Strawberries, Wormwood and St John’s Wort…

…all important ingredients for a Swedish midsummer. The first you eat, as they are or with cream or sugar or both, the second you put in your schnapps, to make it taste like medicine and therefore providing you with an even better excuse to drink it, and the third you, if you are a young girl, collect during the night. Yes, girls who want to dream about their future husband only have to collect seven different flowers, climb over seven fences and not utter a word in the process and their dreams will reveal all. I have never managed it; the flowers and the being silent is not a problem, finding adequate fences in a city, however, is.

We had been invited by friends who had courageously set the table outside (under a roof), in bold defiance of the dark skies. It was the coldest day for a long time, which in a way is traditional. Heat will undoubtedly set in on Monday. These friends deal in art, and have it everywhere: on the walls of the patio and in the shed. In the house you can’t find the walls for paintings.

The host, a dominating presence at the best of times, greeted us with flowers on the head and a bottle of homemade schnapps, looking less like a hippie and more like the second coming of Puck or a faun in a suit. The guests were a mixed bunch, several generations, nationalities and languages. As the evening, and indeed the schnapps distribution, progressed, the three languages became more and more intertwined. We had the traditional food, but did not indulge in traditional dancing around a flower-clad pole. As no midsummer celebrations are complete without the handling of some phallic object, however, the men decided that the flagpole had to come down to be fixed. And that a hay fork might be useful in the process. The women immediately started talking about how lovely it is to put dried lavender in the linen cupboard and just like that we had restored the gender conventions of society. It may have been the wormwood.

By that time, the sun had decided to make an appearance after all and in the end, the most important thing about midsummer (and, indeed, summer) is strawberries. Of which there were plenty. Our American guest wondered if Swedish parties always comprise several eating sessions, and that was before the final session – coffee and raisin scones, baked by the Dutch guest. (At some point I will have to tell her that we even have traditions and terminology for the food you give the guests in the middle of the night, if the party goes on for that long.)

I had a few drops of cognac and with it an epiphany. (This blog is fast becoming Proustian.) Whisky is an acquired taste, one I spent some time acquiring and now have a profound love for. Cognac is also an acquired taste, and one that, until last summer, I simply hadn’t acquired. In many situations where cognac is an option, whisky is too. So I go for the whisky. Anyway. Last summer I happened to be given a bottle of cognac, and around the same time I had been persuaded it was imperative that I see The Office. The pain and squirming which previous attempts at watching The Office had generated had to be overcome and I suddenly came up with an incredibly cunning plan: I would combine the two projects. So I drank copious amounts of cognac and watched The Office with a marathon-like dedication until I liked them both. So far, so good. But because I haven’t had many other occasions to drink it since, the taste (even if this was a different, and for me new, kind) now immediately conjures up images of a certain workplace in Slough. My nose and its memory. What have I done?

I haven’t picked any flowers (even if I did come home with my bag full of lavender for some reason), but I certainly hope all this does not mean that I will dream about Ricky Gervais.

Space and place

Since my dear physiotherapist J accepted the challenge of turning my surprisingly battered limbs into a fully functioning body, I have experienced something of an exercise revival. Mainly because I can now run. And this I do, happily, as often as I can. Last week in England I didn't; essentially because there was very little time, but also because I felt as though there was no space for it. I like open space, a consequence of being Swedish in general and southern Swedish in particular, perhaps. My friend I often speaks of how southern Sweden is too starkly lacking in trees for her taste (she is from the north where there is little but trees), and how this makes her feel exposed with nowhere to hide. I, on the other hand, feel somewhat claustrophobic in the dense forest where she lives - and experience the opposite threat: I can hide, but so can whatever might be pursuing me. Getting lost is also more of an issue in a forest than in the open field landscape I have grown up in, probably a contributing factor to the naive navigation approach which led my friend M and I so astray in a Norwegian wood once. I still don't know how we managed to find the way back to the cabin and will forever remember the valuable lesson it taught me: when in Norway do not take the road less travelled by. Take the main one. And bring a compass.

Anyway. The wonders of modern technology (represented by my phone/mp-player/radio/camera) allow me to take pictures of my beloved fields while running and listening to music – and to then put them on this page for further nostalgic reminiscing. Yes, I haven’t even left yet but am already acutely aware of the fact that I will have to find new fields to run on soon. This is perhaps the best way to explain why a move to central London won’t happen if I can help it. Too many people, not enough fields.

