Older and Wiser

A jolly morning of housework. I like our kitchen lino, it's got one of those usefully dirt-concealing patterns. The down side to this is that you don't realise how much it needs a clean as quickly as you ought. What, for example, is artistic swirl and what is the micron-thick remains of a raisin.

-

It was my birthday yesterday.

"Do you know what today is?" V asked F, in the appropriate tones of hushed awe my nativity commands.

Blank look, shaken head.

"It's daddy's birthday! It's daddy's birthday today," V said.

F took this on board and nodded slowly and wisely. "Feya ha berday too," she said. And then claimed the present V suggested she give to me as her own. A tantrum was averted by tactical iPad deloyment.

F wanted burgers for dinner on Sunday. "Where are we going to get those from?" I asked her. She pointed to the cupboards.

"Pappa cook," she said. Right.

A month ago, she would say please when asking for things with only a tiny prompt. Now we just get a big cheeky grin and a very emphatic single nod.

"What do you say?"

"Pappa, get more cumcumber, put here."

"You can have more cucumber, but you have to say please!"

"Yes." Nod nod.

"Can you say please, then?"

Nod.

"Well, you can have more cucumber when you've said it then."

Tantrum.

Which isn't to say it's all tantrums. By no means - F is currently about as angelic at going to bed as I can imagine she ever will be. If you tell her it's bedtime in ten minutes time, ten minutes later she takes you to help brush her teeth and then goes to her room of her own accord. Something tells me we've got about twenty minutes before she starts deciding on her own deadlines for this, though.

-

I'm taking my monday evening drama group.

"But how old are you, though, really?" asks E, a bossy thirteen-year-old. This has somehow become the moment's teaching point, my age.

"How old do you think I am?" I ask, a foolish Scorpio to the last.

"Fifty?" suggests A.

"Fifty three?" thinks G.

Oh how I hate you all, you glossy teenage bullies.

I go home and get a doughnut with a candle in it from my lovely wife, and watch an extremely entertaining rubbish film (Hercules - The Legend Begins, a lot better than you'd expect, because the inverse would be impossible).

On a Stick

Walking home from Dagis now has the added excitement of being dark, as the clocks have gone back now. She walks along with me sometimes, holding my hand and pointing at things.

"Lights on," she said, pointing at the streetlights.

"Yes they are," I agreed.

"Moon!" she said, pointing down a street at a wintery crescent just over the top of Skansen Kronan.

"Yes it is!" I said. "It's just over the hill, look!"

She pointed at it. "Freja get moon," she said.

"It's very far away, sweetie," I said, cringing mildly because I'd called her 'sweetie' again, which I try not to because it's a revolting word.

"Pick up," she told me. I did. "Freja get moon," she repeated, reaching again.

She certainly knows what she wants, F. If only I was a bit taller.

Deflection

Bit of a pause since my last post. This has been due to a combination of family illnesses and adapting to regular school sessions. F's immune system seems vastly improved after two months of relentless viral exposure. Mine and V's seem to have burnt out. I'm trying a new respiratory system that extracts oxygen from mucus instead of air. V gets back from work, shattered, and collapses face down on the sofa, surfacing occasionally to cough.

All the same, I've made progress. I got promoted to a higher level of SFI after a fortnight. C+ is good. The class can mostly make reasonable conversation with each other in Swedish, so it feels like I'm practising a lot more. I followed the entire violent argument over where the Muslims should get to say their prayers in our feedback session today quite well.

'Not by the toilets, please' was their request, but apparently they have a place set aside and when the guy asking was reminded of this in rather blunt terms by a Bulgarian, one of his fellows started a very shouty tirade that ended in a lot of macho posturing round the computer bench. You know the sort, two muscular young men bunching their deltoids at each other, looking like they might start a pushing match without ever quite daring to go past that point.

Last week we went to the Volvo factory. It's very big. They make 160 lorries every day and a half. Their cafeteria is an indoor jungle. Everybody was too in awe of the robot delivery system to start miniature religious wars.

