2005-06-08

I found a credit card on the sidewalk the other day. It turned out to be an Australian card, probably dropped by some poor drunk bastard on holiday (I found it outside a pub, predictably). I�m as superstitious as an illiterate goatherd, and my instinctive reaction was to give the card back post-haste, not as an exercise of disinterested altruism, but as karmic insurance against misadventure on my own upcoming holiday abroad. I haven�t been able to get through to the bank number listed on the card, and I�m becoming paranoid that this is a bad sign. Mr Patrick Wogan, if you�re out there somewhere, I have your Mastercard! Please come take it away and thereby prevent me from being robbed, raped and trampled by a moose on the streets of Stockholm! (To dispel any grammatical uncertainty in the preceding scenario, I do not see the moose as being the perpetrator of the robbing and raping, just the trampling. Although every moose is a potential rapist, as they say.)

If I�m not back on Tuesday, assume I have been the victim of moose-related violence. I leave you with the following words of wisdom, provided by a Google search on �Sweden travel tips�:

Don't worry about getting a license to fish in the ocean, but you do need one to fish in lakes and rivers.

When you go shopping in Sweden and you go to the cash register, please don't forget to put the products with the barcode turned in the right direction.