Category Archives: Family

Engrish School Blues

Posted on by

Freya is soon to take her first excursion into life without parents. In August she is to start pre-school, at the school we’d hoped – and almost didn’t get – she would be in.

Despite having put her name down soon after she was born, we received a letter a few months ago stating was no place for her.

Despondently, Jo put her name on the reserve list and, to our surprise, a vacancy became available. Our joy over this news comes from four reasons we wanted this placing:

1) Freya will get vegan food;
2) The school is bilingual;
3) The philosophy that guides the school is a more libertarian one;
4) It’s local.

We received a wad of papers when we attended the welcoming evening, in both Swedish and English. After reading through these many, many times, I do not know whether to laugh or cry: the English is appalling.

Here are some of the choice cuts (wrong spelling/grammar use underlined):

9.00 A shorter circle with some fruit

10.45 Circle time in responsible groups

17.30 The pre-school is closing

…your child and we…are going to experience exiting…things together.

…they are done to stimulate your childs’ language, give him/her a better understandig of it and to enrich his/hers vocabulary.

The children learn about themselfs.

Tag/label all the childrens’ clothes.

There are numerous other errors, though for the sake of preserving sanity I shall refrain from wasting valuable virtual space by including them.

I understand that these papers were translated by a Swede; one would think that a school that advertises its multi-lingual status would spend a little more time on first impressions.

Overall, though, I know Freya won’t suffer. The staff stick to their respective mother-tongues. I shall, however, be monitoring further communications with peeled eyes.

How An Illness Should Not Be

Posted on by

Jo and I have been suffering the last four or five of days from some strange virusey thing. Freya has also suffered a bit, though her white blood cells are more eager than ours, and didn’t appear to be in pain for more than a day or so.

In the beginning I thought I’d just burned the tip of my tongue, but after a day of tingling it spread slowly around the sides of the tongue and up to the roof of the mouth, leaving a trail of ulcers and spots in its wake.

The outcome of this has been that almost all food either tastes like a shodow of its former self, or worse, tastes disgusting and causes pain with each mouthful. This makes cooking a real pain in the arse, knowing that I’m spending time on something that I will not enjoy. Even wine tastes greasy and undrinkable (almost).

There are, however, certain things which seem to have retained their enjoyability: Soya yoghurt, coffee and snus. Not the most healthy of consumables, but I’m certainly glad for the addition of caffeine and nicotine in my weakened state.

I don’t know how I’m going to survive with both Sweden and England playing their first World Cup matches today, but I’m a trooper, so I’ll do my best to ignore the pain of beer-drinking for the greater good. Wish me luck!

Coldplay

Posted on by

We saw Coldplay tonight, with our friends Aleks and Jo. I went along because Jo wanted to go, not grudginly, but not exactly expecting to enjoy the show too much.

Just before the gig, we found out that Goldfrapp were supporting, which whet my appetite a bit. Whilst I do not consider myself an energumen of their music, it was enough to get my interested in seeing the evening’s show.

It was only after seeing Coldplay that I realised that I like them. Their songs are sufficiently depressing to suit my style, and the melodies in their songs appeal.

Goldfrapp performed well enough, without any real stage presence or show. Certain sounds they use came across well live, but the overall feeling was one of distance and nervosity.

I appreciate the way Coldplay handled ticket-sales. After my disappointment with Depeche Mode, it was nice to see a limited amount of tickets for the show made available through having already subscribed to the e-newsletter. This only applied to those who had subscribed before a certain date, cutting out the possibility for ticket-touters to make economic gains from the offer.

First BBQ Of The Year

Posted on by

We all went to Mattias and Linda’s yesterday afternoon, for a grill-fest. Freya had been a bit tired during the day (a combination of a particularly painful new tooth coming through, temper tantrums, and interrupted sleep), so we weren’t expecting a long (or enjoyable, come to that) evening away from home.

She finally got to sleep at 12 o’clock, having hardly eaten anything the whole day, and having played almost continuously from our arrival at the party. She made a few friends, all a bit older than she), and got taken care of brilliantly. All this with very little whining.

A regular Duracell-girl, she is.

(Pre) World Cup Fever

Posted on by

Thanks to Jo’s work (again) we got two tickets to see Sweden play a friendly against Chile. A great atmosphere and 34,000 attendees did little to sway the quality of football; a 1-1 draw was all that could come out of 90 minutes of relatively mediocre play, the usual yawn-inspiring faking from the Latinos, and weak-beer drinking (from Jo’s and my side). It’s a pity the match did not offer the same amount of excitement that the post-match traveling home did:

Hoorah! We got given two loaves of bread outside the stadium.

Boo! Not enough money to buy tickets for the Underground. Had to go to a shop first to purchase said tickets.

Boo! 12 minutes until the next train. Why don’t they run more frequently on match days?

Hoorah! The train comes early, and we get seats.

Boo! Still have to wait 9 minutes until departure.

We make a substitution, changing trains.

Hoorah! Opened a loaf and took a slice. Not bad at all.

Hoorah! Got home to find that Maria (Jo’s work-friend and babysitter for the evening) had just got Freya to sleep. At 11 o’clock.

It was nice to see that Freya had no problem with us leaving (considering she has just started showing the first signs of temper-tantrums). Luckily, Maria had the energy to keep up with Freya’s antics for the whole evening, and seemed almost as delighted as we are to recount the evenings proceedings.