🔪☕ Some of You May Die
It wouldn’t have been a fun road walk, so we took the path alongside what looked like a run down, unorganised and derelict boat yard that looked like it belonged in a horror movie like Wrong Turn, where they store the victim cars, only these were boats obvs, with a few beaten up cars stored amongst them. It’s a working yard, mind. A couple of nice cars came and went the whole time we were walking past it. My partner said it looked like a dumping ground for things too big to go in a skip. I said it looks like one of those places you run into for help and never come out of. Jokey side eye.
Sweden’s walking infrastructure is essentially a lie. Broken paths, incomplete paths, not there paths. But we got lucky and found a pretty good walk near the river, which had a little stretch of land almost like a pier with trees and a little opening, where I captured some mushrooms with me camera and tried not to fall over the food and pill packet rubbish scattered around. Very limited variety, mostly white and dead. Before deciding to leave and call that pill-poppers pier paradise a day we decided to google the local area, and we found a cafe. Remote location, it’s kinda in the middle of the arse-end of nowhere, weirdly with timed parking areas for the woods, that were all empty. We were kinda surprised by timed parking to explore the woods. I have never seen that in areas that have not been ‘designed’ to attract tourists for funding like national parks, etc, but these areas were not that. Parking next to the dumped sofa required a P-skiva to declare your time for permitted fun in your allocated time zone.
By this point we were narrating our own deaths, because this is exactly the opening of every horror movie where two people leave the beaten track never to be seen again while the audience is left screaming at the television. ‘You know what? I feel like we are about to get picked up or pointed in the direction of a murder house. This whole road is giving Texas Chainsaw Massacre or House of Wax vibes. Only thing missing is the harmless passerby, the SOS phone box that doesn’t work, and the bright blue sky and sun before everything turns to shit.’
Anyways, the cafe was a house on a little hill behind trees, looking like it had been forgotten about and needed a freshen up from the dusty roads. Just as we came around the pathless corner there were two boards up. One said öppen. The other said stängt pga sjukdom, closed due to illness. So lagom they couldn’t decide whether they were open or shut. We walked up the steps, through the gate, him first of course. ‘They are all in on it. It’s a family business, Texas stylie. If you don’t come out, don’t worry, I won’t be following.’
Naturally I’m nosy. The people outside were not eating or doing much. When you think of a cafe back home in an area like this, people have ice cream, coffee, maybe stopped for lunch. The very few people here had cans of Coke, which the Swedes don’t drink because it’s massively unhealthy and Sweden has the healthiest people in the world if you ask… their excellence. It really looked like a place where time forgot and then Coke paid for placement advertising. A few tables of people all sitting together, what looked like it should be a nice little gathering, social giggles, a time to touch grass both literally and mentally, but nope, every one of them on their phone. The appearance of being social without actually having to make effort or commit to it. Healthy!
Walking up the front garden green I told him to crack on first, I’ll wait at the bottom of the stairs, so ya know if the door slams shut behind him as he walks in, well, it was meh while it lasted. And he’ll probably be just fine, because everyone knows you can’t trust a ginge, that might actually work in his favour. And then our little us joke, ‘some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make’, courtesy of Lord Farquaad.
There was a white ball of fluff outside, kinda looked like a miniature Samoyed, sitting on the porch looking like he was being baked in the sun, nozzle whacked up to extra crispy just enough to make sure the double coated little sucker drooled down itself.
Inside had some pretty cool shit. The walls had some old school posters on them, you know, no matter the class they would be scattered around the classrooms, these particular ones were biology based. A frog and a toad, with the skeleton laid out in pieces beside them and everything numbered. A second one further in with a fly, the larvae, the pupa, a dragonfly with the wing veins drawn out. Proper looking teaching plates, hung up like everyday decor, and from my experience in Sweden they are not. In fact decor doesn’t exist unless it’s white or grey and as empty as a robbed coffin. But the posters for me were great, this is the kinda shit I hang in my house, and I have piles of folded up posters and rolled up and banded ones waiting to be swapped out when I get bored, like the wildlife ones they used to do in the early 2000s in the newspapers. But I couldn’t help but say to the ginge, ya know, if the lab coats come out, they’re at it again, we’re going full 1934 revival.
This is a conversation I have had before with someone I didn’t care to know in Sweden. The typical my identity revolves around bouji restaurants lover, and shitting money away on watching people run around on the green chasing a ball like a dog and then getting absolutely smashed with friends that only talk to him during football season kind of guy, and creating the high and mighty holier than thou almost religious preaching about it all. Well, we got on to American education, and biology classes still working on preserved animal specimens. Now, whether you think that’s right or wrong is completely fucking irrelevant. I personally can see the pros and cons of these classes, the most brain dead and basic would be finding out you’re not good with blood, or with cutting into someone’s cat, before you get to university. But after a few minutes we hit peak Swedish denial.
‘Sweden would never. We do things right here. People follow us.’
You believe that do you? Shit eating grin on my face and pursed lips.
You gas pigs here, mate. It’s your number one go to.
‘No, we’re better than that.’
Swedes have literally written books about it and have studied this shit for years.
‘Propaganda.’
