Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Hooray! Last night I looked out of my bedroom window and could see two stars in the sky. It's been months since it was last dark enough for the stars to be shinning this early in the evening.

The long summer evenings are great, but I do miss seeing the stars at night. Living, as I do, just outside Västerås there is very little light or air pollution so on a dark clear night the you can see the whole band of the Milky Way spread out across the sky. It's a big contrast to when I was living in Birmingham in the UK, where, with all the streetlights and cars, you were lucky to see a plane going over at night!

Still all the air pollution did lead to some pretty spectacular sunsets.

A Land of Two Seasons

One thing that really strikes me about Sweden is how polarized the passage of time is between the two key events of Christmas and the summer holidays.

No sooner has the last of the New Years hangover worn off than people start dreaming and anticipating the arrival of summer and the long vacation. I guess this is to give them hope that the cold and the dark can’t last forever and eventually the snow will melt and the warmth will return and everything will be sunny and bright.

As soon as the people return from the summer vacation they begin to be more aware that in only a few weeks time the days will begin to get shorter, the trees browner and the summer will begin to loose its grip on the land.

In Sweden the summer vacation comes with so much expectation that people really need a good one to re-invigorate their souls and recharge the mental batteries for the long haul through winter. In years like this, when that dream is washed away by the endless rain, the disappointment can leave and empty hole which dampens the spirits for the rest of the year.

In England the seasons pass more slowly and the winters are shorter and less dark, spring and autumn last months, not weeks and the summer vacation, though shorter, is not built up so much as here in Sweden. I think this allows people more time to adjust to the passing of time and to stay more rooted to the here and now rather than in Sweden where I sometimes feel that people are always looking ahead to either winter or summer.

So as my summer vacation has come to an end, every warm day feels like an opportunity missed as I sit at work slaving away at my keyboard. Maybe I should cheer myself up by singing a few Christmas carols….

All Alone at Work

So another working week comes to an end and at last the weekend is here. It's quite strange for me right now since I am on my own in an office area which normally has about 15 people. This will continue for two more weeks until the first of colleagues start drifting back to work.

On the one hand it’s great to be all on my own as I can get some 'real' work done without all the tedious meetings and endless discussions. Actually it’s scary how much more efficient I can be. The down side is there is nobody to talk to or fika with (hence the extra efficiency?).

In England it is usual to only take 2 weeks of vacation in the summer. Most of the times if you want to take more that 2 weeks off in a single block you need the permission of your manager. This does mean that there are not so many people off work at the same time like here in Sweden. I work in a building which should have a few hundred employees, but right now it feels like a ghost town.

I'll try to enjoy the solitude and concentrate on getting as much stuff done as possible, as for one thing it takes my mind of the fact that I am sitting at work and all my colleagues are off (I imagine) having a much better time.

Living with Bilingual Children

At home I mostly speak English to my 2.5yr old son, whereas my wife speaks Swedish to him and he also picks up a lot of Swedish from the other kids at day care. In the past he has mostly only spoken Swedish but he understands English very well when I speak to him. Now he has started mixing the two languages more and more.

I've trained him to say bye-bye when he leaves somebody, but if a Swede says hey-då instead he somethimes replies bye-då.

Also, I've taught him all the English animal noises as well, so he knows English pigs go 'oink-oink' instead of 'nöff-nöff' and that English frogs say 'ribbit'.

He can also sing along to both 'Ba-Ba Black Sheep' and 'Bä, Bä, Vita Lamm' and can do the actions to both 'Incy-wincy Spider' and 'Imse Vimse spindel'.

If he wants to get my attention he repeatedly shouts pappa-pappa and if that does not work he switches to 'daddy-daddy'

Eventually, when he develops an attention span of more that 5 minutes, I'll start him on English children's TV shows.

I only hope my own Swedish will be able to keep up with him....

The Thief of Time

Finally after all these years I have got my hands on the last Harry Potter book.

Within its covers all the answers will be revealed and all the plot twists laid bare.

But I can't bloody read it !!!!!!

The problem is that I have two small children aged 2.5yrs and 6 months who don't allow me a moment to myself.

During the day they demand constant attention and if I try to sit down to read the eldest will poke his face into the book to see what I'm doing or will start shouting for me to come over and look at his train set.

In the evenings we put them both to bed at around 7.00pm, it takes about half an hour to get the eldest into bed an read him a story etc.. Then the youngest wakes up again wanting more food, so we feed her. Her brother will then start climbing out of bed and running around upstairs. We then get another hour of constantly going up and down to put the little bugger back! My wife and I feel like a tag team where one of us is constantly jumping up to sort one of them out.

By about 9.00pm they have finally settled down, so I can pursue more important things (like reading Harry Potter books, blogging and watching Series 3 of Doctor Who, which my brother kindly sent over from England).

Edward Young famously wrote that 'Procrastination is the Thief of Time'

He had clearly never met my kids - I'd love to have enough free time to procrastinate.

Anyway I am off now to discover when Ron Harry and Hermione will stop running around the countryside and get on with the story.

Rain rain go away

I'm supposed to be on vacation right now on Sweden's West Coast (should be called the 'Wet Coast). So far it has rained every day and we have had the least hours of sunshine in all of Sweden, and thats official. Whenever there is a lot of rain I get people saying stuff like,'you should be used to this coming from England' and 'its only raining so you don't get homesick'. So I'd like to go on record now as saying ENOUGH ABOUT THE BLOODY RAIN. Theese sorts of comments were charming when I first arrived in Sweden, but that was eight years ago!

After a week of rain in Goteborg i wish i was back in sunny England, but not in Yorkshire obviously...