Edinburgh Days

Early Morning at the Scottish Parliament

For the fifth time since July, I had been invited to meetings about the Scottish Parliament's long-overdue review of public sector reform. This time, it was to be a witness at the Public Sector Reform Committee.  Four papers that I had written had been published by either Enlighten Scotland or Sceptical Scot. I was fully loaded with material if only my brain could download it in a logical order. Saying little and saying it well would be a tall order, and so it proved as we answered questions for 90 minutes from the assembled MSPs.

The day had been a shock to the system: up at 6am to drive to the station to catch a train just after 7am, a walk to the Parliament and through security for a pre-meeting at 9am. I used to be used to these sorts of days, but baby boomers need their sleep nowadays. We had a quick debrief before I exited Parliament and headed up Canongate. I had noticed the Proverb on the way in; I paused and read some of the other 23 quotations on the Canongate Wall. I was heartened by the Norman MacCaig quote from 'A Man in Assynt' and was pleased that I had raised the issue of a land tax for the benefit of all the people of Scotland. I read the extract from Edwin Morgan's 'Tell Us About Last Night' or Canedolia.I loved the phrase 'pure strontian' meaning pure magic. Even more thrilling is the use of "Schiehallion, Schiehallion, Schiehallion' in the poem as a toast to the Scottish landscape.

I spent an hour visiting shops searching for everyday woollen socks; they are warmer and more comfortable than the flimsy synthetic fibre and cotton socks that the retailers stock. I had spent one summer working in a Courtaulds rayon factory; I should have learnt to shear sheep instead. As I returned to Waverley station, frustrated at the time wasted on futile shopping, I was amused that Edinburgh had installed a cone on Sir Walter Scott. It is good to know that Edinburgh has used the tourist tax for an installation at the Scott Monument to attract the passing tourists. 

Hopefully, Andy Wightman's legacy 

Skye Magic

Sir Walter would be pleased with the patriotism

 

Persevilience; a very, very big word

I was trying to avoid reading about the new word coined by Alistair Campbell to describe his fight with depression. It takes a big ego to launch a new word, and then make it the title of a new book. I took a shortcut and asked AI what it meant.

Persevilience, Definition and Meaning

Persevilience (noun): the ability of an individual, group or organisation to turn any situation, setback or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow, to advance and secure their core interests.

Core definition: The ability of an individual, group, or organisation to turn any setback, challenge, or life experience into a positive opportunity for growth, advancement, and the protection of core interests.
Distinction: While older concepts like perseverance or resilience are viewed as passive endurance or "banging your head against a brick wall," persevilience emphasises a proactive, optimistic, and values-driven mindset rooted in integrity.

I understood and bought it immediately, and when I met with my regular group of cronies whom I had known for 40 to 50 years, I thought that it maybe explained why we still hung out together. We shared values that didn't fit easily with the paternalistic politicians and rules-based managers we had worked with. We instinctively believed in social justice and community engagement. Our optimism stemmed from a conviction, maybe naive, that we could change things.

I asked them if our common bond was persevilience; the response was muted: "How do you spell it? We're banging our heads against a brick wall. Scotland is a mess, and local government has been shafted. Let's order the next round." 

The conversation drifted into the Serbian and Brazilian election results and the prospects of Trump getting his comeuppance next week. We discussed the possibility of rebuilding the world order based on soft power and international collaboration. Our spirits soared as earlier cynicism had been replaced by satirical stories that castigated Trump for his warmongering, corruption and pathological untruths. We harboured the prospect of younger generations rejecting the greed and corruption of our generation and demanding more equality of opportunity and hope. That's where we had come in fifty years ago! Life is a game of snakes and ladders.

Glasgow: Nostalgia amidst Friends

Gotham City, or Glasgow 1970s

I made three trips to Glasgow in the past week, each time with a different group of colleagues: my Regional Strategy team from the 1970s, Strathclyde Regional Council colleagues from the 1980s, and CEO colleagues from the noughties. I was seeking a bit of nostalgia, amplified by tales from friends.

