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If life gives you cucumbers…

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January 16, 2020

(Photo by Charles)

…write a blog about cucumbers.

Sometimes life descends into pure farce. On a wet January evening in a shopping mall on the outskirts of Malmö. Or anywhere. It goes from the mundane to slapstick silly.

So I was in my local supermarket. I had my large-volume backpack on (I cycle my groceries home) and I was standing in front of the organic cucumbers. But why did I feel wetness just above my left hip?

It was definitely wet

I was wearing a heavy winter coat. It wasn’t raining outside. I took off the backpack and looked at it. The bottom left corner was dripping wet, as if it had been dunked in a puddle. Strange. I hadn’t put it down once.

I opened it. Empty. I’d come shopping. Of course it was empty. It was going to be filled. Perplexed, I put it back on and chose an organic cucumber from among the sad specimens, reflecting on how quickly my wife had eaten the last one.

Is that a cucumber in your backpack, or are you just…?

I walked away into the avocado aisle. Once more, I felt the wetness on my skin. Dammit! What is this? I whipped the backpack off again and glared at it. Why? Where was this water coming from?

Then I clicked. The side pocket. The long, thin side pocket. I unzipped it, thrust my hand in, and slowly drew out… what?

A long, thin plastic codpiece, containing the remains of an organic cucumber bought at this same supermarket the week before. It was now half liquid, and the top half was a phallus without gusto.

I held the dripping member in my hand and stared around the shop wild-eyed.

MAN CAUGHT SHOPLIFTING PUTRID VEG!

I saw the headlines already.

I scurried to the organic cucumber section and flung it on the pile. Then thought, Noooooo! What am I doing? That’s disgusting. I picked it up again and ran with it dangling in my hand.

Finally, God placed a wastepaper bin at the foot of the kumquats. I was saved. I slam-dunked it. I straightened up. I looked hastily around. Act casual: Oh, two paw paws for only 20 kroner. A surprisingly good deal…

If you enjoyed that, try Talking To A Three-Year-Old
Same place, different century

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January 10, 2020

(Photo by Emma Francis)

Stuck for a good read? Try two books about the same place from writers who were there a century apart. I’ve done it twice now, by chance. I recommend it.

First, I read Siberian Journey: Down the Amur to the Pacific, 1856-1857 by Perry McDonough Collins, an incredible account of his trip as the first American to travel the length of the Amur River on the border of China and Siberia.

I followed this up by reading Black Dragon River: A Journey down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires by Dominic Ziegler.

Collins travelled the Amur as Slavs from Russia were craving out territory for the Tsar. He envisaged a new America in the Far East, rolling back the primitive Chinese. Ziegler’s contemporary travels revealed gleaming Chinese cities looking across the Amur at impoverished Russian settlements.

From US Grant to Kerouac

It happened again when I read the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant – American civil war hero and president. He published them in 1885, just before his death. They largely recount the civil war years and the battles he was engaged in.

I followed this up with Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, published in 1957 and chronicling his road trips across the US in the late 40s and early 50s. I hadn’t intended them as comparison pieces, and yet they were.

Kerouac’s crazy drives from coast to coast, with almost no sleep, occasional fuel stops and bouts of drinking, happened to take him through both Vicksburg, Mississippi and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Both were sites of major civil war battles Grant described.

A hundred years from now…

I was struck by how these two men were treading the same ground less than a hundred years apart, yet one was bogged down in constant mud, trying to pull mule trains of munitions and bedraggled soldiers through the mire, hitting the major obstacle of rivers they couldn’t cross.

The other was crossing the entire American continent from coast to coast in a matter of days, in an automobile on bitumen roads. For one, the conditions were so harsh they imperiled life itself, for the other, it was a joyride.

Same place, different reality.

More travel and books? Here’s how to spend a long haul flight
Meet beauties online now

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December 9, 2019

(Photo by Jamie Street)

I know a couple who are from wildly different places in different hemispheres. How did they meet? On the internet, of course.

If you’re old enough, the idea of meeting romantic partners online still has a frisson of mixed emotions. It feels a little risqué, but also a little taboo.

In my formative years, we viewed internet dating as the last resort of the sad and lonely, not a tool for the sexually active.

