Dreaming of Freedom

It’s been a Christmassy week. I have brought and wrapped a million useful or edible items as presents and sought out a Christmas tree and carried it back on my bike to the flat where it is now tastefully decorated with fairy lights and a little baked dough angel that Rich’s mum gave me years ago.
On Thursday night to get into the Christmas spirit Tim and I went to John’s College to drink wine, eat warm mince pies and listen to ghost stories by candlelight. We squashed in with a good deal of other people into the Samuel Butler Rood and listened to four ghost stories including one written specially for the occasion and a cute poem by the grandson of the organizer. Afterwards we went to John’s student bar where a student of the college has to sign you in and we spent a happy hour discussing what we thought had actually happened in the ghost stories although not much was actually concluded. St John’s is lovely - especially on a crisp winter’s evening but the whole thing was slightly surreal as Christmas met Halloween in a long long candlelit room, wood paneled, low ceilinged with intimidating Tudor portraits on the walls.

No Comments »

I went to see the fireworks last night on Parker’s Piece. It wasn’t a massive display but it was nice. Afterwards Andy and I wandered the cute little streets of Cambridge which were surprisingly busy. After a much needed lie in today I went into the center to the Sedgwick Museum to see Pif-Paf perform their short play Under The Floorboards which was all about important 19th century figures in Geology and what they discovered that contributed to our understanding of geology and the formation of the earth. They ended the play by telling us we were entering an era of human made geology which left a million questions buzzing in all our heads.

Andy and I spent the rest of the day buying him a bike on the ‘bike to work scheme’. It sounds like a great idea - people are encouraged to ride bikes to work and the money to buy your bike is taken out of your wages and you benefit by not paying tax or national insurance on it. The downside is that your employer gets to decide where you can get your bike and Halfords isn’t a great choice. Most of the customers in the bike department were clutching their bike to work vouchers with a sort of manic desperation. I was left undecided as to whether they really did need a tax break on their bikes or they just wanted it because it seemed like a really good higher purchase scheme. Perhaps the air of desperation was due to being in Halfords which is possibly the worst place to buy a bike from. I am convinced that the lack of choice of where you buy your bike from is a major drawback of this scheme. Halfords has an expensive and unimpressive range of bikes, it was chronically understaffed and the staff seemed to have a total lack of passion about bikes. Give me a little bike shop any day, where people know what they are talking about and can offer you real and valuable advice.

3 Comments »

It’s been a whirlwind week of work and St Lucia celebrations. Sweden is crazy about the festival and churches are full of small children dressed up as St Lucia in white dresses with red sashes. Large companies have their own candle lit processions and everyone is really up for celebrating it even if they are a little hazy on the origins. It’s like Guy Fawkes Night/Bonfire Night in England or Halloween in America. The costumes associated with the celebrations are the Lucia dress, sash and candle, or white dress and pointed cone shaped hat with stars on it, a gingerbread man costume, or a Christmas costume of red and white. It’s a calm sort of festival, the St Lucia song is beautiful and gentle and so it’s quite nice to have this celebration in the build up to The Holidays.

Apart from the obvious excitement at discovering Gingerbread Men costumes for the first time - other highlights of my week included a fika with Karin, the book club meeting and a Sue Townsend book. And in ‘other news’ - Keita and Mike sadly left us to return to England; Gothenburg is lit up with Xmas lights and cheered by buskers; and although it’s a bit cold there hasn’t been any ice all week so cycling is still nice and easy.

Although it’s dark outside and I’d rather curl up with P G Wodehouse I’m just about to go out to see an exhibition of work by first year students on the C:Art:Media course here. The work is exhibited at the Rotor Gallery at Valand School of Fine Arts, and will, I’m sure, be very interesting.

No Comments »

The cultural festival was quite good. The city was heaving with people night and day. On Friday night we went to see Circo da Madrugada - Fallen From the Sky. It was a magnificent acrobatic, tightrope walking, juggling and fire breathing display. The story they structured all this around was based on a Brazilian legend - that every 500 years the angels are allowed to come down to earth and enjoy themselves for a night. The performers were fantastic. They swooped in on wires from the tops of the government buildings that surround Gustav Adolf’s Torg and entertained us for a good hour with their amazing feats. Fearless, they bounded up and down the huge dome shaped steel structure, swirled on ropes, swung on swings and made us all fall in love with the sheer beauty of their movements.
On Saturday we explored the numerous stalls and street performances that were dotted around the city including the medieval fair at the Cathedral.
And on Sunday we wandered into Liseberg seeing as there was free entrance to the theme park after 5pm. We’d so far failed to go in as it costs 70 sek to get through the gate and that doesn’t include any rides. We had a good look round the place and it was ok but I’m not really into theme parks. I was hoping I would manage to get one of the huge bars of chocolate that I see everyone walking around with but sadly you had to play a game to win them so my dreams went unrealized!

I’m continuing my punishing regime of a Swedish lesson a day and can now say a few sentences and recognise a few words and have even managed to say a couple of sentences to real Swedish speakers and had the pleasure of them understanding me.

No Comments »