Rick´s News

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. 

When you get to my age you realize that most people have skeletons in their cupboard. Now before you start getting too apprehensive let me raise a hand in caution. Indeed the following story is not one that I have talked about very much although it is an incident which, I now realize, has influenced my approach to a great many things and has been helpful not least in my troublseshooting career in disaster management. It is said the devil is in the detail which is nothing I would be inclined to refute only possibly point out that details are often of  little use unless they are seen as part of a whole and also that there is  a clear understanding of what that whole consists of and one´s own role at any one precise moment in time. This understanding should then be indicative to the next move which of course could be no move at all. The latter in plain English is knowing when to shut up. Knowing when to shut up does not necessarily have to be a defensive position it may well be the realisation that the battle is won and no more is to be said or in fact should be said thereby risking a return to GO.

The year was 1969 a time when the Beatles era was coming to a close and maybe even the impetus of Bob Dylan´s The Times They Are A´Changing. The teenagers of the sixties were growing up, cutting their hair and getting jobs. To earn a little extra money I was giving evening classes in London teaching German. I had never taught before and looking in my files can find no reference confirming that I had. Now references are strange things and are rarely straightforward, so as I have little recollection of my actual teaching and the meaningless absence of any reference leaves me in blissful ignorance of if any success. What I do remember most vividly are the people attending my class. If you think this sounds like something out of Cluedo please believe me I am not making this up.  There was a Miss Brown who if I remember correctly was from London and there was a Mrs White, a lady originally from the Caribbean and not in any way representative of her name thus adding a third colour and more confusion especially for the teacher. The other two in the class were Tony and Dennis. Tony a Scotsman born in Liverpool and Dennis a Cockney with Irish parents. Now Tony, Dennis and I would sometimes round off our evening class sojourns with a few pints and then a curry. The term ”ring sting” was added to my vocabulary as well as one or two Irish rebel songs to my repertoire for drunken singing. Tony with his broad Scots dialect and wild temprement to match  contributed on my part to an increased understanding of Hadrian. 

On the 8 December 1969 our motley band found itself in a German Bierkeller celebrating the end of term. It was a pleasant evening although it ended in a rather unexpected way. Mrs White´s later analysis of the events that her presence was the cause is not one I share but for her to think as such is condemning in itself. Tony had gotten himself into a dispute with somebody on his way back from the gent`s toilet. The situation was obviously escalating and knowing Tony, Dennis and I attempted to intervene. Of little avail and the Old Bill (as Dennis would say) appeared as if from nowhere and began escorting Tony to a Black Maria. I soon found myself accompanying Tony and a very drunken Irishman on our way to Bow St. police station. The drunken Irishman was not Dennis who I believe was spared this trip due to his lesser sense of entitlement. What happened? Something like this: ”Now look here officer, there´s no need for this,” I exclaimed in my best what is linguistically known as received pronounciation. ”One more word from you and you´ll be coming along” He omitted the customary ”sir” which should have been warning enough. Watever it was I said is really of no matter and he kept his promise. A night in jail and standing next to Tony in the dock of Her Majesty`s Magistrates Court in Bow St. we both pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly resulting in a £2 fine. Looking back it was probably the best £2 spent in my life. Apart from having experienced the famous Bow St. Court at first hand albeit with a mighty hangover, I also learnt the necessity of taking in the whole picture, that negotiations are never only on your terms and there is a time and a place to just shut up. 

That´s how the saying goes and as usual with this kind of squishy reasoning it covers just about everything without saying anything. The verb feel of course is useful for describing a number of things which in many cases you would find hard put to attribute to any age determining quality. To feel a pebble in a shoe can be painful and restrict movement but that´s about it. For all intents and purposes I intend to restrict myself to feelings coupled to age excluding a number of other interpretations. Even then it is still a matter of interpretation. The interpretation of the world around us and the realization that this interpretation is mutual and ever changing. As a child, as I believe the case is with most children, I was impatient to get older. It would appear that the status of age is a knowledge we seem to acquire early in life. Somewhere along the way the desire to be older than I actually was left me. I don´t know exactly when that would have been but I guess around the age of 21. I have no explanation for this other than the last age related restrictions were lifted and I most probably saw myself as a fully fledged adult.  This desire however was never at any time replaced by wanting to be younger. In fact the thought of having to once again go through all the trials and tribulations of puberty, youthful stupidity and recklessness not to mention a multitude of examination papers was never an attraction even later on in life when becoming aware that old age was creeping up on me. Paradoxically this had little to do with me other than the fact I was getting on in years which I just viewed as an irrelevant number in contrast to the legalities attached to becoming 21. The very first time I realized the significance of that number in relation to how the world and indeed I, myself included, view a person of age was when I glimpsed a reflection of myself walking past a shop store window and wondered who the old man was. It rather startled me although I do remember laughing out loud at the same time thankful that there was no one in the vicinity to add a label of insanity to my what must have seemed like extraordinary behaviour. The second time I recall vividly as it had several connotations. I was on my way to work on a crowded bus in Södertälje, a town renowned for its large group of non European immigrants mainly Christian Syriacs from the Middle East, when a beautiful young woman of about 18 offered me her seat. I thanked her kindly doing my best to hide my surprise which in fact was twofold. Firstly I saw little reason for me not to be able to stand on a local bus for a short period of time but then becoming aware that she was showing the respect due to older people e.g me that most surely was part of her upbringing. I don´t know whether it made matters better or worse that in Sweden this type of behaviour has become increasingly rare to the point where holding open a door for a female might well reap a look of disdain. I have to admit that even until a few years ago the penny hadn´t dropped entirely as to my status so gracefully enveloped in the epithet “senior citizen” when on a domestic flight in Malaysia my wife and I were allowed to board the plane ahead of everybody else. I checked our tickets several times and it wasn´t until several days later I realized it was a case of children and old people first.

More years have passed and things have not got any better. I´m giving Old Father Time a run for his money and even though I may concede that he now definitely has me looking the part, his inroads on my mental status are of a limited nature. I might add there has been no activity from me to halt or even inhibit the process by frenzied activities in the local gym. In my mind Golf and Bridge are two very acceptable substitutes. Becoming aware but not resigning myself to my new status in life has assisted me in battling further assaults on my integrity in a more intelligent and for me less disturbing way. Thankfully I might add as the time I was given incorrect information on which floor of a building the person I intended to visit was housed. Returning to the reception desk explaining as such, the receptionist then repeated her earlier directions in a condescendingly louder voice. I felt like reaching through the little hole in the glass window and throttling her but refrained as my brain conjured up tomorrow´s headlines in the local newspaper. Not, “angry client attacks receptionist,” which I could have lived with but more on the lines of, “deranged pensioner now in care of social services.”