Talking about the weather with...Neil Finn

Well, here I am in London and I must apologise for my vague writings today but it has been rather tiring. Day 1 was pretty surreal. Irina and I were no doubt still drunk (and tear-stained) as we made our way to the airport, and so I arrived in a kind of fog with vague memories of "ballroom" dancing with my friends and singing to Dolly Parton -- the whole of Stockholm seemingly succumbed to Dolly Parton fever as a result of her tour -- a mere few hours earlier. My old friends Ben and Erin organised a veritable welcoming party of two, and JonJon picked us up from the tube station in a large silver Vectra with the most annoying navigation system voiceover in the world (I have dubbed her Morag, which I feel is a suitable blend of sternness and obedience and conjures up the right size of hair: big). Morag is impossible to silence.

Anyway, astute blog readers may have noticed that my blog is named after a Crowded House song. Upon arriving here, my lovely friend JonJon whisked me off to Peter Gabriel's studios, Real World, out near Bath, for a webcast gig with the reincarnated Crowded House, their first in ten years. In a bizarre moment, we arrived in Jonathan's rented flashy Vectra and despite my adjustment to Scandinavian weather I realised how cold it is here. Shivering, I opened the first available door to find Neil Finn (Crowded House singer, for the uninitiated) sitting in front of me tuning a guitar. "Come in, " he said, "it's freezing out there". JonJon had failed to inform me how well he knew the band, and immediately introduced me much to my surprise. Neil then kindly offered me a glass of wine. "Thanks," I said. "I moved here from Sweden today and can't believe how bloody cold it is!" Neil looked sympathetic. "It's just a cold snap," he said. "It's even supposed to snow on Monday". More people shuffled in and I wandered off with some new friends to get some wine. Suddenly it hit me...I had just talked about the weather with Neil Finn. Of all people. I rolled my eyes at myself. Thank God I didn't ask him if he'd brought the weather with with him.

Tom (new friend who is strangely and purely coincidentally the brother of an old friend) and I headed off to the toilet, an experience we found quite hilarious considering its famous owner. ("I just sprayed Air-Wick in Peter Gabriel's toilet!" became our gleefully whispered catch-phrase of the evening).

Ushered into the studio, we were offered a bass guitar case to sit on. "Shouldn't we go upstairs?" I asked someone official-looking. "God no, that's for the plebs," he said dryly. Quite surprised at my new non-pleb status, I gladly took my seat behind the bass amp. (In another potentially fate-revealing coincidence, bassist Nick had worked with my aforementioned friend Ben. I said hello to Nick and also informed him that thanks to his dubious fashion advice, I was now subjected to walking around London with Ben bedecked in the most horrible pair of brown tortoiseshell 1980s Ray Bans ever. He seemed unrepentant about inflicting this on me. So does Ben.).

The gig itself was fantastic, although knowing that thousands of people were watching you was a little disconcerting every time the camera swung near, and I lived in fear of tripping over a wire and spilling red wine over the drumkit and ruining JonJon's career. Luckily, someone else did the wine spilling for me (well, smashed a glass all over the floor. I'm not sure yet whether a slow-mo replay is available courtesy of the webcast, we have to try and obtain a DVD of it). JonJon's career is however happily intact.

It was truly magical to sit in a room with people who so clearly loved what they were doing. Not to mention realising that I was sitting with good friends - new and old - and that it felt perfectly ok to be here in London. The fact that Crowded House is Antipodean (I'm being diplomatic, Kiwi readers) was particularly comforting.

But I am still "home"sick for Sweden. Today Jonathan and I took the flashy Vectra shopping, attempting to impersonate an affluent London couple although probably failing after our completely unconventional parking methods at IKEA (the Vectra was 20% in the parking space, 80% in the flower bed). IKEA made me ridiculously sentimental. Enthusiastically I raced into the supermarket section searching in vain for my beloved risgrynsgröt. They had none, but they DID have nypon and blueberry soppa, snaps, kanelbullar, bilar sweets ("cars"- the packet proclaims they are the "most bought car in Sweden", and no doubt easier to park than large flashy Morag-mobiles) and various other delicacies which I eagerly purchased. The cashier took one look at my odd collection of food and decided I had to be Swedish. She started speaking away at me and to my amazement, quite a lot of Swedish came out of my mouth. The poor girl had only been in London for 2 months but was homesick. I sympathised and then perhaps rather cruelly pulled out my very Swedish credit card. She nearly cried. By this stage Jonathan was very bored so I applied the Swedish solution of 10 miniature bottles of snaps, which hopefully has gone some way towards repaying him for a perfect start to my London adventures.

But back to the weather - the forecast for tomorrow has been downgraded to "hail showers". As my new flatmate, Alex, remarked, obviously hail here does not mean the golf-ball size chunks we get back home in Brisvegas. Still, "shower" is not a word I would use to describe hail. As Mr Finn would say, it's like four seasons in one day.