• Boots (Tampax compact, Day & Night Nurse, anaesthetic Strepsils)
• Call for Indian take away from bed or sofa
• Cath Kidston
• Clapham (Friends)
• Crabtree & Evelyn (Evelyn Rose Eau de Parfum)
• Crisps (Prawn Cocktail)
• Eclipse (Drinks)
• Fulham (RHK)
• Harvey Nichols (Bliss)
• Hotel Chocolat
• Jigsaw
• Kings Road
• Knightsbridge
• M&S
• Northcote Road
• Paul Smith (socks etc)
• Reiss
• Ridgeview Wine
• Selfridges
• Sloane Street
• Starbucks
• Wagamama (Edamame & Kare lomen)
• White Company

How I love to come home after work to an immaculate clean flat. It’s something very special to open the door and be welcomed by the lovely smell of cleanliness. And it’s a joy to open the wardrobe and see all the ironed clothes hanging on their hangers. Hats off to my cleaner!

I remember when I lived in England and once was filling in a form and one of the questions was about my occupation, there was a tick box for ’housewife’. How very 1950’s.

Housewives are an extinct species in Sweden. I know of one; my grandmother. She just turned ninety, bless her!

I had her job once when I was living in England. I of course held a 9-5 job as well but was expected to wash, clean and cook on my spare time whilst the boyfriend was out playing.

I won’t forget that time when I had forced him to cook dinner for me; he stood in the kitchen, looking very lost and asked me how to cook potatoes. I honestly wanted to punch him there and then, really hard.

Ones before we went to a wedding the hubby asked me to iron his shirt for him, and I of course said no. The lady friend we stayed at gave me a very shocking look. I’m sure she was appalled by my behaviour.

She ironed his shirt.

The Swedish man iron his own shirts, feed himself and takes six months pertinently leave whilst mummy brings in the dole.

Once again welcome to the world of today.

The brief I gave my Personal Shopper was to give me the classic British country look. And when I want to dress in tweed, dark green and burgundy it’s undoubtedly a sign autumn it’s on its way.

I no longer sleep with my window open at night, I’ve swopped for my thicker duvet, I want to have soup and home made bread for lunch and I’ve signed up for an Italian evening course.

Evening courses are also a reliable sign autumn is entering our lives here in Sweden. We tend to want to dance salsa and do pottery with strangers when it starts getting cold.

And the biggest change of all: I just want to sit inside and watch a film and that’s about it.

Long gone are the late summer nights when I stayed up until late. When I went out every day of the week, and still went to work the next day, without feeling tired. The sun, the light and all the good times have this effect on us Swedes.

But now all I want to do is to go to bed early and have a good night sleep. I’ve become boring. But so have the rest of the Swedish population.

Come September and we go into hibernation. It’s the force of nature. It’s the force of the very harsh Scandinavian nature.

We live in a country which is pitch black and freezing cold for about eight months of the year. Yes that’s right, eight months.

Its dark when we wake up, we plough our way through drifts of snow to work. It’s dark all day except for a few hours at lunch. That’s if you are lucky. If you live in the northern parts of Sweden its dark 24/7. Yep.

With this in mind you might understand our obsession for the sun. We need it. We need the light. I don’t know of any other country where doctors prescribe light therapy.

It might sound like a joke to dress all in white and sit in a white room with very bright light, but for some it’s necessary.

And when the first days of spring come, even though the temperature is still more towards zero then ten, we want to be outside. We feel alive for the first time in a very long time.

The sun it’s like a drug to us. We are so depended by it, we crave it. A bad summer could have damaging consequences on our lives.

I’ve had a great summer, with lots of sun, so I’m hoping I’ll make it thorough this winter. I nipped of to Italy for a few weeks just to be on the safe side.

Anyhow, I’m going to bed now and tend to stay there until May.

Good night!

I’ve just been to a visit in a lovely Swedish home.

The house had running hot and cold water, a fridge, central heating, telephones, electricity in every room, a lift, a bathroom with both a tub and a separate shower and toilets.

Well this might not sound too impressive but if I tell you the house is now a museum, kept the way it was built and lived in, in the 1890s you might be a bit surprise, as there are still a lot of households in England with much worse living standard.

This should mean by the year of 2130 the Brits can live like kings/an average Swede. There something to look forward to!

I was just flickering through the TV channels and found this lovely little documentry called “Our House – a mould trap”.

Probably not the funniest program but it made me smile and think about when I was lying on my sofa back in London watching property programs. Here in Sweden we have the occasional property program but they are more about interior designs rather then doing up houses, as all our properties are as you know in pristine conditions.

Today’s program was called “Is it safe to return home?”

And just listen to the synopsis of the program: “The nerve-racking process goes on and the families in the mould infested houses are waiting for the local authorities decisions on how to move forward. In seven programs we follow four families whose houses are infested with mould”.

HAHAHA! Isn’t funny? It’s like a scary movie.

Bear this in mind the next time you judge a Swede for having a hissy fit about the mould in their home/office/hotel room/GP surgery/shop etc. We were brought up to believe mould is something very dangerous and just the thought about mould is nerve-racking. Give us a break, will you?

