To Stockholm...

I can't stand technology. Just give me a receipt, I don't want one emailed to me, Friendo! But that's what was on offer as I sat in a taxi outside of Gatwick's South Terminal about to embark upon a trip to Stockholm. All very annoying. But that said, I've done it now and I've walked through the Society of the Spectacle without even stopping for a free tester. I didn't even want to be sitting here in The Grain Store restaurant eating granola and sipping a mint tea – for some reason I wasn't hungry – but the alternative was sitting 'out there' with my lap top resting, appropriately I suppose, on my lap. Give me a table any day. 

I could have ordered a pastry or a 'breakfast bap' but in all honesty it's best that I don't. So I settled for granola, yoghurt and berries and, yes, a mint tea. Haven't had one of them for a long while and it feels good. Normally I'd order a cappuccino, but perhaps I've turned a corner on coffee, who knows? Perhaps I'm back to the delicate touch of mint tea. 

At this stage in the proceedings there's not much to say. The Grain Store has filled out. People going places, just like me.

Inside Dolce Vita, Stockholm...great restaurant

The weather's been good. Very good. Clear skies, so I'm hoping for a decent flight, although, sadly, I've got an aisle seat. Seat 13D if you please. I'll see if I can get a window, but what's the betting it will be a 'full flight'? It always is and I hate that. "Sorry, sir, it's a full flight," they'll say and I'll sit there for over two hours unable to benefit from the view outside the window. My favourite flight of all time in this respect was Miami to Monterrey in Mexico back in 2019. It was about three hours in a smallish plane, but it was great.

Room 241, Clarion Amarantem, Stockholm

The gate for my flight to Stockholm wasn't going to be called until 0910hrs so I moseyed around looking at all the consumer electronics and realising I neither need nor crave any of them, similarly the aftershave and definitely not the wines and spirits, which look a little gaudy and downmarket in the same way that bags of crisps and other potato-based snacks look cheap and nasty when I find myself in their aisle at the supermarket. As I sit here now, at my desk in room 241 of the Clarion Amaranten in Stockholm – yes I've jumped ahead in time, but only temporarily – I notice a bag of crisps and a small bottle of red wine in front of me. It's a bit of a con because, well, putting aside the fact that I gave up boozing nearly six years ago and haven't touched a drop since, I was being made to think the food and drink was complimentary and could, I realised, quite easily have turned the screw-top and 'enjoyed' a glass without noticing that it would cost me 240KR. As for the GARDCHIPS, RÄFFLADE HAVSSALT (I'm guessing ready salted), there's no price attached to them so perhaps they are free. I'm leaving them well alone. Back in the day, however, I would have enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine with a bag of crisps, even if the end result would be waking in the dead of night, heart racing and unable to get back to sleep. Apparently, it's common and nothing to be worried about, but oddly – or perhaps not oddly at all – since I gave up drinking it rarely happens.

View from room 241, Clarion Hotel

But let's go back to being at the South Terminal of London Gatwick Airport. I was wandering around, disinterested in what the Society of the Spectacle was pushing in front of me. I checked out the consumer electronics and couldn't really escape the gaudy bottles of spirits, but there was no way I was going to window shop in Superdry or any of the other clothes retailers. I simply wandered about feeling, it has to be said, slightly sorry for myself. Initially, it's always a wrench leaving home at the crack of dawn for a two-day trip or longer, so I called home and made small talk. Actually, let me qualify that a little bit, it's not always a wrench, there are many times when I look forward to a trip (and there are many) but sometimes it would be nice if I could be with my family. The flight was departing from Gate 10 so I made my way there while chatting on the phone. I was destined to sit in seat 13D and was getting that 'full flight' vibe from all the people queuing to board when I reached the gate. It turned out there were 80 vacant seats. I managed to bag myself an exit row aisle all to myself and with the weather outside the plane looking amazing I just knew the flight was going to be smooth and enjoyable: it was! I had an Earl Grey tea and a bottle of mineral water and read my book, Climbers by M John Harrison – a brilliant novel.

Once on the ground I stopped for lunch at the airport where I found a Caffé Ritazza and ordered a cheese and ham sandwich and a herbal tea of some sort that I couldn't quite identify. It didn't matter. Then I tried to find out where the hotel might be located and was told it was close to Stockholm Central Station so I jumped aboard the Arlanda Express and 18 minutes later I cabbed it to where I was staying, but only because of the cumbersome baggage I was hauling around, normally I try to walk it. When I got to room 241 I was pleased to note that I had some kind of apartment. The room had its own lounge area and two TVs, one in front of the bed, the other in the aforementioned lounge area in front of a huge sofa. I'd say it was good, but I had nobody to brag to as I was travelling alone on this trip. One thing about big rooms is that I never feel comfortable. I don't know about you, but if somebody told me to sleep in a huge grass field, I would choose a spot in the corner close to a hedge separating my field from the others. I wouldn't sleep anywhere else, like bang in the middle, as that would be too exposed. It's the same with big rooms. I found myself thanking God that the bed in my room was against the wall and not, like Victorian baths in some boutique hotels, stranded in the middle of the room. Had it been, I would have 'camped' in a corner somewhere.

