Last weekend's normally dull trip to the local supermarket for the weekly shopping was brightened somewhat by an amusing incident. It involved a woman I have seen (and heard) around town before. This young American makes being obnoxious into an art form and I literally cross the street to avoid her. She sounds exactly like that Fran character on the sitcom The Nanny and any time I've seen her, she is in full flight whining at the top of her strident and penetrating English about "the stupid Swedes". As every second word is punctuated by "f*ck, like you know..." it is not always easy to understand exactly what she is on about. I wonder why people with nothing to say believe that increasing their volume and adding a few vulgarities will somehow add substance to their blather. And why is it still considered wrong to tear off their arms and beat them until they shut up?

Anyway, I was browsing around the baking section on Saturday morning, selecting ingredients for Christmas cooking when I heard her unmistakable bellow from two aisles away. Just think of Fran saying "Oh my Gwad, Mr Sheffield!" and you have it.

"Will you just look at this! she declared in a disgusted tone, the stupid Swedes have their own f*cking jelly for Halloween! And of course it's on special as, you know, like f*cking Halloween was like a f*cking a month ago, you know!"

Halloween jam? I can honestly say that I've never seen any before and would have been surprised as Halloween is pretty much non-existent in Sweden. When she had moved on I went and checked out the jam aisle and found no Halloween jam, but there was Hallon jam (hallonsylt). Which means raspberry jam. I just about cried with laughter.

This put me in a bouncy mood and after packing away the groceries, we went out on a long walk to enjoy the few remaining hours of daylight. While it was cold, the sun was shining so it's great to get out into the brisk, fresh air rather than stay cooped up in the apartment.




When we approached the bay at Fagerviken, we stopped to take the above picture. It was just a random shot between a couple of houses, but had a nice view of the homes on the small island of Trehörningen as well as a few ducks swimming around in the water. We stepped over a small fence to stand a little closer and get a better angle. What we didn't realise was that this piece of land was patrolled by a security guard and here he comes with his "Hello, hello and what do we have here" expression on his face.




We both thought he looked like the security guards (ordningsvakter) that seem to be hanging around everywhere these days. While Mr Swan didn't have his security guard badge on, he had a similar bolshie attitude to that which I've observed from some of his human colleauges before. He approached us and told us to clear off in no uncertain terms.




As an aside, I do feel sympathy towards security guards who usually have a thankless job of dealing with a lot of drunk fools late at night, but some of them do let the power trip of a badge and uniform really go to their heads. Anyway, he seemed to think that we were suitably cowed and intimidated and strutted off muttering something about "And don't let me catch you in here again".




After checking that the boat was securely moored, we ventured further around the coastal walk of Strandvägen where we discovered that most of the town had the same idea and we found ourselves surrounded by people out catching the sunshine and the fresh breeze. The water was sweeping into the bay, driven northwards by the strong south westerly wind and we wandered down from the road to the actual beach where I sheltered behind a large rock and soaked up the sun. It still feels odd to be wearing hat, gloves, jacket AND sunglasses. Somehow my Australian side just can't accept such a sartorial mixture - it's just so wrong.




We were not alone on the beach for long. Several people came down to watch the waves and sit by the shore just enjoying the welcome warmth and the view. It is a very popular excursion place for the residents and you get many people bringing a thermos of coffee and some cinnamon buns to have an impromptu picnic by the sea. Others are content just to sit and contemplate life.




The more adventurous among the residents prefer a more bracing exercise than simply walking in the woods and along the shore. We saw a couple of people out in kayaks, paddling furiously against the powerful wind and waves. It looked far too healthy a past time for me. I'll just stick to the shore for now. I commented to Lars-Göran that I thought there would be a lot of surfers at Torö today, but he thought it might be too cold. Obviously he's never heard of neoprene wetsuits.




We then headed back through the town towards home, noting that there seems to be quite a few trees and shrubs beginning to shoot. I suppose it is the mild weather and combination of rain and sunshine that is tricking them into thinking it is spring. They are going to get a huge shock once King Bore, the Swedish god of winter arrives with his snow and ice.




Everyone is wondering just if and when winter will start this year. And of special interest is naturally if we will have a white Christmas. The speculation usually begins around now, as it will be Anders name day tomorrow and there is an old saying "Anders braskar, julen slaskar", which predicts that if Anders is cold on his name day, then it will be a slushy Christmas.

Many people are saying this unseasonal warm, wet autumn is because of global warming and that we may not see as much snow in the future. I keep reading that this is a record warmth and that noone can remember it ever being so mild at this time of year, while they wax lyrical about winters past when they had real winters with ice everywhere and metre high snow drifts over the whole country.

But is this true? Not according to the meterologists at SMHI. They say that the average temperature at the moment is 7.6C, compared to 7.7C in 2000 and 7.8C in 1938. So perhaps it is not as warm as people believe. In fact, they went on to say that the whole decade of the 1930s was quite mild, though that was followed by some heavy duty, icy winters in the 1940s. It would seem that Sweden has periodically had these episodes of warm weather before, though not in most people's lifetimes.

The warmest Christmas temperature was recorded in 1977, when the mercury rose to 13.7C at Simrishamn. Let's hope that is not repeated again this year. I want to see snow on julafton. I don't need it to be -19C or anything drastic like that, just everything covered in a sparkling, magical white coat. Now I better go and write that on my wish list for santa.