Nathaniel Handy

Writer

Natural blonde, 6’0”, surprisingly intelligent, winning smile, GSOH (why fly in the face of public opinion?)

Currently writing propaganda, journalism, novels, screenplays and old fashioned letters. Hell, I might even try poetry

Subscribe to Blog

Uncategorized

  • Sweden’s alcohol security system

    By

    admin

    on

    Systembolaget with the grille down

    The most secure place in any Swedish city? The prison? No. A bank? No (there is no actual money in Swedish banks anymore – that’s another story). The town hall? No way. This is Sweden. All doors are open. Except, that is, the door of the Systembolaget.

    And it’s not just the door. The Systembolaget doesn’t just shut and lock its door. It puts a metal screen down behind it. And then lots more metal screens behind all the big glass windows. It’s a full lockdown. It is the most secure building in any Swedish town, anywhere.

    Security isn’t a dirty word

    Systembolaget is an important word in Swedish. It’s the name of the state monopoly alcohol supplier. No one but no one in the country can sell you take-out alcohol stronger than a 3.5% lager except Systembolaget. And when Systembolaget closes, it’s closed. Like Fort Knox.

    Swedes are born to it. As a result, they have all perfected a certain style of alcohol purchasing. They plan ahead, in bulk. Being Swedish, this comes fairly naturally. They’re good at planning ahead. It means that when you’re in the checkout line in Systembolaget, you’re surrounded by people with crates of the stuff.

    Even the drunks (yes, state control hasn’t worked) buy their 12% lager in bulk. With my two bottles of Pinot Grigio, I look ridiculous.

    Wine is the forbidden fruit

    And I’m so bad at remembering the strict opening hours that I always miss them. I drink almost exclusively 3.5% lager as a result. It’s a little tedious. Wine has become something of a wistful memory. If only I could plan ahead better, I might taste it again.

    I live in Skåne, the southern breadbasket of Sweden, where the orchards and a few vineyards are fertile and plentiful. Yet even here the state is watching. Visit any of the idyllic Skåne vineyards and you can sample the wine, maybe enjoy a meal with wine, but buy a bottle to take away with you? Oh, no, no, no…

    Only Systembolaget is legally allowed to sell you wine to take out, so having visited the vineyard, you would then need to head back to the city and find a Systembolaget in order, perhaps, to find the fine Swedish vintage you were after.

    They might need to fine-tune that one before Skåne becomes Europe’s answer to the Napa Valley.

    If you ever get hold of any alcohol in Sweden, you might want to wash it down with a Swedish hot dog

  • Finding your Irish roots

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Ann)

    I’m pretty sure my great-grandparents on my mother’s side were Irish. Their surname was Tandy (ironically, unusually close to my own paternal surname). But it’s hard to know for sure.

    It’s amazing how many people have been digging up their Irish connections over the past year, in order quite understandably to acquire the Irish passport that is their green card back into the EU.

    And there is a beautiful irony to such ancestral excavation work. It requires many of us to dig through the humus of our middle class English pasts to find the telltale signs of Irish migration.

    No Irish need apply

    If we could all get a free crack at an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? – the BBC’s ancestry show – I suspect there would be a lot more Irish labourers and housemaids in the closet than many English people suspect.

    Because, of course, Irishness used to be buried. When my mother suggested the Irish lineage to her elder brother, it was dismissed out of hand. The infamous ‘No Irish need apply’ and ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ signs are not so old.

    Steve Coogan (himself of Irish descent) brilliantly captures the latent seam of anti-Irish feeling in England today through Alan Partridge’s occasional throwaway comments.

    It lends the sudden scramble to unearth an Irish relative all the more comic. Even if I were to confirm the Tandys as Irish, a great-grandparent is no qualification for Irishness, apparently.

    My mum is in, but I miss by a whisker. No cigar. It seems patriotic loyalty can be countenanced over two generations, but by god, not three!

    On the subject of roots, you live in the right place, right?

  • Do all apricots taste as sweet?

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Olia Nayda)

    Uzbek apricots cost a fortune from my local supermarket. They are the only Uzbek apricots I’ve ever eaten.

    Almost every apricot you ever bite into will be from Turkey. Why? Because Turkey has, by and large, monopolised the global export of apricots.

    And because it has, an Uzbek apricot will cost ya. Not because an Uzbek apricot is intrinsically better than a Turkish apricot. Simple because it is not Turkish, and therefore your purchase of it flies in the face of economies of scale, thereby upping the price.

    My global yet structured diet

    This led me to thinking about all the foods I eat that are not local, and how they are global, yet each product is usually specific to one place in the world. Not because that’s the only place it grows, but because that’s the only place that exports at scale.

