Toadfish Monastery

Maybe you have already seen this, and I am late tot he party, but I just felt that I had to share these links.

Someone has made a very, very good homage to Calvin and Hobbes, making four comic panels depicting them and their life 26 years later. I feel that these comic strips are among the very few "covers" that manage to successfuly blend both a faithfulness to the original and at the same time doing something new with the material, putting a personal interpretation on things. And the comics are very, very good, too -enjoy, and perhaps get something wet in the corner of your eye, too.

http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/archive/2011/05/10/hobbes-and-bacon/

http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/archive/2011/05/12/hobbes-and-bacon-002/

http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/archive/2011/10/11/hobbes-and-bacon-03-2/

http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/archive/2011/10/13/hobbes-and-bacon-04-2/

OK, this is a thing that really makes me want to have it, just because it is such a cool thingie, not because I have a real need for it.

Swedish company myFC has launched their PowerTrekk portable hydrogen fuel cell/handheld device charger. It's a little plastic thing in which you put a power pod in one slot, and a splash of water in another slot, and then it starts using the hydrogen in the water to produce electricity which is stored in an on-board battery, thanks to some very nifty power control electronics. Apparently, the designers have done some clever things with membranes that strip protons and push them back and forth, in a extremely small package.

Not cheap, but for someone who works in the field a lot, I am sure that this could be a very, very helpful thing. For me, there's also the aspect of having read about portable fuel cells in various SF role-playing games I played when I was younger, and now, there is actually one available that's both smaller and more efficient than the ones posted in the equipment lists of the supposed scinece fiction far future... 

Available in Sweden and USA for now, but might get more widespread distribution later on. SEK 1800 (€ 195, USD 255) for the charger/battery itself, and SEK 150:- (€16, USD 21) for a packet of three single-use power pods, supplying about 4Wh of energy per pod.

http://powertrekk.com/

There's a Swedish composer, musician and generally multi-talented artist called Ted Ström. While he himself is perhaps not that well known, he has written several very famous and popular songs, as well as the scores for a lot of films and theatrical productions.

One of his most famous songs is "Vintersaga" -"A tale of winter", a sad and melancholic story about a winter night in Sweden. The lyrics reference real locations and occasions in contemporary Sweden, all sharing similar themes of lonliness, sadness and grey melancholy, with the repetitiveness of the lyrics underscoring the fact that sadness and lonliness is the same all over the country. In a way, it does capture something of the darker side of the soul of Sweden, of the experience of being Swedish. The long, lonley nights, the empty countryside, the dark night in the birch wood and the long tradition of working hard, knowing your place and getting mind-blastingly drunk as an escape route.

A sample translation of the lyrics, the last verse:

Tradarfik i Docksta i motorvägens skugga 
En överdos på Skärholmens station 
Insnöade vägar nånstans på Österlen 
Och fyllan växer till på Mommas krog 
Frusen törst i kön till stadspuben i Luleå
Frusna drömmar uti monarkin
Kärleken får leva mellan nattskiftet och drömmen
Kärleken går på billigt vin

Det är då som det stora vemodet rullar in
Och från havet blåser en isande, gråkall vind.

A truck-stop in the shadow of the motorway outside Docksta
An overdose at Skärholmen tube station
Snow-covered roads somewhere in Österlen
And at Mommas bar, the drunkeness is growing
Frozen thirst in the queue to the pub in Luleå
Frozen dreams in this monarchy
Love lives between the nightshift and the dream
Love is fuelled by cheap wine

That's when the great sadness comes rolling in
And from the sea, there blows an icy, grey-cold wind

There is really a somewhat-famous truck stop outside Docksta, a small town in the middle of nowhere along the northern Swedish coast. Mommas bar really exists in Kiruna, and is named after the brothers Jakob and Abraham Momma who lost everything they owned in the early mining boom in the Kiruna area. The bar has been famous and notorious as a rather desperate place in a boom town, the place where you went to either get laid or get beaten up. That the bar has now been gentrified and spruced up is something of another layer of irony.

