I ploughed on up through Finland until I finally reached the Arctic circle. As the so called home of Santa Claus, I’m sure Rovaniemi has its charms in the snow-capped months of midwinter, but in the middle of summer it has an ambience so surreal that it could have come straight out of a Ray Bradbury story.
Fifty percent of Swedes are now either overweight or obese. Various shopkeepers and checkout girls along the E4 coast road certainly gave credibility to that report. It seemed the more northerly I progressed, the more kilos the locals carried. Yet one petrol station just outside Umeå bucked the trend.
There’s nothing more hilarious than a monoglottist attempting to communicate with a foreign comrade using only the power of gesticulation, especially when there is the aroma of a liaisons etranger in the kitchen. Its the sort of thing that would have Radio 4 listeners in stitches at 6:30pm on a Monday evening week after week, month after month, year after year. In this case, a prawn sandwich proved to be a mime too far, despite the eventual deployment of the, what I had previously assumed to be universal and thus fail-safe, wavy-fingers-above-the-head routine. The lady in question, I’m sorry to report, had to content herself with the Kent Crisps.