DXStockholm Diary

Note: Click on any bold text in blue for a link to further details, a webpage or a Twitter account
           Click on any bold text in pink for a link to an Abba song

Friday 3rd June - Day One: I Wonder (Departure)

Normally when I get to the last day of a week's Half-Term holiday, there's that feeling that it's all gone too quickly. But this one was different, very different. I had spent the week half wanting it to go slowly so I could enjoy the time with my family, and half wanting it to whizz by, such was my sense of excitement and anticipation.

Just a few weeks previously, I had been approached by Abbott, manufacturers of the FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system, with an invitation to fly out to Stockholm for a weekend, to meet with some fellow diabetic bloggers. As you do.

So instead of a quiet weekend at the end of Half-Term getting ready for back to work, I found myself alone at a deserted Preston Station at 5am on a glorious sunny Friday morning, catching a train to Manchester Airport. I love journeys: I get excited by train journeys, let along plane journeys, which I don't often make. So whilst I was trying hard to look like a nonchalant seasoned traveller, I was beneath the surface a bundle of nervous excitement. The train was pretty empty as it passed first through rural Lancashire, then  my birthplace Bolton, then bustling Manchester Piccadilly and finally the airport. The random Abba song generator in my head alighted on the very appropriate I Wonder (Departure).

Meanwhile, my travelling companion for the flight to Sweden, fellow Type One Lydia, was making her way over the Pennines by taxi from her home near Doncaster. Lydia and I are good Twitter friends and had already met at another diabetes event, but it still felt surreal meeting up in this way. We know each other purely because of a shared medical condition and the fact that we chose to talk about it on social media, but that connection, like that which I have with so many others, is a guarantee of friendship. Going through security, it was nice for once to say "We have" rather than "I have" when explaining the strange devices stuck to our arms. A small but symbolic difference when you spend the rest of your life alone with the disease.

In-flight selfie

I'm not sure if it was Lydia's fault or mine, but we managed to chatterbox non-stop for the next five hours. The flight, with Norwegian Airlines, was entirely smooth and we were soon looking down on a land of lakes and forests as we made our descent to Arlanda Airport. Exhausted perhaps by my incessant prattling, Lydia fell asleep just as the plane was making its scary descent through the clouds, but we were soon safely on Swedish soil.

From the moment you get off the plane, Sweden seems very - well - Swedish. The Arlanda Express which whisks passengers at TGV speed from the airport to the city centre, feels like an IKEA on wheels, all bright, squeaky clean and uncluttered, with teak trim on the windows. The ticket inspectors all look like Bjorn Borg's dad or Pippi Longstocking's mum, speak embarrassingly perfect English but kindly reciprocated my attempt to be polite by using the word "Tack" as a thank you.

Once in Stockholm, we made the very short walk to the wonderful Haymarket Hotel, bumping into a legend of the online diabetic community, Chris the Grumpy Pumper. We checked in, and took the easy option of getting lunch at a McDonalds next door to the hotel. Culinary assimilation could wait.

Ryan, our Aussi-Swede entertains and informs us.

A walking tour of the city was on offer for those of us who had arrived in time, and at 3:30 we were met in the hotel lobby by a thoroughly engaging and entertaining Australian guide called Ryan, a resident of Stockholm, whose confident and coherent storytelling gave a real insight into some of the city's people and places. In particular, his account of the 1973 bank raid which gave rise to the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, by which captives befriend their captors, was both intriguing and amusing.

Stockholm Waterfront in the evening sunshine

With just time for a quick wash and brush up, we then met for the first time as a whole group and a coach picked us up to take us to the Museum of Science and Technology. The tantalising glimpse from the coach of Stockholm's miles of waterfront confirmed to me that I wished we had more time to explore, but no matter, there was stuff to get on with.


We walked through the closed museum to a room in the centre of which was a veritable smorgasbord of food and drink. We were welcomed by Abbott organisers and given a brief presentation on the museum, then left to eat, drink, be merry, and explore the museum. I never got to do the exploring,  but for the nicest of reasons, as I got into earnest, varied and genial discussion with a gentleman from Abbott Sweden whose name I didn't take in. Just the sort of exchange of perspectives and experiences which makes travel such an enlightening experience.