At home, F talks. You can have a conversation with her, pretty much. Subject Verb Object, I've learnt in school. F is on board with this. "Daddy get cookie," for example. Or "TV on please." Or the heartrending plea, on being told it was time to go to daycare, "Nooo, Feja stay hemm. Play. Mumma och Pappa play too. Yes please," with a single big nod on the 'yes' for emphasis.

-

"It's time to get out of the bath soon."

"Nooo."

"Well, you can pour the bottle out three more times, and then it's time to get out. Okay?"

Slight frown, shifty look.

F is currently playing 'pouring the bottle out', which you might think you can work out the rules for. There's a bottle, a floaty plastic ring and a toy plastic glass involved, a three-way pouring system and a target to hit. V and I had ringside seats, but even after ten minutes I wasn't totally sure how the scoring worked. All I knew was we were on no account to try and join in.

Holding up three fingers to count down her last three plays with, F seemed quite happy with the arrangement. And then suddenly the whole pouring thing got a lot more complex. Bottle, glass, glass, bottle, like she was channelling Tommy Cooper. The final pouring of the bottle into the ring got delayed and delayed - the glass wasn't quite full enough, or the ring had mysteriously floated round behind her back.

There's subtle and subtle. This was the kind of very obvious subtle which is extremely amusing to watch, where F is so convinced she's being crafty that she starts looking a bit smug. She slightly blew it when she grabbed my hand and tried to pull my fingers back up, saying "Two!" at the same time so I knew we were counting up again now. That made it pretty much impossible not to laugh outright, which rather undercut any attempt at being stoic and immovable in the face of massive diversion tactics.

Obviously when she eventually poured the bottle out there was a massive tantrum. That's just bedtime for you, though. Slightly less of an affectionate family moment when you're tucking up something that sounds like a hurricane wind blowing over the mouth of a recorder whilst being kicked in the face. But only slightly.

Back to School

I got back into SFI this week.

Nice to be out of the house a bit more. Even lurching over a grey and pockmarked hotel carpark, still semi-crippled by whatever weird viral thing has gripped my joints this week, through the autumn's icy rain. Fresh air and a sense of progress, no bad thing.

My school is on the fourth floor of the hotel building, an especially glamorous place called the Hotel Mektagon. If the name didn't sound like a race of murderous robots, the glossy black lobby and austere Nordic staff might make you feel you'd wandered into a sci-fi set. I half expect Tom Cruise to burst explosively out of the lifts at any second, firing improbable handguns at security guards dressed in cumbersome chunks of plastic wheely bin.

Funny how adults regress in school. Thirties and forties, most of my class. Everyone behaves like teenagers, sloping in late, giggling in corners with their mates or making 'you're fit, miss' type remarks to our Norwegian teacher. You can tell who was a class joker, a swot or a rebel. Or at least who fancied themselves as such. I guess our mental pictures of ourselves don't really change that much from teenage days.

Quick disclaimer - I'm not making any passes at the Norwegian Teacher, just before my wife gets paranoid. I'm a swot. And a lazy one, still - I keep my head down, quickly do the exercises and then try and look busy so I don't get set any new ones.

Occasionally I get a little down about being an immigrant. It's tough being away from home, friends, family and all the familiar things I grew up with. It's tough not being able to understand people very well or finding employment on the other side of the language barrier.

Sitting with my 80% Syrian classmates makes me pretty much suck it up and get over myself, though.

Yes, we have an overbearing, overpriviledged and massively underexperienced bunch of politicians in the UK right now. Full of jobs for the old boys, ministers filling the portfolio for I Knew Him At Eton And He's A Good Egg. Incompetent wankers though they may be, they're at least an elected government. We've only ourselves to blame.

These guys are fleeing from a civil war that's been tearing up their country for over three years. Some of them speak halting but competent Swedish after only a few months, and they had a whole new alphabet to learn to go with it. I've been feeling sorry for myself because I don't have a regular job other than dishwasher operation (entirely through my own life choices, I might add). Jeez. For my next performance, the interpretive dance piece Awakening With Rose Appreciation.

People in school keep asking me what the British think of Syria and Syrians. This made me realise, cringingly, that I knew very little about Syria or its current conflict.

