I like living in Linköping. I really do. But sometimes I feel that it is precisely the wrong size.
It is a fairly big place by Swedish standards. In fact it is Sweden’s 5th biggest city and as a result it has pretensions of being a big city. However, when you actually try and get anything ‘big cityish’ done here you realise that pretense is all it is. In some respects, it would be better if Linköping were smaller. At least then the expectation level would be lower. Instead, every so often, I get fooled by the glossy leaflets and believe that the kommun actually wants to develop a cultural scene here. They don’t. They want to cultivate the impression of a cultural scene.
I had a meeting a little while ago with the head of the kommun’s culture department. I started by simply asking her what her department did. She looked confused and said ‘That’s a very good question’
I spent some of Monday banging my head against a jobsworth brick wall. My crime was to miss the deadline for a quarterly events calendar. Never mind that the deadline for the calendar was not widely publicised or that it is months ahead of the actual publication date but I admit, culpa mea, I had missed the deadline. By how much? I found out on Saturday that the deadline was the day before, on Friday. So I contacted them on the Monday asking if my events could be included. Absolutely not. I had missed the deadline. Rules is rules, sucker.
On a more positive note, Nolltretton magazine have organised a series of nights in the park. I’m going to perform at one of them on the 6th August (depending on the weather, naturally). I also spent a creative day today writing a scene for a sitcom and working on the radio podcast pilot. I’m excited about both and especially the sitcom as it sounds as though I’ll get a chance to pitch it to SVT… possibly.
Finished the day off with fika in the sun with Palle and Emil, having a kvetch, working out who should come and perform in the autumn and telling jokes far too rude for The Local blog
