Tag Archives: Sweden 2010
Artister spelar för livet
My love of Swedish pop music actually predates ABBA. Even though I didn’t know it was Swedish at the time, one of my earliest favourite songs was “Hooked On A Feeling” by the band, “Blue Swede” featuring Björn Skifs. I only discovered the Swedish link when Björn appeared in “Chess” the musical by Björn and [...]
Sno och sol
It’s late in the afternoon, it’s four degrees and it’s sunny. In fact, you could almost say it was warm. The weather is in stark contast to yesterday when it snowed for most of the day. By late afternoon, the snow was no longer looking as exotic as it once did to a lad from [...]
Snöa på
I could have stayed in bed all day. The last week has been exhausting, and I could have happily slept until lunchtime. But I woke early and there was something special waiting outside: it was snowing. Although there has been a little bit of snow in Stockholm since I arrived two weeks ago, it’s mostly [...]
En droppe regn
I’m on the train back to Stockholm, having spent twenty-four hours in the company of Tony Becker. You know how I mentioned the other day in the world of ABBA fans there are some really wonderful people and some really awful people, with most of us somewhere in the middle? Well, Tony comes under the [...]
Radio Days Conference – Day 2
The day started and ended in a way with the word “spectrum”. The second day of the conference was only for half a day, and therefore not as intensive as yesterday. There was still a lot packed in though, and we had a nine o’clock start which I thought was a little ambitious for the [...]
Radio Days Conference – Day 1
I was definitely back in “work mode” today, as I attended “Radio Days Europe”. It’s the first ever meeting of commercial and public sector broadcasters in Europe. By a show of hands, it was 30/70 today. It’s a conference I read about a few months ago, wrote to one of the organisers asking if they [...]
Ø’Brien
I rang my sister Pat today to wish her happy birthday. Pat isn’t her real name, but that’s what we call her because she was born on St Patrick’s Day. And why not? Our ancestry is mostly Irish Catholic. I also caught up with some of the family who moved from Dublin to Denmark after [...]
En natt i Malmo
When my friend Yvette lived in Sweden a few years ago, she wrote about the plankstek, an apparently traditional Swedish dish. If you look around the internet for photographs of the plankstek, you would think it was one of those “mega meals” you might associate with Homer Simpson in an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The one I [...]
Stockholm inatt
I’m spending the night in watching television and hand-washing clothes. It’s one of the less glamorous parts of travelling. But at least this time I’m doing it in hotels, not hostels. Television has been good. There’s a fantastic show called Svenska Hollywood Fruar (Swedish Hollywood Wives), a reality show about a group of Swedish women [...]
Ord
It has been a day of far too many words. Last night I stayed in, and spent a fair bit of time reading over my paper for the conference this week. I read it, I timed it, and I revised it many times, and this morning I sent it off. Fairly quickly I received some [...]
Fikar
Aside from the excitement of Melodifestivalen, it’s been a weekend for catchups. Thanks to my long-term involvement in the world of ABBA fans, I’ve met some really great people over the years. I’ve also met some dickheads, but you learn to avoid them after a while. Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad. And this weekend, [...]
RECENT COMMENTS