A lonely table for one at Dolce Vita

I think tiredness makes me depressed – and let's not forget, I was up at 0530hrs this morning. As I walked along towards St Göran's Hospital with no particular plan in mind – I was just mooching – I found myself feeling a little pointless. I think it had a lot to do with the new buildings going up around a street called Franzengatan. New apartment blocks, a strong sense of renewal and an air of anticipation brought about by a sense of imminent switch-on, activation of the buildings and the surrounding area as a whole, it had yet to be plugged in, I thought, as I reached a kind of dead end and turned to retrace my steps. Somehow I didn't feel a part of things and it depressed me a little bit and I didn't know what to do or how to deal with it. There were no coffee shops to dive into, which would have diffused the situation a little as I could have ordered a cappuccino and resumed reading. Instead, I walked back to the hotel, hovered around in the room for a little while and then started thinking about dining (alone). There was always the hotel bar. The restaurant on the first floor was being refurbished, I was told, and the bar was serving food, but I thought I'd take a walk around in search of somewhere decent before admitting defeat and falling back on the hotel. Fortunately, I found Dolce Vita diagonally across from the hotel at Kungsholmsgatan 16. Red gingham table cloths, candles on every table, very cosy. You can't beat an Italian restaurant and I had a good feeling about this one. I perused the menu and eventually chose Bruchetta al Pomodoro to start followed by Salmone All Italiana. Sparkling mineral water and a coffee rounded off the meal and I forced myself not to have the Tiramisu (and felt great about resisting it!). I was the only person dining alone – I always am. I've dined alone in many an Italian restaurant: Da Bruno in Dusseldorf, Belini in Philadelphia, Bocconi in Brussels and countless others. In Dolce Vita, there were two other couples and a few people sitting outside under an awning enjoying the late summer heat. On my table, it was just me and my phone and I was left to my own thoughts of which there were many. 

Tasty starter at Dolce Vita

After paying the bill, I walked down to some water as the light of a great day began to fade and watched as a boat with a powerful, rumbling engine emerged like a gun ship from under the bridge I was standing on; it disappeared in to the distance a bit like that motorboat at the end of Tales of the Riverbank, a fantastic children's programme I used to watch as a kid, and I must say, re-watching the intro (especially the end bit when you see the motorboat carrying the hamster) almost brought a tear to my eye as I found myself thinking of mum, now 94, and how we used to sit and watch it together. If you want to see it, click here, and if you linger awhile at the end, you'll see another wonderful programme intro, Stingray. "Anything can happen in the next half hour!" I found myself looking at other YouTube videos including What's My Name, a track from the first Clash album which, in so many ways, summed up my state of mind when I reached the ripe old age of 19. I remember being 19 and going to the Nelson for a drink having bought an album by the Stranglers, the one with No More Heroes.

Time moves on, it's now 2123hrs and my hotel room is lit only by a desk lamp and a light in the vestibule. Now there's a strange word, 'vestibule'. It's one of those words, like 'gable' and 'buttress' that I've never really understood. In fact, I recently keyed them into Google Images to get a definitive meaning. Strange, isn't it, that you go through life not really understanding everything in front of you and not really needing to either until one day, curiosity finally catches up with you and like everything else, you wonder what the fuss was all about. Another word I have trouble with is 'cantilever'. I know, it's stupid, but this is me, it's the way I am, and if somebody said to me, 'what is a cantilever', I'd have trouble providing them with a clear verbal explanation...better check out Google Images, which I have done and I'm still none the wiser.

Main course at Dolce Vita...

There are loads of things I'd have trouble describing to somebody verbally and all the words I've mentioned above are in that ballpark and in all honesty it's not something worth worrying about. I know what my dad would say if he was reading this, he'd say something along the lines of 'you're not unique' – he said that a lot to me growing up and it helped, suddenly realising that there were always other people in the same boat and that whatever was bugging me, it was not something I was dealing with alone. It's always worth remembering: you're not unique, although, of course, in so many ways we're ALL unique, but dad was talking about day-to-day ailments and run-of-the-mill observations that everybody experiences, or thoughts we all have but often think, perhaps, that we're alone in our thinking. The reality is that whatever is on your mind, you can bet that many other people think the same way and in that sense, you're not unique. And how heartening it is when you mention something or other and somebody else says, 'I know what you mean, I feel like that too' or 'that's what I think'. I still find it pleasing when somebody says that to me as it's good to know that I'm not alone and I think that's what it's all about, not being alone, be it physically or mentally. This is all getting a little bit heavy.

Tales from the Riverbank. Stockholm at dusk.

Anyway, I suppose I ought to be thinking about chilling out and watching something on the television or even hitting the sack. I've got to be up with the lark tomorrow. I thought for a minute I'd be missing breakfast but no, breakfast will be served on a coach and you can't get much better than that, can you? Well, alright, breakfast downstairs in the restaurant would have been quite nice, but on a coach? It's an experience for sure*.

* As it turned out it wasn't so great. A paper bag carrying a small plastic bottle of orange juice, a filled croissant and a bowl of cereal none of us would eat because there was no spoon. It didn't matter, I eat too much anyway. In many ways it was a shame as most of those breakfast bags went to waste. I remember they were still on the coach when we embarked upon the return journey to Stockholm.