Nightswimming

I suppose it sounds kind of romantic, swimming naked at midnight across the lake in Stockholm with the police helicopter lights glinting off the water. Or actually, just plain uncomfortable.

It all started when a friend who shall remain anonymous decided he wanted to swim home, despite the existence of a perfectly good bridge. Concerned for his safety, my other friend decided to swim with him and then come back (he shall become quite a signficant character in this blog, being my unrequited love, and whom we shall call The Little Dutchman despite the fact he is neither Dutch nor little). Anyway I decided I would be on "safety watch" citing partly my primary school lifesaving certificate but mostly my Australian-ness. At the time it was irrelevant that even if these two factors were a reflection of any kind of lifesaving ability, I had drunk an awful amount of wine in the previous 3 hours.

The boys set off for the other side of the lake (Dutchman making cat noises as he went to assure me he was ok, which were echoed in a surreal moment by passing Swedes at the nearby bar). I decided to go for a discrete little dip while they were away. I abandoned my clothes and slipped in, just as a noisy police helicopter started strafing the water with spotlights from above. It never occurred to me that we weren't supposed to be swimming there. In fact it made it all seem a little bit more dramatic, like a scene from King Kong or something.

As I clambered out of the water, naked as the day I was born, I heard a voice above me. "Sorry, I speak English," I said in my standard response to anything anyone says to me, finding myself surprisingly not very embarrassed about my utter nakedness. "Those police, they are looking for someone who has escaped across the water. Is it you?" I don't know how they expected me to answer if it was me, but now the nakedness was signficant - in the God-fearing heads of these good souls, I had just become an escaped mental patient swimming for her life from Stockholm to Sydney. "Um... we um... just thought we'd go for a swim," I said faintly, cringing as more cat noises promptly echoed across the water. "I'm on... Safety Watch..." I clutched my bottle of Heineken tighter as I said this and wrapped myself in a towel, trying to curl up like a graceful version of the Little Mermaid but no doubt failing miserably.

After staring at me suspiciously (at least I hope it was suspiciously) the police informers left. For one minute I wondered if a police car would arrive to drag Dutchman and I naked to a police cell, so managed to put on at least half of my underwear in a vain attempt at dignity. As Dutchman arrived and "dried off in the sun" (and don't be under any illusions, there was NO midnight sun to be seen at this point, only the intermittent romantic glow of police spotlights) I threw a towel over him and we made our escape, me bedraggled and with mascara running down my face like ... an escaped mental patient swimming for her life from Stockholm to Sydney.

The night grew even more surreal as Dutchman was convinced by our mutual friend known as Papa Pelle to make sure that this was the night I escaped from the clutches of my slightly-deranged flatmate. As we wandered through the graveyard near my house I became a little incensed that Dutchman had previously shown absolutely no concern that I might be murdered in my sleep by the crazy chef with a collection of expensive meat-cleavers.

Papa is the head of a delegation of my friends which I affectionately call Team Sweden. They are the ones who will drop everything to save you - including but not limited to: comforting phone calls when you are confronted with a strange woman's underwear in an ex-boyfriend's apartment, lending you a bed while you are hiding out from psycho flatmates, and possibly bailing you out of a police cell when you have been mis-diagnosed as a mental patient.

Team Sweden's international security service was a little strained last night. I guess this is understandable since it was 2am and Dutchman continually failed to recognise the life-threatening situation I was so obviously in. Reluctantly the Dutchman conceded that I could "possibly maybe be in danger" with a "5% chance" of me being murdered that evening, and marched me to a Team Sweden safehouse. He left me at the door, with memories of nightswimming, the potential for a horrendous hangover, and an overwhelming wish that I really meant something to him.

Photo credit: The photo is not mine but is borrowed from the wonderful Sally Mann, since I was in no fit state to be handling a camera.