Some memories are persistent.

But the more you unpick them, the looser they become.

How did I meet my wife? At work, naturally. How did I meet my university friends? By going to university, unsurprisingly. How do I know my neighbours? By moving into the house next door, self-evidently.

Among my peers of the ‘old world’ of my teens, I think there was a sense that our relationships were pure and authentic, free of the dead hand of digital technology.

But of course, they were simply the result of older networks. Back then, you found your job in a newspaper ad. You found your university by being posted a prospectus. You found a house in a shop window.

Today, I wouldn’t dream of getting a job, enrolling on a course or finding a house without the aid of the internet. Why on earth would I narrow my search to only those places and resources I could physically reach? Absurd!

And so, my quaint old idea that internet love is the preserve of the desperate or the deviant is laid bare for what it is: a memory from another age.

Thank you for reading my thoughts… online.

Talking of t’internet, Are You A Smartphone Addict?
I saw a hare… where?

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November 13, 2019

The photo I didn’t get (Photo by Vincent van Zalinge)

“Here hare here”

So says the note found by Uncle Monty on the door of his Cumbrian cottage in the classic 1980s film Withnail & I. But the hare – that larger cousin of the common rabbit that few of us are very sure about – is not something you see here, there or anywhere.

Until today.

Today I walked within a couple of metres of a real live hare, startled it, and then watched it lollop across the field to the far hedge for a few minutes. I couldn’t believe how big it was. I knew they were bigger than rabbits, but I didn’t know they were that big.

Strange thing is, I grew up in rural Herefordshire. I’ve recently spent another few years in a Herefordshire wood, and yet my first sighting of a hare was on a scrubby field next to the fast encroaching urban sprawl of southern Malmö – Sweden’s third largest city.

Sweden has wildlife

I know this. The elk, the bears, the reindeer. This is a country with proper outdoors. By regional standards, it’s populous – but it still has a population the size of London in a country the size of Spain.

But Hyllie – a suburb that has sprung up next to The Bridge to Copenhagen – doesn’t scream wildlife hotspot. In mid-November, it looks like some bleak noir version of Dubai. Cranes, bricks, dust, mud, piercing security lights, diggers, noise, tower blocks, etc.

My apartment is in the midst of all this. Funny thing is, there are rabbits living in the building site outside my bedroom window. They scurry all over the building sites. And now their larger cousin, the hare, keeping to itself a field or two away.

Nature surprises you where you least expect it.

Since we’re getting back to nature, Ever Wanted To Be A Bear?
Staying silent on Brexit

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November 4, 2019

(Photo by Ethan Wilkinson)

“In the Nazi era they flew the red swastika flag – but only when it became too dangerous not to.”

This is a quote from Rowan Rheingans – interviewed in Songlines about her excellent debut solo album The Lines We Draw Together (see my Top of the World review of the album in My Latest Work), based on her stage show, Dispatches On The Red Dress.

She is talking about her German grandparents. It’s a revealing little line that rang a bell for me. We again live in turbulent times. Many people in the current Brexit debate in the UK are keen to compare their adversaries with the Nazis of 1930s Germany.

While the N-word is unhelpful, the atmosphere of the times has been personally revealing for me. On more than one occasion since Brexit, when confronted with close neighbours, members of my community, espousing pro-Brexit and anti-EU opinions, I’ve remained silent.

What price my freedom?

I have become aware of how uncomfortable it is to contradict a prevailing view. Living in Herefordshire, where Brexit swept the boards, I felt compelled, by my own cowardice, to avoid saying I disagreed with them.

The prospect of being ostracised in your own community, rejected by your own neighbours, cuts deep. Silently going along with their statements allows you to carry on being accepted. How far does that go?

You may scoff

Brexiteers aren’t Nazis, I hear you splutter. They don’t carry a threat of violence. That’s certainly true of the Brexiteers I’ve listened to. But it’s one thing to be a loud and proud Remainer from the safety of inner London.

Out here the LEAVE billboards have only just about come down in the fields and on the side of pubs. I never saw a Remain poster in the entire referendum campaign.

