Ah, Ullared!
Such a name, brimming with promise and redolent of exotic spice. Like distant Samarkand or Marrakesh, a thumming hub of commerce where merchants vend their wares with a flourish, producing magical lanterns or bales of finest silk from the tea-scented depths of their vibrantly-coloured tents, ready to haggle over an ivory chess set or a crystal hookah as they match wits with equally cunning customers.
A mad scrum of pensioners with trolleys. Cut-price velour tracksuits and bulk-buy crates of deoderant, fought for tooth and nail by families driven psychotic by the low-ceilinged fluorescent lights and smell of over-heated diner kebab. An endless maze of aisles. The lowest circle of hell, the one Virgil chickened out of showing Dante round.
For two hours, I lay at the bottom of the slide in the children's play area, cradling C as she angrily tried to get away and follow F. Every two minutes, F would first throw Bunbun down to me and then crash into my thigh moments later, cackling like a fiend. Similarly dead-eyed parents littered the nearby benches. When the zombie apocalpse begins, it will start in some urine-streaked ball pool, where the border between half-life and brain death is already so weak.
We needed Christmas presents, so we borrowed Mormor's car and made the two-hour drive out. Ullared is nestled in a set of low wooded hills out in the countryside. The view from the Lekland window, when not obscured by screaming toddlers, was something like the landscape in Deliverance.
Returning to the carpark at five thirty, we discovered the battery in the car was dead. Had I left the lights on? I was pretty sure not, cars are such hostile territory to me I'm more than usually careful about my dealings with them. Was it the arctic gale howling over the carpark, freezing the acid? Was it the sheer perversity of Ullared, determined to keep us there forever in obediance to F's wishes? She wanted us to sleep in the playroom, and cried when we said no.
V found a man who could recharge the batteries with a portable generator, five minutes before he would have gone home for the day. The cost was her stress levels, already high after I'd asked to keep the time spent shopping shorter than optimum.
That set the mood for the drive home, V and I mostly silent except to growl unreasonably at each other about food (I don't count hotdogs from a crap grill as dinner, but I'd also forgotten to pack enough hot water for C's third bottle, so my bargaining position was a little weak).
Swedish cars are mirror images of a normal UK car. Whenever I change gear, I automatically punch the door next to me first, groping for a stick that isn't there. I mutter a constant mantra of 'drive on the right, drive on the right' as I go, terrified that I will forget. After F, sitting in her child seat up front next to me, tries to fill my ear with unwanted fruit salad on a narrow corner, I lock down totally into a driving trance, eyes and mind only for the road.
About half an hour later, a drunk man ploughs into the back of the car at 200 kph.
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