    Every raisin I eat grew in the California sun. Every avocado I eat is from Israel. Every orange, from Spain.

    This isn’t a blog about the merits or otherwise of global food supply chains, but rather the simple oddity that foods that can grow in a whole swathe of places are generally only every brought to our supermarket shelves from one specific place.

    Would my palate appreciate a Greek raisin, or a Trinidadian avocado, or perhaps, a Pakistani orange?

    Talking of eating local, if we go local do we end up divided?

  • The Ninjago Pandemic

    By

    admin

    on

    Ninjago Lego characters on a cake
    Photo by Ariana Suárez

    Last week, I finally saw compelling evidence of a highly infectious obsession among our children. I was in a pine forest in rural Sweden, among deer, wood anemones and goldfinches, when I spied a small boy with a Ninjago baseball cap on his head.

    My son will be six this month. He wants a very fancy Ninjago Lego set. Very fancy indeed. It was then I realised. This is the latest franchise to hit the jackpot. It doesn’t matter where you go, what language you speak, or how much social distancing you observe – your child will catch Ninjago.

    You can’t quarantine the Ninjago

    Your child will catch Ninjago, and so will you. It’s that contagious. We watched the trailer for the Ninjago movie, and like all kids’ movies these days, it’s designed specifically to make Mums and Dads say to their friends, “Honestly, it’s really funny for adults, too. In fact, it’s probably my favourite movie of the year so far!”

    The Ninjago are cool Samurai warriors from Japan (disclaimer: part or all of the following may contain errors and omissions). They are super fighters in Lego form, each with a colour. There’s Lloyd (the Green Ninjago), Cole (the Black Ninjago), Kai (the Red Ninjago), Jay (the Blue Ninjago) and Zane (the White Ninjago).

    They all sound a bit male. My son has suggested that there is a female Ninjago, but it’s unclear to me what her colour is. It’s a bit fighty, and it’s aimed at boys, in the same way the hysterical Lego Friends is aimed prettily and pinkly at girls, with no boy characters in sight. Very old skool.

    This post will mean absolutely nothing to anyone without an under-10 year old, but suffice to say, just because you don’t know a virus is spreading, doesn’t mean it’s not out to get you. Watch out! I’m thinking of getting a Ninjago baseball cap for my birthday. Ironically, of course.

    (Editor’s note: The Ninjago franchise is in fact a decade old already, but then that’s about how out-of-date every parent’s pop culture knowledge is, so there)

    What more? Try talking to a three-year-old

  • The devil wears Primark

    By

    admin

    on

    (The Threadbare Collection™, author’s own)

    Apparently, there are two types of buyer: sweatshop-conscious, eco-conscious (and rich) people who buy expensive, durable, long-lasting clothes, and evil people who go to Primark and get a fresh pair of joggers every Saturday. 

    And then there’s me. I have an enviable wardrobe of fast fashion with all the design cues of… not this season, not last year, but five (make that ten) years ago. 

    Collezione Nat Handy, Edition 2021

    You have to go back to about the 1950s to find references in literature to Westerners in threadbare clothing – patched-up suits and reshod shoes. But it’s amazing how much of my clothing literally falls apart around my ears. 

    Maybe I’m just not very good at shopping? Maybe I’m hopelessly lazy? Maybe, even, I’m an eco fashion warrior who thinks ‘Damn, if those sweatshops are going to exist, let’s make the most of every thread!’

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m so vain

    Carly Simon wrote that song about me. I would, like most people, happily have a fresh wardrobe with every season, sporting all the latest thrills. And I would happily have it all handmade by my own personal tailor. 

    Trouble is, I don’t. Instead, I buy really very reasonably priced togs and never throw them away. ‘Still perfectly serviceable’ is my motto until one morning my wife points out that you can actually see my arse. Seriously. Clear as day. 

    By which time we have bypassed the charity shop entirely and find ourselves with, at best, old fabric for recycling. But in the case of many a pant, even that is not worth it. There simply isn’t enough material left to dress an earthworm. 

    Talking of fashion, why are clothes always about the USA?

    retail clothing with US cities and states
    Get your USA themed clothes everywhere!

  • The day the waxwing came

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Patrice Bouchard)

    The icy North Wind blew us a mysterious guest this January. It arrived on our balcony unseen, caught us aware, touched our hearts, and left a poo. 

    I looked up, and there it was, sitting plump and still, staring in through the kitchen window. Soft, fluffy brindle feathers, darker wings with flashes of red, white and yellow and a tail with a yellow bar along the tip. 

    Livin’ in a twitcher’s paradise

    It didn’t fly away. It just sat there, staring at me. I called my son. He said it looked unusual. I hadn’t really considered it. But now he said so, I couldn’t say what it was. 

