Dispatch #31 – School.

Posted on February 12, 2012 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

My sincere and bespokely-worded apologies; my peeplessness both humbles and disgraces me – it shames me to my very colonial core. I would so dearly love to write that I have spent the time deep undercover; perched behind enemy polar lines, but alas this is not the case. Neither have I, in dippylomatic terms, gone ‘rogue’ and idled the days away languishing in a thermal spa bath with twee, blonde nymphette Nina, she of bland band The Cardigans fame.

The truth is oh so much worse…

I have been caught.

…and it was but just an Etonian schoolboy error which led to the disclosure of my secretive sleuthing. I had written a strongly-worded letter of electronically mailed complaint to the most abhorrent cafe I had ever supped in. My opine contained a number of words which had, it would so seem, ‘flagged up’ both my thoroughbred nationality and the true reason I sully my soles on this permafrosted land.

For the record, never use the words ‘Earl Grey’, ‘crumpets’, ‘wench’ or ‘carpet bombing’ while airing your disdain in the written form.

I assume it was no coincidence, but days after the mouse had clicked upon ‘send’ an official summons was thrust through my letterbox. I was given an address and a time and told not to be, under any circumstances, late. The letter was embossed with the letters ‘SFI‘ and from its content I can only guess that this stood for:

Swedish Forcibly Induced.

The building in question, on approach, had all the charm of a Russian gulag. I found myself sitting in a draughty outhouse where I am herded among other captives – NONE of them were Swedish, had I been sentenced to some form of cultural-cleansing facility? Whatever it was, it was being done on an unprecedented and industrial scale. Research tells me that currently 125,362 are undergoing the cultural-conversion treatment.

Then we hear our punishment, delivered by an individual who ominously described himself as ‘teacher’; teacher’s first shudderingly sinister words were delivered with the good grace of a Gestapo officer shining a 100watt light bulb into our collective faces:

“In a year’s time you will ALL be speaking Swedish”.

Or, as it sounded in my top-hatted head:

“Ve have vays of making you talk.”

Well, we will see about that, Ölaf, or whatever phlegm-inducing grunt your parents named you after. Conversations with my gloriously multi-cultured fellow inmates led me to learn this was in fact a program which attempted to coerce us fresh-off-the-boaters into learning the whys and wherefores of the Swedish ways…and then to communicate them in the Swedish brutish banter, i.e. in a matter of months we would all be able to speak like we were singing and hide our grimace when we gnaw on the boney claw of a crayfish.

I left Week One baffled as to how I would shake these shackles; did I ever really want to be ably able to assemble flat pack furniture? Did I ever want to find an ABBA track ‘catchy’? Nej, tack you very much, but then the queerest thing happened while mingling with Malmö’s glitterati.

A waitress approached me and said:  “Vill du prova en härsken fisk hor d’oeuvre?”, without hesitating I responded: “Nej tack, jag skulle äta hellre en franskmans socka. I had aghasted myself -I was talking bloody Swedish, I had the Brain of a Brit, but with the silver tongue of a Swede. I have spent nigh on a year trying to demean myself enough to blend in and now it was being handed to me on a silver platter.

Being behind enemy lines has never been so easy.

Hej-diddley-då




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: Have YOU been affected by SFI? See this Dispatch as an open forum to discuss your experiences. And for Pete’s sake, SUBSCRIBE.

Posted in Ex pats, Gothenburg, Humour, immigration, Language, Malmö, Politics, Religion, Stockholm, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 29 Comments

Dispatch #30 – ABBA

Posted on January 6, 2012 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

In fear of sounding like a plucky polemicist or a grouchy grump, I’ve always held a certain disdain for ‘pop music’; ‘pop’ is short for ‘popular’, ‘popular’ means ‘affordable’ and anything which is both affordable and popular is almost certainly ‘vulgar’ – I rest my case.

[enter stage left] Abba.

Abba are many things to many people – there cannot be many who have not stumbled across their glitter-laden path – to some they are the copycat pale imitators of the iconic British band and Eurovision Song Contest winners, Bucks Fizz  To others they are the unkempt glam throwbacks who launched their career off the back of the depressingly successful entertainment-vacuum musical and subsequent silver screen motion picture, Mama Mia! It would not surprise me one iota if 80 per cent of 20-somethings thought ‘the blonde out of Abba’ was called Meryl Streep and ‘one of the blokes’ was ‘in one of them James Bond films’.

