Greetings from Stockholm, where Mr and Mrs Emu have been spending their annual few days away from the offspring, in an attempt to rekindle their sanity. And where better to hang out than Stockholm, home of the darker side of European cinema, where the nights start drawing in at about 2.30 pm, and where every time you venture outside, it’s like walking into a freezer. And apparently, we got out just in time; get here in December and you start getting down to a couple of hours of daylight and minus 20 degrees.

But, given that our cultural knowledge of Sweden up to this point had been largely driven by the works of Stieg Larsson, the Abba back catalogue, Bjorn Borg’s adventures with wooden racquets, the Bluewater branch of Ikea and those really cool 1960’s Volvos and Saabs, we set about the business of getting to know Stockholm as well we could. So, with no further ado, here are the top 7 things to know about Stockholm, presented to you by a very impressed visitor:

1. The Swedish parliament is represented by 17 different parties. That’s 17. Given the fuss that the UK has recently made about an effective coalition, how could it possibly work? Well, in a couple of ways. Firstly, it splits parliament down into sub groups responsible for policy and process – each group represents all parties. Secondly, when parliament sits, the decisions are made by individual vote. The members of parliament actually sit together in order of constituency rather than in their parties. This seems incredibly civilised to me.

2. There’s a sense of reserve about the place that manifests itself in how people engage with you. There’s no unfriendliness as such, although on the scale of judging a city entirely on the basis of how many people say hello to you on a run, it would rate alongside Barking. Or Thetford. But the idea that people aren’t jumping about trying to impress you all the time is all good in my book.

3. Because the Swedes have been busy being tolerant for so long, some of the approaches that you see in other countries seems woefully old fashioned. For example, the idea of a gay-friendly bar or district is, well, a bit 1960’s. Everybody seems to be switched on to a fairly enlightened approach to the environment, without necessarily being a hemp-toting hippy. Although, of course, these would be tolerated…

4. There seems to have been a problem with alcohol abuse in the Nordic countries for years. It’s not as super-expensive to buy a beer as it used to be, but that’s in the context of everyone being pricey. And that, in turn, is partly because VAT is running at a standard 25% But the issue with  alcohol was more a problem of abuse in the home, so the government decided to sell the stuff themselves, regulating the sales through their own chain of shops, that were only open until 3pm on weekdays. Rather worryingly, there are quite long queues outside the shops, but the recognition of alcohol as a drug that needs controlling is pretty neat. For a country with such a reputation for alcohol abuse, there’s no culture of drinking on the streets. A shame in a way as you could pretty much guarantee that your beer would always be cold.  

5. Like many European countries, Sweden’s language skills put ours to shame. And it’s not just knowing another language, it’s being super-fluent in it. Ask someone in Stockholm if they speak English, and they’ll say ‘of course’, rather than ‘a little’. I got lost while I was out running, and had to ask directions. I’d been running for about 40 minutes, and must have looked a right mess.
‘Can you tell me how to get to Skeppsholmen’, I asked a pedestrian.
‘Certainly’, he replied, ‘and will you be travelling by foot?’

6. Because of the extremes of the weather, there seems to be a natural affinity with nature, so people get out and about when they can; the centre of Stockholm is    littered with islands that have hardly any inhabitants that you can just wander, run or cycle around. And if you talk to someone about the weather, it’s like an audience with Michael Fish. except more fun.  

7. According to Mrs Emu, who knows about such things, the classic blonde Nordic look is down to a genetic deficiency that took the kerotene pigmentation out of the hair. And apparently, the Nordic men were quite taken with this, and bred little genetically deficient Scandinavians for generations afterwards, thereby leading to a long lineage reaching all the way to the wives of many Premiership footballers. Mrs Emu, I might add at this point, is a brunette. Anyway, apart from all of that, there’s a pretty healthy and vital look to lots of the people we met. We walked around quite a bit in central Stockholm and beyond, and really couldn’t find any obese people to point and laugh at. Similarly, there was a marked lack of chavvieness, although, given that almost everyone was wearing a black anorak, who knows what hellish fashion might have been beneath?