Here's a version with the composer himself singing, accompanied by his own aquarel paintings that I find convey a lot of the mood in the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1oN97OMyW4


Here's a classic version with Swedish chanteuse Monica Törnell singing, considered by many to be the definitive singer of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CWg-uSKyIw

And, as an odd one out, here's a video of Swedish metal/punk band Mimikry doing a surprisingly good cover version. It probably does help that the band members are from the Swedish ruslt belt, some of them actually coming from places mentioned in the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZcYk0lEcYU

Another interesting blog: Anachroneironaut, a quirky and very personal blog by someone in Sweden who has a deep, deep love for fountain pens and other writing instruments. Lots of quirky ink drawings, a lot of it with a very personal touch, some with a nice whiff of steampunk. Take a look!

(The blog is in english, by the way, not some furrin crazy moon language  )

http://anachroneironaut.wordpress.com/

Recently, I came upon a blog collecting and publishing historical photographs from various US sources. The photos are frm the civil war era up to the 1970'ies, with the majority being from the 1910-40'ies. It's a wild mix pf pictures -1940'ies propaganda photos showing how the railroads contribute to the war effort, farmers migrating from the dust bowl, someones family christmas photos from the fifties...

Quite a few of the pictures are from middle-format cameras or even glass plates, which mean that the high-resolution scans have brethtaking detail, and you can really spend ages poring upon the littlest little details in a street scene -the decoration of lamp posts in a street scene from Sacramento or whatever.

Take a look, but be warned -it's easy to lose yourself in the collections! 

http://www.shorpy.com/

There´s a very good Swedish blog out there that never fails to make me and Darlica gasp, wheeze, cover our heads in shame, laugh like a pair of demented hyenas and emit strangled cries of "The Trauma! The Horror! I need Strong Drink to fortify my frail spirits!.

It's called Katastrofala omslag and, much like the title says, it is all about disastrous record covers. German "party-sound" saxophone medlys. Swedish Born Again Christian Osmonds-clones. Free give-aways from petrol stations. Sabrina. Eighties Poodle hair-and-giant-earclips pop princesses. And much, much more.

The text and comments from the blog propreitor, Herr Dryck ("Mr. Beverage") are all in Swedish, which is a bit unfortunate, since they are often absolutely hilarious and of an excellent bad taste. Still, the pictures are worth a thousand words. Though you might want to wash your eyes with bleach afterwards.

One word of caution: Some of the images might not be worksafe -you know, artistic french disco with a bit of tits on the cover, or german records with "Swedish Sin" themes, though nothing really nasty. at least not in that way.

Take a look at: http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.se/ !

A sample:

Last year, Crown Princess and heir designate Victoria of Sweden married in Stockholm. A part of the wedding procession that recieved a bit of comment was the four Men In  Black (actually, three men and a woman) who jogged along the horse carriage of the royal couple all through the whole festive parade, dressed in black suits and sunglasses.

In commemoration of this, and the one-year anniversary of the wedding, some Swedish running enthusiasts set up an event today: The SÄPO (Security Police) jog, a collective jog following the rout of the wedding parade, with all the runners dressed in black suits and ties, with sunglasses, earphones and water pistols. 

Looks quite funny in the pictures...

http://www.dn.se/blogg/epstein/2011/06/19/sapojoggen-en-ny-klassiker/

Click on the pictures in the link above to enlarge them.

German magazine Der Spiegel has published a very strange and interesting little photo-feature on their home page: A tour of ex-Yugoslav memorials from the Tito epoch.

Some are utterly bizarre -"UFO:s for dead heroes", others are actually strangely beautiful and compelling, and some are just crumbling heaps of concrete and rebar, having become memorials on yet another level.

The text is in german, but the pictures are universal:

http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a22829/l0/l0/F.html#featuredEntry

Someone over at steampunker.ru decided to make a nice, proper CD player instead of those boring grey plastic ones. Interesting pictures, and a very impressive result. I've used google translate for the blogpost, so it's almost comprehensible, too! Hmmm... I must say that I am tempted...

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://steampunker.ru/blog/our_workshop/3130.html

Well, perhaps not this one, though!

Recently, a expedition traveled to the Nyiragongo crater to explore what is the world's biggest active lava lake. Among their activities, they took some absolutely stunning photographs. Take a look!

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/02/nyiragongo_crater_journey_to_t.html

A big Happy New Year to all of you from Darlica and me!

The fish is about to hit the frying pan, the wine bottle is edging closer to the corkscrew, the blini batter is proofing and there's a bottle of champagne for the stroke of twelve -Darlica and I are going to have a lovely evening! Hope you all will also have a wonderful new year!





