Welcoming Sweden and Everybody Else

Welcoming Sweden and Everybody Else ©

By

Michael Casey

I ventured out further up the road today, the ice and snow is too much for me nowadays so it as nice to take a trip up the road to the shops. My daughters demanded chocolate and Polish buns if I only went as far as the Polish shop at the corner, luckily I went to our posh supermarket instead. Their buns are very nice too, and chocolate for Mother’s Day was on offer a full week early. I also spotted a couple of still fresh sandwiches at 1/4 price, so obviously I got them for my dinner. Half price cappuccino was also available, so all in all a nice Sunday’s shopping, and a proper escape from the house after all the snow.

Now I’m chilling with John Denver and his Rocky Mountain collection, he was a big friend of mine 40 years ago, so I decided to free him from the cd box and let him sing. He is on my computer hard disc now along with 100 other CDs. A cd is a thing that welcomes us home, we hit play and kick off our shoes. We sling the dinner in the oven and relax on the sofa. That was my life in my computer room days. Mind you the MSG in processed ready meals, even if it was just breadcrumbs on kievs may have been bad for my heart, though I probably just inherited my heart from my dad, and the arthritis from my mum. Its nice to be a close family, but its better not to inherit the diseases. At lease my Ckd was not inherited, that’s all my own.

Now speaking of chilling I just spotted Sweden joining my reading club today, so hello to whoever they are. If you are a Nobel family member I’m not worth a Prize, and as my dad used to say is there any money attached to it? Otherwise it was rubbish in his opinion. Talk is cheap but money buys bread was his motto. Anyway hello Sweden, even if you are a lowly hotel cleaner having a look at the internet on the hotel’s front of house computer. I was hotel worker for 3 years.

No today’s title is Welcoming. What makes you feel welcome? Hotels and companies pay millions to Advertisers and Brand people and Designers to make us feel welcome. Why? Because if we feel welcome then we will come back.It is no good if people feel as if they were robbed or mugged almost if when they go somewhere they never want to return. Remember you’ll tell 10 people that Michael Casey was such a rubbish host and you’ll say all manner of bad things about him. But if Michael Casey was a great host, you’ll only tell 4 people.  Hotel’s know this, it is also common sense, that’s why they train you to be nice. They do also pick nice people to start with. Empathetic people. Nobel only discovered what people really thought of him when he read his own obituary, and then he changed. So Hotels are aware of this in advance.

In different cultures they must feed you well or they lose face. Arab cultures are noted for their hospitality, as are the Irish. I once heard that in one culture the host’s wife was offered as token of respect. You’ll have to Google that to see if that is an urban myth. If you reversed that idea I doubt if any guest female or male would accept me as an offering. It may explain why nobody comes visiting to our house, for fear of ending up in bed with me,as a token of hospitality. Or it could just be that our tea and biscuits are really rubbish. There is no Trip Adviser rating for our house, so I’ll never find out.

Moving on, in Sweden its their vegetables which make them famous, the swedes in Sweden are truly outstanding. Abba was a famous fruit and vegetable salesman, he used to sing cockles and muscles alive and alive o, but then his children grew up so they sung songs as they pushed the barrow around selling swedes in Stockholm. At Christmas stockings were filled with swedes for all the Swedes. My mother said if she go an orange then she was really happy, this was 1920s Kerry Ireland. So imagine that the Swedes followed then same path, but with swedes in a stocking.

The salesman’s children had an idea, so the girls wore the stockings, they were the Swedes in stockings as opposed to swedes in stockings. And the boys grew beards so they did not look like the girls too much. Then they pushed the barrow through the streets broad and narrow, singing  Swedes come and eat your swedes, we have various sizes just for your needs, Swedes come and eat your swedes. It was so catchy they should have won a prize, but not a Nobel prize.

Tragedy struck the wheel fell off the barrow, so they thought they would starve. They stopped to cry outside a pub, and lamented they’d met their Waterloo, while they nipped inside to use the loo, they had an idea. So seizing the stage, they sang for all they were worth. My, My we’ve been to the loo, we’ve lost our barrow, no more swedes for us, please let us sing for our supper.

And after a lot of practice, they became a band. The rest is a mystery to me, as I’ve never eaten swedes. So Sweden welcome to my world of words. John Denver is singing about Old Shanghai now, and my Shanghai wife has fallen silent now, I think she just ate her swedes.