You're right, I haven't posted in a while.

Tons of things have been on my mind aswell, I just haven't been able to sit down and write about them. So here I am writing about how I can't write about stuff. Ironic? I barely know the meaning of the word.

Today I've finally found the je ne sais quoi to get writing! (I hate French)

So here goes:

It's been over a YEAR since I made the move to Sweden, crazy how time flies right? I can still remember how I felt around this time last year...all the memories. Lisa, her dad and I packing the car, saying farewell to my family, getting on the boat...It's cliché to say it but, it feels like yesterday. 8-9 weeks of planning and it culminated in me leaving the UK forever. It's hard to look back and not feel accomplishment, because it was the biggest gamble of my life and it paid off big time. It was all arranged by Lisa and her dad - the boats, the bridges, the hotels, the car, the trailer. I can't thank them enough for that.

If I didn't have this condition I'd have been able to get on a plane and have my belongings delivered by cargo. Ah well, if only life were that simple, we all have our downfalls so I know I'm not alone when the shit hits the fan - which is why it was a good job that Lisa's dad was so willing to help us out like he did.

.....


I never thought I would be interested in Swedish politics - until last night. Here's what I've learned...

There are 8 parties currently in the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament), 7 of them form 2 different coalitions - The Alliance and The Red-Greens. It was between these two that the leadership was decided. The 8th party is called the Swedish Democrats, they got elected into the Riksdag last night for the first time. The Alliance beat The Red-Greens by quite a large margin, but they failed to gain the majority (50% or more) of the Riksdag.

All this basically means is that The Alliance has more power than The Red-Greens overall, but not enough to make a huge difference, which is where the Swedish Democrats come in.

The Swedish Democrats are, in the opinion of most Swedes, a racist party. In the UK, the equivalent of the Swedish Democrats is the BNP. The goal of the Swedish Democrats, according to them, is to have a responsible immigration policy but that is just an easy way of saying "No Immigrants, No Non-Whites, No Non-Swedish."

As an immigrant myself I find it disheartening to know that 5.7% (330,157) of the Swedish voting population feel this way. I wasn't an immigrant in the UK though and I found the BNP to be a disgusting excuse for human life, so I mostly have the same views now as I did before I left, thus, I'm not TOO biased.

SD = Swedish Democrats.

So what effect can the SD have on the Riksdag?

Well, since there isn't a majority goverment at the moment, the SD are what some call the decision makers. For example, if there's a movement where the The Red-Greens and The Alliance can't come to an agreement, the SD will have to make a decision on who to agree with. I'm not sure what other consequences there are to the SD being in Goverment, but I'm guessing it's not good. I know they'll be able to have much larger platform on which to speak and air their racist views though and that's not a good thing.

They've already amassed a wealth of support and it's only going to get worse if The Alliance and The Red Greens don't start working together to stop these racist people.

As you can see, the SD are the talk of the nation right now. I think people are just in disbelief that they got voted in, we all saw it coming but when it actually happened I think we all realised that it was the end of an era.

Internationally, Sweden has been a very quiet, neutral country, at least that's what I've come to believe. Now though, things may have to change. Last night may have set the stage for what might be a daunting future for Sweden.

I compare everything I come across to my experiences of living in England for 20 years by default, so I'm seeing alot of similarities between Swedish and English politics. Election night over here was fairly standard to what I'm used to, lots of numbers, statistics and parties. Nothing blew me away, but somehow I was quite intrigued about the whole thing, how one country can have so many different views of how things should be, some good, some very good, some bad and some very bad.

One thing that should be noted is how much I knew about Swedish politics before I watched it. Lisa informed me of the two major parties, just the basics, and she wasn't shy in telling me who she preferred. This most certainly affected how I was thinking during the election, which in hindsight, was not a good thing. I wouldn't say she pushed her views on me, but when describing who she liked, she made a point to say how great that party was and when talking about the other party, it felt to me like she had nothing but disdain for them. It may have been inadvertant on her part but I felt misled by the whole thing and brought it up with her today. After a good talk we both agreed that she should have found me some unbiased reading material and then I would have been able to decide for myself who I preferred.

I'm not sure where my views stand on the Government as a whole, obviously I'm either Alliance or Red-Green, they're what makes Sweden what it is today, a fine country with very few flaws. I can't vote obviously, but I can have my views and I can either keep them to myself or tell people. I just don't know what they are yet. More research is definitely in order.

