Day 3944: Grill Season

The longer you live somewhere the less in-your-face the cultural differences are, and the more you have subtly absorbed those traits which you once considered differences.

Fortunately for the sake of this blog I still encounter a few of them, such as this fine evening when the weather is 23 degrees and the sun will shine on some corners of Stockholm until after 9pm, enabling the good Swedish folk to barbeque farty hamburgers and smoky, fatty fish to their hearts' content underneath the windows which I have opened to get an airflow through the flat.

Perhaps this has little to do with cultural difference (British people like to BBQ too) and more to do with me being a vegetarian. I understand that it is, in fact, possible to grill non-meat products (or as I like to call it, food) but really, fire warmed squeaky cheese does not drastically outshine its frying pan cousin and added-last-minute-then-left-to-go-luke-warm vegetable skewers with soggy peppers and mushrooms aren't ever going to be described as the highlight of anyone's summer. 

The joy of the grill is really reserved for the tired, middle-aged Swedish dad, who uses dinner time as an excuse to stand the fuck outside away from, well, everyone else (except, perhaps, other tired, middle aged dads who are prepared to talk about grilling and little else) and flip a bit of meat over the coals. Of course, in contrast to most vegetarian food which requires quite a lot of TLC before grilling it will add any discernable benefit, anyone's pound of flesh is always improved by maillard reaction.

"Vi ska grilla!" (We're going to have a bbq!) is the culturally acceptable but yet also catastrophically and diabolically lazy way of hosting summer parties, since all the host has to do is set fire to something, and the guests have to bring the items to burn. Swedish summer parties always result in 25,000 packs of unused halloumi cheese in the host's fridge and a conga line of freezing guests at sundown all carrying up to the flat any errant ketchup, skewers, empty beer bottles, half eaten hot-dog buns, depleted crisp bowls, cutlery, tablecloths, extra chairs, trays, mayonnaise tubes, and uneaten salad that made their way downstairs in a gradual drip-drip-drip but must all go back up as one. 

There's only so much god-damned halloumi I can eat, to be honest, and there's probably a limit to how much carcinogen I can bear to have seeping into my bedroom from the man who likes his cow to taste like charcoal every night of the week. I hasten to add that it isn't just the one dad who's out there grilling on the daily, every flat in the inner garden has a grill setup. So if one person gets their char on at 5, another can start at 6, a third at 7, another at 8 and we can enjoy that smokey, smokey, meaty, meaty goodness all night long! There are also some grills out front, so if I want to close the back windows and let some fresh air through the front, well, I'd better hope those dads are out at one of Sweden's 900 burger restaurants.

She's probably set fire to the whole thing 'cuz she's not usually the one doing the grilling...

Day 3111: COVID

Welp, it took me 2 years but I finally succumbed to Covid-19. In the end it wasn't packed bus travel, flights, holidays, supermarkets, parties, clubs, bars, restaurants or any other of the fun or travelling-to-fun things that finally got me, it was a 6-year old child I teach. Of course, there's never any way to be 100% certain where viruses come from, but this 6-year old was very sick, carrying a snotty tissue around the school, and coughed wetly directly into my face around 4/5 days before the onset of symptoms... 

To mark the occasion, and because I'm sitting here in my house for the 4th day in a row with nothing much doin', here are some very Swedish responses to the pandemic I've observed over the last couple of years.

1. No Masks

I've been to the UK a few times during the pandemic and masks are a must-have. Everyone has at least one with them in a pocket or in a bag to put on when they enter a shop or public transport. This is a behaviour that simply never manifested in Sweden. There are some people who wear them, if I take my observation of busy central Stockholm shopping hubs as an example, I'd estimate that these are about 15% of people. On public transport, even when it gets really busy, I'd say its a similar figure. Last year before the vaccines came there was a definite increase in masks on the tube, maybe 75% of people wore them, but then the behaviour never stuck around after the summer.
When I went to visit the GP a few weeks ago I was wearing a mask, and seeing me wearing one prompted my GP to put one on. 