    We googled. We found a match. My five-year-old was right. It was unusual. The bird on our balcony was a waxwing. That meant nothing to me. The RSPB told us that it liked to winter on the eastern fringes of Britain. 

    Costa del Malmö

    Clearly, it also liked to winter on the southern tip of Sweden. Not the Costa del Sol, but preferable to its summer home above the Arctic Circle. Maybe it had flown all the way down to us that very day? 

    Was it dying, I wondered ominously? It wasn’t moving. The night was dropping to minus 7. Would it survive? Would I have to sneak out without my son noticing next morning and dispose of a frozen corpse? 

    Berry, berry hungry

    The RSPB said that the waxwing’s favourite food is the rowan berry. Just beyond our balcony were two rowans, stripped of their leaves, but still hung with red berries. If this waxwing still had use of its wings, surely it would find them?

    By morning, it still sat on our balcony. But it had turned around in the night, a movement that felt like progress. It had pooed too, so the bodily functions were working. Still more hope.

    Then hope turned to abundance. By mid-morning, some 50 of its mates converged on our rowan trees. Our waxwing joined them. By lunch, there wasn’t a berry left. 

    A day later they were gone, but while they were here, they were a bloody miracle. 

    On the subject of Swedish wildlife, I saw a hare… where?

  • Mwah! One kiss or two?

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Guido Fuà)

    In England, when I grew up, kissing or not kissing women on the cheek was a class issue. Lots of people think the English don’t do the kiss on the cheek. Not true. The posher you are, the more kissing there is. It’s so French and sophisticated, see? 

    Among my mates, it was simple: no one ever touched the opposite sex, prior to a full snog, let alone kissed them on the cheek. 

    Then I went to university, like a fresh-faced extra in The Line of Beauty. 

    A good friend took me to the nightspots of Fulham and Chelsea, and I discovered that I was expected to kiss every girl I was introduced to. It was extraordinary. 

    One cheek or two? 

    I made a total hash of it, and did one-and-a-half. 

    This inept action left everyone awkward and unsure of my intentions. Was I using the opportunity to go in for the kill? Or was I so put off by their first cheek that I couldn’t bear to fully kiss the other one?

    This is the part of the blog where I say: Obviously, over time I got it down pat. Nowadays, I’m a natural with the ladies… [Is that coughing I can hear at the back? Hey, come on, pipe down!]

    Intimacy is, as anyone who’s lived a long time will know, fraught with dangers. 

    Alas, such sociable cultural fun might just be one of the casualties of Covid. But a nostalgic part of me hopes this awkward British institution will live on.

    Like this? See what I can do with a cucumber

  • In praise of air travel

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Vadim Sadovski)

    Would you consider a one- or two-stop flight from London to India? Or would you click the ‘direct flights only’ button every time? How about 21 stops, plus a rail transfer between Basle and Genoa?

    I’d bet no one would consider such an option today, and yet that’s the trip Lord Beaverbrook stood Robert Byron in 1932, weeks after the first Air Mail route from London to British India opened. He recorded his experience in the wonderful odds and ends travel book, First Russia, Then Tibet.

    It begins in self-deprecating travel journalist mode, moaning about the squalor of this new form of transport. But Byron ends up acknowledging that air travel has been a life-changing experience: 

    “I see it now as one of the great experiences of a life, a period of vivid, unclouded enjoyment in its revelation of a huge expanse of the world’s surface, of unsuspected and unimagined beauties, of heat and desolation beyond credence, of a new pleasure in physical movement.”

    His trip is scarcely believable today. Byron stands in the cockpit behind the pilot, his head and shoulders clear of the windshield, the air sending goosebumps down his arms as he surveys the land below. 

    He gazes on the Amalfi coast, the Gulf of Corinth, the White Mountains of Crete, the endless dunes of North Africa, and the corpses of Turkish soldiers still lying in a deserted fort in the Jordanian desert, over a decade after the close of the First World War. 

    Time for a spot of lunch?

    Byron enjoys scheduled stops for luncheon, and sleeps every night in an hotel. The carrier, Imperial Airways, lays on armchairs and morning papers in even the most remote desert locations. They land in time for tea, before a shave and perhaps a bathe in the ocean before supper. 

    One hint of the future of air travel occurs en route from Genoa to Naples, when they are forced to miss a lunch stop since the water is too shallow for their seaplane to land safely. In the event, the engineer produces a “typical Italian lunch of ham, salami, chicken, new rolls, cheese, Russian mushrooms, nectarines, and wine” to eat onboard. 

