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On Friday the 31st of January at 11.00 PM the United Kingdom will formally no longer be a member of the European Union. The agreed upon period of transition where much stays the same is set to one year and, according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, will under no circumstances be extended. When Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson is categoric about things most people have come to realize that the opposite is just as likely to be the case. For all the talk of a no deal crash out Brexit desired by some acceptable to others, the consequences are far too damaging, not only to ordinary people but pertinently enough to the holders of an eighty seat majority, to harbour credibility. The risks of not only losing this majority but destroying the Tory party´s chances of winning an election for a generation are too great. 

Recently the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid David claimed there will be no alignment with EU rules in the forthcoming negotiations. For reasons of the above that sounds like posturing to me but it also casts a shadow on Johnson´s claims that he will get a good deal by the end of the year. All very confusing as, again for reasons of the above, some sort of accomodating deal is essential and believing or lying that it can be done without alignment is like saying you would have no problem claiming an expensive seat at the Proms without having bought a ticket and dressed only in your underwear. I get the impression we are dealing with politicians who think that keeping the campaign alive will somehow make do in lieu of tangible politics. Theresa May began the process with her ”no deal is better than a bad deal” which ended in political humiliation. This kind of blackmail did not wash with the EU and ended up with Theresa May agreeing to a dogs dinner like withdrawal deal. True to form, on becoming Prime Minister, Johnson bamboozled his way to and boasted about getting a better, revised deal by putting a border in the Irish Sea, something he had voted against during May´s tenure. 

After this, much was made of getting a future trade deal with the EU and the, in the government´s view unnecessarily long transition period of two years for negotiations was reduced to half. Since then the new mantra is ”no alignment.” This makes the one year withdrawal period less understandable as no alignment will undoubtedly lead to Britain leaving the transition period without a deal. The obvious question is why bother with any period of transition at all? I can´t rid myself of the feeling that Johnson and his government have not learnt any lessons and are putting the country at risk in a new chicken race. I am reasonably convinced there is no intention of a cliff edge exit as the transition period would seem to underline and that bluffing despite the risks will see us through and the EU will eventually back down. 

As with any country, Britain´s future is reliant on where the money is made to pay the bills. After forty years of membership of the EU decisions now have to be made on the basis of non membership.

 The first step might be seen as deciding on whether to align to US standards and any potential trade deals there. Politically this would be like eating chocolate with the paper on and geographically akin to doing your shopping in Manchester whilst living in London. The obvious choice is of course to turn to our nearest neighbours and start talking which I despite everything, believe will be the outcome. All things considered the man on the street would appear to have little understanding of EU membership outside of the government´s Pied Piper sound bites, ”we want our country back, we want control of our borders, we want our sovereignty back.” It is frightening how easy it is for a government to mask its own failings by demonising something or someone else. There is little danger that Johnson and Co. believe any of this clap trap as so often with mindless campaign slogans but there are many people who do.

When it comes to living up to politics based on false promises, obfuscation or direct lies, there comes a time when they have to be addressed. In that sense shortening the transition period to one year is the child of ”no deal is better than a bad deal” and we know how that ended.

In company with walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat or ensuring seven years of bad luck by breaking a mirror, a  Friday on the 13th of any month is considered bad news. Election day the 12th of December will be the day that goes down in history as the day the United Kingdom decided on Brexit. This may be so but for most of us, the shit doesn´t hit the fan before the votes have been counted and reported, that is to say on Friday the 13th of December and everything associated with that particular, unlucky day. This will be the day that etches itself into people´s memories or will it?

A society founded in the late 19th Century by an American named William Fowler sought to provoke the superstitions surrounding the number 13 by dining regularly on the 13th of every month. Googling on the subject I discovered that walking under a ladder before dinner was one of the rituals yet I found no evidence of any unlucky consequences. One might hope that the food was good to balance the obvious anti-climax of success.

Likewise, this next election will be anything but decisive and will in the following months or years be seen as just one of the steps in the torturess Brexit process with any of the outcomes being nothing but a gigantic question mark. 

1. A Tory majority = what will the deal be or hard Brexit in a year? 
2. A Labour majority = which deal will be put up against a promised referendum and then what?  
3. A hung parliament = another referendum or people´s vote and the outcome?