Additionally, if you ask someone why they're wearing a mask, more often than not they'll say its for protection - and there is a prevailing idea that masks protect the wearer and not everyone else around the wearer. Sweden often projects an image of itself as a society in which everyone plays their part in making the country somewhere pleasant for everyone else, but more than ever before has this fallacy been completely blown out of the water by the mask question. People wear them here for themselves, and not for everyone else - i.e. in the most pointless manner possible. 

2. Rapid Antigen Tests

Fast, cheap and reliable testing backed up with effective contact tracing is the backbone of the world's most successful Covid responses. Fast, cheap and reliable testing also never manifested in Sweden. For the last few months, "gargle tests" have become available in a few schools in response to outbreaks there, notice in response to and not preemptively. Workplaces here do not distribute or encourage regular self testing. Before meeting with groups of friends and family if you want to do a test you will have to pay through the nose for a stash of private antigen tests. This phenomenon has only now started to take off in the wake of omicron - friends and family in England have been taking "Lateral Flow" tests for the better part of the last year. I detected this manifestation of covid in myself with a lateral flow a good 36 hours before noticeable symptoms and kept myself at home a day earlier than I would have, saving me from meeting a lot of students and interacting with a lot of people.

3. State Mandated PCR Tests

Ok, so there's a distinct lack of fast N cheap testing, but I'm always blown away by the efficiency of PCR testing. There are multiple ways to get tested, always free, never more than a day or two away even in the busiest depths of central Stockholm. The method I've used most is to have a taxi courier drive the test to and from my house to a laboratory at state cost, even when I've come back from international travel. This method has kept several taxi companies running despite people not being able to go anywhere during some points in the pandemic. The results are collated and used for the national tracing strategy and to inform policy. 

4. Vaccines

Vaccine uptake in Sweden is among the highest in the world. You know what else is higher in Sweden compared to many other places? Trust in government. I'm not a sociologist or a statistician but I'd bet money there's more than just a coincidental relationship between those two variables. Vaccine uptake here is lowest among people without a Swedish background - you know who has most reason to distrust state machinery? Low paid immigrants. 

Taken from the Swedish Health Agency

 

5. Lockdowns

Or, as the case actually is, no lockdowns. Sweden never had any lockdowns. Some measures were brought in to minimise spread, at their height pre-vaccine these included limits on gatherings, no more than 4 seated at public tables, restricted numbers in indoor areas, no events, enforced closing time of 8pm in bars, distance teaching in high schools, working from home as much as possible and closed swimming pools. Schools stayed open as much as possible so that workers could keep working -  unless, like me, they were teachers and had to just keep GOING even when 50% of you were NOT THE FUCK THERE. After the first few months of covid, which predominantly affected the elderly in Sweden, a colleague of mine died and someone up above realised it probably was not a good idea to keep us carrying on as normal, so I did some distance teaching for a while. 

Even though there were no lockdowns like in other countries, there were times when central Stockholm was like a ghost town. People were afraid to go out, families met on zoom instead, I saw some old ladies last winter desperate to sit down after a walk together in the snow but too scared to sit indoors for a bit. I kept going to the local pub which had good social distancing measures and because the pub needed it - they lost so much business and recieved very little to compensate the loss. A lot of places have gone bust, although the majority of high street businesses here are chains that can survive. 

6. The Law

It is not possible under Swedish constitutional law to restrict the freedom of movement of citizens, and therefore you can't force them all to be locked down. A temporary "Pandemic Law" came into force early last year to allow restrictions on gatherings, international travel and the other measures given above, but it stops short of being able to enforce a total lockdown. It will be interesting, indeed it is already interesting if not worrying, to see how different countries dismantle (or do not dismantle) controls brought in for the handling of the pandemic. It is an academic question for the ages to assess who did what and why and what the consequences were, but in Sweden at least, this was the way the law was applied and the lack of lockdowns and higher spread of covid compared with her neighbors were some of the outcomes.