I had an epiphany to the effect while I was in London, on the tube. That is in itself extraordinary (not the content, I’m sure many people on the Bakerloo line wish they were somewhere else), as there wasn’t really room to have anything, not even a small epiphany. Events conspired and I found myself needlessly in rush hour twice that day, crammed into the confined space of a train carriage with hundreds of strangers. An inferno on rails, scorching heat, people frantically trying to ignore the temperature and each other – as well as forgetting the report in the paper that an accident in the underground had been narrowly avoided that morning (a driver having got in at the wrong end of the train and set of in the wrong direction). Very Danteesque. Yes, standing in an underground train somewhere between Piccadilly circus and Waterloo, trying not to tread on more than one person’s toes at any one time, is the antithesis of my running path. There may be people who love it, or at least are untroubled by it, but most of my fellow sufferers last Thursday looked like they would have been happier elsewhere. Apart from being an, admittedly, effective way to get around London, the tube is also a marvellous place for exploring humanity. The hordes of people around me resembled mistreated cattle more than human beings, but every time I smiled at someone they smiled back. We're all just trying to cope with the lack of space.

Wherever I end up in the near future I hope there is open space, but also a place with people. They are quite nice, really.

Gaffeltruck

Some men should come equipped with this sign...

I found it in St James' Park, in central London, and confused innocent bystanders with my frantic giggles. Those of you who know me well enough to get the reference are hereby invited to share in the giggling - those of you who don't... use your imagination.

Sand between my toes

I suppose summer only really begins for me when I have gone for a swim in the sea. Spring with its lovely warmth and increasingly active life is transformed into summer, and life somehow slows down a bit. Too warm to walk quickly; now we saunter. Clothes, hairdo, make-up - none of it matters much when the skin begins to tan and the sun forces us to be outside, to enjoy and to take every opportunity to cool off by hiding under water.

What though the hair be a mess? Great are the rewards of swimming in salt water, for body and soul alike. Besides, on the beach everybody has a little sand in their ears. And there is no better make-up than a happy summer smile.

In the world of me, then, now it is summer proper. I have taken the plunge and it was so nice that I contemplated giving up this earthly life and become a mermaid. As is the case with most Swedes I love the Swedish summer more than any other, at least when it is as we want it to be: sunshine, a little breeze and blue skies over the blue sea. If I were a poet I would write a poem about the pangs of happiness a summer day inflicts on me. And the pangs about leaving it soon...

Nationalism and noses

The 6^th of June was the day that saw Sweden break out in allergies.

I don’t think it has very much to do with the National Day – even if we still haven’t figured out what to do with it. I mean, it’s not like this is the day Sweden won its freedom from oppression by means of, say, a revolution. Back in the day Sweden was the big superpower that, it anything, oppressed others. By the time we had world wars in more recent history, Sweden had retreated into a corner, tried to be neutral and consolidated the status of has-been with the national anthem, which states our determination to remember the days of past glory rather than seek new ones. Nationalism in Sweden can neither take it’s impulse from being a superpower nor from being gloriously rid of a superpower. We’re just quite well off, basically, and that fails to serve as an impulse for carnivals or Guinness-infused mayhem.

I had something of an epiphany to the effect a couple of weeks ago. Having visited my father’s grave, and reflected on the loveliness of the little country cemetery as well as the fact that our dead are better off than the living in many countries, my mum and I went to Helsingborg for lunch. Walking on the coast, among the beautiful new houses and the trendy cafés and seeing the boats, the dogs and the beautiful people sauntering around, looking happy, healthy and content in the glorious sunshine of a Sunday in May, I realised just how well off we are. I always know this, of course, but that afternoon really served to hammer the point in. Can’t remember complaining much about anything since.

Except allergies. I believe in the theory that allergies are something we have brought upon ourselves and my runny nose, then, becomes just another galling reminder of my “being well off complex”. Grass, apparently, is my trigger and today the grass must be in full bloom because my nose (along with eyes and ears) is not happy at all. Nor are those of other people. Seeing as the National Day is a bank holiday, there is only one open pharmacy in my home town. And it, according to the lovely girl I spoke to, ran out of allergy medicine early in the morning. Annoying. But hardly a catastrophe in global terms.

So, I’m sure many other Swedes with hay fever spent the National Day sneezing and rubbing their sore eyes while being nationalistic in the only way we are really good at: happily supporting our national football team. They even managed to win.