Brexit has from day one been a political tornado that has ravaged the country, opened up old wounds and re-drawn political affiliations. Ironically it will result in the exact opposite of the promise of taking back control. The United Kingdom as such may well not exist in a few years but even if it does it will have ruined its historical reputation as a sound and reliable democracy and possibly have relinquished its predominant place at the decision making table of european power thereby accepting a minor role on the global stage. 

Friday the 13th give or take,  this is self inflicted bad luck.

What´s the next best thing you can do if you can´t afford a winter trip to the Canary islands? For some people it would be to shame a person who can. Climate change has effectively put an end to the usual envious responses like, ”it´s too touristy for me” or ”sunbathing all day is not my cup of tea.” Of late the smug reply by anyone in need of offering such is a snide remark about climate change and flying. Before you read any further let me hasten to add that I am not a climate change denier and come out in full support of effective policies to address one of the greatest threats to our planet. Unfortunately belittling the argument for climate smart change by reducing it to a ´dog in the manger` level is not very helpful and possibly even counterproductive. 

At a friend´s dinner party the other day I was asked about our recent  trip to Australia. Before I had a chance to answer someone chirped in, ”how does that relate to being climate smart?” The person in question having once enjoyed the benefits of a university education could hardly have been in doubt as to the lack of options available , other than those at the disposal of Phineas Fogg, in reaching Australia from Sweden. So I shall leave it to whoever reads this to draw their own conclusions on why the question was asked. Without going down that path I merely pointed out that our 7000 kilometre trip from Darwin to Brisbane via Adelaide and Melbourne involved 4000 kilometres of rail travel and the 900 kilometres we flew from Adelaide to Melbourne were due to there not being a train on that particular day. The remaining 2000 kilometres from Brisbane to Cairns were by car as we wished to explore more of Queensland. 

This answer effectively put an end to the climate shaming and at the same time any further discussion which in itself is a shame. Our justice of the climate was a little put out yet silent, giving everyone the impression that we were exonerated. This is rather silly as we prefer travelling by train or boat whenever possible with flying being the last resort. Kicking down is so much easier than kicking up and may be rewarding as a stimulant to the brain such as alcohol or coffee but is less effective when it comes to catalyzing change. Kicking up is rather more difficult and apart from requiring courage it is also best done with a healthy mix of passion and knowledge. A 16 year old Swedish girl has been showing us how it´s done.

All in all our Stenåsen period, the name of the property meaning Stoneridge in English, lasted a total of fourteen years of which as I have already mentioned the most part was as a summer holiday retreat. Our efforts to move there permanently, foundered on a moving to the country back to nature dream crossing paths with reality. Stenåsen had been a smallholding although the man who built the house in 1905 and his family of five children were reliant on his ability to work elsewhere to supplement their income otherwise derived from growing their own food and some livestock. When we bought the place from one of the sons it had been empty for a number of years since the death of the widowed mother. The enormous barn with the integrated stonewalled stables/cowshed and the fading whitewashed walls had obviously not been in use for far longer, representing a once harsh reality of survival and now serving as a backdrop to some sort of back to basics romanticism. Gunilla is from Stockholm,  often derogatorily referred to as 08s, the telephone area code for the Stockholm region and although I come from a family of landowners I have little experience or inclination for that matter to grow things. This of course pointed us in other directions than farming for a living. No problem for my wife who had just graduated from teacher´s training college and in the short term not for me either although travelling the world including to an evermore restless Middle East would be something to address in the long run. Winters have been known to subjugate great armies and in this respect we were not much of an opponent. My mother used to say she didn´t trust history books because the people who wrote them hadn´t themselves been there and experienced what they were writing about. Not a good reason for deriding history books of course although in truth hardship and suffering can only be communicated to a certain degree, yet if we are to avoid making the same mistakes in the future an understanding is a pre-requisite. History repeatedly tells us that we listen but often do not understand. 