I'll keep you updated.

'Till next time....

......

Years ago when I was a lad, the Summer for me was a time to get away from school for 6 weeks so me and my friends could have mega waterfights, excitedly long bike rides and a few games of football on the field. Then, as I dropped out of school from the age of 15 due to the crippling nature of my Autism, it became a time for playing board games in the garden with my mother and that carried on until I moved to Sweden.

That was then though...

The Summer of 2010 has been the most enjoyable, most relaxing and by far the best time I've ever had.

We had the Eurovision Song Contest, the FiFa World Cup, Lisa's Graduation and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't be fucked listing. For most people, my Summer would seem boring but when you can't exactly get out of the house much it's been a welcome relief to have some FUN! Obviously it's been packed here at the beach so most of the stuff we've done has been inside, not exactly a perk but at least I wasn't sweating buckets in the too-hot-for-fat-folk weather. I didn't actually go on the beach all Summer, shame really but what could I have done? I'm not risking panic attacks just so I can get some sand on my feet, fuck that :p.

Moving on...as the title of this post suggests, it is indeed the end of the Summer here, sure we'll maybe have a few nice days here and there but it's not the same, I can already feel the bitey wind that Gotland is known for. Gotland is also known for hedgehogs and my fuck...there were tons! The nature here is out of this world, I've never seen so many animals in all my life - foxes, frogs, toads, dragonflies, snakes, mice, lizards, caterpillars, rabbits and squirrels. There's even a shitload of crickets chirping away like you hear in American movies when it's night time. Mosquitos are a fucking bitch though.

Ahh, Gotland is fun.

Too bad I've been sick for the past 2 weeks though, I looked it up online and I'm almost positive it's the flu...I dunno what kind or "strain" it is but it's a pain in the ass. With a simple cold all you have to deal with is a runny nose and a bit of lightheadedness, with the flu you can't even get out of bed because of the aching joints. I'm in the latter stages of it though so I'll be fine within a few days I reckon.

I'm gonna keep it short and end it there, I felt like writing and I didn't want to over do it, sometimes I just go on and on, other times I just feel like writing a paragraph. So in closing, Summer was amazing and I hope everyone else is doing well. Thanks for reading!

'Till next time....

.....

I don't blog much these days, the past few months have been quite different compared to when I first came here. Gone are the heaps of snow, graffitied walls and dead silence, replaced with dozens of cars, sunny weather and screaming children, yes the Summer is indeed here and it's...all right.

As I've said in previous blogs, I knew the Summer was going to busy on Gotland and since I live by the seaside there was no way to escape it. This place is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Sweden and I have prepared myself for the hundreds of people that come here from places like Germany, Norway, Denmark and Holland.
Everyday I would look out of my bedroom window and see and empty carpark with a beach and a swingset and I always wondered "...tourists come HERE?" I couldn't understand the hype of this place until around June, when suddenly flowers were blossoming and wildlife was everywhere. It was then that I realised that this place was no ghost town, this place was full of life!

Progress wise, things have slowed down a bit as was expected - however, I've managed quite well, indeed..very well if I do say so myself. I'm extremely proud of how I've coped with the amount of people right on my doorstep and I understand how the people who live here feel in the Summer. These tourist do tend to invade the local's privacy to an extent and you can see it on their faces that they're not too pleased about it, but the tourism and that cement factory is what keeps Gotland afloat (no pun intended) so it's the nature of the beast.
My walks have been cut down a bit, but I'm happy just to get out of the house really. They can last for 30-60 minutes but not really much more than that, I do feel quite vulnerable here this time of year but like I said, I'm managing.

The tourists are certainly...interesting. They don't really bother anyone alot but we have come across some posh cunts, ignorant twats and overexcited teenagers who act like they've never seen a beach before which is actually quite amusing. They're on their holiday so who am I to put a dampner on it? I just find it funny. Lisa does too, infact she overheard a conversation that went something like:

"Where do you think the people that live here work?"

"Oh I don't know, probably in that factory."

"Ah yes, most likely."

When Lisa got home and told me that conversation I just laughed at their stupidity and ignorance.

Last week was Stockholm Week...I don't know what it is, don't ask, but for some reason a bunch of people from Stockholm come to the island and party for a week. Lisa has told me about this a few times in the past before I came here...she doesn't really like the partying Stockholmers much at all, she says they're..and I quote:

All assholes

Have I ever told you how much I love her? Haha.