7. New Swedish Words

Covid has affected every language and changed the way we use several words - some concepts we use considerably more than ever before (vaccine, lateral flow, antigen, viral load, incubation time, contagious, covid, corona, antivirals, epidemiologist, just to name a few). In Sweden this means learning and comfortably meeting and using specialist words in everyday parlance that I otherwise would only have learned in extremely specific conditions (smittspridning, folkhälsomyndigheten, bekräftade fall, luftvägarna, munskydd, Anders Tegnell). Speaking of which, this might not be a specifically Swedish phenomenon, but a cult of personality erupted around the state epidemiologist, with people even going so far as to tattoo him on their bodies... 

8. What next?

Well - what next indeed. In Sweden I think people are resolutely trying to live a normal life again (which you can't do in the winter when everyone is smushed indoors with no air and the cases skyrocket). Shopping centres are crowded again, workplaces had a stint at trying to lure workers back from their mjukisbyxor (loungewear) and schools are carrying on even with half the staff and kids missing. But settling in to a routine in which summer is great and winter is despair is an inorexable and fundamental prerequisite for Swedish life!

Day 2998: Never be normal, part one.

2998 days is around 8.2 years, and 8.2 years is approximately 25% of my life on this planet. So having spent a quarter of my life in Sweden I can say with reasonable certainty that the following things will never feel normal.

1. Not closing curtains, or even having curtains to close.

Here's a picture of my neighbors this evening. Bottom floor: 3 different kitchens which you can see all the way into. That neighbor bottom left I feel I know fairly intimately even though I've never met her. Second floor, bedrooms with mood lighting. Third floor, a mix. Fourth floor, not home, go burgle. 

I say this after closing the blinds myself, because my Swedish boyfriend is happy to sit in a brightly lit room after dark with all everything open. 

I've learned how to have all the curtains open in the daytime otherwise there isn't much light in these parts, but full visibility at the end of the day when I'm trying to loaf around in fucking old pyjamas and a headscarf, picking my nose and watching embarassing TV? No.  

2. "You're from England! I love England!"

I'd like to get to know you person to person, not really fetishized nationality to fetishized nationality, ya know? Ya get me? Ya understand? Oh you have relatives in England OK. Oh, you holiday there at least once a year, OK. Oh, you're continuing to talk to me in English even though we're in a workplace and other people are here who aren't necessarily interested in conversing in English, OK, I'll just keep speaking Swedish, OK? 

Oh - it's been a few weeks since I last saw you and you're going to greet me with over the top British greetings every time, aren't you. Right. OK. 

No I don't really have time to "explain Brexit" right now, sorry. 

Can we talk about all the things that are weird in Sweden and that Swedish people do? No? That's a bit uncomfortable for you? OK. FISH AND CHIPS. CUPPA TEA. RULE BRITANNIA. Ah now we're friends again. 

3. Calling the police and not getting an answer

I've had to call the police about four or five times since living here, once it was extremely urgent because I saw someone breaking and entering, and another time it was less urgent because I found a stolen bike and wanted to report it. For the bike, I had to wait an hour, hang up and call again, wait another fifteen minutes and then be told there was nothing they could do. For the break in, I had to wait fifteen minutes, describe what I had seen (past tense, it was over) and then several hours later an officer called me while I was at work to ask where the crime was, to which I replied that the criminal was most certainly long gone. Another time I saw some teenagers on a stolen police motorcycle so I called to report that, and after waiting to be connected I was told that I had not seen what I thought I saw, and it was impossible, goodbye.

Shitty police services which are chronically underfunded and reactionary rather than a help to the community I am completely used to. Not even being able to get through on the phone when there is an emergency is... mind boggling. I sincerely hope I am never involved in an emergency for which I need an emergency service fast. 

4. Dry, dry, dry, dry, DRY

 Seriously though, it's dry.

Some positive benefits of this include less mould in bathrooms here than in the UK, washing never smells damp, fewer pests in homes, that cold-to-your-bones-creeping-damp feeling doesn't happen, and you can watch your tea evaporate in swirls. 

5. Exactly the same objects in different people's houses

Honestly I just took the first thing that came into my head (svenskt tenn candle holder of which everyone either has an exact version or some cheaper version of swirly metal blah) but there are MANY examples of this. 

