It was pitch black when I got up in Stockholm at 4.30AM today. There weren’t many cockerels around at that time I certainly didn’t feel like shaking my tail feathers with any real vigour. I have a flight this morning from Stockholm to Helsinki at 6.50AM. What to many might seem like a stupid idea, seemed to me like a good idea at the time of booking my tickets. In fact even now I still think it was a splendid idea because it meant that I was able to have dinner with an old school friend and his family last night at their home in Sweden.
It was a very enjoyable evening despite the obvious tiredness in the house as a result of a 3 year old who is slowly having his dummy taken away from him and therefore won’t go to sleep easily, and a 3 month old who just doesn’t get the difference between night and day yet, (surely a hard thing to learn in these funny Nordic countries which have 23 hour long days or nights depending on the season). The ability to stop and see old friends all around Europe and Scandinavia is most definitely the best thing about the job. It will therefore be of little surprise to learn that I’ve already had dinner with friends in Paris on Sunday evening and in addition to last night, I have another dinner planned with some friends in Helsinki tonight and then I’ll go out with another friend in London on Thursday for the Indian Festival of Light. It’s funny to see but regardless of location, background, current profession or anything else, we all essentially move through life at roughly the same pace and we face roughly the same challenges at roughly the same time. It’s hard not to develop a certain perspective once you see that your challenges are not unique. I suppose that’s what experience is all about – the number of different phases of life you’ve gone through and the range of different problems you’ve encountered and surmounted. And it’s also the reason why you can’t amass experience in a classroom or overnight. Thankfully by the end of the week I’ll also have had a few business meetings as well to justify all this gallivanting around and noddy philosophy; Monday was a software vendor, Tuesday and Wednesday are internal planning meetings and Thursday and Friday are a big marketing event that we’re sponsoring in London.
On the home front things are also looking better. Gaston was clothed for the first time yesterday and his incubator has been switched off. Capucine shouldn’t be far behind and we’re hopeful she might cross the 2 kg threshold this morning. I’m trying to get a load of trips done now such that I can be more at home when they finally get out of hospital, which should be soon. I’m already itching to get back home to see them. They’re growing up so quickly – I’m half expecting Gaston to be smoking a pipe and wearing slippers when I see him next on Friday night.
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