And tomorrow, I suspect it will be a case of

On a rail worker's forum I sometimes frequent, I stumbled upon a post about a truly stupid and somewhat ironic event. It seems that a group of ghost hunters had decided to gather at a certain railway trestle bridge in North Carolina, on the anniversary of a derailment, to look for signs of reputed ghostly activities.

They gathered on the bridge, set up their IR cameras, parabolic microphones and other sundry equipment, and waited. And sure enough, just around midnight, the train came.

Unfortunately, it was not an ethereal train, but rather a thoroughly corporeal and solid train, which ran over all the ghost hunter's equipment, forced some of them to jump from the bridge, others to run for their lives, and unfortunately ran over an killed one of the ghost hunters.

Now, for the next level of stupidity, i suppose another group of ghost hunters will come back in ten years or so, to investigate the alleged hauntings of a ghost hunter's ghost that stalks the bridge... 

http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=13055036

Meanwhile, here in Sweden, former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström has shown his staunch commitment on serious issues again. Mr. Bodström is, by the way, a ex-soccer player turned lawyer and then minister in the last Social Democratic government. Considering that he has all the ideological convictions and spine of a amoeba, he fit very nicely in with their New Labour/Anthony Giddens-influenced style of politics.

During his career, mr Bodström tried to score some political and populist points by taking a Mr Tough-On-Crime stance, including ramming through the building of a horrendously expensive maximum security prison that not even the police knew what to do with, and now stands mostly empty due to lack of customers. He also took a strong stance on the Drug Menace (said with suitably grave and trembling voice), advocating zero-tolerance policies, stricter punishment, and tons of drug testing, both random and otherwise. Interestingly enough, according to the gossip mill, Mr Bodström was apparently quite fond of powdering his nose with colombian white powder during his sportive days, but that was of course just malicious and idle talk.

Now, Sweden is heading for a general election this autumn, and of course political journalists are conducting lots of interviews. One group from a radio programme interviewed mr Bodström about his views on the current conservative-led government and their policies on crime and the legal system. After some discussion, they came upon the subject of drug testing, which Mr. Bodström again proclaimed himself to be a staunch supporter of.

To which the journalist replied, "Oh, good! My assistant here is actually a registered nurse from one of the big companies that do random drug testing, and we would like to do one of these on you, right now!".  At first, Mr Bodström was under the impression that he would only have to do a breathalyzer test, to which he consented. But when he realized that he was also going to be tested for opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, bensodiazepines and other substances -in fact, a standard drug test, he suddenly declined and refused on the grounds of "personal integrity"

Indeed...




And I am getting a strong urge to 

I suppose we all have some secret little gem that we like to listen to, that almost no-one else has heard of. Be it a group, an artist or even a single song, it is something we like or even love, and that has unfairly sunk into undeserved obscurity.

One of my secret little gems is the former Swedish rock group Yvonne.  The band hailed from Eskilstuna, a small industrial town in middle Sweden that hovers preceptiously on the edge of the rustbelt, both economically and socially. Incidentally, both Darlica and I have strong connections to the place, having lived there for quite some time. Eskilstuna is a rather special place, with sky-rocketing crime rates, dismal final grades of school pupils and ever-increasing numbers of unemployed on the one hand -and on the other hand a very laid-back pace and mood, with lots of genuinely nice people and a mood of "yeah, I know I live in a godforsaken dump, but so what?". I am somewhat undecided if I want ot go back there, or ought to be bloody grateful for getting away.

Anyhow, Yvonne formed in the early ninties as a group of depressed young men who loved such luminaries as My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, The Cure and Blur. While they did have some actual musical talent, they also had lots of attitude and two or three really good riffs.

Through quite a bit of hard work and some blind luck, they eventually landed a record contract and went on to make a series on records for some of the smaller Swedish Indie labels. Their first album, "Yvonne" (1995) is still the one that I consider the best, but their second album, "Getting out, getting anywhere" (1997) is also quite good. Their third and fourth albums, "True love" and "Hit that city" were, in my opinion, unfortunately not all that good. From 1997 onwards, the group was also suffering from conflicts within the band with a few of the original cast leaving the group. After about a year with nothing but rumours of infighting, the band finally split up in early 2003. They have, however, made a few reunion live performances since then -most notably one last year when Eskilstuna celebrated it's 350th year by throwing a huge festival with free live music for a week, a huge fireworks celebration and other nice stuff (they do know how to party in that town).