They may have brought disco ball-flecked joy to hundreds of millions, put Sweden on the cultural map, possibly even have boosted its Gross Domestic Product by several percentiles, but I have always found something a smidge sinister about them. No.1 Rule Of Being an Englishman – don’t trust a man wearing Cuban heels or a woman who looks like she’s been dressed by a pimp.

What drew them to my attention was their somewhat over-zealous protection over their trademarked/copyrighted/whatevered name. So keen were they to make sure no one made money or sullied their songs using the letters ‘A-B-B-A’ that I dare say the moment any seven year old attempts to scrawl out the alphabet, a team of sharp-suited legal eagles appears over the infant’s shoulder in fear that after ‘A’ and ‘B’ he writes ‘B’ and ‘A’ and submits an entry to the end of term talent show.

Tribute acts Abba Queens, Abba Mania and Swede Dreamz Abba Tribute have all received ominous notifications NOT thanking them for the music or subsequent joy it might’ve brung; there are almost 50 such acts in the UK alone, contemplate the inevitable Japanese tribute band market and the mind both boogies and boggles.

There is probably more loose change down the back of the collective Abba sofas to solve the Third World debt crisis, do they really need to be so Money Money Money grabbing so long after the white suits and sequined miniskirts have been mothballed? It all seems so spoilsporty to my good self, but I guess in their own defence they may claim it is ♫ ♪ The NAME of the Game ♫ ♪

But whose name and whose game?

Now, the canned fish and seafood aisle is never my first port of call when I optimistically enter a supermarket in my endless and naive quest to find a Findus Lancashire Hot Pot Aga meal-for-one, but one could not help chance upon a familiarly-named jar of fishy splodge, or pickled herring as the Swedes like to call it.

Abba Seafood was set up and running in 1838, a time when Waterloo was remembered for being the battle in which your Father died rather than a disco-tastic dance floor filler. The band approached the company and negotiated a deal to ‘share’ the name long before any notion of the combo’s success had dawned. I  would humbly suggest the ‘original’ Abba would happily renege and perhaps suggest a tinker with that original ‘amicable’ deal.

The last time I saw a tribute act it was Bark at the Royal Festival Hall, did I rush out after and buy a Bark CD? No, I went out and bought every Bach long player I could get my manicured hands on, consider that Abba, if you really want to be the winners who took it all.

Abba, your attitude stinks like a, like a…an out of date jar of Abba’s pickled herrings.

Toodle pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: Have you not subscribed yet? What else can I tell you other than Take A Chance On Me?

Posted in Ex pats, Fashion, Food, Gothenburg, Humour, Malmö, Music, Stockholm, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 34 Comments

~URGENT DISPATCH~

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

Tinsel pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: The Dippylomat esq will be back in the novus annus. If you want me to stoop to your level and speak YOUR language next year then subscribe, NOW!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 43 Comments

Dispatch #29 – Christmas.

Posted on December 16, 2011 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

I am waiting for a delayed flight, I am awkwardly perched in the supposedly ‘First Class’ departure lounge revelling in the joy of my inconvenience – oh, British Incompetence and Inefficiency™, how I have dearly missed your familiar ways; sterility, punctuality and functuality cut no mustard with my good self, it is the bemused bus queues, the harangued huddles of stranded commuters and the collectives of complainees that bind Britain.

My mission on temporary hold, I am returning to the Motherland for Christmas, having learned a hard lesson from last year’s merry-less Yuletide.

Let me recount the tale of mistlewoe and whine which came to be my 2010 debut Swedish Christmas and as I do so relive their traditions in all their pine-scented albeit gory detail.

I had been invited to spend the occasion at the Swedish Embassy, could there be a better place to patronise and mock appreciate and understand the manner in which this nation spends the day?

It started off badly and went downhill faster than an Olympic gold medalist skier. I arrived Christmas Day mid-morning and rapped the door with the brass handle knob of my walking cane. After a short wait I am met by a somewhat hungover looking hostess. Knowing I pride myself on etiquette she tried to politely explain I was late – a DAY late.

