Friday, January 2

The shops are open again and all the sales are in full bloom.

We have come to Lanterna to look for a replacement for the outdoor Santa that fell over and smashed in the wind the other day. It no longer has a head, which rather spoils the effect. We are in Asko where a young assistant is checking his computer. The Christmas stock has all been put away but they may still have a Santa in the store-room. They don’t.

On the way out we stop at Expert to see if they have a cd player in their sales. Ours completely stopped working a month or so ago. They have the one that Irma and Naa saw the other day, and it is 249€, compared to the 299€ it was when they saw it in Gigantti. Irma will notice that the model number has one letter fewer than the one she and Naa saw, and ask what the difference is. The salesman will shrug and act dismissively enough that we will decide to go to Gigantti to ask there.

When we get there we will discover that it is now in Gigantti’s sale at 169€, so we get it there. It is a cd player and a digital radio. The missing D will turn out to stand for DAB+, a digital broadcasting format used in Sweden and almost nowhere else. We are future-proofed. If we move to Stockholm we have the perfect radio.