A Brit in Sweden

[Dreamwoven]

As a Brit living in Sweden I am happy to be living here. It has a fragmented class structure so there are lots of political parties to choose between. In Britain you only have two, or perhaps three, Labour, Conservative and possibly Liberal. I learned quite a lot about Sweden by the language, especially in the Institute for Housing Research, while in Gävle, where I was a Research worker for my last working years (the Housing Research Institute has now relocated to Uppsala, while Gävle has grown into a decent-sized city with some 100,000 residents. the Housing and Urban Research Institute: https://katalog.uu.se/organisation/?orgId=SF16

[Dreamwoven]

Although I was born and lived in Britain for the first 25 years of my life, I increasingly identify myself with Sweden. This is my home and I love it here.

[Danik 2016]

Sweden seems to be an interesting country. Only winter seems to be very cold there.

[Dreamwoven]

This year was exceptionally cold, we had four feet of snow, but in spring it melted quite quickly, by May it had all gone. Southern Norrland is about the same latitude as Anchorage in Alaska.

[Dreamwoven]

Further north it is much colder. Yesterday we went by car to Åmot, a beautiful place some 50 km north of here. We stopped off for an iced drink and home-made pastries, and sat and watched the swallows and the waterlilies on the lake.

[Danik 2016]

Well you have something there one misses when one lives in an immense air polluted capital:beautiful spots of nature. We had a lot of doves around here, but the major put a fine on feeding them and in no time they grew much less.
This winter promises to be another winter 40ºC. Temperatures so far have been above 25º.

[Dreamwoven]

Oddly enough, the most influential department for me was my very first post as Assistant Lecturer at Leicester University (1961-649. This obituary of its head of department, Ilya Neustadt, in combination of the two lecturers there, both appointed by Neustadt - Norbert Elias and Anthony Giddens - were formative for me. I was thereafter always fascinated by the micro-macro distinction in sociology.

See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...t-1473958.html

Leicester City did very well at the time and with a group of friends I went to watch them play. Their goalkeeper,

[Dreamwoven]

Oddly enough, the most influential department for me was my very first post as Assistant Lecturer at Leicester University (1961-649. This obituary of its head of department, Ilya Neustadt, in combination of the two lecturers there, both appointed by Neustadt - Norbert Elias and Anthony Giddens - were formative for me. I was thereafter always fascinated by the micro-macro distinction in sociology.

See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...t-1473958.html

Leicester City did very well at the time and with a group of friends I went to watch them play. Their goalkeeper,

[Dreamwoven]

Oddly enough, the most influential department for me was my very first post as Assistant Lecturer at Leicester University (1961-64). This obituary of its head of department, Ilya Neustadt, in combination of the two lecturers there, both appointed by Neustadt - Norbert Elias and Anthony Giddens - were formative for me. I was thereafter always fascinated by the micro-macro distinction in sociology.

See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...t-1473958.html

Leicester City did very well at the time and with a group of friends I went to watch them play. Their goalkeeper, Gordon Banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Banks played for England until a car accident left him with damaged vision in 1972.

[Danik 2016]

So you will be rooting for England, of course.

[Dreamwoven]

I was in the early 1960s...

[Dreamwoven]

We are heading for another hot month, similar to May, all the rain in the west, England and south of there.

[Danik 2016]

Winter has finally arrived, but you are probably laughing at the temperatures: 10-17ºC and a beautiful mild sun during the day.

[Dreamwoven]

Sweden is currently enjoying a warm spell, similar to that in May, but now three months long. Must be due to global warming. Its like living in Australia. So we have had 4 months of it, blue skies, warm and increasingly hot. Temperatures in the low thirties (celsius). Some days are so hot that I don't risk going out, especially when it is humid and thundery.

And we have had forest fires started by the flashes of lightning. The predominantly dry pine forests are tinder dry, so it doesn't take much to get them burning.

Luckily, Sweden has a fleet of helicopters carrying a water in a largish drum suspended underneath.

What we would really need would be a fleet of "superscoopers", like this: Canadair CL 415: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadair_CL-415.

Italy has one which she lent to Sweden for firefighting.

[Danik 2016]

It seems that at the time we have very similar weather, only there hasn´t been a drop of rain for the last 35 days now. According to the news it is the driest winter for the last 18 years. And yes, there are many fires too. Sometimes there is aerial fighting of the flames, but I don´t think they have those superscoopers.