Earth Hour

On friday I went into town with my parents to watch my little brother play the drums. His band (that brings a smile to a sister's face) Line of Fire, was the opening act for Gasoline Queen and a Falu band called Billion Dollar Babies at Verkstäderna ("The Workshops", the only youth recreation centre still standing in my hometown) and lo and behold, he was actually really fucking good. Who would have thought that one day I'd watching my little skrutt of a brother rock out behind a drum set. I was quite proud actually. He was the best in his band too, the others were good for their age but they were too careful and nervous I think (but they're only 13-14 so it's understandable...)

Last night was Earth Hour, so my mum and I left dad and Simon to watch the game in the dark (Sweden-Portugal) and went into town again. People were gathered at the square. Andreas Håberg (the kindhearted enviromental activist who grew up in the house nextdoor) was organising the get together. It started with a short film clip on a screen showing the highlights of Earth Hour last year and the concept and the origin of the whole thing. Then a group called Naked Monkies put on a fire show as soon as all the lights switched off. It was really magical. Just the dancing flames and the tribal music in the dark and the cold (although I couldn't help myself and had to stage whisper to mum, "and what does those speakers run on, do they think? happy thoughts?") after the fire show, two troubadours sang a few songs (again, microphone and speakers equals electricity...) and then an elderly lady was reading some texts that she wrote, but it wasn't really to our taste so we left... and went to the Norrtulls Church, which was also entirely lit up by candles, for an ongoing acoustic concert and sat and listening to that for about half an hour. Then it became overly religious, so we left and got pizza on the way home.

The pizzeria in Ljusne (my village) is the image of sadness at ten o'clock on a saturday night. The decor hasn't changed under the 22 years that I've known it, but it has seen better days, like any business still treading water in the village, refusing to accept the gone era of rural communities.

When we arrived on the scene and sat down to wait for the pizzas, there were two other people there, besides the owner who was watching the game. A tragic-looking figure nursing a beer bottle, who was gazing unseeingly out the window. He looked ready to jump off the roof of a building and like he was mourning the fact that no building in this village is high enough for the fall to kill him. When we sat down to wait, we sat down at a table from which mum could see the TV as she wanted to watch the game as well, bringing him also in our field of vision, something that made him slightly more self-conscious and as a result, he decided he needed a glass for his second beer.

The other person, also a guy, only older than the first but equally lonely-looking, was sitting by the one fruit (or slot) machine and gambling away all his money, also nursing a beer, no glass (he wasn't in our field of vision however)