A DJ in a DJ

We returned by coach to the hotel, whose atmospheric public bar was already buzzing, being apparently a place for a diverse and friendly crowd to gather through the long summer evenings. A guy in full evening wear - a DJ in a DJ - was spinning 1920s jazz tunes at a wonderfully civilised volume, and we all sat long into the night exchanging stories, views and banter like the friends we had so quickly become. Entertainment was provided by various of the more cheerful of our number trying to take grumpiness lessons from the Grumpy Pumper, but they failed to frown and he failed to smile. Only the knowledge of an early start on Day Two drove us reluctantly to our own rooms, heads already buzzing with excitement and anticipation.


Saturday 4th June - Day Two: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (a drink after midnight)

         

A modest plaque marks the spot where Olof Palme was murdered

I declined the invitation to take part in an early morning run, opting instead for a stroll round the local streets. In particular,  I had noticed that the site of the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme was a couple of blocks away, and I wanted to pay my respects to a statesman who had died under those particularly shocking circumstances. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that it is marked with the most modest and understated of brass plaques on the pavement where he fell. The Swedes are an undemonstrative lot I guess and I rather admire them for that.

Swedish Breakfast

Breakfast was a splendid spread of the familiar and the unfamiliar, and it was great to share a real breakfast with Philippa, a regular "attender" at the #GBDocBreakfastClub, a Twitter event at which those of us who find ourselves awake too early meet in the virtual world at weekends. I unadventurously made myself a variation of a full English (photo left, with my other favourite Swedish word - Smor - labelling the butter),  but the bacon was gorgeous. Full Swedish for me!


We walked the short distance to the "Conference Centre" at "No 18", a stylishly decorated set of rooms in a city centre building that may have been a private residence in the past. I imagined it perhaps as the home of a Baltic trader in 19th century Stockholm.

The theme of the day's conference was "The Future", and we were certainly given a Smorgasbord of presentations and experiences based around this theme. It felt a bit like the sort of conference we all have to attend in our working lives, except that (a) the subject matter was fun, varied and interesting and (b) the delegates were a group of a diverse range of ages, nationalities and personality types rather than a bunch of people distressingly similar to oneself.



Rabbits ears showing our every thought!

Particular favourites for me were a session on storytelling from Kate Steele and a talk on the Future by, well, a futurologist called Rudy de Waele from Belgium. Now there's an interesting job. We also learned about Snapchat from Geir Ove Pederson, a Norwegian social media superstar, extracted our own DNA and tried out rabbit ears that respond to brain activity (see left). I was left, like everyone, with my head spinning at times, yet somehow reassured that the future is not something to be feared: Sitting surrounded by people who only 100 years previously would have died from their condition, watching many of them fine tuning dosage on their insulin pumps and seeing everyone confidently and discreetly interacting with their phones and tablets made me think how lucky we are to live in an age of such fast technical progress, and how much we have to look forward to. As by some distance the oldest person at the conference,  I felt so glad to be of a mindset that embraces change and technology rather than bemoaning its influence. The same sort of technical advance that gives us mobiles, the internet, Snapchat and the like also gives us insulin pumps, flash glucose monitoring, and goodness knows what in the future.



Three Libs in a row (four with me)

Late in the day, I took this snap (see right) of a line of arms each, like mine, fitted with a FreeStyle Libre sensor. The future's white, round, the size of a £2 coin and stuck to your arm. I love this photo, as it makes us all look like members of some secret society, and I am proud to be part of this society. Two years ago, it would not have been possible - such is the nature of technological progress in the control of our condition.


We strolled back to the hotel in the late afternoon sunshine under skies as blue as the Swedish flag, sharing the busy-but-not-too-busy streets with medal-wearing athletes who had just completed the Stockholm Marathon. A few minutes free before meeting up again to walk the short distance to another unique venue, the Kung Carls Bakficka Restaurant, for a marvellously convivial meal on a first floor balcony lined with leather-bound books. Highlight of a delicious meal was being served toasted cauliflower croutons in an empty bowl, to general mystification until the cauliflower soup was served from a jug.

