good thing.

*  *  *

In a little over an hour I plan to settle into my uncomfortable armchair in my cold living room and watch the concluding part of the glum Swedish drama. I’m guessing that Minnie isn’t a loony after all, and that the heavily bearded Viking lookalike who runs the rehabilitation centre turns out be a bit of a bad egg. I never liked him. His excessively self-confident air and staring eyes always seemed like a dead giveaway to me, but I might be wrong.

And, as you might expect, the Viking lookalike has already had sex with dear, supposedly-a-bit-loopy Minnie. No surprises there, then. As Peter Cook famously said in the legendary Bloody Greta Garbo sketch: ‘You know what these bloody Swedes are like!’

Finally, I do hope that all Swedes reading these posts will excuse my apparent calumnies. I’m sure your personal qualities are of a high order, your virtues second to none, and your national characteristics something of which to be justly proud. But you must admit, you can be a bit glum at times.

The Glumness of the Swede.

I just watched a Swedish psychological drama on the TV and now I’m in a bad mood. Swedish dramas have a habit of doing that, don’t they? Think of Ingmar Bergman and you’ll know what I mean. And what about Greta Garbo? She wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party, was she?

Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Maybe she was searching for her soul, because Swedish dramas always seem to be about soul-searching people spreading glumness and grinding self-reflection in their wake. Or it could be that living in a country which extends north of the Arctic Circle gives you the right to go about depressing everybody who doesn’t. Then again, it could be that the Swedes are a really happy bunch of people who just don’t want anybody else to know it or we might all go there and make pathetic jokes:

‘Are you a Swede?’

Ja.

‘Oh, good. Got room for a few turnips?’

You can’t really blame them, can you?

I only ever knew one Swede personally. His name was Stefan and I never saw the slightest sign that he was searching for his soul. What I most remember about Stefan was that he was friendly, intelligent, polite, personable, a little on the serious side, spoke English so perfectly that you would never have guessed he was a Swede, and that he didn’t have blond hair.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. What I most remember about Stefan was that he screwed up my blossoming relationship with an attractive young theatre designer and I didn’t speak to him for several weeks. I relented eventually because he’d never intended to trip me up, poor chap, and I’d made an error of judgement anyway. And it’s an odd coincidence that the attractive young theatre designer did have blonde hair.

But there you go, you see? Meet a Swede and you end up depressed. Where on earth do I go from here?

Fuelling the Crime Rate.

I need a displacement device, since the enjoyment of an English rural landscape replete with perfect summer sunset is not congruent with the sound of rap and dance music coming from somewhere over the valley. So…

… I thought I’d mention this interesting little incident from our neighbours across the water in Sweden. This is the accompanying photograph:

It shows an off-duty female police officer arresting a man who stole her friend’s mobile phone while they were relaxing in a Stockholm park. It’s expected that police patrols will be greatly strengthened tomorrow in anticipation of a massive rise in the number of men picking pockets, snatching bags and stealing ice creams from children (and then not running away very fast.)

The Viking Gene?

There was a fascinating news report from northern Sweden today. A man who’d been trapped in his snowbound car for two months has been found alive. He’d had no food, apparently, just melt water from the snow, and the temperature had been down as low as -30°C (-22°F.)

The report said that he’d been unable to utter more than a few words when they found him. Such wimps, these Scandinavians.