Ups and Downs

t's been exactly a month since I last wrote an entry, such is my "habit" of writing a blog! What's been happening? Well, instead of trying to do it chronologically, I'll just do it by topic.

The Christmas period has come and gone, and plans changed at the last minute for various reasons. Instead of me spending Christmas in England and Linda spending it with her maternal grandparents in Norway, we decided to have a quiet Christmas together. So, I went over to England a week early instead. But because of having to see lots of family, I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to, so Linda and I will be going over to England around March time. But it was all good. I got to see my grandmother who is now 90 years old, bless her. And Linda and I had a lovely time. For New Year, we were in Gothenburg with some friends. It was quiet and grown up - well, until we drank a lot of beer, champagne, G&T and wine!

The Tele2 story continues, but has taken a significant step forward - earlier today, in fact. An engineer came round and fixed the line. There was a fault (which had actually started going wrong when Linda had the flat), and because it's owned by Telia, Tele2 were waiting for them (Telia are the BT of Sweden - I rest my case). BUT, now I have a working telephone line! Tomorrow Tele2 should be phoning me about the ADSL - but I can see myself having to phone them. After all, the engineer was supposed to phone me last Friday to confirm the time of the appointment, but didn't. He phoned me at 9:00 this morning saying he was outside my door. "That's a shame," I said, "I'm in Trollhättan. You were supposed to phone me on Friday," I added, pointedly.

"Oh." said the engineer. "When will you be back?"

"Two o'clock," I said.

"Oh. I'll come then."

"Do that," I said. Thankfully he kept his promise and fixed the line within 20 minutes.

Expanding on that note, I was in Trollhättan this weekend. I was supposed to be in Gothenburg doing a DJ set at the biljard, but Linda had a bit of a fever so I cancelled and went over there. She could have survived without me, really, but several things happened to me since the new year, including something that happened on Saturday morning. It just made it easier for me to run off.

There is a preamble I wanted to add to this blog, but for legal reasons, I'll keep it out for now.

On Saturday morning at 7:30am, I was woken up by some bloke visiting my next door neighbour, and being none-too-quiet about it. Next door neighbour had already left at around 5am (I know because I heard the noisy bastard). After a couple of minutes of banging on the door, he walked off. However, after about 10 minutes, I was dropping off to sleep, and was suddenly woken up again by a few big bangs and clattering. Then the bloke came storming up the stairs again with one or two of his friends, banged on the door again, shouting through his letterbox. Then banging MY door and shouting through MY letterbox again to see if he was here. After another 5 or so minutes of that, they went downstairs again, shouting loudly in frustration.

When I went downstairs later in the day, I found that the banging was that they had tipped all the bins over, and smashed the window to the door that served our stairwell. That was it for me. After consultation with Linda, we phoned the landlord up and told him that said neighbour has to go. At which point I also went to Trollhättan to get away from it all and have a quiet weekend with Linda.

When I came back today, it's all very quiet in the neighbour's place. I'm assuming he's laying low for a bit.

Anyway, that's the main points of my life over the past month. Let's see what happens next, eh?!