Learning a new language can be both an interesting and frustrating experience. I still remember the early days here when I didn't have a clue what anyone around me was saying. It was such an isolating feeling, that I was determined to learn Swedish quickly in order to participate in life here fully. I am always amazed by people who live in a country for many years and never learn the language. How do they survive without the luxury of understanding the society they are living in?

Of course, I made many errors, confused English and Swedish words etc producing some funny moments that had my husband either rolling around with laughter or looking at me like I had three heads. Generally speaking, those days are behind me. Or so I thought.....

This week, we have been very busy with my mother-in-law who has undergone another bout of surgery associated with her paralysis, this time plastic surgery and skin grafts to repair a very deep pressure wound in her lower back. She was discharged from Karolinska hospital and sent to Rehab Station in Frösundavik (just north of Stockholm) for a month to convalesce. For us it is a 120km round trip every second day to see her and bring various things that she needs from her home.

When she was moved there, she rang us immediately sounding quite distressed and depressed about her room. We tried to reassure her and said we'd come and see her asap. We were sure she was exaggerating about how ghastly it was, but in fact, she was right. It is a very modern facility, constructed from a renovated barracks or stable area that belonged to a large eighteenth century military training grounds. I can sort of see what the architects were trying to achieve in keeping with the theme of stables, but honestly, her room is exactly like a packing crate. Horizontal, unplaned, unpainted wooden plank walls. Wooden floors stained to look very old and absolutely nothing on the walls at all. Minimalism gone crazy. While it probably looked wonderful on the drawing board, in reality it is totally inappropriate for a bedridden, paralysed patient. Can you imagine lying in bed for a month looking at four identical grey wooden walls?

The first day we brought photographs of her six grandchildren and talked about what else we could do to brighten up the place. I told her that I was so surprised there was not even a painting on the walls and she said that she'd like us to get a fish for the wall. Well that's what I THOUGHT she said. It's not as crazy as it sounds. You can buy fish plaques for the wall. But I quickly recalled that we were speaking Swedish, so it could not have been "a fish". I should have left it at that and looked it up in the dictionary, but I made the mistake of asking Lars-Göran.

Exactly! He is still laughing 24 hours later and making the most appalling fish jokes and puns. It seems that mother wanted us to buy an affisch (in other words a poster) that we could hang up with thumbtacks. I have never heard it called that before. I always use the word "poster". Never again!

So today we went to Gallerix in Huddinge Centrum and bought two lovely posters featuring paintings of beautiful Swedish summer motifs - a coastal, archipelago scene and a summer garden scene. We also bought her some flowering plants from the stall in the square to brighten her room. It certainly made a huge difference to the room and she is much happier.

Now I just have to live down the fish remark.