    In the age of pinched legroom, no frills and, finally, the moral yoke of ‘flight shame’, it’s breathtaking to read such a description of air travel. 

    “Unbuttoned, unshaven, and unfed, I clattered into the hall at a quarter past seven, to find the other passengers already waiting.” But never fear, for “we reached Gaza for tea”. 

    London to Karachi itinerary

    Day 1 – London to Basle (Luncheon: Le Bourget, Paris)
    Day 2 – Basle to Genoa (by train)
    Day 3 – Genoa to Naples (Luncheon: onboard the aircraft due to conditions on the ground)
    Day 4 – Naples to Athens (Luncheon: Corfu)
    Day 5 – Athens to Tobruk (Luncheon: Suda Bay, Crete)
    Day 6 – Tobruk to Alexandria (Luncheon: unrecorded)
    Day 7 – Alexandria to Gaza (Luncheon: unrecorded)
    Day 8 – Gaza to Baghdad (Luncheon: Rutbah, Iraq)
    Day 9 – Baghdad to Jask (Second Breakfast: Basra, Third Breakfast: Bushire)
    Day 10 – Jask to Karachi (Luncheon: Gwadar)

    Fast forward to the modern age, and find out How to Spend a Long Haul Flight

  • Trump: the damning verdict

    By

    admin

    on

    Gratuitous cute dog image (Photo by Juli Kosolapova)

    The media (that I read) has tried to restrain itself in the fallout of the US election. It’s attempted to remain unbiased. It’s not Fox News, after all. It has standards to uphold. But despite itself, it still let the truth about Donald Trump’s inhumanity out of the bag. 

    No pets shocker!

    Now I am aware that Brexit Britain views the BBC as a Communist fifth column in its midst, so call me old fashioned and out-of-date, but for some wacky reason I do still use the BBC to provide me with news reports. 

    They did their best to keep a lid on their élan in the face of the Biden victory, but they just couldn’t sustain it. The icing on the bun – for me – was the moderate and sober item that arrived on November 9 about Joe Biden’s pet dogs. 

    Cuddly animals win votes

    Someone should tell Trump about this. If he’s such a media manipulator, did he not hear about the oldest one in the book – cute pets? As the BBC report (and so many others) fawned over Joe Biden’s dogs, Champ and Major, the shocking, chilling truth was revealed. 

    Donald Trump was the first US president in more than 100 years not to have a pet.

    BBC News, November 9

    Yes, that’s right. There’s been a lot of debate about the Trump presidency. How low could this guy go? Did he not care about common decency? Did he not give a shit about the rules? Well, in the final analysis, all has become clear. 

    He doesn’t even own a pet. How inhumane is that? 

    I shall now go over to Fox News to hear about the very real threat of rabies infection spreading in the corridors of US power come January…

    More political comedy? How about Blackadder goes Brexit

  • Get off my land

    By

    admin

    on

    (Photo by Lisa McIntyre)

    I love Rupert the Bear. There, I’ve put it out there. Anyway, I was reading my son one of the ancient Rupert the Bear Annuals the other day – those dusty old Daily Express hardbacks full of Rupert stories from the 1930s onwards, when a picture stopped me in my tracks. 

    Obviously, a lot about Rupert the Bear is dated. There’s plenty that could be culturally dissected today. In this case, it was the innocent sight of a cartoon image of Rupert and his friend, Bill Badger, being shown a sign on the edge of a wood by a gamekeeper. 

    The sign read: “Private property: no picnicking”

    The pair had been doing just that – picnicking in a wood. The gamekeeper gave them the benefit of the doubt, since Rupert said so imploringly that they hadn’t seen the sign. All was well. Only it wasn’t really, was it? Two children (well, a kid bear and a kid badger) were being kicked out of a wood for picnicking. 

    The narrative flies in England. Now I live in Sweden, and viewed from here, it doesn’t fly at all. Swedes inherit the right to roam from birth. All land outside a person’s private garden is fair game. Picnicking in a wood is just a given. Telling kids they can’t do it would be tantamount to treason. 

    Trespassing is the right thing to do

    It made me think about my own English upbringing. My family were walkers. We walked everywhere. I had it drummed into me, one footstep at a time. At the same time, my parents made it abundantly clear to me that while trespassing was legally wrong, it was not morally so. 

    I was always reminded that – like the poacher – as long as you’re not caught, it’s OK. It has meant that all my English life has been imbued with a tone of us and them – the common people and the landowners – and an uneasy co-existence. I always trespass as a point of principle, but I’m always on guard against the gentry. 

    I guess that’s why The Levellers came from England, not Sweden. There’s only one way of life, and that’s your own, your own, your own!

    Talking of rights, is it your right to migrate?