So, if it’s so fantastic,why don’t you just go and live there? Well, it’s bloody freezing, you have to pay four quid for a cup of coffee, and you’d have to watch a lot of  Ingmar Bergman films to fit in. But loads of stuff to learn, and I can’t recommend it highly enough for a visit. Just not in winter.  

I was reading a letter in the paper at the weekend that traced the above headline back to NME’s Charles Shaar Murray, reviewing the album ‘Ghost in the Machine’. I shall make it my mission in life to get a copy of said review, as I can’t help feeling that the combination of NME during its finest hour, CSM as popular music’s most barbed wit and Mr Sting in the period of his life just as he was getting really pompous would make for some excellent reading.

Then I got reminded of the quote when watching the unavoidable car crash that is the X Factor, later on that evening. Why, why, and why again, did something as banal and superficial as ‘Every Breath You Take’, ever etch itself into the nation’s psyche as a piece of work to be trotted out as a meaningful song from the heart? This is played at weddings and funerals, for goodness sake. I don’t want to go on about this at great length*, but it’s as if Captain Sting got given an Early Learning Centre rhyming dictionary for his birthday, and tried to fit around chapter one. Hence take/break, day/way, see/me etc.

So, back to the X Factor, where someone called Storm Lee was dragging the nation through Flt Lt Sting’s most insightful lyric since ‘Da Doo Doo Doo, Da Da Da Da’. About 30 seconds in, I realised the true horror of what I was watching, which went well beyond the immediate experience of dread TV.

Let me explain. I’m sure I’m not alone in having some slightly dysfunctional wiring in my brain that will, during quiet moments, revert to nonsense. Fortunately, like many people, I don’t have that many quiet moments, but if I’m going to sleep, going on a run, or listening to one of our coalition leaders discussing their new policies, I kind of drift off into a stupor, in which I have nonsense songs going round in my head. I think I’ve mentioned this before, and that ‘The Smurf Song’ makes a regular appearance in my brain at such times – a far from pleasant experience, particularly part way through a long run with no other distraction. So, the combination of unexpected exposure to Sqn Ldr Sting’s meisterwork and the fact that I’m going to be on a treadmill for very many hours on Friday can only mean one thing – that this is the song that’s going to be going round in my head.

It was with these rather negative thoughts going on that I looked at my email the following day, which had a contract from the organisers of the treadmill marathon. In point 3, it said:

All participants will be required to engage and interact with visitors…providing a service that is both entertaining and interactive.

So there we are. All I need to do on my run is to open up my inner monologue. Do come along and join in, altogether now…

*actually, I do, but time and your patience does not permit…

Some time ago (possibly in the 1980’s) I set what I thought was a reasonable ceiling on footwear. In them days (I know, I know), you could get a decent pair of DM’s for £30, so I thought it was a pretty valid benchmark. And, with the exception of running shoes, which I can justify on the basis that cheap ones will limit my ambition of still running marathons well into my 70’s, I still pretty much have £30 as my top limit for shoes. Which, as you might imagine, means a fairly limited approach to shoe-buying that isn’t always successful.

I tell you all this as a context for a recent conversation with Mrs Emu, a woman who I hold in considerable regard, and with whom I share almost every moral code. There are exceptions, however, and both the length of time allowed shopping for shoes and the price ceiling are good examples.

Here’s my favourite phone call of the week:

Mr E: ‘Hi, what’s up’

Mrs E: ‘Well, just thought I’d phone to see how you were’

Mr E ‘All good…you don’t normally phone up just for that’

Mrs E ‘No, well just thought I’d let you know that I had half an hour spare so I cycled into the city, and I found the most amazing pair of brown boots. You know I’ve been after some for ages, and these are just fantastic’

Mr E ‘Great, did they cost much?’

Mrs E ‘Well, far less than those road bikes you’ve been looking at online’

(The conversation went back and forth a bit, even involving a bit of ‘The Price Is Right’ ‘higher/lower’ action, until the full price was revealed.)