Christmas Day in Sweden is what we call in England ‘Boxing Day’; the drink is drunk and the delicacies are devoured. Swedes up and down the country are sniffing around plates of leftovers in the lingering fog of fumes which was yesterday’s snaps binge.  I had missed Christmas, but as I walk away the subservient Swede cried after me ‘nej, nej…’. I was then asked inside and told the day will be reenacted for me in its entirety.

Bring on the Dopp i grytan, the greasy, seasoned gloop leftover swampy waters previously used to boil the ham; guests are dared invited to dip bread into as a precursor to the main course.

But before my main meal fate is sealed and at the very split second Queen Elizabeth II address Her sadly diminished Empire, the Swedes, as if in an act of defiance, sit down and watch reruns of Kalle Anka, or as we would know him, Donald Duck. The Queen struggles to maintain our attention for seven minutes, but in Scandinavia Donald, by far the most popular Walt Disney creation here, keeps all generations of the treasoning Swedes glued to their seats for an hour – the country is effectively closed down by a duck. And as if to add quacking insult to injury, the running order of the cartoons does not change; year after year the same cartoons at the same time for as long as any Swede can remember.

The Swedish festive main is entirely unique, in that it is the only national Christmas dish which does not differ from what they eat herring-fuelled day in and anchovy-laced day out: balls of meat, rolls of fish and cold cuts The Swede’s logic apparently being ‘we love it, let’s celebrate by eating more of it’.

The largely carnivorous banquet is left to settle, disturbed only by the obligatory dance around the tree. At 19.00 hours the second bout of cartoon watching commences, this time it is the 1975 short animation Christopher’s Christmas Mission. A Robin Hood-inspired seasonal tale about a philanthropic Stockholmian boy to be watched while seeping Christmas porridge down your gullet to fill any gaps until your back teeth are floating in an unholy glut of food. In short, they eat too much and they watch rubbish on television, what kind of savages are these people…it makes your blood run cold even colder.

Right-o, I am boarding back to Blighty to eat turkey and Brussels sprouts, just like they did around that manger some 2011 years ago.

Toodle pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: This Christmas why not offer your loved ones the gift of Subscription to The Northern Plights – it is free, but priceless.

Posted in alcohol, diets, Ex pats, Food, history, Humour, Malmö, RAF, Stockholm, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Dispatch #28 – Immigration.

Posted on December 9, 2011 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

Know Your Enemy; it is one of the maxims I have lived my life by, or rather it is a maxim that I have got the staff to live my life by – I try not to get my hands grubby. Everyone knows who the Swedes are; they are the fair – both by nature and appearance – quiet ones who are geographically shunted to the outer reaches of The Empire Globe – out of sight, out of mind.

No surprises. At least not until, as I did, you open your Swedish window and gaze down upon the minions below – not all of them are blond/e, many of them are not white; some, I suspect, were not born here – their darker complexions wasted on the paltry summer sun which fleetingly graces this hinterland.

Who are these non-native folk and why on earth would they go to, of all places, this godforsaken, partially-Arctic utmost limit of the European mainland?

Take the city of Malmö for example, some 30 per cent of its inhabitants were not born in Sweden, add to that the second, third and fourth generation of immigrants who chose to embrace these bracing climes and you will soon understand why it is a bit of a cultural smörgåsbord.

Of course many come from neighbouring countries with only a vigorous hike or a train ticket required to get them Swedeside. In fact it is hard to tell whether these non-Swedes are immigrants or just, well, just lost. In the Scandinavian vodka belt one might very well meander off the chosen path or fumble and lose a return train ticket.

But not all these immigrant can come from Norway, Finland or Denmark; the exotic dress codes, the sobriety and the slightly more palatable food aromas wafting upon the icy breeze defy that rationale. Indeed, there are 171 different nationalities represented in this city alone.

Let us reflect on our own fair isle for a moment, the list of immigrant groups to the United Kingdom does read somewhat like a guilty conscience: ‘sorry about your country, old boy, here’s a London city slum and a dank bit of the north you can reside in as way of an apology…sorry about the weather, that was partly why we colonised you in the first place’. However, the demographics of Sweden read like everyone else’s guilty conscience; it has not declared war since 1814, it has not colonised anywhere since 1721. Empathy just rouses suspicion in a British born and bred brain, even now the UK offer overseas aid with a cowering ‘please don’t bomb us’ whimper.

