Ireland get me out of here, I'm going to Sweden...

Welcome to my new blog. I moved to Sweden in June and thought I might blog about the experience, since, for obvious reasons, it's being talked about quite a lot these days. This blog is meant to be a light-hearted look at the place, some recipes, some photos, that sort of thing, and so I apologise for my very first post, but the reason I'm here can't be ignored. Below is a very brief outline of why I left Ireland but I promise beyond this I won't mention the C word again. Honest.

Late March 2020 and the world as we know it is on the brink of a tyrannical dystopia. Well, at least that's how it looks from where I'm standing.

- "You think I'm mentally ill." I accuse my brother.

- "I don't think that," he replies carefully, "I just think you listen to too many David Icke podcasts."

I'll concede that point... 

I'm standing in his kitchen on the edge of County Galway, and he's casually sipping at his coffee, dressed in trackie bottoms and slippers, all is good in his world.

I, on the other hand, am a trembling mess and I'm putting all my effort into not spilling my coffee all over myself. My heart is hammering in my chest and has been for over a week since my children were sent home from school to avoid a virus no more deadly than the flu (according to official figures), and I realised that shit just got real. I've spent years listening to the likes of Icke and Max Igan tell me this was coming and now it's happening in front of my eyes - social distancing, Orwellian voiceovers in the supermarket telling me to be kind, stay two metres away from everybody else, soviet-style queues around the corner of my local Aldi as people stand, confused and terrified up to 20 feet apart (and this was before the masks!). My stress levels are through the roof, I'm unable to think in straight lines anymore, overwhelmed as I am by an impending sense of doom which no amount of lavender oil will alleviate.

"Look at me, I'm chill," he says calmly, "it's two weeks to flatten the curve, you're massively over-reacting."

I pray that he's right but deep down I don't believe this for a second, I feel there is something else at play, something big, after all you don't lockdown the free world for a virus - even really deadly ones - I just don't know what it is yet. But as the lights go out all over Europe and beyond, there is one place which is defiantly keeping them switched on. Sweden. And I'm going there just as soon as I can...