Thursday, February 2

 

 

I slept very well and woke up at 6:30. I went to find the breakfast room, and found the buffet in the corridor two metres from the door of my room. I helped myself and sat in the charmingly small breakfast room opposite, joining the other occupant, and sitting at the other end of the room so that we could comfortably ignore each other.

At 9:00 the Nobanet meeting began in a digitally equipped meeting room on the ground floor. Eija started and, after introducing ourselves, we reported back on what we had done since the last meeting. Mikke and I sat together. He had prepared a slide show that I had never seen. He suggested that he should control the slides while I spoke about them. Off we went.

Eventually we split into two working groups and it suddenly occurred to me that everyone in the room expected Mikke and I to lead the group through a two day workshop. Off we went.

Lunch has just been announced and I look out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the harbour. Stockholm has had no snow at all, the sea has no ice, and the dull weather seems fitting.

By the end of the afternoon we will have got a lot done; certainly more than I had thought possible when we started. Erik, Mikke and I will go for a beer at a nearby bar I had noticed yesterday called The Soap Bar. I will decide that the name would seem slightly more amusing if they had called it The Bar Of Soap, but I will not manage to explain to anyone why I think this.

At 18:00 we will rejoin the other twenty and march in a crocodile to the old town and Den Gyldene Freden, allegedly the oldest restaurant in Stockholm. Over dinner Mikke and I will talk about writing reviews in TripAdvisor. Mikke will make notes as he eats.

I will fall asleep just before 23:00. I will wake at about midnight, check the time, notice and answer a message from Irma, and fall asleep again.