Midnight Sun

We quite often go out on Friday afternoon when the business closes and bomb off to Chichester either for a late lunch or a bit of weekend food shopping in M & S or simply stop off at Prezzo in Arundel for pizza on our way home from work. For several reasons we came straight home yesterday, firstly because Prezzo had a one day only, two for one on mains, last Wednesday, and we had our weekly pizza then instead of Friday and anyway we had food in fridge for dinner. There was a third reason which was that Steve had had a hard week with pressure to get jobs that had been brought forward, done when the client had a change of schedule. Steve wanted an easy evening and he cooked us delicious salmon fillets with which we ate lambs leaf salad. 

After dinner, when I had dealt with the washing up and tidying away, Steve announced that he had found a new series on Sky Boxed Sets to start watching as our pre bedtime TV. The new series was Midnight Sun, and is set in a fantastically beautiful part of Sweden, North of the Kiruna mountains.  The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon that occurs in the summer in places north of the arctic circle. Kiruna, Sweden is well northeast of Iceland. The programme certainly wins the ‘Quirky’ vote for the year so far and is high up on the blood and guts chart too. It is well in the noir range that started as a drip feed into our TV entertainment and has now reached full flood.

Steve will try to tell you how good it was…. but I can tell you that he had his eyes covered for a considerable amount on time. It was very different in a lot of ways and some interesting choices of actors. It is nice to get a little local atmosphere and colour intertwined with an original story and that was interesting into the bargain. We got stuck into it immediately and went straight on to episode two without even a glance sideways at each other for agreement. Gustaf Hammarsten, who we have seen in Nordic TV films before, including Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and as the French police officer sent to investigate is Leila Bekhti, who is a lovely contrast to all the pastie faces of the rest of the cast. I know it is silly, but I did enjoy that the Sami people take cheese in their coffee; well I suppose it is just another dairy product is it not.

It also reminded me of the 1999 Long Distance World Championship that were held 1100 kilometers south of the Midnight Sun location, in Säter, Sweden. It was a memorable trip in many ways including that the Triathlon Village that had been promised to the athletes in the travel information turned out to be several blocks of a local mental institution where many of the inmates had been sent home during our stay. Apart that is from the violent or more disturbed ones who remained in another area. The accommodation was primitive with depressing ancient marble floors,  and echoing corridors, with iron barred gates to pass through. The rooms had simple cot beds, no hot water, no plugs in the sink and no covering what so ever at the windows so it was sunny all night. That is where the reminder comes in. It was mid summer and it did not get fully dark at all; there was a slight dusk for an hour and then it got fully light again.

Having said all that, to the detriment of the venue, the surrounding area was mainly endless tranquil woods and glass still lakes and a pretty town centre.  My best memory of the trip is the gold medal in the 55-59 age group. The American age group manager pulled the most impressive flanker when two women from the USA team who had not made the cut off at the end of the first lap of the run and were retired from the course, were at his strong complaint, quoting rules of other sports like motor racing (!) given the silver and the bronze medals when I was placed first, having completed the whole of the run course inside the cut off time.

Today has been sunny and the sky turned a pretty blue colour that we have not seen in a while. It was very windy though so Steve and I grabbed the moment and got out on our bikes for a very good work out indeed. We did enjoy our time out in the sunshine today and chose a course that took lots of turns so that we were not ever too long in the head on wind. It was hard enough cycling east along the sea front but harder still going north. We also found a few hills to climb and so were satisfied with our training for the morning.