Stockholm hasn’t seen the sun for a month – even during the short hours of so-called ‘daylight’. It’s grey, wet and muddy outside, worse even than an English winter, especially here in the sticks. But when the snow comes it will be better – lighter, for a start – and snow brings a different kind of cold. 

In the meantime we have our little wooden hut to snuggle up in (below), right through Christmas, in order to avoid the virus; with a traditional Swedish Xmas meal on Julafton, and a proper British one on the day itself, courtesy of me (the cook) and deliveries from the ‘Little Britain’ shop in Gamla Stan (https://www.facebook.com/littlebritainshop/). The usual family pleasantries will have to be exchanged via Zoom. 

What a blessing that is! How on earth did the Vikings get through their winters without it? Probably sitting around open fires telling each other sagas (‘here’s one you won’t have heard’), and dreaming (the men) about the Anglo-Saxon maidens they planned to ravish in the summer. Zoom is not really an adequate substitute for that.

Serious blogging should resume shortly. It will mainly be Covid and Brexit, I’m afraid. And about what we (the British half of me, that is) can possibly do to remove the worst and most auto-destructive government in modern British history.