It’s been a while since I blogged. One of many reasons being that I now spend a large part of my working day in front of the computer and have little lust to spend my freetime there either. Another being that a large part of my working day is much larger than it used to be and spare half hours have been increasingly hard to find. However, the hormones are kicking in and it’s the monthly insomniac period. Despite that fact I now have my own office and have spent a considerable number of hours playing ‘grown up’ with members of the university staff and this city council, there has also been a myriad of simply pleasing childish moments - including some serious sock-puppet-synchronised-headbanging and a new approach to learning Swedish.

A highly entertaining way to learn new and complicated words holds it’s basis in the fact that Swedish is built, essentially on composite words (though rarely spondees). The composite word may be broken into two or more other words which can them be memorised. The joy of not having Swedish as a first language is that we may break a composite word in the wrong place and thereby give it a whole other meaning. However, the easiest way to memorise the word if to translate the broken word into English.

Bergström, which is just a name, translates as Electric Mountain, hence the title.

blixtlås - literally, lightning lock is a zipper

stänkskärm - splash screen, is a mudguard… and the list goes on. Light entertainment for the litterary inclined.

My new word for the day was svetsare, which sounds suspiciously like someone who sweats but is actually a welder.

Things with MZ are, to put it mildly, going rather well. Falling in love, is, when one thinks about it, an extremely alarming process. We take a huge number of risks, expose ourselves to emotional upheaval and participate in routine breaking behaviour that leaves you both clumsy (crashed my bike into a tree today…) and forgetful (left my handbag outside on the same bike a couple of months ago.) I wonder why we take these risks when there is the possibility that things will go so unforeseeably wrong. I have invested a serious time allowance to analysing the failure of previous relationships and conclude that there are few definite answers, just behaviours to avoid in future.

The strength I believe that lies behind the current CG MZ coupling is that we have no boundaries when it comes to conversation. And as such it seems only sensible to take this issue up. Despite that fact we split almost three years ago, David, my only ’serious’ ex has been a Sweden in Clover reader every so often - and even chosen to leave comments in either his own, or other ‘cleverly chosen’ names. This troubles me - not because I can not handle the rather weak insults, but because it genuinely bothers me that he has nothing better to do with his time than comment the blog of a several-years-ex-girlfriend. With this in mind, a significant collection of the comments are also nothing more than hypocritical. In short, the whole thing is rather tragic.

Relationships are like everything else - they need to be worked upon, renovated, cared for. They are also two sided, and will, without question, fail, if both parties have the same magnetic polarity. Underlying dis-attraction and inability to holds ones words will not enable relationship success. The only key is honesty.

Eye contact and communication. The ability to express ones’self is, as a wellknown creditcard commercial would say - priceless.