Oi, mate! Come over here and say that…

And now I’ve mentioned the B-word, fancy some Brexit and Morality?
Being nude isn’t rude

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October 26, 2019

Swimwear, denied

I went to the kallbadhus the other day. It’s a Swedish thing. A municipal sauna and sea bathing spot at the end of a jetty. They are dotted along Malmö beachfront. A sign in the saunas advises the visitor that swimwear is not allowed.

Sharp intake of breath

They say nothing helps you see your own culture like going abroad. Removing your clothes in public is just something the English don’t do. I’d never particularly considered this fact until confronted with an alternative.

Last summer in Ibiza, I went naked on a beach. At first, I was terrified I would shock or insult someone with my naked manhood. The same sense of contravening a taboo lingered on the air at the kallbadhus.

A good Swedish slap

It’s what made the whole experience – including six invigorating immersions in the Oresund – so pleasurable. The utter, languid, Saturday morning casualness of the whole affair.

You leave your shoes at the front door. You leave your clothes and bags on the benches in the locker room (of a municipal changing rooms – what, no theft?!). You take one pocket-sized towel to place your bottom upon in the sauna.

You step into the sauna to discover not only men enjoying a moment’s calm sweating, but women, too. The sexes mixing naked – have you ever heard of the like? And doing so with nonchalant indifference.

Dinosaurs love underpants

It’s the name of my son’s favourite book. It’s funny. And so English. With accompanying audiobook read by Rik Mayall.

“It all began when cavemen felt embarrassed in the nude, so someone dreamt up underpants to stop them looking rude”
Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman & Ben Cort

That’s a line I love, and find difficult to explain to a four-year-old. Is this a caveman trait? If so, why doesn’t it affect the Swedes?

It must be the pent up English Christian issue. All that shame and sin. But then, the Swedes do Lutheranism better than anyone.

Just where does the naughtiness of nudity come from for the English? Who knows, but it’s been called out for me at the kallbadhus.

Up for another dip? Read about The Baltic Cure For Fear
You live in the right place, right?

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September 30, 2019

No mincing of words

France has the best wine in the world. Sweden has the best childcare in the world. Britain has the best television in the world. Brazil has the best football in the world.

We love to tell ourselves stories. I’ve been living in a new country now for two months, and it makes you realise just how much we’re encouraged to buy-in to the stories of a nation.

God’s own country

All countries like to think they’re best – some more than others, perhaps. I do come from Great Britain, after all. Not just good, but Great. But wherever you are, a lot of effort is expended in making you sure you’re where you should be.

‘British Meat’s got the lot!’

That’s what it says on the side of a toy bus I’ve had since childhood. Now my son drives it around the carpet. It’s just one tiny, innocuous example of the recurring mantra that you’re in the right place.

That’s probably a good thing. The last thing we need is millions more dissatisfied subjects, clammering to cross borders. But for anyone who has placed a foot in another country, this refrain becomes a little exposed.

Is it really better here?

Nationalist blasphemy, of course. Everything and everyone around you encourages you towards contentment with the way things are where you live.

Of course Britain has the best political system, the best drivers, the best beer – until, that is, you arrive somewhere where everyone tells you they have the best political system, the best drivers and the best beer. What then?

A place called Sweden

As a new arrival, Swedes have been keen to unveil their envied social system to me. They pay a lot of tax. They’re happy to, because they have the best social care in the world. That’s how it is.

But scratch a bit and their social care isn’t that different to British social care, yet you pay a lot more for it. But hush, don’t tell the Swedes. They’re content with living in the right place.

As for the British, they have the best political system in the world. But hush, don’t… oh.

If you want to cross a border, Is It Your Right To Migrate?
How’s your eco-guilt?

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September 23, 2019

(Photo by Simone Busatto)

Are you doing your bit? Did you put the right plastic in the recycling bin? Was anyone watching?

This isn’t an eco post

You’ll find plenty of eco-outrage on Facebook. This post isn’t about that. It’s about the effects of this reality on us. It’s about stress – that other elephant in the room. Just how much have we stored up – collectively – since industrialisation?

Enough for a planet-sized shrink

Some depressing words for you: deforestation, pollution, extinction, contamination. Don’t stop reading! What do they bring to your mind?

Feeling stressed yet?

