Svenska Drömmar

It's good being able to communicate a bit more thoroughly and effectively again, but having said that the Swedish influence still shows itself here and there. Once in a while a Swedish word will fly out of my mouth mid-sentence but seems like people aren't noticing too much which is good. I have said och instead of and and nästan instead of nearly amongst a few others I haven't noticed. My dreams are still 100% in Swedish but after all, it's only been 3 days so I am sure the kinks will sort themselves out soon enough.

England is so dirty and chaotic compared to the beautiful, clean and organised Sweden. I have thought on a few occasions of doing a year in London but I don't know if I can take it. Sure, when I consider the Swedish migration board are on my case right now for working a whole season without a work permit London sounds a bit easier but still, how do people put up with it?

Once one gets out of London however, England can be quite beautiful. Rather than staying in the city, this time we got a big van and drove down to a little farm house near bristol. As part of our farm trip we did a little bit of a detour through Bristol, Warwick and even jumped out of the car for a quick look at Stonehenge. We were a little tight on time and considering the entrance was over six pounds, the 7 of us decided to take the cheaper viewing spot about 100 meters away. It's a bit smaller than I expected.

Sudden death hot sauce was a prominant theme of the trip; I myself was a victim of it on 3 occasions - one of which inadvertantly - this is the stuff that you take just one tiny drop on a teaspoon and you feel like your whole mouth is on fire and within a minute tears are streaming down your cheeks. It takes a while for the heat to really take hold and on the worst of my incidents I had demolished a litre of milk within seconds. Ben had ingeniously positioned a fork-full of mashed potato with a generous dose of hot sauce under the fork; serving to both hide the act while maximising sauce-to-tongue contact.

Staying on the farm there wasn't an incedible amount to do- we kicked the footy, cooked some food, listened to music and got through a few drinks - soon we starting thinking of other things to do. We suited up and stumbled off into the darkness in the hope to find the local pub. We passed groups of cattle, sheep, rivers, bridges, barbed wire and headed towards the lights. By some miracle we actually negotiated the terrain successfully and found ourselves at the local in less than 30 minutes. It was pretty close to closing time and once they'd gotten rid of the locals the two bartenders locked up and joined us for a few drinks- we were even treated to a couple of beers free of charge. I can't see that happening in the city. A few drinks put away and loading up on take aways, we started the trek back to the farmhouse while being entertained at Chris' attempts to spook the herds of sleeping cows along the way.