Throughout the band's existence, they lived somewhat in the shadow of much more succesful group Kent, another indie band from Eskilstuna, with Yvone being something of "oh, yeah, that other band from Eskilstuna". Incidentally, there was quite a bit of cross-breeding between Kent and Yvonne, withe members of both groups producing each other's songs, doing studio work for each other and so on.

Today, their records are of course quite difficult to find, but I do think you could find a few songs with them on Last Fm or Spotify, or perhaps even on a P2P network nearby. There is also, of course, YouTube!:

The video to "Wires", one of their best songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8NtQ1pUR4Y

"Drifter", one of their earliest songs, and also in the movie "Fucking Åmål" (which you really ought to watch)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxsJSZwGZoY

"For Your Pleasure", live from their reunion gig in Eskilstuna last year. You might very well see the backs of Darlica's and mine heads. Sound quality not that good, unfortunately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4KndDkg_lo

And here's "Only Dancing", another very good song about being seventeen and madly in love and discovering that your feelings are actually answered... Again, live, again, not so good sound, but go for the feeling!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZI9t8ZycQ&feature=related

Enjoy!

And dear Toadfish, now you have to teel me about your hidden musical gems!

There are some songs and artists that never should have seen the light of the day -never mind the dark smoky haze of the basement club. There are also certain covers that are an abomination unto all that is good and verily ought to make one very pissed off indeed.

A stellar example of the latter category would be Britney Spears' cover of Joan Jetts iconical classic "I love rock n' roll". Ye Gods, that is foul!

Two other shining examples would be the legions of covers of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, none of which seems to have grasped anything of what the song is all about. Say what you will about Grace Jones and her cover of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" -it was quite dissimilar from the original, and I am not so sure it was very good at all, but at least it had nerve and a bit of tension. Don't get me started on Marilyn Manson and "Tainted Love"

Oh, and when Duran Duran made a cover of Public Enemy ("911 is a joke"): What were they thinking? Seriously? Was Simon Le Bon flirting with Nation of Islam as some sort of deluded compensation for flagging sales, or had the cocaine finally turned his synapses to instant custard?

So, fellow toadfish: What musical atrocities have you been exposed to? Covers, terrible artists, "supergroups" that aren't so super after all, pentecostal metal bands with bad hairdos? Unburden your heart and warn and enlighten us!

Celine Dion and Udo Lindenberg are hors de concourse based upon their long and meriterious oeuvres and not valid entries.

As reported by the BBC, for example, white supremacist and hate-monger Eugene Terre Blanche has been murdered in his home in South Africa.

While I do think that, on general principle, it is a bit iffy to lop people's heads off, I am having a very hard time finding any sympathy for the deceased. Then again, we are talking about the man who proudly proclaimed himself to be the "moral father" of a series of racist killings during the ninties and boasted about his preparedness to throw the country in civil war rather than let "that kaffir" Mandela come to the presidency. Let's just hope his legacy doesn't get twisted into some sort of martyrdom.

One of my favourite blogs about food and cooking is Lucy's Kitchen Notebook, by Lucy Vanel. She is an ex-pat american (really more of a globetrotter) who now lives with her husband and their little child in Lyons. Her blog is about food and cooking in a very wide sense of the world -lots of recipes and ideas, sure, but an apple at the market can also be the starting point for some philosophical musings about life in general. Or, for that matter, some wry observations about the bizarre concoctions that pass for tex-mex cuisine in france.

The writing is, in my opinion, excellent. A very warm, human tone, tempered by a subtle humour and sometimes a bit of melancholia and thoughtfulness. This is accompanied by some absolutely beautiful photography -sensualist in the classic sense of the word. Even though all the recipes that I have tried from the blog have worked quite well, or even been excellent at the first try, the real importance of the blog to me is that it is so very inspirational. Ms. Vanel can really bring out the beauty in just a few fresh radishes and a bit of cheese -and make us realise that they are not so "just" and ordinary after all. I suppose it is something of her being able to point to some of the extraordinary things in our ordinary lives, and doing so without sounding as if she was standing on a pulpet.

Highly recommended reading!

http://kitchen-notebook.blogspot.com/

The artist Terry Border likes everyday things. Or, more correctly, the moments when those everyday things do things that are somewhat out of the ordinary -or perhaps just shows us how extraordinary a lot of ordinary humdrum really is.