Not all of us are tree huggers or Attenborough wannabes. Some of us are lazy. Some of us just don’t care. Some even dismiss things like climate change as nonsense. But we all kinda know human life is degrading life on Planet Earth.

A spot of baggage? A Santa’s sack of baggage! No one became vegan in a vacuum. So many little acts these days are connected to the big fat – nearly extinct – elephant in the room.

When do you qualify for eco guilt?

We all know about Greta Thunberg and her stolen future. OK, so the kids aren’t to blame. But when do you start being to blame? On your 18^th birthday? Or do you have to be baby boomer or older?

My parents are baby boomers, and they spent my entire childhood at CND and Greenpeace events. Does that give them a pardon? The irony is, Greta Thunberg’s stolen future idea causes ex-hippies far more guilt-ridden anguish than it does the likes of Donald Trump.

The best starting point I can see is to begin by acknowledging to yourself that you don’t need to assume the burden of humankind’s environmental impact. You can care, but it’s not your fault.

That way, you’re far more likely to make a positive difference.

While we’re on tricky eco topics, If We Go Local Do We End Up Divided?
Hot dogs, with added Swedishness

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September 5, 2019

Korv, blimey! (Photo by Mark Solarski)

In Sweden, a hot dog is not simply a hot dog. It must have mustard, ketchup, gurkajonäs (chopped pickles and mayo), prawn mayo, hell, even mashed potato. In short, it has cultural legitimacy.

In the UK, eating a hot dog is imbued with no cultural significance whatsoever. It’s cheap processed meat, pure and simple. It even looks and feels like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. You’re a glutton and a piglet slayer.

But in Sweden, you can be sure that any stretch of forested highway will soon be interrupted by the neon light of a kiosk of hot dogs. They are a Swedish institution – just as fridge-cold Ginster’s pies are to Britons.

A good hot dog

Being offered a hot dog in Sweden is a liberation. You aren’t simply eating a hot dog, you are having a ‘cultural experience’ – and as all good tourists know, cultural experiences cancel out calories.

It means that when you eat a hot dog in Sweden – which you call a korv, naturally – it has so much cultural legitimacy that it’s essentially zero air miles, carbon neutral, plant-based goodness. Amazing!

The same goes for meatballs – that other mighty Swedish culinary edifice. It’s processed meat made happy for the Scandinavian socialist utopia. It has the same guilt-free X-factor that deep-fried fish has in Britain.

The icon halo

This halo effect is fantastic, but we all know it’s ultimately a con. That’s why IKEA has taken to offering a veggie dog to its customers. It can’t get rid of the hot dog – that would cause a riot – but it can offer a clean alternative.

Swedes are super-hot on being super-environmentalists. They’re world famous. But hey, even zeitgeists need downtime with a hot dog every now and then.

Talking of how we eat, Fancy A Dinner Share?
Are nomads bad?

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August 27, 2019

(Photo by Diego Jimenez)

I’ve been listening a lot to Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Western Stars. I love it. It’s one of his strongest records for a long time, in my opinion. The songwriting is so condensed and focused.

Some folks are inspired sitting by the fire, slippers tucked under the bed
But when I go to sleep I can’t count sheep for the white lines in my head
Bruce Springsteen, ‘The Wayfarer’

Western Stars is all about the wandering life, not being able to settle. Is that an affliction? It is in a settled society.

The question ‘are nomads bad?’ can seem a little brutal. Of course not! Most people in settled societies look with benevolence towards those humans still living a nomadic life.

Nomadism is seen as a fragile trace element from our shared past – a survival from an earlier age. When it’s at a comfortable distance – on TV or in interesting books, for instance – it’s cherished.

Wandering is not a crime

But what about the Gypsies in your town? What about the government in your state when someone tries to live without a permanent address? How sympathetic are we then?

Which got me thinking about all those road movies, all those novels, all those ballads at the heart of the American myth of the hobo wandering man just chuggin’ on up the highway…

Is this our Gypsy ancestry trying to find an outlet in a world that no longer accepts the nomadic instinct? Are all those misfits and loners who don’t quite fit in just the natural, honest truth about the human being?

How many lives might be fixed by not trying to settle? Just being one with the road?

Talking of borderless people, Is It Your Right To Migrate?