As of 2010, 14.3 per cent of the inhabitants in Sweden were foreign-born. Of these, 9.2 per cent were sober and fully intended to be here (born outside the European Union) and 5.1 per cent were drunk/lost (born not that far away.)

I had a peruse through the list of Swedish demographic groups, it reads more like a roll call for a UN delegate brunch  for the least fortunate nations of modern history. Bosnians, Croats and Serbs came as their country cracked; Iraqis shot here as fast as allied forces shot their countrymen; Somalians swarmed from their brutalised-by-the-British homeland; Chileans choked by England-endorsed despotism left in droves Sweden-bound. It seems that Sweden is one of the very few nations not culpable for these disgraced Empires’ hangovers and misguided witch-hunt fallouts.

It is humbling to hear of these immigrants’ plights and the Swedes ability to overlook the world’s warmongering and dictatorial indiscretions, instead offering refuge to the victims. But, still, it does beg the obvious question, where will all the Swedes run to if the colonial cannons’ crosshairs are fixed upon them?

Toodle pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: The new World Empire will not judge you on colour or creed, we’re not fussy, we want EVERYONE. Subscribe now to discover your destiny!

Posted in Denmark, Ex pats, Finland, Gothenburg, Humour, Malmö, Norway, Stockholm, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Dispatch #27 – Mexico.

Posted on December 2, 2011 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

Mexico? Have I lost my Elgin marbles? Have I gone, what I might haphazardly suggest the Swedes spell ‘löcö’? Before now Mexico has never really featured on my radar, I once went to an American Ambassador’s fancy dress party as an ‘illegal immigrant’, but beyond that I have paid it no mind. Nor, incidentally, has The Empire, Britannia has enough drunk, shouty, stabby people of its own, muchas gracias all the same.

Yet Mexico, it seems, has been thrust upon me, like an awkward maneuver performed by one of its working class masked wrestlers.

This came to fluorescent-stripped light one Friday afternoon whilst striding a shopping trolley up and down the aisles of my local food court. Most of the fresh foods look like they have been clubbed over the head and dragged in by a bedraggled hunter. For a fussy connoisseur, pickings are slim and mostly pickled.

Whether the Swedes had gone on a hunger strike was not clear, but what was obvious was that the store was deathly quiet, a quiet I had not heard since I squiffyly bellowed ‘You know Abba were miming, right?’ at a Swedish Embassy musical soirée.

But hold the Ericsson phone, there was life…and it was all centred in one aisle. My curiosity got the better of me and I waited for the blond/e mass to dissipate. They left behind the bare shelves of what had once been the Mexican food aisle, and I don’t mean ‘shelves’, an ENTIRE aisle had been reserved for cacti and sombrero adorned tins, jars and spice-mix boxes. Like a pack of malnourished wolves with a wild boar carcass they had stripped it bare. And sure enough, as the checkout bleeped and blöoped their items out, every basket contained at least one item from the now barren Tex/Mex shelves.

Why…varför…¿por qué?

In short, I wish I knew.

No one knows, but this quite genuinely appears to be the embryonic stages of a tradition, like ‘Christmas’ or ‘colonialism’. At the very heart is the notion of ‘Fredagsmys‘ which literally translates as ‘Fredagsmys’ or, if you ask a native, ‘Friday Cosy’, a custom akin to the slightly more dogmatic and restrictive Jewish Friday tradition of Shabbat.

Everywhere else in the world it would be referred to as ‘I am Knackered and Can’t Be Bothered to Cook or Go Out Day’, but since the early 1990s some entrepreneurial Swedes have made it into a marketing Mecca – they have found a way to fleece the hard-earned kronor from the, err, fleeced pockets of the Average Swede while festering with his/her loved ones on the sofa. Sweets, snacks, fizzy pops and all manner of calorific mucks are consumed by the snow-shovel load, but where there is muck there is gold and the company on the winner’s podium is Santa Maria.

For all intents and purposes this Swedish-based company has snuck into homes, removed the meatballs and replaced them with the ingredients of a taco…and no one has cared, not a jot, in fact they have embraced the taco to such an extent that the day is morphing into ‘Taco Friday‘.  Every year Santa Maria makes 85 million taco shells along with 200 million tortillas..that’s an awful lot of Tex/Mex for a population of 9.5 million.