We spent our first summer blissfully taking in all that our new home had to offer. Our six acre smallholding was perched on a ridge between Västanberg and a lake known as Grängen. The house with its seven outhouses and an earth cellar or jordkällare was situated in a clearing surrounded by woodland on three sides and a small field to the South. A jordkällare I would like to think is the 100% climate sustainable forerunner of the refridgerator. Often dug into a small embankment with in our case two consecutive doors and standing height for anyone shorter than 1,70 metres which I am certain would have been ample for the times. The fascinating thing about a jordkällare is that it keeps roughly the same temperature all the year round, cool in the summer and never freezing in the Winter. Halfway between the jordkällare and the house was a well with a bucket and chain hidden by a heavy lid. Thus a 20 metre walk for some water and another 10 metres to the fridge. As there was no running water in the house it will come as no surprise that the only toilet was what the Australians refer to as a dunnee. Ours was situated just beside the stables which makes sense for more reasons than one but it also had a rather quirky feature to it. This wooden dunnee perched above the manure pit had two holes to it, side by side, each with a lid. I´m not sure if this was some sort of one-upmanship on the neighbours or a necessity for a family of seven. 

Talking of neighbours the nearest one had to be the beaver in the stream about a hundred yards to the West and the only neighbour in that direction. As you have already gathered Stenåsen in the community of Ekshärad in the county of Värmland is a quiet place but notwithstanding, Albin one of our two neighbours to the South would quite happily have shot our neighbour to the West. No sentimentality toward beavers that build dams and flood fields, that´s for sure.  Pointing out that nobody tilled the land here anymore, other than Arvid about a kilometre further to the South thus not affected by Billy Beaver, was met with a look of disdain. Let me add that Albin was really quite a gentle fellow and didn´t own a gun, in fact I am inclined to believe he never had. The second neighbour to the South was Hannah a charming old lady in her 80s who took pride in growing roses. To the East we had Signe who clung on to the last vestiges of farming life by supplying milk to the local dairy.  Although her farmhouse could not be seen from the road the large , shining, aluminium cannister on her milkstand opposite ours put our empty one to shame, indeed we were in the middle of a farming community about to enter history. We became the first summer guests and would over the years come to see the locals replaced by other summer occupants from Norway, Holland and Germany. The changing of the times was never so apparent as when we invited our neighbours to the North for some refreshment during our very first Stenåsen Midsummer festivities. Ruth and her sister Evelina lived on their pensions in a little farmhouse approximately a kilometre further upstream. On arrival and shaking hands with Gunilla both women curtsied, showing the respect  earlier generations bestowed on education at the same time paying homage to a class system that everyone else there was convinced had long time been banished. It was a touching as well as an embarassing moment to witness. 

If I were I asked to explain the word ”identity” by means of a song I would suggest, ”He’s got the whole world, in His hands He´s got the whole wide world…” No, I´m not doing a Billy Graham and that was not meant in a religous way although religion is not to be excluded. It is only recently I have begun to realize the intensely complicated and powerful effect this word posseses.

Intensely complicated you might ask questioningly? One look at your identity card or passport and there you have it. Difficult to disagree with the information presented there and what is seen in the document should more than just roughly coincide with the person in front of you which of course is the object of the exercise. In that sense a case of true and I imagine unique identity. There may be exceptions to this I am aware but how many brown or blue-eyed John Smiths born in London on a specific day of any one year are there? Now, despite this rather touching view as to who I am according to my passport there is undeniably a larger everchanging picture and the greater the number of pixels in that picture the more complicated it gets. 

Life has its own system of benchmarking and all along we have little choice other than to generally accept, adjust to and interpret who we are. Everchanging, not only in the mirror and even then sadly not only due to the latest hairdo. From infant to child, from child to adult, from girl to woman, from boy to man. As adults we are engaged in any one of a million groups from work, business or pleasure. We pride ourselves in a combination of our choices and our heritage. Not unlike a salesman though, we do like to overemphasize positive things and very often play down the weaker side of our nature resulting in a self-image through rose tinted glasses. Much like, as an animal lover conveniently forgetting you throw things at the neighbour´s cat because it shits in your garden. This points to a number of other character traits without necessarily making you less of an animal lover although the neighbour might be forgiven for not seeing it that way.