I'm used to people having similar decor or following trends, but these trends that transcend time and everyone having inherited the same object/getting it for a wedding/being gifted it/buying it for themselves after queueing for hours to get into svenskt tenn (yes, people do this. Even during a pandemic) is just....nuts.

Also the very staunch "I am an individual and my choices should be respected" stance that Swedes strive for is really undermined by the "I own exactly the same items as everyone else" stance - not because I don't think they should be respected, but maybe because there's not a whole lot of individuality going on... 

Also how do I know people have the same things? See #1

6. Energy Drinks

For such a little country with such a small selection of everything else, Sweden has an absolute shit tonne of different energy drinks. That fine venn diagram crossover of sugar, caffeine and sports marketing just really gives such a massive boost to this pile of shit industry in a country that loves consuming, and then consuming ways to burn off the consumption.

7. Baptized?!

For a country which is supposedly three-quarters non-religious, there's a whole lotta baptism going on. 4/10 babies apparently is the latest figure. And among people my age and older, there are a lot more baptized non-religious people.

That's all for now, folks. Tune in again eventually for part 2. 😉

Day 2803 - The Toarp Crown (Toarpskronan)

I've just been on a weird research journey that I thought I'd share. After eating my waffles (today is waffle day) and sending some pics of the waffles and the Easter decorations I put out, someone in England asked me if I could get them "one of those candle holders", namely this one:

This strange black contraption is made of pointy, jagged, metal, and when you see it without any candles or chicks or little figures it looks a little bit like a torture device: 

I picked it out from a house full of things that my boyfriend's grandparents had in a cabin that we had to clear. The reason I liked it was because it came with three sets of little figurines that you can swap out for different seasonal celebrations, and I am definitely a fan of kitchy yet practical, cutesy yet odd, household items. Nobody else wanted it... And indeed once we had it at home, any Swedish visitors would remark "oh you've got one of those. My grandparents had one" which essentially means it's an old, unpopular, forgotten-about, out-of-fashion bit of tat, which just makes me like it even more. 

Anyway back to being asked whether I could buy one. How do you search for such an item? I did various Google searches in Swedish on the theme of "black metal candle holder easter christmas midsummer"  which didn't help. On Tradera (the Swedish version of ebay) one person was selling a modified version of it, but they didn't have a name for it, they called it a candle crown and they didn't have any different sets of figures. It was only once I started to look for replacement sets of figurines that I came accross the name - Toarpskronan - and made the wallet endangering discovery that the company Kinnox still distribute these crowns and little sets of figurines for every conceivable occasion! 

According to Kinnox, the crown candle holder was first made by Per Persson, if a name could get more Swedish, in the town of Toarp in the 1800s. It was designed to be a replica of the crown that many Swedish kings and queens wore ceremonially as a lucky power-giving item (see the whole story here). 

It would literally put Toarp on the map, if people only knew that the bloody thing was called a Toarpskrona! The crown is used as a claim to fame for Toarp parish:

And might be, at least according to me, the most important item in the very small and very easily missed Museum of Borås. They whip out the crown on special (non-covid) occasions, and invite the public to dress it with accessories. 

 

That was my weird journey for today, thanks for coming with me. I'll see you in Borås for a bit of crown dressing!

Day 2785: I'm so done with this Corona bollocks

There's an old adage that says "if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". But if I followed that rule I wouldn't have said a good seven tenths of the things I've ever said, and a good nine tenths of the things I've ever written. 

The only thing I've said about Corona on this blog is that people hoarded stuff way back last year (my god, that time span. Depressing.) at the beginning of the pandemic. I think I, like many others, was just hoping the whole thing would go away and I could go back to thinking about other things. But it's not going away. And I'm not thinking about other things - well I am, but Corona always crops up in there somewhere. 

If your life is based in a single place, your family and friends are in that place, your job is there, and your hobbies too, then your life became complicated in the sense that you were restricted from engaging in your usual routines and social habits. You probably have some kind of resentment (even though there's nowhere to direct it really unless you have a punching bag with an anthropomorphised corona face stuck to it, or one of the world's worryingly more common authoritarian governments) about losing out on a year of your life that you planned to use to greater effect. 

