Sitting around at Mum n Dad's

 

Dad got his penknife and fixed the top of the water bottle I'd brought from Somerset and couldn't unscrew.

We were discussing school meals. My mum had bought this tart at Blackbrooks for us to share, but my dad didn't fancy the custard. I used to loathe custard at school too, but now I've dealt with the issue by simply calling it vaniljsås, and then I like it.

My mum went to högskolan in Sundsvall. She was a shy eater and didn't have school dinners. She went home in the lunch hour instead (though she didn't necessarily eat much at home either).

Once when she was going home she was followed by Tok-Bertil ("Mad Bertil") and had to take refuge in a shop. The shopkeeper had to call for her mum to come and get her. 

Tok-Bertil was the well-known local idiot. He may easily have been harmless, or he may not. No-one knew, but you didn't want to be followed by him.

My mum has been friends with Berit since they were 11. (She has an even older friend, Bo.)  

Dad said that when he was at school in Penrith they used to bait the village idiot. Shocking, but it was just what schoolboys did, in those days. (c. 1945).

Once, in the 1970s, my Dad was in the Penrith area and decided to visit his old school. He sauntered in to what was now a police HQ and began taking photos. 

Security descended. It was at the height of IRA activity on what was then called "the mainland". My dad was questioned at length by an unsmiling intelligence officer. When he tells this story he makes himself sound like a slightly hysterical Bertie Wooster, prattling away fondly about his schooldays. 

Eventually the intelligence officer decided my dad actually was as oblivious as he sounded. He ordered him to walk to his car without looking to left or right, get in, drive away, and never come back. 

My mum did national service. She was a "Lotta". She did it with some other girls from her school. Her best friend Anna-Greta, Birgitta Pettersson and Margareta Alvar. 

She learned how to spot planes and to radio in the details. She had a muster point with instructions to assemble if the sirens went, meaning Sweden was at war. They also sold hot drinks at ski events, wearing their smart uniforms. 

Portrait of Ptolemy I (on a coin by a later Ptolemy).  

From my dad's collection of ancient coins. I spent an hour chatting with him about them, and took numerous photos, most of which were total failures. 

Portrait of Alexander the Great bearing the horns of Ammon, on a Thracian coin from the reign of Lysimachus. 

Lysimachus, like Ptolemy I, had been one of Alexander's generals.

Ptolemy wrote a history of Alexander's campaigns. It's lost, but it was one of Arrian's main sources. 

The books you live with. My mum is reading Lilla Marilla for the hundredth time. 

This is one of the Anne of Green Gables books by the Canadian author L. M. Montgomery; the final one, in terms of the narrative sequence, though not the last to be written. In English it's called Rilla of Ingleside. It was written soon after WW1, which plays a big part in the story.