Mr E ‘That’s quite a lot of money for a pair of boots’

Mrs E ‘I know, and I’ll work a couple of extra shifts to pay for them. Besides, these boots will make me happy in a way that you’ll never be able to’

My advice if you’re looking for a wife or husband…find someone who makes you laugh while they put you in your place. Although, if you’re reading this dear, ideally also someone who doesn’t end her sentences with a preposition.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this internet thing seems to be catching on. I really really ought to do more on this, and I will when time permits; in the meantime, here is every single statistic that you’ll ever need to prove why everything that we’ve learnt to date is wrong.

I had my hair cut today. This is always an opportunity for me to find out what’s really going on in the world.

‘What’s really going on in the world?’, I asked.

‘Well’, said Mr Sweeney*, ‘everyone’s been talking about Gordon Brown. They say it’s time for him to go; he’s made too many mistakes’.

And, although Gordon Brown may well be an uninspirational and unelected misfit who takes Scottish dourness to levels that make Private Frazer sound like Jeannette Krankie, I feel compelled to rush to his defence:

The Labour party is supposed to have something to do with socialism, right? Well, Gordon Brown at least has some modicum of socialist background, in direct contrast with T Blair, whose handing over of the reins now appears to have been a master stroke.

Most of Brown’s problems have been inherited, and unlike many of his peers, he hasn’t dwelt on the hand he’s been given. Surrounded by people with better sound-bites, he’s seen some phenomenal change in a very short period of time, and I do find it hard to think what he would have done differently in the financial sector of the UK – we may even applaud him for intervention when we look back on 2008/9**

‘Man of the people’ David Cameron, in contrast, seems to have so little to say (still!) about policy, that, at a time when the parties should really be rallying towards each other, his best lines are still the traditional party politic jibes – exactly what he said he wouldn’t do when he was elected leader. I think Cameron is about as out of touch with British society as…well, Boris Johnson, probably, and I really fear the alternative to the current government.

Plus, while I think about it, Cameron annoys me because he’s younger than me. When I was growing up, political leaders (and Tories in particular) were about as old as your grandparents. Which I’m not, so it’s just wrong.

In the European elections, the protest votes included voting in two BNP candidates as MEP’s. Showing that not all forms of protest are especially rational. Gawd help us if thsat thinking continues into a protest election

As we have seen in recent weeks, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, there are a lot of MP’s out there who are out for themselves as 1st, 2nd and 3rd priorities. Now, we probably all knew that to become an MP you have to be pretty ego-centric, but to have confirmed that large numbers of them are also fraudulent apologists (or, in Sir Anthony Steen’s case, just fraudulent), kind of puts them on another level. And there are a few politicians who thus far have no stain on their character; GB being one of them. Incidentally, if you are a journalist on the Telegraph at the moment, it must be like having a birthday/Christmas/Boris&Petronella scoop every day. After this, the journos are going to really struggle back to real life.

Anyway, he’s not a moron. Even if everyone thinks the country is out of control, I really fear the alternative.

*I have no idea what Mr Sweeney’s real name is, but I’ve had my hair cut by him at his shop (Sweeney’s Barbers; Norwich), for about 20 years now, and not once has he turned me into one of Mrs Miggins’s pies.

** “We” doesn’t include Vince Cable

Last night I dreamed that somebody loved me…well, kind of, insofar that I found myself 18 rows back from the god-like genius that is Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

I’ve always thought of Morrissey as someone completely at ease with his (slightly snobbish) lot, so it was a bit of a surprise to me that his shows at the Royal Albert Hall (cancelled due to throat infection) and the Birmingham Symphony Hall (ditto) were followed by The Great Yarmouth Britannia Pier. Because Great Yarmouth doesn’t really have that high culture feel to it – to complete Norfolk snobs like myself it’s always been a bit of a tacky embarrassment, the bit that you visit once every couple of years to remind yourself how lucky you are not to have to go there more often.

Anyhow, by Friday, his master’s voice had cleared up sufficiently for an attempt at a gig, and thanks to my good friend DJ78 we had tickets clutched in our hot and sweaty hands. And as a result myself and Mrs Emu fair skipped along the pier to one of the more surprising venues on Morrissey’s world tour. As we queued, we passed under massive signs for forthcoming attractions – the Chuckle Brothers, Cannon and Ball, and (of course) Jim Davidson. Then a huge sign for “Long John’s Show Bar – where the stars of stage and TV enjoy a drink”. I’m not making any of this up. I did venture into the bar before the gig, hoping to catch a sight of Morrissey enjoying a pre-gig chaser with old ‘nick-nick’ himself, but no joy – they were probably in Long John’s VIP area.