On a more personal basis I have few problems concerning identity although I am sure people find this hard to understand. It all started out pretty straightforwardly with a German father and mother then getting slightly more complicated when I found myself in England at the age of three under the auspices of a lieutenant colonel stepfather. Very soon my mother tongue faded from memory only to be revived on infrequent summer holiday visits to adorable grandparents.  My heritage I bore in my name and the undying support for, ”die Mannschaft” in an otherwise total English setting. I rarely experienced any anti-German feeling at school or anywhere else for that matter and felt British in the hanoverian sense often casting a thought to a distant relative who commanded the King´s German Legion at the battle of Waterloo. 

Believe it or not things got even more complicated when the publishing company I was working for in London sent me to Scandinavia to set up an office and 48 years later I realize I have become more Swedish than anything else without actually being a Swede, unlike my wife, my three children and my five wonderful grandchildren.

An old friend Claes called me a week or so ago asking me if I would be interested in crewing for him for a few days. Not having done much sailing since I sold my own boat a number of years ago I jumped at the chance. Sailing from Kungsör one early July morning he picked me up virtually outside my front door and this picture is taken aft as we leave, with Västerås in the background.

Sailing is pure bliss and not for those in a hurry. Our first overnight stop was in Strängnäs harbour a stone´s throw from the city´s cathedral, seen here in this picture

Stallarholmen nostalgia: The very torpedo boat Clas did his national service on some forty or more years ago giving rise to a conversation ranging from wire steered torpedoes and life on a torpedo boat to reflections on Sweden´s once very impressive defence capabilities.

Arriving in Stockholm our second night was spent under Västerbron and the guest harbour situated there.

More nostalgia. They don´t make them like this anymore. This beauty was in Hammarby locks in Stockholm as we left the freshwater of Lake Mälar for the saltwater of the Baltic.

Bit of a late start today due to fan belt trouble. As we leave Stockholm you can just see the dome of Katarina kyrka in Södermalm behind a cruise ship and ferries to Finland.

Heading South in the archipelago looking for a cosy little ”vik” to spend the night.

Getting closer

Found it.

This water is rather salty otherwise it would be clean and cold enough to water your whisky with.

Beer, barbecue and sunset.

Yours truly, First Mate

Arriving Utö

S 1 and 2 out of 3 are best done ashore.

Captain Claes in Nynäshamn waiting for a replacement crew.

Like Christmas, Midsummer comes once a year and is celebrated at the end of June or if you like at the opposite end of the calender year from Christmas´s winter solstice. Unlike Christmas, Midsummer has not been adapted to Christianity but is splendid in maintaining the more mundane joys of our existance. Whereas Christmas has lost most of its pagan origins albeit still going by its pre-christian name ”Jul,” Sweden´s Midsummer has all the handed down attributes of a Viking festival fortified by its very raison d´étre namely the summer solstice when the country is at its most beautiful.

Tomorrow Gunilla and I will be off to Stockholm´s archipelago to partake in, unbelievably so, our 48th Midsummer together. The countryside will still be greener than at any other time of the year, the sky as blue as ever with the smell of pine mixed with the scent of at least the seven varities of flowers which according to tradition are to be placed under a young girl´s pillow for her future betrothed to come to her in her dreams. The Midsummer pole will not be as well prepared nor as tall as in younger days as will coffee and cake be more predominant without entirely banishing the ”snaps” accompanying the pickled herring. The conversation may turn to those early Midsummers in Värmland where the brief period of semi darkness replaced by a rising sun went unnoticed as the ”fest” went on for hours more. 

Stenåsen 1983

”What now my love, now that it´s over?” as the song goes together with Theresa May. Well she may have gone but it´s definitely not over. Leavers now rallying around their ”no deal” war cry and Remainers basking in the glow of sweet EU election revenge showing Jeremy Corbyn that their 2017 vote for Labour was not a vote for Brexit. The Tories are on their knees and Labour is on the ropes. UKIP has metamorphosed into the Brexit without a manifesto Party where Little Englander nationalist emotions replace all else. The House of Commons and the country are divided as before although shot of the Withdrawal Agreement Brexit has now crystalized into a suicidal No Deal or Remain.

