I have to do the get up insanely early and try to get to Stansted thing again, so when the plane is delayed for an extra hour it is clearly of no consequence to me. Eventually we are cleared to go and are soon flying over about 1000 frozen lakes in Sweden – excellent: extreme cold is exactly what I want from a holiday, and it makes a delightful contrast to the heat of last week. Thankfully the lakes seem to melt as we get closer to the airport, which is a 1.5 hour bus ride to Stockholm (and why the hell is that – did the bus company build it that far away so they could charge more for the trip into town or something?) through Arena photo shoot country – that crystal clear light through pine trees thing that they seem to love this month.   Continue

I was talking to this guy who came in the other day – German bloke, seemed nice enough – and he asked me why everyone seems so happy around here. Sounded to me as if he’d asked this question a few times before. Don’t know really, I replied, no reason not to be I guess. He had a few drinks and we talked a bit more and he left, none the wiser but smiling at least, and I started thinking a bit more about it.

Continue