Food pundits, health campaigners, social historians are all scratching their Nordic noggins trying to pinpoint the precise origins of this weekly custom; Ladies and Gentlemen, let me come  to your assistance – The Brits have been sitting on their posteriors doing nothing but eating rubbish since records began, welcome to The New World Empire, you appear to be settling in nicely.

Toodle pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: My name Juan, I take Dippylomat hostage…you subscribe or I break ‘is monocle.

Posted in Benjamin Disraeli, diets, Ex pats, Food, Gothenburg, Humour, Malmö, RAF, Stockholm, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Dispatch #26 – Environment.

Posted on November 25, 2011 by

I AM a representative of the former British Empire and the current Commonwealth of Nations; I am the descendant of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the son of an RAF pilot. I did not graduate with First Class honours from Cambridge University and since then have not entered the Foreign Office’s prestigious diplomatic corps.

‘The Northern Plights’ documents my assessment of Sweden for the possibility of any future conquests which the British Government’s War Cabinet is not considering.

At last some respite and a chance to don my civvies and leave the city of Malmö. I head to the coastal town of Ystad, but before the Baltic Sea spray has washed off the suburban grime the electronic synthesised opening strains of the National Anthem sound an incoming text message. Damn and blast. I am being sent back to Malmö to destroy the myth that the Swedes give a flying fir cone about Britain’s our planet.

It frustrates me that I have been instructed to prove the Swedes are the worst at something they are considered the best at – being green – on my weekend off. Perhaps that is why I have been sent to Malmö – a city still stained black from its industrial past, surely if I can prove that Sweden is as environmentally friendly as an oil slick then this city would be the place to do it.

In its defence, Malmö, at its heart, is pretty, baroquey, gothicy and all the other pretentious superlatives you pick up while eavesdropping someone else’s tour guide around any gem of a European city. But is Malmö really a gem? Beyond that heart lies an urban sprawl in a perpetual state of modernisation with all the lumbering cranes and dug up roads that requires, one may muse to one’s self ‘it’ll look nice…when it’s finished.’

It doesn’t look like a gem and it doesn’t look green.

But it is. It is in fact an emerald, the greenest of all gems.

Under every Swede’s IKEA-molded sink you will find a veritable smörgåsbord of recycling bags and in every Swedish block of flat’s cellar/yard/out-house you will find corresponding recycling bins. The Swedes recycle ‘the lot’ and ‘a lot’ of it; in fact, if it is not labelled ‘Chernobyl Fallout’ you’ll probably find a recycling bin for it – in total, 34% of all household rubbish is used as something else by someone else at some point.

The Swedes set a high bar and curse my luck it is Malmö which ably balances on that bar – it is considered the most eco-friendly city in the most eco-friendly country in the world.

The city is blighted with its heavy industrial ship-building history; the harbour was one of the largest in the world and set more boats afloat than Helen of Troy, but what now the galvanised hull of the market has rusted and fallen out? The harbour looks to fester like a decaying spectre of global-warming industry past. Would it be here I found oil drums bobbing in the coastal waters, or chemical paints dribbling into the lapping waves? I felt positive; there was still a small hive of industry, a company floating in the face of environmental legislation, perhaps?

No. As it turns out the harbour is now used to make, of all cursed things, turbines for wind farms. DRATS. And then, holding a telescope aloft to my monocled eye, I see it, parked out in the midst of the choppy waters, flapping its eco-friendly arms in my distinguished vicinity, the world’s third largest wind farm – Lillgrund.

From here on it was just blow after blow after blow, and that was not the energy-giving Arctic wind, that is my mission. Malmö is Sweden’s first ever Fair Trade City..blah, blah, blah..set to be carbon neutral by 2030 blah blah blah…the list is endless, and no doubt written on recycled paper.

While I am reluctant to do so, I think I will have to concede; the Swedes may have won this battle, but they will not win the war. I cannot admit defeat and send this Dispatch though, so instead I just text the Foreign Office back:

Toodle pip,




ATTENTION BOTH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMPIREES: Recycle this Dispatch and send it to you nearest and dearest – the planet will thank you for it.

Posted in Ex pats, Humour, Malmö, Nature, Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized, Wildlife | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments