Yes, it's snowing here again, but then what does one expect so far north of the equator in January?

There has been a gentle powdering of continous snow since yesterday and in places it is quite deep and soft. Perfect for snow angels! I might see if I can sweet talk my man into posing for a pictorial essay (purely for our education, of course!) about making snow angels. But basically, in the right kind of snow (and believe me, there are many kinds of snow), you flop yourself backwards into the snow with arms outstretched, then wave them about in the snow and when you get up, you leave an impression of an angel in the snow. Of course, the impression you leave on the neighbours is something else altogether.

In the news this week, the Stockholm International Forum on preventing genocide has been meeting this week. Once again traffic has been disrupted in the downtown area, as police have cordoned off streets around the conference center and have put up barriers to prevent cars from parking nearby.

There are 1000 government representatives and other delegates from almost 60 countries attending the conference. But even before the conference began, we had a huge art controversy over one of the pieces in an exhibition mounted to co-incide with the conference.

The exhibition is called Making Differences. The theme is Lämnad ensam med sin egen svaghet, är människor i stand till vad som helst. — Man, left alone with his own weaknesses, is capable of almost anything. As a theme to accompany an international conference on genocide, it certainly offers one perspective on the origins of evil. But I digress. The offending piece is called SnöVit (Snow White).

The huge controversy occurred when the Israeli ambassador visited the exhibition after reading about it in the local news and vandalised this installation, claiming that it was anti-Semetic and glorified the suicide bomber, Hanadi Jaradat. The artist, himself an Israeli living now in Sweden vehemently denied the charge. You can read the text accompanying the exhibit here.

He strongly objected to the notion that he in any way supports suicide bombings, and said basically that the exhibit was meant to create a discussion about why a 29 year old woman, a well educated lawyer, would commit the hideous act that she did. And about the circumstances in society that create the amount of desperation that causes some people to resort to this type of response. The text accompanying the artwork held the names of the victims of the bombing.

However, politicians weighed in with ill-informed opinions and a bun fight ensued about whether it should be removed or not. The Prime Minister eventually stated that Sweden was not a police state and that there would be no censorship of the artwork.

So then the controversy turned to the posters advertising the exhibition that were plastered all over town, including the subway. There were demands by the Israeli ambassador to have them removed or Israel would not attend the conference. Eventually the transport company agreed to remove the posters of the bomber to placate the Israelis.

I haven't seen the offending piece and doubt that I will go now as the whole debate has prejudiced my view. I'll be looking at it and wondering what it was that others saw in it rather than being able to get a first, own reaction. Which is a pity. I am no art critic, but my question is: Who is the responsible party in art? Or, is it the audience's fault it misconstrues the intent and message of the piece, or is it the artist's fault?

High-minded elites no doubt would blame bushpigs like me for being too ignorant of 'art' to see the nuanced ideas behind the exhibit. I admit that I am an idiot, but I believe that the artist is almost wholly responsible for the interpretation of his work.

I see a parallel to the artwork Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili that was displayed in New York in 1999. The piece had the Virgin Mary on a canvas smeared with elephant dung. The artist did not intend the work to be offensive to Mary and thus Catholics, but it was. He was using an African symbol to convey a certain idea about the Blessed Virgin. Fine. But for him and the elite to expect ordinary people in a largely Irish/Italian Catholic American city not to get extremely upset is ludicrous. The artist failed to know how to correctly communicate with his audience. And we had the same homegrown controversy in Australia in 1997 with the display of Andre Serrano's contoversial piece Piss Christ. The talkback radio shows were frothing at the mouth for weeks!

Does Snow White offend on account of its message? The Israeli Ambassador probably thought so. Does this justify defacing it? I don't really think so.

Wow. This has been a somewhat more serious post from me. Not what you are used to at all. So I better remedy that with another of my completely useless, inane quizzes. Come on, Sue, you know you can't resist:

How Would YOU Take Over the World?