Anyway, suffice to say the gig itself was fantastic – the band was as tight as ever and Morrissey exuded his rather bored coolness with a lot more self-deprecation than he used to manage in his younger years. Shirts were ripped off, the security bods on stage were kept busy by a series of reverse stage dives, and the venue suddenly seemed just the right mix of intimate and ironic.

But the most extraordinary thing was the audience. Having spent my formative years in the shadow of the Smiths, I thought I understood the importance of looking right at indie gigs. You need to work hard at not looking as if you’ve tried too hard, and look bored and interested at the same time. Ideally you will wear clothes belonging to someone now dead. But the audience at Yarmouth seemed to have missed these vital lessons in deportment. I witnessed a really challenging pair of elasticated velour trousers, and not sure that was the worst crime.

And yet, we should presume that every member of the audience had shelled out £32 on a ticket, so you’d think they must have been fans. So, either you can’t judge a book by its cover, or we are being overrun by morbidly obese philistines with too much money. Or both. To test this theory, the next time you see somoene lumber towards you in a massive pink velour leisure suit, try singing a couple of lines from ‘The Queen Is Dead’ or ‘Meat Is Murder’. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

“Ladies and Gentlemen, a special guest for you tonight…on harmonica…Mr Bob Dylan”

I blame Spotify.

…, why doesn’t anybody want to sell me anything?

So, we are in the market for a new kitchen. Mrs Emu has convinced me that if our children are to grow any taller, we’re going to need a bigger table. A bigger table will need a bigger room, and therefore the house will need to be extended. If we extend the house, we’ll need to rip out the kitchen. So we’ll need another one.

And, with the world tightening its belt, you would think that the easiest thing in the world would be to go into a shop and say something like:

“Good morning, I have been convinced that I need to spend an unfeasibly large sum of money on some boxes to fix to the wall in my kitchen. As a kitchen designer, please can you advise me on what boxes could go where, what components I need to buy, and how your sleek design will make me forget that I’m spending half a year of my salary putting all this in place.”*

Well, you might be surprised. Mrs E and myself have run the gauntlet now of three kitchen suppliers, varying from the disappointing to the infuriating.

Kitchen Company Number One: Had to be chased before he’d deign to visit. Then spent most of the visit telling us how stressful his life was. And how he thought that chasing for a sale was beneath him. And so it proved, as we chased, week after week, for some sort of design or quote. And we finally gave up.

Kitchen Company Number Two: Was part of a big department store chain. Who are supposed to specialise in fitting kitchens. And who charge you for coming to your house to give you a price. Before which, you have to effectively go through a 2 hour ‘consultation’, presumably to ascertain if they are prepared to do business with you. There is quite a strong possibility that I could go off on one here, so to avoid this, I’ll just state that John Lewis kitchens are in debt to me to the tune of 2 hours of my life that I will never, ever, ever have back.

Kitchen Company Number Three. After dragging our way through a couple of presentations on factory build quality and a couple of reasonably challenging home visits, during which the price has at any time seesawed between 50% to 200% of our budget, we now have a reasonable chance of buying a kitchen. So I asked for an itemised quote. Two weeks ago. And when chased, the sales guy says ‘Oh, I haven’t had a look at that for a few days now’. And I’m still waiting…

Maybe this is just a whine, but I fear that it shows a bit of an inherent problem – any one of these businesses could have had several thousand quid from me but decided that they weren’t bothered about selling to us. As it happens, they also managed to wind us up en route with the sort of customer service that Little Britain would struggle to parody.

Hey-ho, maybe I’m just imagining this recession thing, but I’m sure I’ve read in the papers that it’s going to be quite big news next year. And lots of businesses will be put out of action as they won’t be writing any new orders.

And we still need a kitchen.

* of course, you wouldn’t say it quite like this or you’d sound like some sort of Viz character. But you get the picture