Using mixed materials and techniques, he produces small installations and photos, often with a dry, wry and slightly surreal humour. Lots of interesting photos on his blog:

http://bentobjects.blogspot.com

And he even sells some of his prints and objects on Etsy:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/bentobjects

Take a look!

A while ago, Darlica and I were throwing round ideas for a little card-based game themed on the terrible cooking of the seventies and early eighties, as featured in various old books and Home & Garden magazines. You know, those "Oriental Casserole with cabbage and tinned pineapple chunks", as well as "Textured Vegetable Protein with Piquante Sauce and lemon jelly" recipes. Yes, those.

The basic idea was that all the participants would be dealt a set of cards. These cards would be of four categories:

-Ingredients, such as tinned mandarin oranges, filet of pork, Maggi Fondue Mix and instant mashed potato mix,

-Techniques and methods , such as deep-frying, grate coarsely, flame and bake in clay pot

-Drinks, such as Charter-Holiday Sangria, Beyaz (a horrible extremely cheap white wine), Kir and Lemonade

-Accessories, Condiments and Piquant Touches, such as toasted almond flakes, chopped hardboiled eggs, Instant Bearnaise Mix and Mayonnaise Salad

-Wild Cards: Giving special bonuses, abilities and tasks. For example, "Big Special Theme in this week's Issue of "Your fridge and You": Deep-fried Lard and it's uses. You may use lard as the main ingredient in any course during the meal, irrespective of the type of course. Or "Healthy living with crudites: You must incorporate a grated or chopped root vegetable in every course. You gain 5 bouns points if you succeed." Possibly also some negative effects: "Disaster strikes: Your Jello mould has mutated from all the preservatives, gained intelligence and escaped from the kitchen, devouring the cat in the process. Lose all your Jello cards, as well as all Jello-based dishes!"

The object of the game is then for the players to put toghether a three-course meal (starter, main course, dessert) using ingredients and techniques, as well as any other cards on hand. We haven't ironed out all the details yet, but players are supposed to trade cards between each other, as well as draw from a deck.

Points will be gained based on the complexity of the dish (number of cards used) as well as for the number of finished dishes. Bouns points will be gained for replicating authentic and verifiable seventies dishes, as well as dishes in exceptionally bad taste. The game will be played in a number of turns, say about three or four, with each turn being a three-course meal.

I am sure that we all like to moan and groan about our jobs and places
of work from time to time. And to be sure, most of us also have every
right to moan about crappy jobs, insane managers, stupid schedules and
whatnot. But fortunately, most of us also have something at work that
does give you a nice feeling, that makes things seem almost worth it, or
even quite enjoyable. Here's a few of mine:

As I work as a train driver for a major freight company here in Sweden,
my scheduling and working hours are often tough, and sometimes outright
crazy. Come home after two days away, be at home for 11 hours, and then
away for two more days. Or finish at 04:40 one day, and then start work
at 03:59 the next. The work itself can be both stressful and monotonus,
sometimes physically heavy, and at times even dangerous.

Trying to stay alert driving a train after waaay to little sleep,
plodding along in the darkness of night, trying to stay awake. Waking with a jerk in the middle of nowhere, realizing that you had an instant of microsleep, no idea of where you are or how you got there.

Doing shunting duties, riding on a small footstep of a wagon in a heavy
october rainstorm. Or, for that matter, shunting in the summer, when the
goods yard is baking in the sun with no shadow anywhere, covered in a
haze of diesel fumes, brake dust and smoke from small smouldering fires
along the trackbed, started by sparks from the heavy braking, with the
air so hot that it almost hurts breathing.

Sitting on a diesel loco ten years older than I am, shoveing a heavy
load up the steep incline from the harbour to the transfer yard, with
the engine at full power, and the noise and vibrations so loud that you
can't hear a thing, feeling the noise more than hearing it through your ear defenders, and the world has disappeared, except the beep-beep-beep vigilance tone in the comms
radio, telling you that the guy riding on the wagons up front is still
there, somewhere, 700 metres in front of you.

And on top of that, a management that can sometimes only be described as
scatterbrained and incapable of planning. Duty rosters that are wildly
unrealistic. Wagons without customers and customers without wagons.
Always having to bodge together last-minute solutions to save the
immediate crisis, never having time to do a bit of planning and
forethought.