Dinner at Kung Carls Bakficka Restaurant



The Frenchies

I didn't want the evening to end - and it didn't. Led by our new friends from Abbott, we found our way to an open air bar and sat in the mellow warmth of a Stockholm night enjoying the company of our fellow delegates. I'm quite sure that a lot of the time, Stockholm must have grim, damp weather, but we really struck lucky, and there's something really magical about such a late sunset.



Three English, an Italian and a Canadian

We then returned to the hotel bar (pausing for Grumpy and one or two others to get a McDonalds) then sat in the corner drinking in the atmosphere,  the beer and the camaraderie. I felt as if I was among old friends, not people I'd only known 24 hours.

My inner Abba juke box played Summer Night City and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (a drink after midnight) as I finally admitted to myself that at my age I should be tucked up in bed, and eventually we all drifted off to our rooms. The hotel, incidentally, was superb, and the beds very comfy.

Sunday 5th June - Day Three: Mamma Mia!

The Swedish Parliament (headless polar bear bottom right)

I woke early and took a stroll through the deserted streets down to the waterfront, determined not to miss out completely on the chance to get to know this cool city. It felt so relaxed in the fresh morning sunshine, with early tourists mingling with revellers returning home from a night out - at least I assume that's why I saw a man in a polar bear costume carrying his head. He's in the bottom right of this picture, outside the Swedish Parliament building.

The Wizard of Libs - Chris Thomas

Back at the hotel, a minor drama at breakfast in which one of our number, Lisa from Germany suffered a hypo and collapsed at breakfast. The crisis was quickly and calmly resolved by her friends old and new (a wonderful example of diabetic solidarity in action) and we convened for a meeting with the Wizard of Libs himself, namely Chris Thomas, Abbott's Senior Principal Research Scientist, to reveal the latest news about the new Libre Link App.

Then it was time for thanks and farewells.

And that was it - or was it? No, because I had sneakily plotted a visit to the Abba Museum with Philippa, her husband James and Baby G (the self-styled #DXFringe) when I found out that Philippa was a fellow Abba geek. Poor Lydia was obliged to tag along, which produced this "tweet of the day" :-

A fine Abba tribute Band

But just as we were about to leave for the museum I found out that some of our new friends from Abbott shared my love of Abba and asked if they could join us. And so it came to pass that on a Sunday lunchtime, I found myself in a karaoke booth singing Mamma Mia with Ollie Mitchell and Fiona Lloyd from Abbott Leadership and fellow diabetic Lydia. The museum is a great celebration of Sweden's most famous export, and brings a smile to the faces of everyone there.

And did I really perform on stage with a virtual Abba?

Yep, and the evidence is here:-

A surreal climax to a surreal weekend. The rest of the day was smooth but increasingly wistful: Taxi back to the hotel, then the Arlanda Express back to the airport with Jen Grieves, who was also on the flight back to Manchester. An SAS Airlines flight which oozed Scandinavian class and efficiency (not able to get seats together, Lydia and I sat on nearby seats tapping away at our respective laptops in a race to post the first blog), then fond farewells to Jen and Lydia and a train journey home under gloomy skies and pouring rain on a clunky Northern Rail Pacer, somehow symbolic of  my wistful mood. I had woken up in Stockholm, danced to Abba at lunchtime and now ended the day back home in the rain. But as one of those annoying but sometimes spot-on internet quotations says:

"don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened"

Disclaimer: I was invited to DX Stockholm by Abbott Healthcare, who paid for all travel, accommodation and subsistence expenses for me and other delegates. Opinions on the FreeStyle Libre Flash Glucose Monitoring System expressed by me are my own and not those of Abbott Healthcare.

Summer Night City

Sitting outside a bar, drinking a refreshing glass of Öl at around midnight in the sultry warmth of  a still-light Stockholm night, I tried briefly to step out of the moment and reflect on where I was, what I was doing and why I was there.

I was sitting there in the Summer Night City talking, laughing and drinking with a group of  young women: a Canadian scientist who lives in Paris, an Italian electrical engineer who lives and works in London, a Welsh student dietician who is an accomplished and successful athlete, a medical secretary from Birmingham and a first year university student from Doncaster. Of the group, I had only ever met the latter two briefly before; the others were, until 24 hours previously, strangers. At other tables in the same bar were about twenty other people, all unknown to me previously, but now new friends: Germans, Dutch, French, Swedish, Irish and British.