"What do you think of Assad?" someone asked. Knowing he's either a politician but also possibly a Middle Eastern secret service, I tried to keep my remarks fairly non-judgemental. I don't know which side of the war these guys are refugees from. I don't know how many sides there might actually be.

As I educate myself (starting from Wikipedia and moving outwards), it's embarrassing to find how little I know. And worse, to find how pointed some of the remarks I took for lighthearted jokes might really be. "You think anyone with a beard is a fanatic, yes?" someone wryly said, pointing at mine. I don't, personally. I know people who do.

Being bombed by a country that once trained him as a doctor is probably doing little to persuade President al-Assad that his conspiracy theories of foreign manipulation are false. Listening to Cameron preach about extended campaigns in Iraq and anywhere guilty by proximity doesn't do so much for mine.

While they make their speeches, a pleasant middle-aged man asks me to translate a letter from the Swedish Embassy in Ankara for him. It's in English and Turkish, neither of which he speaks, so he wants it in Swedish. It says his wife can pick up documents allowing her to come to Sweden. He's pleased.

I rather feel I have some priorities in my life to examine.

Lurgy

F's favourite toy is BunBun.

BunBun is a stuffed rabbit her godmother L gave her when she was born. Through some mysterious process of elimination, BunBun became pretty much the only stuffed toy F plays with. She's not really into stuffed toys generally, she prefers cars and lego right now. But BunBun goes everywhere with her. BunBun has her own chair, gets to share F's food, goes to Dagis with her, sleeps with her at night (or else) and has had to be physically prevented on occasion from sharing baths.

BunBun is, as a result, filthy.

Nearly two years of being dragged over playground floors or rubbed into breakfast cereal turned BunBun from a nice fluffy beige to stinky kind of grey. With occasional blue paint dots, god knows from where. But having taken on board that BunBun doesn't like getting wet, F point blank and screamingly refused to let her go and wash.

Mummy had a plan. Buy a second, identical BunBun from the toyshop down the road. Then we could swap them round while original BunBun hung out to dry.

Of course this didn't work. New Imposter BunBun was the wrong colour and scent, still being fluffy, beige and not smelling like a shoe. I'm not stupid, F seemed to say, thrusting this pod-person version away angrily. Get me the real deal.

I tell you this story so I can segue into another, which is that I've finally collected the full Big Five of infantile secretions. Poo, wee, dribble and nasal mucus I've had in spades for ages. Now my Spotted Guide is complete with the long-awaited addition of vomit.

I don't know what kind of vomit bug only strikes at night, punctually at eleven o' clock every night for half a week. F caught it, presumably from the plague pit that masquerades as Dagis. She stopped eating during the day, pretty much, which is extremely unlike her. And then started spewing what little she'd had over her sheets in the night.

Ironically, PseudoBunBun caught it first, which wasn't a problem. Then Original BunBun the following night, and even F agreed that sick was a smell too far for the poor creature. So come that midnight, having just mopped the flat (I'd tried to carry F through to the bathroom when I heard the sickup begin, which resulted in something like a Marx Brothers soda siphon gag being played out through our hallway. Plenty of gagging, anyway), I found myself washing BunBun by hand in the sink.

It's a morbid process, hand washing a beloved soft toy. Wringing the tiny furry creature out in the bubbles felt like disposing of an unnecessary cat, per some villainous landlord in a Victorian melodrama. My moustache isn't really the right variety for twirling, sadly, otherwise I'd have been doing that as I hung the macabre bodies out to dry on a makeshift gibbet. "Hang! Hang!" F said, pointing at them the following day. Good that she got into the spirit of things.

Half a week later, F is totally well again. Or well enough to cheerfully catch a new cold from Dagis, anyway. She's doing catch up eating (two hours of breakfast today, remarkably) and ruthlessly putting us through our paces. We're both zonked out, it's our turn with the bug. No vomiting for us, just exhaustion and (for me at least) a bizarre collection of muscle aches and pains that leave me creeping round the flat pathetically.

Both BunBuns remain clean and well.

*Late footnote - V read this and felt I hadn't done her role in the whole Regurge Crisis sufficient justice. This is true, I didn't mention her at all for some reason. Maybe because she spent most of it actually covered head-to-foot in sick whilst rocking a howling toddler and I didn't want to remind her of those dark times? 