There will have to be a new referendum no matter who replaces Theresa May as Prime Minister or whatever further election fudge Jeremy Corbyn comes up with as the Tories would never risk an election in their present state.  Also with or without Corbyn, Labour will back Remain. Why will Remain win? Because there are no other realistic options left. It´s everybody´s face saving way out of a disaster that most people now realize should never have happened.

Language or indeed languages have always interested me and I make the assumption that growing up bi-lingual has been influential in this respect. Perhaps not exactly on a daily basis but still quite frequently discovering the common root or history of a word disguised in spelling or pronounciation still gives me a kick as well as more often than not serving as a reminder of a shared European heritage. Experimenting on English words by pronouncing them exactly as they are spelled will reveal a treasure trove of Anglo Saxon, German or Nordic linguistic cousins as a compliment to the slightly more identifiable Latin ones. A pre-requisite is of course at least a rudimentary knowledge of another European language. Enough of that, where enough rather serves as a good example of the above.

On the way back home to Stockholm or in fact Märsta which is situated next to Arlanda airport I asked my wife something that was puzzling me. ”Wasn´t that Mr. Ericsson we were talking to or did I miss that it was his assistant?” thinking that my newly acquired skills in  Swedish were letting me down.  Gunilla confirmed to me that it was in fact Mr. Ericsson who had shown us the house and was also making preparations for our purchase of said. She had addressed him in the third person using his name as if she were talking about him not to him; ”we would very much appreciate it if Mr Ericsson could arrange to send the papers to Stockholm.”  She explained to me that in very polite Swedish a person is addressed in this manner.  This was nothing I had come across in Stockholm and I began wondering if the 380 kilometres we had travelled West were representative of as many months in time. Even in those days the so called ”du (thou) reform” was already widely accepted and the more formal ”ni” (you) rapidly becoming extinct other than in a plural context.

In September 1972 Gunilla and I bought what in Sweden is called a summer house often referred to in English as a weekend retreat or maybe even a second home. Living in Stockholm at the time we had plans to move to the country once Gunilla had finished her studies in Uppsala. My job as a sales representative for Holt Rinehart and Winston only required for me to be within easy commuting distance of an airport. For several reasons things didn´t turn out as we had expected and our summer home never became our permanent country home other than for a few months. 

Neither of us had ever heard of Ekshärad before yet had a vague understanding that the county of Värmland was about as far West from Stockholm as you could go and still be speaking Swedish albeit with a strong regional dialect that at times would seem as close to Norwegian as Swedish. I´ll be getting back to that another time. 

The advertisement in Dagens Nyheter referred to a property which sounded like something we were looking for so we rented a bright yellow VW beetle and headed West. Bypasses, not to mention motorways were virtually non existant in those days so the 380 kilometre trip took us about 6 hours, something we had anticipated, inspiring an extremely early start. At the estate agent´s office we were given a description of the property and a landmark to ensure we took the correct turning off the road. My parting question to the estate agent on how far the turning was rendered a slight shrug and a reassuring ”just a bit up the road.”

Off we went and stretching ”just a bit up the road” to include about 30 kilometres we then decided we must have missed the turning and returned for more detailed instructions. NB mobile phones were still science fiction in those days.

”It´s just a bit up the road” turned out to be a distance of 80 kilometres. 8 miles which is what he actually said has a much better kling to it until translated into kilometres.

Having already travelled 6 hours we were in no mood to continue a further 80 kilometres and took our chances with that day´s local property advertisements instead. The lesson I learnt here was that a Swedish mile may be the mathematical equivalent of 10 kilometres but in a Swedish understanding of distance it is more on a par with an English mile. 

That afternoon another estate agent showed us two properties and we set our hearts on buying Stenåsen, a former 6 acre smallholding. A timber house, two up two down, an enormous barn altogether a total of 7 outbuildings including a ”jordkällare” or earth cellar.  Being a little unsure that again my newly aquired skills in Swedish were letting me down Gunilla had to confirm to me that the finishing price was actually 38000 Swedish kronor which is the rough equivalent of £3000.

We signed the contract that late afternoon giving us a few days to pay the 10% deposit.