 

If your life is based in more than one place, that is to say your family, your friends, your job or your hobbies are not within reasonable range of your residence, then this year became fundamentally, world shatteringly more complicated. The situation may even have made you question the whole foundation of why you moved, and ended up living in what is possibly one of the world's most boring, antisocial, cold, quietly self aggrandising, disappointing, overrated and dark places in the world. Yes, I may have crashed out of the hypothetical there somewhat. 

Doubtlessly, life is miserable the world over thanks to Covid, and it is foolish to blame all negativity on any one place. The grass is always greener. A nasty side effect of moving from your home is that you forever wonder whether life is shit because life is shit, or because life HERE is shit, but if you were THERE it would be better. If you live in one place and one place only, you know for sure that life is just shit, you don't have this nagging pull at the back of your mind that you are much better suited to life elsewhere (though let's be honest we're all better suited to life on an environmentally friendly, politically autonomous, fully catered, private equatorial island). 

If half of your spiritual self is in one place, the other half is elsewhere, and a pandemic prevents you from uniting the two... well. You're basically living in a perpetual state of colossal FOMO, a self-developmental limbo, impostor-syndrome autopilot, in which you try to act like you're living your best life in Sweden even though you hate minus temperatures, you don't own a holiday cottage with a bit of land, you've never been, or wanted to go, skiing, you have no intention of queueing in the snow to use a virus ridden gym, you don't suddenly feel the need to contribute to an ongoing housing sales boom, there really is no need for you to get a dog just because everyone else seems to be getting one and above all else you absolutely, under no circumstances, will watch mello or any of the other drivel that this country calls television. 

"But there's no lockdown in Sweden!" I hear you cry. I can tell you now, hand on heart, that pubs being open until 8pm for people who sit in groups of maximum 4 people drinking beers at 8 quid after sitting at home on the computer for ten hours of the day really doesn't compensate for having the slimmest opportunity to leave this place and be with old friends and family that you havent seen for months and months. Worse still, that gnawing guilt you had about all the air travel your lifestyle required is now multiplied tenfold by the knowledge that everyone will be jetsetting all over the place when the time comes for holidays to be on the cards. Do you really want to be a part of that gas guzzling, carbon monoxide spewing, consumerist frenzy? Is there any choice in the matter?

Answers on a postcard.

Day 2734 - Post Brexit Post

I travelled from the UK to Sweden on the 4th January, having turned off roaming on my Swedish SIM at the stroke of midnight of the New Year like some kind of digital Cinderella who didn't want to pay excessive charges to her telephone fairy godmother. 

The truth is so many small kinks in the fabric of British/Swedish life have yet to be ironed out that it is anybody's guess what will happen with phone charges. The latest new feature of the post-Brexit life is the slowness of post between two countries, a post system that used to be so breathtakingly efficient that sometimes I would recieve post within 24 hours of somebody sending it with normal postage prices. Now post sits for a week at the least in a customs depot somewhere. 

Brexit effects have not been cataclysmic so far...can I expect a death by a thousand cuts type scenario where myriad bureaucratic processes become slower and red-tape-ier in turn, or should I be lulled into a sense of security? 

 

Day 2480: Peas halp!

When you learn a new language as an adult, it is extremely likely that you will never be as confident in this new language as you are in your mother tongue. That is why I felt very under confident reporting to my friend that "ärter" is not the plural of "pea" in Swedish, because "artor" is the plural.

Or is it?

What do you say?

Day 2425: How to hoard like a Swede

Last week was all about mocking the Australians because they were hoarding toilet paper.
Well.
This week was all about imitating the Australians and hoarding toilet paper.

This week was also all about learning the Swedish verb "to hamster" (att hamstra) which means to hoard things, although you (hopefully) don't have to stuff them in your cheeks. I went on a photographic tour of my local supermarket to document the things which Stockholmers consider hamsterable. How do they compare with your local supermarket?