Today is one of those days when I need to cover myself in green fur and move into a rubbish bin. Then everyone would know I'm grouchy and just leave me alone. Why? Well, on the weekend we installed Windows XP on my computer. And I lost my favourite website links. I did get some words of wisdom from Kate after the event:

Next time remember this - you need to EXPORT your favorites to a file and IMPORT them after the upgrade. See under the File menu on Explorer. Don't trust that they will just come across.

Next time? There is not going to be a next time!

But I don't want to talk about that. This morning, the sky was a perfect robin's-egg blue. Sunshine so sharp you could get paper cuts on your eyes if you were not careful. And cold, man was it COLD. It has clouded over somewhat, but that still does not detract from the beauty of the place.

You can see from the photograph that there is a sense of peace and calmness about this little town. The view from here, across the water to the nearby island to the east, the woods behind us to the west, the archipelago to the north and to the south of this point is open water.

The little house you see pictured is called a lusthus. No, not what you are thinking. Lust in Swedish means more contentment from pleasure. These little places to sit and contemplate are very popular here in Sweden and are to be found dotted along many quiet spots.



This is a view looking across Svandammen (the Swan Lake) across to the church. The blanket of snow you see on the ground is the lake. It had completely frozen over and last night's snowfall is sitting there. I guess the council will be done later on to polish up the surface as it is a popular place for the kids to skate around and play ice-hockey. It still amazes me to see the kids on the ice. Even quite small children have no trouble shating along. How can they do it? One of life's little mysteries.

I was coming home from the railway station last week and I passed a poster advertising the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. This museum is probably the number one attraction in Stockholm and contains the remains of the warship Vasa, which was lost on her maiden voyage in 1628.

What made me do a double take and return for a photograph was the writing on the poster! I mean what a stereotypical Aussie name! And the comment really cracked me up! I wonder what impression the Swedes will have of us now? But it was quite funny to see it there - a little reminder of home.

There is a lot of stuff on here this week for Australia Day. On Saturday there was the function at the International School in Stockholm. This event is jointly run by the school, the Australian-New Zealand Friendship Society, The Southern Cross Club and The Stockholm Australian Football Club. It is very well attended with around 200 or so coming along to help us fly the flag. There is a lot of free food and drink, a few speeches and a lot of information about Australia and Australian products. Also there was the amazing performer Gavin Alexa.

Last night there was a Beach Party at The Dancin' Dingo pub. Thursady we have an opening of an exhibition of work of the Australian artistSimon Andrews in Stockholm. And then on the weekend it is tiny little Nynäshamn's turn. Yes, we have our own Australian artist living here in Nynäshamn!

Imagine my surprise when I looked at our little local newspaper and saw on the front page "Australiskt på Kroken". Of course, I immediately turned to page 10 and saw that John Dullaway, an artist born and raised in Sydney was now living here in Nynäshamn! Not only that, he is having an exhibition of his paintings in one of the local restaurants, Kroken, by the fishing harbour.

His paintings are inspired by his childhood memories of holidays spent in the bush north of Sydney and incorporate the dot painting techniques we see in aboriginal art as well as the x-ray look at animals. There was a big article about it in the paper. The opening is on Saturday, so I'll go and say hello and take a squizz at the paintings. How freaky to find someone from Australia living here in this tiny town. I have seen his work before, a couple of years ago at an exhibition here, but I hadn't realised that he was living locally. At that stage I could not read very much Swedish, so I didn't look at the artist blurb at all.

So that is the excitement for this week. Life continues much as normal. Lars-Göran is busy working on the boat so it will be ready for summer sailing. I see him looking at books about the Faroe Islands, so I hope he doesn't have any ambitions to sail there. As Bruce and Sheila as well as Lambi have to go with us, there may be quarantine issues. Are we mad taking the birds on a boat trip?

Last week, I almost bought yet another bird. We went to the pet shop to buy Lambi a harness. I don't like her collar, so we changed it for a harness that we can attach the leash to. Well, while we were there, we saw a green parrot with ATTITUDE! You could just tell that it was stubborn, grouchy and determined to have his own way. He strutted around the cage, casually leafing through the food with his feet, picking out the best bits and scooping the rest onto the floor distainfully. What a scream. I'd LOVE to own a moody pet like that.