Oh, and the always popular faxes about wagons so-and-so gone missing,
not arrived at their destination, please search and report back. Load:
Anything perishable or hazardous is prefferred, but generally valuable is
also OK.

So, why do I stay? Why don't I change over to the nice commuter trains,
with their whisper-silent AC in the cabs, and their humane working
hours, not to mention distinct lack of having to work outdoors?

Because I do like it here. I like the feeling of going across the
Igelsta bridge on an early summer morning, watching the sun rise over the
countryside where the Södertälje channel meets the Baltic sea, with a
long and heavy train behind me, running smoothly and almost effortlessly, despite weighing several thousand tonnes.

I like the sound of an early morning in late november, when the frosts
have come, and you are riding on the wagons over some sidings, running
the loco by remote control, and all is silent, and you can hear a very
special, crisply cracking sound of the frozen, frost-covered, wooden sleepers
flexing as your wagons roll along the track, accompanied by a melodius
whispering sound of the wheels rolling on the track.

I like sitting on the footstep of my loco cab, in a passing loop
somewhere out in the woods, waiting for a meeting train, and having a
fox cub come up to me and start sniffing my hand, wondering what sort of
strange creature I might be?

The goods yard I am based at is old, rather run-down and neglected for years. In a way, we are a sort of living musuem, still doing things by hand and in the old ways you don't see often nowadays. It does make the job tougher at times, but it also makes it more of a challenge, and we do get to use and keep skills that are more or less becoming extinct on the modern railway. And working in an environment like this, where you have to absolutely trust your fellow workers does create a special spirit, a cameraderie, that is hard to describe. I have colleagues that I think are utter bastards on a personal level, and would never ever associate with socially -but I am literally trusting them with my life at times when we work together.

In a way, I suppose the railway is one of those extreme environements where you either fit in, or run away screaming. I started working part-time whilst studying at the university -that is now approaching twenty years ago, and I sometimes have doubts as whether I would be able to stand a "ordinary job" now.


So, what about your place of work?

Elseforum, I posted a little account of a duty turn I had a few days ago that turned out ot be a bit more adventurous than I had bargained for. Since it might perhaps amuse you, too, O Toadfish, I thought it best to also repost it here.

To recapitulate from my introductory thread, I work as a train driver (US: Locomotive engineer) for a Swedish freight operating company. I am based in Stockholm, and work trains over most of southern and middle Sweden -mail to Malmö, Sundsvall and Göteborg, Intermodal trains with containers and trailers to Norrköping, Nässjö, Gävle and Hallsberg, wagonload freight to Hallsberg, Västerås and Gävle, lots of local services and shunting in the greater Stockholm area and so on.


Here it goes:

===================
This was indeed an adventoruos night and day...

I started out on monday afternoon by going to Hallsberg. There, I readied a loco and picked up my train in the marshalling yard. (By the way, the new batch of shunters in the marshalling yard are all young, cute, blonde females. I predict that some trains with pining drivers will be late departing the yard... And traditionalists will of course lament that the traditional shunter's greeting of "grmblgrf" is now replaced by a cheery "Hi!" )

Aaaaanyhow, I got underway and started driving towards Gävle. The route I took from Hallsberg to Gävle was a somewhat circuitious route through southern Bergslagen, a area formerly full of heavy industry and mining, now a rustbelt with a few huuuuge hi-tech industrial megacomplexes here and there, such as Sandviken that manufactures tools, dies and special steels. The route goes through the deep woods, is often single-track only and is actually very fun to drive.

Once I had left the area of Hallsberg Line Control and entered the outskirts of the Stockholm Control area, things started to go badly. My train was delayed for a few meets here and there, and I was then held in Sala for almost 30 minutes to let a delayed passenger train pass me. Whatever happened to the golden rule of on-time trains always having priority? Grrr... As I left Stockholm Control and entered the Gävle Control Area in Avesta-Krylbo (The Avesta in Avesta Polarit Steel, btw), things started looking better again: I called up the line controller to talk to him about an entirely different matter, and then the controller asked me if I had a heavy train tonight. My reply was "nah, only about 300 metres and 600 tons, so it's a sports model. "

-"And the loco is running fine?"
-"Oh, sure, purring like a cat"
-"Well, then, I cannae be arsed with having ye go intae the passing loop at Dalgränsen and wait for 7538 (a passenger train) to pass ye by. I'll let ye run as far as it goes."