Fishy

Cultural milestone time.

Some swedes eat rotten fish. We had some friends round for a haggis supper the other night. As they ate it, expressing surprise that it wasn't quite as weird and unique as they hoped (no legs? why does it taste so edible? where are all the yards and yards of glistening offal we were promised?), it was suggested that I ought to be introduced to this charming custom with all due haste.

There's a general election here in Sweden at the moment. You put coloured bits of paper in envelopes to express your choice. I didn't get as many votes as my wife, I'm not yet trusted to help pick out a government yet, just local mayors and county bigwigs. This is probably because I hadn't eaten enough surströmming.

Your democratic right.

We got invited to a pickled fish party the following week, luckily. Following my indoctrination, I'd describe it as bearable.

Most things are bearable if you smother them in enough cheese and potatoes. Possible exceptions include oil spills, Strictly Come Dancing and David Cameron. But slushy fish, pink, ripe and fizzling slightly in its briney tin, is no different. You can tell it must be delicious because of the way the flies cluster round the table.

Joking apart, once you get past the smell, it's no worse than (say) jellyfish. Or barbecued mealy worms. Or the pickled eggs that you find on a dusty top shelf at the chippy, the ones full of rust-coloured vinegar where the lid has corroded on to the jar with the strength of a good weld. Or any of the other odd things I've eaten.

I could get past the smell because my cold hadn't passed. I got passed the flavour because it's not unpleasant, actually, and because it's better than the medicinal aquavit you wash it down with. The texture is weird, though. Like a thousand tastebuds screaming out in pain and then suddenly silent.

F liked the flatbread, the potatoes, the sour cream and the meatballs she ate instead very much. She demurred an opportunity to eat the fish, quite forcibly.

You know, I enjoyed the second (cheese and onion laden) helping? Years from now, I shall share a plate with whatever prime minister I've just ushered into power. Then, dressed as crayfish, we'll drink herbal shots and sing Santa Lucia round the Stång, as a wicker goat burns gently in the background. See? My cultural integration is complete.

Independence Day

"Pappa! Pappa. kom, piggup," F calls through in the mornings now. And she refers to things as "min!" when she doesn't want you to take them off her. Rubbish goes in the Bi, anything even vaguely boat-shaped can be played with as if it were a Boa, if it's hot and she's hungry she'd like an I Keem.

Two weeks of part-time daycare, and she's talking all the time. Dagis seems to suit her. I told her she'd be going this morning, and she said "Woohoo! Cooka," because there's a big toy cooker there that's her current favourite.

Not that there haven't been hiccups. The first day, she came back with a vast blue smudge on her cheek where she'd run full tilt into the corner of a bench. Then last week she was ill. Or at least 'ill' in daycare terms, which means if she's running any sort of fever, even 0.2 degrees of one, she has to stay home and not come back until there's been a whole fever-free day.

Wow, I got used to her being away fast, I realised as I resentfully settled down on the sofa with her. Fever? Other than the lime green jelly pouring out of her nose, you'd never have known it. "Pappa! Kom play!" every five minutes, and she'd take my hand and lead over me to the relevant patch of floor. F doesn't exactly want me to help with playing, just be nearby while she does it. In this respect, she holds true and close to her mother's views on my utility when shopping or doing DIY.

I was only on the sofa, I hasten to add, because I had her cold and fever too. Otherwise I'd have been springing about, constructing scalable forts out of letters of the alphabet and boiling deliciously healthy vegetables with a free hand. Doubtless.

It's still odd, though. There's a lot of residual guilt washing about as I sit at home, looking for work. Or writing. Or, frankly, lying face down in bed for an hour and a half, trying desperately to recover the sleep I've lost in the last two years.

Do birds feel like this, after they've kicked the chicks exhaustedly over the nest edge? Like, I'm so tired, I want to just eat a couple of worms and then give hibernation a shot but oh god! I haven't pre-sterilised the grub for dinner and what if they meet an owl and look at this place, there is fluff and sticks everywhere!

And worst, what the hell am I going to do with all this empty time?