No point going further with clowns like this. Arguing with stupid is an impossible task, so I’ll say it here instead. Lowered into CO2 chambers, and it’s been known for twenty years that it isn’t painless. Most used method in the country. Because it’s fast, and fast keeps pork cheap as fuck and free of problematic ethics and morals. Their own Minister for Rural Affairs got asked outright whether he thought gas chambers were ethical and couldn’t manage a yes, just that they’re looking into alternatives and it’s the legal method. 2% of pigs raised here have outdoor access. 1% of chickens under EU organic rules. Strong hunting culture, and for a country so superior there’s barely a veggie option in it. Being veggie here is a fucking nightmare. It may as well be outlawed.
So, a biology class with a frog specimen doesn’t seem all that bad. In fact it would appear, Sweden, Swedes, you’re no better than any other country, you’re just more deluded.
Yeah, the convo didn’t end well, especially when he decided to google it and claimed it was a conspiracy to bring their system down. Same shit different day.
I’m not saying we’re better here in the UK. The difference is that in the UK, if I have a conversation about why I don’t eat meat and think gassing, religious slaughtering and factory farming is a disgusting practice, the response I’ve always gotten back is basically meh, ‘I love meat and don’t think about it’, and that’s at least honest. Here the only response I’ve gotten is ego. ‘That’s how we’ve always done it.’ ‘Propaganda against us.’ ‘People are out to get us.’ ‘They want to prove we’re not as great as we are.’
We’re not better because we don’t do it. We’re better because we can say something’s fucking wrong, and it’s being ignored because people are selfish and the bacon sarnie is just too delicious. Just take some accoutability and be honest innit.
Anywhoooo, some of the ceiling and wall paint is peeling in flakes almost like it’s rusting off the walls the same way paint falls from metal as it becomes brittle. The brown wood is coming through underneath. In some areas it’s extremely smooth like somebody has decided that one particular flake is fucking them off so they’ve had a buff down, and in one room it has gone far enough that you can see where the water has been getting in with slightly swollen grain.
There is a kakelugn in the corner and it was probably my favourite thing in there. I prefer the old brick and stone fires with old wooden beams for mantelpieces from back home, with all the Welsh stone surrounding it and, in the case of my house, really warm coral colour paint on the reveal wall. This fireplace is white and looks quite modern for what it is. But it’s a solid thing, a tower, quite the feature for completely different reasons to the fireplaces back home. I think I would have one, cause I kinda like it, but maybe not in my main room. Another reason I kind of loved it is because it’s self-contained. It was not something you can easily mess with, which is more than you can say for what happens to fireplaces at home when somebody decides they want it gone, or wants to stick some modern shit on top of it and apply the hand of an educated DIY twit to it, then they masterfully do something to fuck up the original thing and create more problems.
It cafe really felt out in the sticks when I asked if there was a toilet. She struggled to explain what it was at first, and I eventually said is it basically a hole in the floor, or? Turned out to be an ‘outhouse’, but it wasn’t, it is one of those plastic boxes you typically see on construction yards or if you go to any festival, because there was no running water, so it kind was a hole int he dirt. It was kinda in the middle of nowhere and kind of functioned that way. I was surprised at that point that they had electricity. I did on the way out notice there was a blackboard by the door that explains the whole thing. No water, no drainage, everything on disposables you sort yourself. She could have just pointed at it.
There was very little on offer and what was there was mostly pop, ice creams and cake, the sustenance of the gods if they were terminally peckish and nutritionally misguided. BUT, and it’s a HUGE but, there was a basket hanging in the corner. The ginge spotted it while trying to work out how a business with fuck all stays in business. Meat pies, nudge nudge. Our sense of humour isn’t for everyone. But there they were. Not bland paprika, not basic bitch cheese and chive, or salted, which seem to be the only bland as ass flavours Sweden sells, but these magnificent fuckers were Walkers. Walkers! Fuck my life, fucking Walkers. Prawn cocktail and salt and vinegar. Crisps never looked so good. Flavour, finally!
We originally stopped for proper food, a sandwich, maybe a baked potato. But we left with the crisps, and it felt real right.
We decided to go and sit on the ‘beach’. Not much of a beach really, more of a concept of a beach. You could imagine a bunch of British tourists showing up on a bus with the castle buckets and spades, extra large towels and striped windbreakers, going full on early 2000s, stepping out for the smiles to fall from their faces with disappointment, and then it getting to DEFCON 1 over who actually gets to sit on the tiny beach first and who has to wait and plan a takeover.
But that was the first satisfying packet of crisps in a good while. I did manage to find, in the very small corner shop one time, salt and vinegar Pringles, to which a colleague said he couldn’t eat them because they were so strong they burnt his mouth. That’s how pathetic flavour is here. Salt and vinegar is spicy. LOL has never been more appropriate.
This was my bon voyage bitch moment. Nearly out. Nearly home. Nearly done. The perfect ending to a very un perfect experience, and very much looking forward to going back where you can actually enjoy a well stocked spice rack and of course get my hands on a pack of Monster Munch.
Ah, well worth a murder house.
— WRITTEN BY THE ONE WHO — SENT THE GINGE IN FIRST.