Yeah, some came to Slite and kept the whole town up with their "hilarious" antics. One of the more interesting things that did happen that week though was a car show..or something. We're not entirely sure what it was but, a shitload of fancy cars, old and new, drove around Slite and probably most of the island, we videoed some of it and are working on a project to do with that. That was pretty cool.

In other news I'm still Eurovision crazy, Lisa and I, on a whim, decided to buy the past 3 years DVDs and CDs! I know...mental. We liked them, not as much as this year's though, infact we watched the first semi final of this year's last night and we were blown away! We love it! I guess all couples have their little things that they love to do or watch together, it's all fun.

I'm still shit with people, even family, heck, even friends. I just don't know how to act or what to say and I'm stumbling quite a bit on my words. My memory has been extremely poor lately aswell, maybe I'm getting like my mum but I don't know, I'm getting distracted by small things and they overpower what's happening around me. For example, today was weird, I was on the laptop checking my Facebook and things and I asked Lisa if she could find my phone for me, anyway 5 minutes later I close the laptop and get up off the couch only to find that my phone was in my pocket, I thought this was strange...but it turns out that while I was checking my stuff on the laptop, Lisa had found my phone passed it to me and I'd put it in my pocket myself, I couldn't remember anything about this at all. These things are happening more and more frequently. We do have a theory about why this is happening though.

If you've read my Autism blog then you'd know all about my obsessions, particularly the guitar. A couple of weeks back the power supply to my FX pedal decided to...not work and for days we tried to find one online but Sweden are completely out of stock and importing one from England would be extremely costly so fuck that. In the end we have decided to wait for it to get in stock over here and that's where we currently are with that. It doesn't end there though, I believe the increase in memory loss and other odd behaviour is down to "guitar withdrawals" I know it sounds crazy but it's the only solution we can think of. Now, I don't have the shakes and I don't have crazy eyes, but I do feel that there is a feeling of emptiness in me that I can't explain, it's a bit of a sad feeling for me and I just wish I could play my electric again! I just feel extremely stressed without it to be honest, it was the one thing that really calmed me down. Along with the mental stress there's also the physical implications of not playing electric guitar, my wrist doesn't feel right, my fingers are starting to soften and my elbow is a bit sore. "Why don't you play your acoustic?" Well, I do, alot...but it's not the same, my strumming and picking technique is different with both electric and acoustic so it can't really be helped. It'll sort itself out in due course I'm sure.

One thing about my Autism that Lisa and I have discovered is that I have the ability to remember what key a song is in on the guitar without listening to it for an unlimited amount of time. Okay, that basically means that if you ask me for instance what key a song is in, I wouldn't have to listen to that song there and then, it's in my mind and all I need is a guitar or a piano to tell you what key it's in. Complicated I know, especially for people who don't understand keys, chords, notes and rhythm, but in the music world it's quite rare to have that ability. Wooo!

Well, I couldn't think of anything else to talk about (thank God, this has gone on long enough lol). Sorry for my all-over-the-place style but, it's just some thoughts that I figured would be good to jot down, I do it for myself mainly, like a diary, but I often get messages from people telling me they've read it and then we have a conversation about whatever subject matter I tend to delve into here. It's nice to see that people are interested and even if they weren't, I'd still write. Maybe this could replace my electric guitar for the time being? Maybe.

'Till next time...

............


Been a long time since I blogged, it's because I've got quite a big blog in the works and I've had to do alot of research before I publish it. Now, in the meantime I have decided that it would be fun to a do a bit of a lighthearted picture blog so that anyone who reads these things knows that I haven't abandoned Blogger.

So, the topic of this picture blog is a day out I had with Jenny (my sister) and Lisa to a place called Eyam, to quote Wikipedia...

Eyam is a small village in Derbyshire, England. The village is best known for being the "plague village" that chose to isolate itself when the plague was discovered there in August 1665, rather than let the infection spread.

I'd been there before with school and I really liked it, it was such a small place with tiny roads and old houses, of course I never appreciated it at the time, I was too busy having a laugh and taking the piss with my friends. Ahh to be a teenager...

Anyway, it's EXTREMELY rare that I spend more than an hour or so outside so this was particularly special for me personally. Also, it was the last time I got to spend any real time with Jenny before I left England. I could just about handle it, I was already familiar with the place and I had two people I knew very well to go with me, so if I had any trouble with other folk or if I felt things weren't all right, Jenny and Lisa would be there to help me out

So let's get started...