In other words, he let me run on clear signals all the way towards Gävle, and I soon was over an hour early. Things looked better and better, I was heading for an early relief and then to bed, and it was a joy to drive a train.

Until I came to Hagaström, all of two minutes running time from Gävle, my terminal station. The exit signal was at stop. I did have the time to think "huh?" before the cab phone started rining. It was Gävle control, telling me that the catenary in the Gävle central area had failed, and they had to switch off the power to the whole area while the electrical repair crew did damage asessment. Meanwhile, no trains could pass through Gävle at the moment. But the electrical repair crew was on their way, promise.

So I waited.

And waited.

And called Darlica on the phone to while away my boredom.

And waited.

So, then I called up the line controllers to hear if they had any prognosis for when things could get moving again. As it turned out, they had actually managed to sectionalise the catenary and clear two tracks for service, but then the first train through ( A SJ AB-operated passenger train BTW) had managed to pass a signal at danger and then end up in de-energized territory, completely blocking the two newly opened tracks in the station. Yippie-Kay-Yay, etc. The mood of the controller for the Gävle  local area could best be summed up as "We are NOT amused"

About 45 minutes later, they managed to clear a path for me into the freight yard, where I could finally uncouple my wagons and hand over the loco to a waiting driver, who was supposed to use that loco for a train back towards Hallsberg.

I was by then about two hours late, and had been waiting for three hours to go a few kilometres. Ironically enough, the last hour was spent literally looking at the window of the lodging room I was to sleep overnight in. I called up our company control and informed them that my rest period would be too short for me to pick up the train I was supposed to pick up next morning, so we agreed on a time where I would be officially awake again and call in to them

As it turned out, when I called them up the next day, my ordinary train (a intermodal train from the very far north of Sweden) was so late, that it had actually just arrived in the freight yard and was more or less parked outside my window. I relieved the preceeding driver, and got on my merry way, if "a bit" late.

Still, it was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining, and the weather was really warm. I had to wait for a while and let a few other trains pass on the single-track sections at Furuvik and Skutskär, but that was only to be expected, since I was so late.

And then, the phone went off. It was Gävle Line Control, who told me that there seemed to be something wrong with my train. In fact, a trackside detector device had reported sticking brakes on eight axles of my train, including two high-level alerts (where the brakes have been sticking enough for the temperature of the wheelset to go above 450 degrees celsius)!

So, according to our procedures, I brought the train to a careful stop at a convenient place -in this case, just outside Marma, a interlocking and passenger halt in the middle of nowhere. And then I had to check on the sticking brakes. Of course, this was one of the 620-metre trains. Of course, the axles that set off the detector where around axle 84, 91 and so on -almost all the way back. Arrrgh! Of course, most of the sticking brakes were false alarms, but two were actually serious enough for me to cut out the brakes on those two wagons. I then had to re-do some essential paperwork, calculating the new brake force available for my train, and new top speed etc, as well as call in a damage report to my company operations centre. Eventually, I could move on again, about two hours late.

Aaaaaand on my way in to the godforsaken municipiality of Tierp ( a place so depressing they actually have to pay a hardship bonus to the few passenger drivers who are stationed there), Line Control called me up again, and told me that my train had set off a detector again.

ARRRRGHHHH!!!!

So, same procedure again. This time, there was only a false alert, thankfully. When I talked to line control and my company control again, we did exchange a few "robust" jokes as to how far I was going to make it this time, and if the floor of a cab was equivalent to a hotel room when it came to claiming back lodging expenses from the company.

I eventually ended up back home in Tomteboda goods depot outside Stockholm, where the depot driver greeted me with a "Where on earth did you come from?", about three hours late.

Oh well, There will be some nice overtime compensation for all this, so I suppose it wasn't all that bad. And the drive up to Gävle was very nice! I even saw some buzzards hunt mice in the fields outside Tillberga in the evening dusk. And I did see a bunch of dancing herons on my way down from Gävle today, which was also fun.

But I was glad when I could finally climb down from the loco this afternoon!
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I should perhaps mention that there are also those days when everything runs so smoooothly that you are home and have poured the weekend's first whisky before your scheduled booking-off time in the depot.  But mishaps tend to be more amusing!