As I paused for thought (not easy in a noisy and lively bar), I just had to smile. Why was I, by some years the oldest in the group, enjoying such a fun night out? The answer, dear reader,  you will probably already know. It's because I, and all the others there, suffer from an incurable and life-threatening condition about which I have chosen, only in the past couple of years, to talk online.

Yes, I was at #DXStockholm, a weekend conference for diabetic bloggers organised and paid for by Abbott Healthcare, a global giant of a medical equipment company, makers of the FreeStyle Libre monitoring device of which I am so fond that I call it "Libs" (not original - copyright Amber Rose)

Such are the rewards for responding to the rubbish hand that fate has dealt us in a positive and constructive manner.

Two days earlier, as I boarded a Stockholm-bound plane on a sunny Manchester morning with my good friend and fellow sufferer Lydia, we reflected on the chain of events that had brought us to that in many ways surreal situation. Which twists of fate, which decisions made by each of us in our hitherto unconnected lives had brought us to those aircraft steps? You really couldn't make it up.

Much else over the weekend was gloriously surreal, and enormous fun, and merits some thanks. How about the logistics for a start: flying somewhere, and checking in to a top-of-the-range hotel, with the bookings and payments done by a company account just doesn't happen to schoolteachers like me: at best, we book our tickets and our budget hotel rooms and claim it back, and at worst, we just pay ourselves. Thank you, Abbott! Or how about bopping  to Mamma Mia in an Abba-themed disco pod on a Sunday lunchtime with two of the big cheeses from Abbott and a friend with his 6 month old baby daughter in her baby sling?  Tack, Benny, Bjorn, Anna-Frid and Agnethe! Or how about bantering on Twitter with a new German friend when she and I had badly failed to respond with an appropriate level of seriousness to the calming voice of a Mindfulness coach? Yes folks, I can exclusively reveal that Germans do indeed have a sense of humour every bit as subversive and cynical as ours! Vielen Dank, Steffi! Or how about hearing the story of the 1973 bank robbery which gave rise to the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, from a cool Australian tour guide and local resident called Ryan, standing outside the building where it all happened, now a high fashion store. Cheers mate! Oh, and while he was telling the story, an even cooler old gentleman dresssed in an immaculate bright blue suit came out of the store and calmly confirmed that the tale being told by our guide was 100% true, "because I was there". Tack, Mr Random Swede! Somehow, we believed him. We were in such a good mood already, so why would we doubt him?

So was this just a corporate "jolly"? Just a p***-up funded by the profiteering of a giant corporation? An easy accusation to make, but one which I, and all my diabetic friends, would strongly refute.

For a start, we actually deserve a bit of fun. Life with Type One Diabetes is a 24-7 battle, a 365-days-a-year balancing act from which there is not a moment's respite. We don't look ill, we don't look like we're just one small error of judgement from a hospital admission or worse, but that's the way it is. And people forget or don't realise, because we're so damn good at it. Occasionally, it goes wrong, and one of our number keeled over at breakfast on the last day. Needless to say, she was helped and nursed back to health by the rest of us. But it was a sharp reminder for us all of what can go wrong.

But Abbott wouldn't put this on just because they feel sorry for us. We were invited because, in a variety of ways, we have all helped to build the wonderful trans-national support network that has helped to transform the lives of people with (mainly Type One) diabetes since the advent of the internet and social media. We have helped to develop, share and promote new diabetes technology in a way that, of course, helps Abbott, but also helps each other.

To be told, as I was, by senior managers in Abbott that my FreeStyleLibre film is valued and used all around the world to help people understand the importance of the gadget was humbling. And to meet in the flesh a veritable Euro-Army of well-informed, canny diabetics was inspirational....and fun. The event was called #DXStockholm because it's an exchange. An exchange of ideas and expertise between the people from Abbott who develop the stuff we need to stay alive and healthy and the users of that stuff. And as far as I can see, it's a valuable and valued meeting of minds....and hearts. I've already waxed lyrical about the value I place on the #gbdoc and the friends I have made from that, but now that same feeling of camaraderie was replicated at a European level.