I leave you with a picture taken from school, looking towards the harbour area. You can see the church, and the funnel of the Gotland Ferry that is coming in to dock at the terminal. A very typical winter view of Nynäshamn.

Till next time.

Yes, I know I only posted yesterday, but I wanted to share some photos that we took on our long walk yesterday.

First, the Bruce and Sheila side-show continues. Not only are they unrepentant, they have decided to also sleep in our bed. Typical Aussies! You invite them in for a drink and they take over everything!

Of course, I can afford to be generous about it - it's not MY pillow they are shitting (oops, I mean, sitting) on!

But they look so cute that I haven't the heart to lock them in their cage.

Yesterday was one of those glorious winter days. It was very cold at -5C, but the sun was shining, the skies were deep blue and the call of the great outdoors was too much to resist.

Lars-Göran is doing a course in Photoshop at the moment on Saturday mornings, but as soon as he arrived home, he decided that we had to take advantage of the day. So I packed some food and we set off.

I was glad to get out for a while as I'd had a frustrating day with emails. When will people pay attention to what they do?

I get a high-volume mailing list in digest mode, so I get one or two daily messages that each contain 25 messages at one time, instead of 25 or more individual messages whenever they get sent. In the latest digest, there were two other digest subscribers who replied and quoted the entire digest to which they were replying. So, instead of one digest of the usual length, I got a digest that was three times the usual size and annoying to sift through.

It's enough for me to start getting individual e-mails again because slipping anti-stupidity pills into the water supply is not a solution that will be happening anytime soon. I would really like to hold them down and beat them with a cluestick.

But I digress! Well, we decided to take the road along the coast, which is a beautiful view. When the Olympic Games were held in Stockholm in 1912, the sailing events were held here in Nynäshamn and this road was built so that spectators could watch the races from vantage points along the shore. It is lovely to walk along the shore and woods and to know that these are right here in town, a few minutes walk from centrum.

Well the first sight I saw was this:



Remember folks, it is -5C here. These people are wearing bathers and having a dip in the icy water! I was on the opposite shore rugged up in 5 layers of clothes! I couldn't believe my eyes! This area is part of a posh new resort and conference centre they built here last summer. Nynäs Havsbad is very exclusive and what you see in my photo is the outdoor spa area, with hot tub, saunas and a sea dip. But as they say, "Whatever rocks your boat".

Then we swung around to walk through the woods. I love this area of town!



Later we found a great playground, complete with crocodiles! I was pretty excited. I though we could shoot a pilot show about crocodile handling just in case Steve gets the flick from Animal Planet. Lars-Göran was less enthusiastic as it was sited on a public walkway and in full view of an apartment block nearby. But he decided to go along with the spirit of the adventure.

So first, I "saved" Lambi from the jaws of the crocodile:



She seemed pretty underwhelmed by my superb bravery. And Lars-Göran thought it was unconvincing. So he set out to show me how it was really done by a pro:



So whaddayareckon? Should Steve be worried? Though looking at Lambi, I wonder... she is giving him "that look" she normally reserves for the insane. I wonder why?

Till next time (if they let me write from the loony bin)

I wonder if I can substitute cockatiels for blackbirds in that song?

I've been humming that nursery rhyme a lot lately. No, I'm not regressing just yet, but my motivation has been the fact that Bruce and Sheila have decided to do a spot of "redecorating" around the apartment.



Look, it's not that I'm saying they don't have a say in how their environment should look, but my poor cornice seems to be suffering quite a lot. And check out the damn cheeky look on Bruce's face. He's just daring me to try and stop him. I thought I'd scare him by leaving cookbooks around the place, open at such recipes as Quail In Cream Wine Sauce, Fried Mince Squab in Lettuce Cups or Moroccan Style Spatchcock. I've even been thinking of that great Grahame Bond sketch in Aunty Jack where they make Budgie Pizza.

What did our pair of intrepid destructors think of all that? Scared? Quaking in their feathers? Repentant, remorseful? Well, let's take a look:



Nope. Looks like it's back to business! But what can I say?

I'm having somewhat of a bird week. Perhaps some would say that is because I'm bird-brained and attract like minded things (though not many would say that to my face!). However, whatever the reason, I seem to be surrounded by "birds with attitude". I feel at times as though I'm on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic The Birds. We have the aggressive crows around at the moment swooping down and scaring the dog. But what really takes the cake as far as bird attitude here are the white swans. Forget Swan Lake, forget the graceful, elegant, regal birds gliding majestically across the water. No, here in Nynäshamn we have the thug swans. The ones that sit in the middle of the road and glare at the cars as though to say "What are you doing here?" and flatly refusing to leave. Poor Lars-Göran is scared they will get run over. He's trying to save them. Me? I'm scanning the net for swan recipes. Not really. Just kidding! But somedays, you have wonder if they WANT to be road kill! And are they grateful for Lars-Göran trying to help them? I'll let you guess...



The big news here in Sweden at the moment is of course the trial of Mijailo Mijailovic, a 25 year old Swede (of Serbian background) who murdered the Swedish Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh last September. It's been huge news here. So much so that they are telecasting the trial directly from the courthouse, which disturbs me on a lot of levels. But it seems like this guy was an accident just waiting for a victim. He is quite disturbed and both before and after the murder sought help for his severe illness. But because of cuts and downgrading of services here in Sweden, he was turned away.

Ironically, these services have been eroded away as a result of the 1995 investigation headed by none other than Anna Lindh's husband! The result of these closures has been to create a class of homeless, severly ill people who wander aimlessly around. Only in the last year there have been several deaths at the hands of persons who are instructed by "voices in their heads". So this trial is also going to highlight the state of the Swedish psyciatric system and society's attitude to the mentally ill.

He has admitted killing her and the charge is murder, not manslaughter, so it will be interesting to see what the outcome will be. I really admired Anna Lindh both as a politician and as a fine example of a woman of strength, commitment and humanity. It was a sad day indeed when she died. But I also have a great deal of sympathy for Mijailo Mijailovic, who realised he was on a downward spiral and really tried to get help. It also appears that he was taking 15 prescriptions for 8 different medicines, prescribed by 6 different doctors! Observers say the combination of some of those drugs could have had unfortunate effects. No shit, Sherlock! What a tragic story.

On a lighter note, the other story dominating the news is the effect that opening the EU borders and reduction of tax on alcohol in neighbouring countries is having on the Swedish government monopoly of booze. I'll write another day about the system here, but suffice it to say that the alcohol tax is horrific, you can only buy from the government shops and it is ultra expensive. So what do the intrepid Swedes do? Well, the lucky ones in the south and west of the country just cross the Öresund bridge to Denmark or grab a ferry to Germany and shop there.

This picture will give you an idea of what Swedes look like on their shopping trips. My husband cringes at such images, but it is true. People go there solely to buy grog! Is it cheaper? You bet! In some cases, less than half price. The government monopoly, Systembolaget, is quite worried. Statistics released yesterday showed that sales of alcohol in the south of the country have fallen 20% since the new regulations came into force. During the same period, the lower liquor and shopping prices have boosted Öresund ferry and bridge traffic over the Helsingborg - Helsingör waterway by a quarter of a million passengers since October. A whopping 40% increase.

Some silly expats here think that Sweden will bow to pressure and lower their tax to meet EU guidelines. Don't make me laugh. Sweden are lobbying to have the EU adopt Sweden's more restrictive policy. One reason the EU has permitted Sweden to maintain the retail monopoly was because of government assurances that the system allows for a wider assortment of products in shops than if other shops were allowed to sell alcohol.

Alcohol politics in this country is a huge hot potato, especially as they are trying to shake off the image of Sweden being "the vodka belt" of Europe. But it will be interesting nonetheless.

And as you all enjoyed my armadillo quiz, I'll leave you with Do you know what lives in your eyelashes?.

How can you not click with a title like that?

Till next time!

Something disturbing happened this morning. I woke up with the Hail Mary in my head. I'm beginning to think 12 years of private catholic schooling is taking its toll. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

An apology for the Devil - It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case - God has written all the books.

This, my dear friend Samantha is for you:



Eat your heart out! You aren't the only armadillo on AA! Try the quiz and see how you fare. I normally wouldn't bother to post it, but I couldn't resist when I saw the result.

Okay, today in Sweden is Tjugonde Knut, the twentieth day after Christmas (and Knut's name day) and Christmas trees are being plundered by vikings everywhere. Why? Well, around the year 1000 Denmark's King Harold the Bluetooth introduced Christianity into Scandinavia. His son, Sweyn the Forkbeard (these names crack me up!), led a revolt against his father. He defeated his father, took control (love these family squabbles) and returned to worshipping the ancient Norse pagan Gods (Odin, Thor, Tyr, etc)

His son, King Canute the Great (Knut in Swedish) was considered a great and effective King and he followed his grandfather's footsteps re-introduced Christianity into Denmark (and of course the rest of Scandinavia).

He introduced the 30 day Christmas season, which begins back in December with St Lucia day until January 13th (St Canute's Day).

History lesson over. So what does this really mean? This is the day traditionally used to "kasta ut julen" ("throw out Christmas"). All of the Christmas decorations and lights are removed. Until recently it was very common to arrange a children's party on this day called "julgransplundring" (literally: looting the Christmas tree). The children play games and then take all the edible decorations from the tree - fruit, lollies, biscuits etc. The party ends when the tree is completely stripped of all decorations (reusables of course taken off) and it is thrown out into the lawn.

It's rather amusing to see the Swedes who are so well known for taking things religiously to the re-cycling station suddenly simply throw the Christmas tree out the window and leave it there! The Swedes just love the recklessness of such a fun tradition and it persists to this day. The streets here today are littered with trees thrown out by householders. The councils are less keen on this than they used to be as I guess it costs plenty to go around collecting the cast off trees. This year they are trying a new approach - they set up a collection point in the main square and if you bring your tree there, you can swap it for a voucher for I think a hot dog and drink or something like that.

But that's not as much fun as just tossing it out the window!

Me? Well, it's grey and depressing here, so I'm doing the very un-Swedish thing by leaving my lights up in the windows for at least the next week or two or until I think it's much lighter. And I have a fake tree (tsch! tsch!) so I'll keep it for next year.

I was watching this show called "Just for Laughs Gags" earlier. It was full of people playing practical jokes. There was one where this little old lady had a big butcher's knife and it innocently falls out of her bag as she's walking along and the guy behind her picks it up and says "Hey lady, you dropped your bigass knife" and she turns around and throws up her hands and starts screaming hysterically.

I am so going be that little old lady when I grow up!

It's a lovely quiet public holiday here in Sweden, being Trettondedag Jul and everyone is off work. Literally translated, that’s the thirteenth day of Christmas, but if you ask most Swedes why it is a holiday, they don’t have a clue. They will usually mumble something about "Well that's the day we take down the Christmas tree and put away all the decorations" (You need a day off of work to do THAT?). However, they are wrong - that day, Tjugondag Knut, will be on the 13th, thus the confusion with the 6th which is named the thirteenth day!

In fact, today is the Epiphany in the church year. It is the day celebrated in memory of the Three Wise Men who visited the baby Jesus. I remember this being an important day when I lived in Italy, as it was the day that Befana came and left gifts for the children. But here in Sweden it is merely yet another day off with no particular celebrations. The Swedes may have run the Catholics out of the country in the early 1500's, but they managed to retain almost all of the old catholic feast days. Tradition dies very hard in this country.

So everything is shut. Now you expect this on a public holiday. But as in a lot of cases in Sweden, the day before the public holiday is a sort of "poet’s day" (viz. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday) where the shops shut at 1pm and everyone gets ready for the public holiday. Pretty funny really – you need a half day off to prepare for a full day off.