On the way to Eyam, we found this lovely view so we had to get out and take a picture of it.


So...we parked where we shouldn't have. (Snooze, you lose)


Poor woman lost her entire family...how did she survive?!



Here's me and Jenny walking around, dunno why Lisa took this from behind. I look dead scruffy.



People still live in these cottages, I dunno how they can though because the two times that I've been it has been packed with tourists.


We got to this church, you couldn't really miss it in this small village.


We walked around the church, there were alot of graves, this one stood out to us as it's more of a tomb.



One regret about the trip that Lisa and I had was that we didn't notice the Anglo-Saxon cross to the right of the picture until we got home and looked up Eyam on Wikipedia, turns out it's dated to the 7th century! We would have tried to get a better picture of it had we known.



The graveyard behind the church. Amazing views looking up, lovely greenery.


We went through more than the church but, we didn't want to take too many pictures out of respect for the people that lived there, here's our final shot of Eyam, the museum.


That wasn't all of our day out though, on the way back we stopped at the Five Pits Trail for a bit of a walk. As we were driving there, we had a look at the crooked spire!



We found the Five Pits Trail, Jenny used to come here as a child when she visited my aunt and uncle.



This is a bench...nice place to sit, or stand on.


I look ridiculous in the photograph, typical fat kid, stains on t-shirt and all. Had to put it on though, think of it as proof that I went out? I couldn't make it to where Lisa was...not scared of heights or anything, I just didn't think the tree could hold me and if I fell I might have sunk into the ground.


Here's Jen on the same tree, she had no problem climbing it like Lisa.


The Five Pits Trail sign...


And one last look....



Looking back, it was as if we knew that I was leaving England that Summer, of course at the time that we went on the Eyam trip we had no idea, but when I think about it, it was obviously my last chance to do this kind of thing, to visit all these places before I left it for good. I'm happy with the way things have turned out, so I can look back and smile at days like these.

Time to get back to work on my other blog, thanks for reading and looking at the photos...Lisa did most of the camera work by the way, I took a few, but who's counting?

'Till next time....

.........


Just thought I'd do a quick blog about this public holiday in Sweden.

Sveriges Nationaldag is a public holiday in honour of King Gustav Vasa, who's election in 1523 is considered the "foundation of modern Sweden". It's a slightly low key affair, infact alot of Swedes barely acknowledge it, but others celebrate by flying a flag on or outside their house.

Why I decided to make a blog about this particular holiday is because of an issue I had with my homeland regarding similar things. The UK is overrun by immigrants, most do what I do and keep to themselves, others come into the country and preach their religion at us and change our culture to suit theirs, I like to call those people "arseholes". In the privacy of your home you can say what you want, do what you want, but screaming at the government to tell them that they're doing things wrong is barbaric...surely only citizens of that country should hold the right to do that.

My main gripe with these people is their lack of respect for the flags of the United Kingdom, whether it's the Union Jack or the St George's flag, they believe that hanging these outside our houses makes them feel unwelcome, so they complain to the authorities and tell them that anyone who has one is racist. How the fuck can the UK be racist if they're letting these immigrants in in the first place? I believe anyone can fly their flag in their own country as much as they want, especially in times of a crisis. It shows pride towards something they love. Now, if someone from the UK were to go to, let's say, Pakistan or Poland and complain about their flags making them feel unwelcome, then they would be laughed out of the country.

There are people in Sweden who also take issue with the flag waving, these are mostly immigrants that associate that flag with a racist government party (whose name escapes me). Maybe these people should hate the person that spouts this racism, rather than the flag itself. The difference between Sweden and the UK in this matter is that the UK is bowing down to these demands at the drop of a hat and are likely going to impliment some sort of law in the future, whereas Sweden's government isn't going to lose sleep over a few pissed off immigrants.

Today I went out for a walk with Lisa and saw 7-8 flagpoles with big Swedish flags at the top flying in the wind and did I feel unwelcome? Fuck no, should I? Well, I don't know what each individual person's feelings on immigration are, but I doubt it. It's refreshing to see a sense of pride, infact the people of Gotland are very proud of their island aswell, I've seen many Gotland flags out all through the year and not once did I feel uncomfortable. It's not about me though, they shouldn't have to care what I feel about this or any other immigrant, it's their island, it's their country, if I didn't like it, I'd fuck off or at least keep my mouth shut.

Anyway, short and sweet.

'Till next time....