I'm going to leave it there, because there's another post to be done about what we did over the weekend. That needs photos and video, which I can't do on a plane or a train. But I'm not home yet, so I'll just post this straight away as a massive THANK YOU to all who helped organise the event, and those who came and made it what it was. I'll say that thank you in Swedish, because it's such a cool word:

TACK !

Much love to all my diabetic friends - you are, collectively and individually, simply awesome - and lovely!

Watch out for my #DXStockholm diary when I get time. For now, I'm nearly back home to see the lovely and long-suffering Mrs L, @RosanaghL and Godiva the cat.

However sad I am about the end of the weekend, it's nice to be back home too...

Thank You for the Music - and the lyrics

With a surprise visit to Sweden coming up at the start of June, thanks to my well-documented affinity with the FreestyleLibre and those good people at Abbott, I have suddenly found myself wanting to be immersed once again in the wonderful music of Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anna-Frid, collectively known to the world as Abba. I know that there's much more to Sweden than Abba, but let's face it, for most of us, Sweden is about Abba, Volvo, Ikea and, erm....

So as soon as I heard I was going to Stockholm, their Summer Night City, those songs flooded my brain as they do every so often and out came my Abba Gold and More Abba Gold CDs.

I have watched with amusement over the past twenty years or so as the rest of the world has decided that Abba are indeed very talented and cool. I always thought they were, unlike the Johnny-come-Latelies who have reassessed their work and its enduring appeal and influence. I was an Abba fan right from the start, and especially all the way through university in the late 70's, while my friends were more into punk, new wave, and disco. I loved all that stuff too, but I always said that Abba would survive and prosper long after their extravagant clothing had faded into the realms of  ridicule or ironic nostalgia. I well remember telling a group of friends at university that Thank You for the Music was what our generation would be singing along to in an old folks' home when we had all gone ga-ga. How right I was. And how pleasing it is for people of my generation to see my own children and the young people I teach discover Abba's wonderful musical legacy. It's very hard nowadays to find anyone who doesn't like Abba.

Now of course it's about the music in most respects. Benny and Bjorn are peerless tunesmiths, be it in the exuberance of Dancing Queen, Gimme Gimme Gimme, and Mamma Mia or the melancholy of The Winner Takes it all, Knowing Me Knowing You and One of Us. Moreover the arrangements, instrumentation and production are also touched by genius. Just imagine Dancing Queen without those descending piano chords, or Chiquitita without the guitar introduction. Imagine Voulez-Vous without the chords that lead into the verse, or Super Trouper without that piano-backed middle eight. Imagine The Day Before you came without those synthesised little twirls or Mamma Mia without the crash crash of cymbals that accompanies the "Just one look" line. I could go on. Those guys certainly know how to write, harmonise and arrange a good melody, and their ability to create a whole song from one simple melody is at times awesome. The Winner Takes it All is not only a lyrically devastating song, but musically it is so very simple: it's actually just two melodic phrases, repeated.

However, I think we can all too easily overlook the words. Considering they were penned by two men for whom English is not even their mother tongue, the lyrics of Benny and Bjorn demonstrate a mastery of our language which puts the rest of us to shame. The searingly honest account of a broken relationship as told in Knowing Me, Knowing You, or The Winner Takes it All is genuinely heartbreaking, while if anyone ever lays bare the pains of parenthood better than is done in Slipping Through My Fingers, I wouldn't want to hear it. I defy any parent of older children to listen to that and not shed a tear.

So how come a couple of Swedish folk singers (for that is what they were long before the platform heels and outrageous flares took over) became such masters of our subtle and nuanced language? Well they don't always get it quite right: there's a clear error, for example, in Fernando, where "since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand" should surely be "for many years..." not "since many years..". And in I have a Dream, their Germanic languistic roots are showing in "And my destination makes it worth THE while/pushing through the darkness STILL another mile". But almost everywhere else, they nail it as well as, if not better than, most English-speaking lyricists, and I have only recently started fully to appreciate why this is.