That's all well and good if you know and remember that it's a public holiday (or red day). If you are like me and lose track of these things you’ll find yourself out shopping at normal time and be confronted by this:



Yes, folks, downtown Nynäshamn at 5.30pm – peak hour and all that! I was thinking of poor Kate in New York and her peak hour traffic as I gazed down on the scene before me. Actually, it was hard to tell that the shops were shut as it is always this quiet here. But shut they were, and had been since 1pm!

I know, I know. You are thinking "Stupid foreigner" and yes, there is an element of truth in that. But was I the only one to forget? Nope. Even the bus company in Stockholm forgot that although the calendar said it was Monday, it was really a Saturday as far as their services went. I read about it in today's Dagens Nyheter. The story is about those who ventured into the cemetery at Skogskyrkogården. This is no ordinary cemetery - it's listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is HUGE. Take a gander at the panorama camera. You need a bus to get around it, and the full circuit takes the bus 15 minutes, so that gives you an idea of the area we are talking about.

Swedes like to visit the cemetery on special days and weekends, so Bus 183 operates only on weekends and days before public holidays. Oops! People took the subway to Skogskyrkogården and waited for bus 183 to appear. It didn’t. There were calls to the bus company who said "Sorry. But it’s too short notice now to get a bus on that route". Their suggestion was for people to pay for a taxi, then send the receipt in to the bus company. But many people had no money on them so had to go home without visiting their loved ones.

Sweden seems to have been on holidays since the day before Christmas here thanks to the system of "squeeze days" or klämdag. This is something I've never come across before. "Swedes are world best" (one of their favourite phrases) at finding excuses for not being at work. They created the 'squeeze day', explained once by a Swede as a day squeezed in between a holiday and a weekend.

We had the day before Christmas, Christmas Day AND the day AFTER Christmas as official holidays. Many seemed to have treated New Year's Eve as a holiday as well as New Year's Day. That left Monday and Tuesday of this week so why bother going to work right? Then the day after New Year's is a Friday so lets take that day off as well. And as the next Tuesday is 13-day jul so we better have Monday as a "squeeze day". And for the very clever, they may even have "squeezed" the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This gives them from December 23 to January 11th off from work.

We do that a bit in Australia. But there we take our vacation time. Here this is IN ADDITION to the between 5 and 7 weeks vacation most people get. I laughed at this "taking days off" to my Swedish friends who became very indignant. These are NOT days off, they assure me. They work for them. It seems they do this by getting their almanac and calculating how many days they need to "squeeze" this year. They then work out that if they say "work" an extra 7.3 minutes every day, then they reckon it's not a holiday but time off in lieu of the overtime. Get it?

If they are lucky, the Swedes can enjoy what can only be described as a 'squeeze week' during the first week of May. There's the weekend, then a squeeze Monday, as Tuesday is the 1st of May and a public holiday. Hopefully Ascension Day falls on the Thursday so it's no good going to work on the Wednesday and the Friday is squeezed between Thursday and Saturday and before you know it it's already the following weekend.

Interesting thought process. It operates in no other country in the world, but this does not perturb the Swedes who are used to standing out from the crowd. It must be a huge nightmare for business to be forced to virtually shut down as the staff have managed to "squeeze" a day off. I think that this will be coming to an end in these new EU days. Some large companies are already talking about outlawing this practice in the New Year.

All I can say is Good luck. As I said, once it's a tradition in this country it is almost impossible to remove! They may yell Carpe Diem (Sieze the Day) around the world, but the catchphrase in Sweden is Squeeze the Day!

Till next time!

*VOOM*

That, my friends, was the sound of another year whizzing past.

Whew.

If my last year could be made into a roller coaster, I could sell it to Dreamworld and make a million dollars! Up and down and up and down and WHOA! Blind curve! Thrown for a loop or two or three. Evening out for just long enough to catch a breath before the bottom drops out and keeps dropping....and then a series of break-neck curves designed to completely disorient and nauseate... and at last, the station comes into view...

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for roller coasters, but there's something to be said for those "lazy river" rides, too.

