''The bells of hell go ting-aling-aling, for you but not for me.

And the little devils how they sing-aling-aling, for you but not for me.

O, death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling? O, grave thy victor-ee?''

(WWI trench song.)

It's invariably wonderful to have dinner with the priest and her boyfriend the policeman. You sometimes learn some interesting facts, too. For instance, among many topics for the evening, death was discussed by these two people whose jobs require them to deal with death on a regular basis. A difficult client, death is. But sometimes more bizarre than frightening.



For instance, the priest told us very briefly about speaking at the annual conference of Sveriges kyrkogård- och krematorieförbund, which roughly translates to Sweden's Cemetery and Crematorium Association, which is apparently a society of funeral directors.



The priest gets asked to speak all the time by various organizations, to be interviewed by television or newspapers, gets called on to sit on community panels, etc. because they're always looking for a priest who's not an old white guy. Of course, she happens to be a personable, thoughtful and natural speaker, which is why she keeps getting asked over and over.



Anyway, the funeral directors wanted her to speak about the church's current thinking on funerals or something along those lines. Instead she talked about what it takes for people to work with death all the time.



''They seemed to like what I said even though it wasn't what they asked for,'' she said. ''But the scary thing was, they all looked so waxy and pale. They looked like corpses themselves.''



And, though there were various, uh, ancillary products at the conference, such as pencils with ''Sveriges kyrkogård och-krematorieförbund'' printed on the side (she took one, of course), those attending the conference were, er, dead serious.



''I don't think they ever joke about death,'' she said.



Her boyfriend, the policeman, who had had to spend a day at the morgue as part of his training, said that the atmosphere is rather different there.



''Yeah, they joke around all right,'' he said. ''It's the only way to handle it. But the worst thing is the smell, and it stays in your clothes.''



The Swedish phrase for the day is begravningsentreprenör. It means mortician.



- by Francis S.

The letter that I'd been expecting from the ex has arrived.



It was mostly what I thought it would be: full of apology and regret, an unspoken request for some kind of absolution, all underpinned by the fact that five and a half years after our breakup, he hasn't yet let go of it. Of us.



A reply is necessary, but it will be difficult to balance giving him what he wants, accepting responsibility for my own role in the whole thing, and telling him to get on with his life already, which in part means leaving me alone.



If we'd been in touch all along, things might be different. But it hasn't been that way at all. He was pretty nasty the last contact we had, and that was three years ago.



I can tell I'm going to proscrastinate on writing this letter.



- by Francis S.

Ouch ouchity ouch ouch ouch. What a week of negotiating contracts, dealing with, er, personnel issues, making sales presentations, rewriting articles, assigning last- minute photos, setting up yearly budgets, and constantly putting out countless fires of one sort or another. Which all seems a bit pointless if something big and nasty is going to happen, as the FBI assures us is certain.



But at least the main magazine I edit got a great review in a big Swedish trade weekly - they said it was hip, mouth-watering (!), tough, American (which was a compliment, I guess), thorough. Happiness, indeed.



Now we're off to dinner with the priest and her boyfriend, the policeman. In true Swedish fashion, it should be a most cozy end to the week, complete with candles, lots of cigarettes and lots of red wine.



The Swedish word for the day is full. It means drunk, among other things. It should not be confused with ful, which means ugly.



- by Francis S.

I have just read the funniest thing I have ever read on a blog: a riff on moms and blogs, which I got to via an equally funny riff on, well, just plain moms. The gist of the first one was a sort of nightmare fantasy about one man's mom's blog.



Unfortunately, my own mother could not possibly compete. Her blog would no doubt look something like this:



posted by sylvia at 10:04:15 AM



posted by sylvia at 10:04:31 AM



posted by sylvia at 10:04:48 AM



posted by sylvia at 10:05:01 AM



posted by sylvia at 10:05:23 AM



The behind the scenes one-sided dialog accompanying this would sound something like this:



''I keep writing but it keeps disappearing!''



''Shit!'' (said in such a voice that you know the speaker isn't comfortable using such language)



''I know I'm doing it right, but this computer is so stupid...''



(gutteral and explosive sounds of disgust)



''These things don't make any sense! How can people use these things?''



''You couldn't make me touch this thing with a ten-foot pole! I'm never doing this again, never!''



(loud knocking around and shoving of the chair roughly into its place under the desk)





The Swedish word for the day is hysterisk. You could probably guess that this means hysterical.



- by Francis S., who loves his mother

I've never been nervous about flying, although for awhile there I was a little superstitious in my own peculiar way: Whenever I was in a plane during takeoff, I convinced myself that the only reason this huge hunk of steel was rising into the air was because I was willing it to rise by sheer force of my personal belief that, yes, it could fly. I knew this wasn't true, rationally, but I had to tell myself this. That is the definition of a superstition, I suppose.



I don't do this anymore, and I don't think I'm going to start again. And, as I said, I'm not nervous about flying. I used to have a sort of morbid fascination with plane crashes, however, nothing more than most people have. But now I just feel sad when I hear about crashes like this (an English-language article is here). And of course, living in a little country such as Sweden, I know someone who knows someone who was on the plane. Then again, I knew someone who knew someone who was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, not to mention knowing someones who knew someones who were in the buildings themselves. Which gets at the real reason, I suspect, that this makes me feel sadder than usual. It's disaster happening on top of disaster. It's all wearying.



The Swedish word for the day is olycka. It means accident.



- by Francis S.

I've noticed in the past few days an extraordinary number of people with an .edu extension visiting here. Which is odd. Is the name of the site misleadingly educational sounding (uh, probably)? Did this site mistakenly end up in some kind of Swedish-language resource list for university students? What is it? Not that I'm complaining... just curious is all.



- by Francis S.

It's creeping up again, the smoking. After the usual New Year's quit-smoking resolution I managed to really cut down the smoking so that it was merely an accompaniment to alcohol, basically to ensure when I'd actually consumed too much alcohol that my hangover would be really nasty - there's nothing like a hangover from red wine and cognac augmented by about 15 cigarettes and, as a special touch, a cigar.



But during the trip to Greece I suddenly found myself smoking just any old time. I vowed to stop when I got back, but I didn't really and I've starting having one after lunch on a regular basis, not to mention one in the afternoon, one before dinner and several after dinner... the road from after-lunch smoking to before-breakfast smoking is frighteningly short. And once you've reached the point of before breakfast, you're going to have to start from the beginning again.



The first Swedish word for the day is suck. It means sigh. The second Swedish word for the day is suga. It means suck.



- by Francis S.