Basically, it's because they are uninhibited by the clichés and conventions of English, and therefore dare to do things that a native speaker would find too embarrassing or too banal. Wherever you look in the lyrics of Abba, you'll find turns of phrase which a native speaker just wouldn't dream of using as a lyric. And because we are not used to that kind of language in a song, the banal suddenly becomes unusual and therefore powerful. Try this for an example, from Waterloo:

"...and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way.."

I very much doubt that the phrase "in quite a similar way" has ever been used in lyric poetry before or since. Abba's songs are full of phrases which, when detached from the context in which they have become so familiar, sound like they have no right being in a song. Try this from the wonderful narrative that is The Day before you Came:

" and having gotten through the editorial no doubt I must have frowned"

or this from that same song:

"And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I'm sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style"

That song is actually full of the most outrageously prosaic lyrics - but isn't that the whole point of that sadly under-rated song? And while you're at it watch the video - how dark and Scandinavian is that?

Or how about this for an opening line of Super Trouper:

"I was sick and tired of everything
When I called you last night from Glasgow"

What a line, but who else would have dared write it? Very few English songwriters produce stuff like that, preferring to express emotions with clichés and words from the stock lexicon of love. Of course a few do: The Beatles did on occasions, with the sometimes derided Paul McCartney in particular responsible for touching sublime heights with the most banal of language. Think "Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear" in Eleanor Rigby, or the whole of She's Leaving Home. Some of McCartney's solo stuff has also hit the same spot, but he's often been ridiculed for it. Another Day is a good example. Another band who had the knack of making silk purse lyrics out of sow's ear words was that popular 70s art-rock band 10cc: think anything on The Original Soundtrack or How Dare you?

However, in the case of Abba, it's not just about daring to use banal language; sometimes it's quite the opposite. Interestingly, I've heard it suggested that Abba's unfamiliarity with English led them to come up with turns of phrase that an anglophone writer would be scared to use. What English writer would dare, even in the 1970s, to come up with the lines:

"See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen"

"Digging"???  An expression that was perhaps cool and trendy for a few weeks in 1967, but does anyone use that word without irony? It obviously stuck in the minds of two young Swedes...and where would Dancing Queen be without those lines? It's all part of its enduringly camp, "so bad its good" appeal.

Elsewhere, just by using "Eurotrash" words and names they developed a pan-European appeal with titles like Mamma Mia, Voulez-Vous, Chiquitita, Hasta Manana and Fernando. All instantly memorable hooks which are foreign intruders in English lyrics. The Euro-connection leads me to another thought. I'm pretty sure that in other languages, notably French, some of the features I have identified in Abba lyrics are also there. I would quote as evidence the incomparable Armenian-French nonegenarian Charles Aznavour, writer and performer of some memorable chansons in which the banal and the sublime pop up to devastating effect. His work must wait for another blog post, but if you're curious, try this wonderful tale of an old flame rekindled. Sorry if you don't know French:-

"Non, je n'ai rien oublié"

Or try this tale of a romantic evening gone wrong..

"Bon Anniversaire"

But back to Abba. We must also not overlook the many times when there are no linguistic oddities, no banalities, but just astonishingly powerful lyrical expressiveness. Take this from The Winner Takes it All:

"The Gods may throw a dice

Their minds as cold as ice

And someone way down here

Loses someone dear"

Those lines are conceptually straight out of classical tragedy, but then in the next verse the same idea comes crashing into the modern world of the divorce court:

"The judges will decide

The likes of me abide"

And don't forget that those extraordinarily personal and poignant lyrics were written by two men to be sung by the two women from whom they were going through a messy divorce. The most public group therapy ever?

So there you have it. Musical and lyrical genius in my humble opinion. A band who could have drifted into a category marked 70's nostalgia, but have become an enduring global brand. I'm pretty sure people will still be listening to Abba years from now, long after they, and I, have gone. What intrigues me about Abba is that the more times I listen to their songs, the more I like and appreciate them. There are not many artists of whom I can say that: possibly just David Bowie and the Beatles. I rest my case.

PS Take time to watch some of the Abba videos. They, too are iconically wonderful. Click the link on any of the songs mentioned.