And ferris wheels.

And those little log flume rides that give you a thrill and get your heart pumping and get you all wet, but don't leave you dizzy and reeling and kind of regretting having eaten that last bucket of chips and vinegar...

You've heard of the Age of Aquarius, well New Year's Eve in Sweden is more like the dawning of the Age of Pyromania! You know, Swedes have now been a neutral country and not participated in any wars for at least 150 years, but I don't think that deep down inside, they have ever really recovered from the days when their armies were the scourge of Europe. Read a Polish travel guide someday. It's all about "Gdansk was this lovely little town and used to have a great cathedral that was 1,000 years old, but it was burned by the Swedes in 1756", stuff like that. I mean, they weren't always these lagom, non-violent, middle of the road, white-socks-and-sandals kind of individuals. These people have turned pyromania into a national sport.

You are able to buy almost anything short of a nuclear weapon in this country if it's around New Year's Eve, provided you have the cash. And apparently, lots of people have lots of cash for explosives. The private citizen, the alcoholic, the insane, the terrorist or anyone else, can simply wander down to their local shop and lay out money for incredible fireworks. We're not talking a handful of sparklers and a few cone fountains here, people, we're talking rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air. We're talking huge chrysanthemums and shooting stars with little whirly things and ka-booms! I've seen towns in Australia that haven't managed the 26th of January so well.

In our town the local agents of Svea Fireworks were busy leaflet dropping, offering demonstrations and enticing people to part with a surprisingly large wad of cash. It astounds me that the Swedes who are so safety conscious (they wear protective glasses, clothing, gloves etc just to wash the dishes!) suddenly throw all caution to the wind and act like completely reckless barbarians this one night of the year.

Of course the very sobering reality hits home as we glance at the paper the following morning to read the casualty list of dead and injured forom this one night of madness.

As you can guess, we didn't participate in the fireworks mania. We had a quiet time with dinner, watching the annual TV special "Grevinnan and betjänten" which translates as "The Countess and the Butler" but we know it as Dinner for One. In Australia, it was aired on NYE by good old SBS television. Here in Sweden, the English spoken Swiss rather than the German version has been shown for the last 40 years and like Kalle Anka at Christmas has become something of a cult tradition, with people even having identical dinners while it airs! It's only 15 minutes long and is quite charming and funny.

Then later, close to midnight we watched every man and his dog in town let loose with the fireworks display. It was lovely to see the colours reflected in the snowy rooftops. There were no accidents here, but we heard of several places around the country being burned to the ground after being hit by stray fireworks and several deaths, including one 30 year old killed nearby when he went to investigate why his rocket didn't fire (a Darwin Award waiting to happen).



Yesterday was my birthday! Yep, the New Year's baby - first born in 19.... well, let's just say sometime in the LATE twentieth century. Hubby never forgets my birthday and every year he gets me a gift and also arranges some method of getting the gift to me WITHOUT him having to get out of bed! It's quite ingenious really, as we have a loft bed and it takes a bit of thinking. This year he hooked up a string and pulley contraption. When he did that, I'll never know as I was home ALL DAY the day before! But in the morning, there was the string for me to pull and from behind the bookshelf a beautifully wrapped parcel appeared and I could pull it towards me!

And what was in the parcel? A great CD from my favoiurite Australian singer - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds new album Nocturama which I've been obsessively playing ever since.

My mother-in-law also rang to wish me a happy birthday and to say she has put some money in the bank for me. Lovely! I have also received several e-cards from AA friends in Greece, Germany, America, Australia and Sweden, as well as my own thread on the Pub message board.

A friend in Australia also sent me this interesting link for a Birthday Star. It's kind of neat to check out your own personal birthday star and see it's location in the solar system. My star is in the Hercules constellation.

Happy New Year, everyone! May the next 366 days be your log flume.


"Det ringer, det ringer
till midnatt i tornet,
och väktaren springer
att blåsa i hornet,
och klockan hon slår:
God natt gamla år!
God dag, nya framtid,
som ljusnar till vår!"