1.TUNA
Pros: Keeps for ages and is good protein. Cons: Too much of it will give you mercury poisoning.

2. CANNED SAUSAGES AND RAVIOLI
Pros: Canned goods can be hamstered for eons. Cons: Canned ravioli and sausage. Do I really have to spell out the cons for you?

3. MOZZARELLA AND PARMESAN
Pros: Italy is on lockdown so when are we gunna get more? Cons: You're so fucked in an apocalypse if you can't live without a bit of melty cheese.

4. BEEF OF VARIOUS KINDS
Pros: Can be frozen, so you can eke out your high carbon, rainforest destroying existence for slightly longer. Plus it has that whole manliness thing going for it. Cons: Literally any other meat or soya product is less soul and/or planet destroying.

4.5 BUT ONLY IF IT IS MINCED
Pros: Make the burgers. Cons: SLAB of beef? What is this SLAB you speak of? No SLAB only MINCE.  There will be no SLAB in the apocalypse.

4.5.1 BLOOD PUDDING
Pros: I just...I don't even know, man. This is a cultural aspect of Sweden that I have not engaged with. Cons: It's a pudding made of blood. And they store it next to the cheesecake, which is a less desired apocalypse food.

5. FUCKING CARROTS
Pros: Beta Carotene. Cons: Why are you hoarding this? Super easy to grow yourself. Plus they're from FUCKING SWEDEN so there's like, 0 chance they will be blockaded/banned/taboo.

6. NOT CARROTS IN A BAG. OR AVOCADOS.
Pros: There are no pros here. You're all idiots. You only hoard if you have to pack the item yourself, or if it is ready to eat today. You won't even hoard it if it keeps for slightly longer and is clearly on sale. Nonsense.

7. GINGER
Pros: Immuno booster. I see why you all hamstered this. Cons: At 6 quid a kilo this is some serious middle class hamstering.

8. LEMONS
Pros: Together with that ginger you're basically immune to corona virus. Cons: Bit sour.

9. NOT YOU LIMES, FUCK OFF.
Pros: More for me. Cons: I dunno, y'all hate green or summat?

10.BAG OF LETTUCE
Pros: CLEARLY healthier than limes. Cons: Lasts about 5 minutes after you open the bag. A very poor choice for the long term apocalypse.

11. DRY PASTA, RICE, BULGUR, COUSCOUS, SPAGHETTI...
Pros: Bolognese for dayzzzz. Cons: This aisle was devastated. I have lost all faith in humanity.

11.5. KETCHUP
Pros: There's plenty of non-Heinz left. Cons: Swedish people eat Ketchup on pasta. Whatever shred of faith in humanity you had, it's gone now, hasn't it?

12. FRESH PASTA
Pros: You can buy it when all the dry pasta has been hamstered. Cons: At this point, everything is a con. Especially considering....

...13. FRESH SPINACH PASTA
Plenty of that. Hamstering is a very trend specific hobby.

14.BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD
Pros: BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD Cons: BREAD BREAD BREAD BREAD
You hear corona zombies in the distance, what is that they are braying after? BREAD BREAD BREAD.

15.POOR QUALITY CINNAMON BUNS
Pros: When all the good quality buns are gone, these ones will outlast even your last born children. Cons: They taste mostly of additives so that they can outlast even your last born children.

16. SHIT CAVIAR IN A TUBE
Pros: Salty. Cons: Fish eggs in a tube. Just....okay. I have a Swedish passport but I am clearly not Swedish because ... I don't get it.

16.5 GOOD QUALITY CAVIAR
Pros: Is fine people, plenty of it.Cons: Where's that facepalm emoji when you need it...

17.NESCAFE INSTANT COFFEE
Pros: Now when Swedes tell you that they are the foremost nation of coffee drinkers you can point out that, when shit hits the fan, they are actually the foremost nation of shit instant granules.
Cons: If you are a Swede who hamsters Nescafe then you have some reflecting to do.

18. CHEESE PUFFS
Pros: If corona has taught us something about Sweden, it is that they are serious about their cheese. Cons: If you eat just one of these puffs, you will in fact have to consume the whole bag. Not a sustainable hamstering choice. 

