Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Party animals

It was my mother in law's 80th birthday on Saturday. One of the reasons why we decided to move to Sweden was so that my wife could be closer to her mum, in the time that she had left. Although, I have this feeling that we've probably arrived about 10 years too early to worry about that. She'll probably end up burying me instead. Anyway, there was a bit of a party (piss up) on Saturday. Just for the family. I say JUST for the family, but not sure that was a positive thing. The "family" consisted of Mum, 2 daughters, one son, 2 son inlaws, and 6 of Mum's sisters. I swore after last New Years that I would never get caught in the family drunken debauchery trap again. How little I have learnt since then. The champagne on arrival to the front door was ok. But that was immediately followed by the compulsary group photo session. Naturally everyone had brought their camera with them. So this led to two things. First, we all had to stand in a group for about an hour while everyone took at least 3 photos with their camera. Secondly, with every photo, we had to "toast" the camera. For effect, of course. In reality, the effect was that I was halfway pissed without even getting my jacket off. After staggering to the table, we were treated to party fika. Sweden has a rather strange party food known as "smörgåstårta", which translates literally to "sandwich cake". And it's a pretty accurate description. I don't know if it's commonplace throughout other countries, but I had certainly never seen anything like it in my life before coming here. It looks like a large decorated sponge cream cake. Like one would have for a dessert. But instead of fruits, it has meat, cheese, or fish. A really odd dish, but quite nice all the same. So anyway, there were 3 smörgåstårtor to choose from. And I got stuck into those. I was also required to get stuck into the endless red wine which apparently came with the tårtor. Not that the champagne had been forgotten, as mother needed to be toasted by everyone at least once every 5 minutes. This was the second time I had met my mother in law's sisters. The last time was 5 years ago, when we travelled to Sweden for her 75th birthday party. One thing I will give her sisters is that they are very low maintenance party guests. All you need to do is to open one of their mouths, and then sit back. I have never seen a group of people talk so much for so long about so little. It is truely impressive. Apart from getting asked if I liked Sweden (and really, how was I going to answer that ?), I was left alone. Just me and my drunken brother in law slash barman. My other brother in law buggered off to the betting shop for a couple of hours midway through proceedings, and I don't think anyone even noticed he was gone. He's a bit of a classic, this fella. A really nice guy, I should point out. He's also the local Captain Mannering of the district. Sweden no longer has compulsary military service but, for those still in the system, they still have regular defence training exercises. There are a couple of million people in Sweden who are still fully armed, and trained specifically to defend their home area. Which is probably why people have been rather relucant to invade Sweden. Anyway, my brother in law arrived directly from his "manoeuvers" in the local forest, in full camouflage gear, boots, the lot. I would have been really impressed if it were not for the line up of pens and pocket calculator sticking out of his shirt pocket. Maybe he was intending to give those stinkin commies a good dose of ink poisoning. So anyway, after about 4 glasses of champagne, 3 glasses of wine, and 2 glasses of a dodgy looking liqueur which everyone "swore by", I decided I was no longer capable of holding my own against a group of seasoned pensioners on a Saturday afternoon. They have already booked their spot for my mother in law's 85th birthday in 5 years time. I'm already frightened.

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