I remember myself arriving at halls of resident at uni, going to the janitor’s office asking them to decontaminate my bathroom as I had so much mould in there I could scrape it off the walls. They then hurled abuse at me for being an international student coming to their country and complain about everything. Yes, it was nerve-racking.

A program like ‘Our house – a mould trap’ would never be made or aired in England, or even watched.

I can see the Brits sitting in their sofas eating take aways, watching telly, and wondering why these families are leaving their homes. At the same time they reach for their asthma inhalers as it feels a bit hard to breathe. They don’t even notice the smell of damp as they have air fresheners plugged-in in every socket to make the house smell of cheap perfume.

Brits would never make a bloody TV documentary about something as normal as mould. Buy an air freshener and the problem is solved!

I was reading the paper in bed this morning and found a rather interesting article about Swedish behaviour when buying houses. There are three things that would stop us buying a house no matter how much we loved it:

1. Mould
2. Damp
3. Pests

I guess that rules out every house in England.

It’s obvious that one hasn’t got enough inspiration writing about the English lifestyle whilst living in the glorious Sweden. Therefore this will be the last thing I write on this blog.

I remember when I started this blog, it was a life ago in my bed in London, and now I’m ending it in my bed in Stockholm.

Back then this blog helped me in a lot of ways as there was no one around me to understand what I was going through. The culture shock that came with moving to England hit me so hard I’m still in therapy.

If you where moving to a remote village in Africa where people live in huts you wouldn’t expect humanitarian living standards. But when you are taking your belongings on a plane for two hours to a United Kingdom you do expect this.

It was love at first sight. It was love that kept me in England and it was the love for oneself that made me leave.

My hopes, dreams and the life I wanted are continuing in England without me there. And of course this hurts, to know that it only took five minutes to erase five years. It was like I was never there.

But I was there.

So thank you England for Pimm’s, Tattler and Day Nurse! What would my life be with out it?

I’m doing a lot of translating work at the moment and I got stuck at the word Property Developer the other day. I was trying really hard but I couldn’t come up with the Swedish translation. I asked around at the office but I had to explain what it meant to be a Property Developer, and we all agreed that such an occupation didn’t exist in Sweden.

In England you can make a lot of money by calling yourself a Property Developer and buy a shabby property and do it up. But since there are no shabby properties in Sweden we therefore don’t have Property Developers.

I will tell you why: at the moment I’m having some renovation work done at my house. All of our outer windows have been taking down and shipped of to a factory where they will be taken good care of, while there will be some handy men sorting out our window frames.

I once again live without double glazing, but only for 3 weeks.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the windows, it’s just that we learnt in Sweden that if you maintain your home, it will last forever.

With renovation work like this there will never be a shabby property for a Property Developer to do up in Sweden. But not to worry there will always be tones of work in England.

And now I would like to share this little renovation story with you, it takes part in England. Where else?

Once upon a time a pair of good looking Swedish girls was sharing a flat in London. Being Swedish they paid quite a lot of money to be able to live in a nice flat (English standard). So they where living there doing their things but quite quickly both of them started to feel unwell, lots of colds and just feeling miserable.

After some time they could see lots of big damp patches on the walls. They called the landlord who came over with a bucket of paint. His solution to the damp = paint it over. Only in England my friends, only in England.

I heard you were having a bit of a time over there, so I thought I’ll come over and spend some money to sort of help you out in these difficult financial times.

With my pockets full of Swedish kronor, I pass the boarder and entered the United Kingdom once again in a very short amount of time.

I came to London to shop but it wasn’t easy when all the shops were closed.

So you are talking about recession and bad times, but then I want to know why you close all your shops when London is full of tourist with spending money. Is there anything wrong with our money? Would it make a difference if we used cheque books rather then credit cards?

My old home is up for sale and as no one is buying during these very difficult times, my guess is it will be on the market for some time. I’ve been thinking of putting in a very low offer. The money I’ve spent on hotels in London would be enough for the deposit. It could be my second home. How flash!

We talked about it over Champagne at Nobu. There and then, happy on Champagne, we decided I would defiantly do it. I would buy my old home back, and move in.

The inclination this country has towards me these days is very powerful.

But since I’m not mad, I am of course staying put where I am. Why go back to hell when you live in paradise (Sweden)?

Dear people, tonight I´m going to look so good, I´m heading out with my best friend J and everything is at it´s best. Tonight I´ll be sharing thoughts of the day “tankar för dagen” as we say in Sweden. Imagine you had the possibility to express the most profound meaning and everything you had experienced so far in life and put it in to one sentence, or a few, for five minutes, What would you say? Probably you would try to think of something meaningful to express something you would consider valuable to everyone else in the world, or something that would sound meaningful in the ears of others. Wouldn´t you? Oh yes you would. But what if there was nothing I could say that would change anything for you? What if your path was already decided. Then all my efforts to transfer any thoughts of the day to you would be pointless? Would it not?
What if any discussions with friends and any chats whit therapists was in vain? Imagine that life just has it´s course and all you need to do is tag along, That´s what I think.