On this day, twelve years ago in the northern Stockholm suburb of Sollentuna, a small, white, fluffy puppy was born. She was a pure pedigree Toy Poodle, with an illustrious parentage and a long, double-barrelled, hyphenated, upper class and totally unpronounceable name. She was first sold as a tiny new-born puppy to an elderly lady who kept her for two years, naming her something naff like Snowball (Snowball???) This elderly lady subsequently sold the little dog to a very excited twelve year old girl and her family who changed her name to the far more appropriate Lambi, grew out the awful “poodle-bimbo” hair-do and loved and cherished her completely.

It’s hard to believe that our little Lambi is twelve years old already. I’ve only been part of her life for the last five years, but in that time she has her left indelible paw prints on my heart (and on my good camel coloured suede jacket, too, but we won’t refer to that today). She is a bright, alert, sociable, intelligent and totally charming companion. She makes friends everywhere she goes and she has been one of the reasons that I’ve met so many people here in Nynäshamn. Everyone wants to stop and chat to her and by association, me. It has reached the stage that if I’m seen around town without my faithful, fluffy accessory people immediately ask me “Where’s Lambi? Is she okay?”

So Happy Birthday, Lambi! May you have many, many more. I know that people say that a dog year is equivalent to seven human years, making her 84 today, but I believe that it isn’t quite so cut and dried and depends on the size and breed of the dog. A twelve year old Labrador for example is a very elderly dog, whereas the miniature varieties seem to age more slowly. The vet told us that Lambi could live to be 16 to 18, so she has plenty of birthdays to celebrate in the future.



This is her, playing in the back garden on the weekend with her friend, Charlie, a four year old Australian Sheltie who lives in the same apartment block as we do.

Today is also my sister-in-law’s fiftieth birthday. This is an extra special birthday in Sweden. The birthdays falling on the decade (20, 30, 40 etc) are all considered something special, but fifty is THE big one. This is a little different in Australia where forty is the big birthday, along with the whole “Life begins at 40” idea. If one bothers to celebrate a birthday after 21,it would tend to be the 40th birthday, so it was a surprise to me when I saw my first fiftieth birthday celebration here in Sweden. I haven’t been able to discover why fifty is the magic day, but then again I have no idea why forty is so big in Australia.

Happy birthday, Mille! And thankyou for being so welcoming and open hearted to me when I came to Sweden.



For a fiftieth here, you tend to have an open house on the actual day, plus a really big invitation-only party (Mille will have hers on Saturday night) and invite lots and lots of people, including those you may not have seen for ages. Everyone makes a big fuss about you at work, at home with flowers, cards, telegrams, cake, nice speeches etc. Hey, even complete strangers may also spontaneously break into the Swedish birthday song for your fiftieth. This actually happened to an Australian friend here, who went to buy her monthly train pass and needed to show her ID as she was paying by Visa. The woman at the counter looked at her ID, declared loudly “Wow, it’s your fiftieth birthday today!” (just what you want a crowded railway station to hear) and started singing Ja må du leva much to her bemusement.

When Lars-Göran had his fiftieth birthday, I had only been in Sweden for a year, could hardly speak Swedish and was a little unsure of what to do, especially as his birthday falls in the middle of winter and he hates parties. But I really wanted to do the right thing and make a fuss for this traditionally special day. So, without telling him, I booked a table for his whole family and a selection of our best friends at the very exclusive Ulriksdals Wärdshus for a surprise Sunday lunch. The restaurant were really lovely and happy to make me a special cake in the shape of his favourite cartoon character Mumin and we had a memorable day that we still talk about today.



I also had his picture and a greeting printed in the daily paper, but forgot all about it. It was only when he came out in shock and showed it to me that I remembered sending it in the month before. He immediately suspected his brother as he thought I didn't know enough Swedish to have arranged it myself. I'm not sure he's forgiven me yet for that. *grin*

What about me? I think of my own age, forty eight (forty-eight!) with a tinge of anxiety. As a girl, I had been unable to imagine even being twenty one. In my early twenties, I’d been unable to imagine being thirty. In my thirties, forty had seemed the absolute terminal point – as for fifty, that was way beyond terminal. We discussed age on Saturday night when we saw Olivia Newton-John being interviewed by Parky and I said she looked pretty good considering she must be pushing sixty and L-G admitted that he now didn't consider sixty to be that old.

Well, I’m not turning fifty for over another year, but I’ve managed to convince Lars-Göran that we don’t make a fuss of fifty in Australia, so it’s inappropriate for me to bother over here. I also told a small white lie and said I’d had a big fortieth birthday party. Which of course is not true as I loathe parties in my honour and any kind of fuss about me more than he does. And as my birthday is on the very awkward January 1st, I’m pretty sure I’ll be quite safe. Just in case, I may hibernate on January 1st, 2007.