19. VANILLA YOGHURT
Pros: Er...It has vanilla in it? Cons: I don't understand why this one yoghurt trumps all the other yoghurts?

20.HICKORY BBQ SAUCE
Pros: Again.....the specific flavour. Cons: Hickory will forever be the flavour of the corona shutdown, eating hickory at any later date will transport you back to this terrible time of depression and desolation.

21.SALT
Pros: A good apocalypse choice, we can't live without salt! Cons: A box of salt lasts for literally years. How long do people think they are going to be in corona isolation?!

22. BROCCOLI
can fuck right off. 

Day 2392: Make like a tree and leave

Christmas was 47 days ago but people are still recycling their trees. And not just a few people, no, there must be a lot of people keeping their trees well into February because:
1. Demand for tree recycling points is high enough that the council has kept doing the clearing rounds 6 weeks after Christmas.
2. There are consistently piles of trees at these points.
3. Some roads are still covered in pine needles and smell like Christmas trees.

If there are still lots of people recycling trees, then there must also be a significant number of people who still have the trees at home somewhere. Like my neighbor...

I thought my neighbor might have forgotten that they even have a tree, because they threw it outside at the beginning of January, still with the lights on. Then it fell over mid January and nobody picked it up. But I can see now there are no lights on it any more, so there is a very slow, glacial even, cleaning process going on here. Maybe they will recycle it in March.

I was taught that it is bad luck to keep Christmas decorations around after the 6th January. Also, trees shed their needles everywhere after a while, so why keep them around? This tree hoarding behaviour just adds further evidence to my mounting case that Swedish people are extremely image conscious, projecting an outward appearance of being sleek, tidy, well designed, organised and clean while secretly hoarding old christmas trees and god only knows what else in their houses. No wonder nobody wants to invite you round for dinner, they've probably got several month's worth of crap built up that they can't be bothered to take away.

Day 2366: Are police even police if they don't police?

Yesterday, two massive explosions ripped through occupied buildings in Uppsala and Stockholm, the former in a night club and the latter in a fully occupied apartment block. These explosions miraculously did not kill anyone, but they did blow out all the glass in the area and give all the inhabitants an understandable shock. Explosions are currently a popular tactic with criminal gangs, last year in Sweden there were over 100 explosions in inhabited areas. These explosions are so common that the Swedish police were forced in November last year to begin "Operation Rimfrost" which focuses specifically on criminal gangs blowing shit up.

https://www.svd.se/kraftig-explosion-i-stockholm-asn8

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there are criminal gangs up to no good in England, but I am pretty sure if they blew up occupied buildings on a regular basis for several years there would be 1) a national emergency 2) a media shitstorm 3) protests 4) the intelligence service raining down hell. Or, at the VERY LEAST 5) people talking about it and being concerned. Are any of these things happening in Sweden? No. "Big fat explosion in central Stockholm and another one in Uppsala" is not front page news today, despite happening just yesterday. Nobody at work was talking about it. Among friends and family, the most reaction I've had is a raised eyebrow and a concerned tut.

Why there isn't national outrage over gangs using explosions on citizens as a casual form of revenge? The nation is sticking its head in the ground and pretending nothing is happening! How has Sweden become a place where explosions are so everyday that society hardly bats an eyelid? I mean really, what the actual fuck? I hate to use the phrase "wake up sheeple" but....wake up sheeple! Just because this shit is being downplayed in the media, doesn't make it no deal. It's a deal. It's a very big deal! "Operation Rimfrost" was only brought into action after nearly a hundred incidents, and even now, if you read what it says on the police website, they are promising that their efforts "are going to have effects". Not that their efforts are already doing something, no, they are PLANNING on doing something, soon. The last time I called the police was in December about a break-in. It took them 8 minutes to connect me to a switchboard and more than an hour to dispatch a car, which arrived way after the intruder had left and driven by two officers who had not been given the description of said intruder.  I teach CHILDREN more effective than that! Are there monkeys working in the police station?

https://xkcd.com/1013/