On each trip, I used the park and ride facility to catch the Ember Bus from Stirling to Glasgow. Even that prompted nostalgia; my first job after graduating was collecting and analysing data for a Park and Ride scheme for Merseyrail. Thirty years later, I identified the site for Stirling's Park and Ride facility at Castleview; it was intended as parking for the Castle and the tourist attractions as well as the city centre. Over the past few years, it has become a strategic park and ride facility for buses travelling to and from Glasgow to Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness. Bus travel has exploded with the combination of new fast routes, electric buses and concessionary fares for the young and old. Bus travel is booming, even the well-heeled middle-aged have discovered the beauty of comfortable buses, which have wi-fi, are faster than trains and are an attractive alternative to the RingGo parking app and its extortionate charges when visiting Glasgow. 

I had some time to spare on my first visit so dropped into the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), better known as the location of the Duke of Wellington statue adorned with its traffic cone. Both ears of his horse were also covered with cones this week; Glasgow was looking like Boston! I was disappointed with the layout and exhibits of GoMA, but the photo of two Glasgow rum 'uns brought back memories of arriving in Glasgow in 1972. As I drove into the city for the first time, boys of their age were playing football on waste ground alongside London Road. They booted the ball against a passing Corporation bus to ricochet the ball back onto their pitch. I used to walk along Maryhill Road on Saturday mornings; the streets were alive with young children behaving like the boys in the photo, the shops spilt their wares onto the pavement, and dogs roamed the streets without a lead or owner to be seen. There are still lots of gritty old buildings and the rum 'uns are now adults, making Glasgow a perfect stand-in for Gotham City in the latest Batman Movie.

The bus station is at the top of Buchanan Street, as is the statue of Donald Dewar, the father of Devolution. I had known him since 1976 and always enjoyed his self-deprecating sense of humour. On the re-opening of the Great Hall at Stirling Castle in 1999, he was to welcome the Queen. His accompanying civil servant had told me that after the opening, he had a 2pm meeting in Edinburgh with Andrew Neil, the journalist. When I was informed that the Queen was to be late, I let Donald know and asked if that would upset his meeting with Andrew Neil. He had not been told about the meeting; the civil servant did not want to upset him. The First Minister's response was joyous "In that case, she can be as late as she wants". It was one of several occasions when his satirical humour captured the zeitgeist. As always, I paused in honour as I passed his statue; his cone had disappeared, and his bronze statue seemed to be getting greener.

A meeting with a web designer meant a visit to the Park area; it was raining, but I wanted to walk there to see if Sauchiehall Street was recovering from the collapse of city centre retailing. Despite yet another upgrade in 2018, it was still dysfunctional. Marks and Spencer's leaving the anchor store has damaged the footfall, and the pedestrianised parts of the street have been taken over by Deliveroo and Uber Eats electric bikes. They are possibly more dangerous than the traffic that disappeared in the 1978 pedestrianisation. The ABC cinema was closed after the Glasgow Art School Fire in 2018, and in typical fashion, negotiations are still dragging on with the Scottish Government agencies about demolition and a proposed replacement.  It will probably be yet another Student Hall of Residence. Baird Hall, at the Charing Cross end, had been such a facility but has now been converted into private flats. The Art Deco building is one of the few signs of revitalisation in the street. Even Nevis Sport, where I had spent many£££s over the years, has gone, replaced by a charity shop.

I crossed the motorway at Charing Cross and looked askance at the new skyscraper emerging in India Street. The Àrd is a 36-storey building providing accommodation for 784 students. The kudos of being Glasgow and Scotland's highest building seems more important than whether this is the most cost-effective way of providing student accommodation. Student loans were never meant to be a funding mechanism for the construction industry, but maybe I am wrong.

Crossing the motorway into Park is always like entering a gentler and grander environment. Splendid buildings that have been adapted to new uses but retain their integrity. Our meeting was in Lynedoch Street, a street full of history and institutions. We entered a building that now hosts a collection of modern businesses. It was bereft of desks and filled with sofas, coffee tables and coffee machines. No typists, filing cabinets or tea trolleys here. I had graduated in the age of Pisces, and am one, but this was the age of Aquarius. We were here to commission a website so that we can pass on our blind ambition to Gen X, Y and Z. 

Donald, the Daddy of Devolution

Baird Hall now Beresford Private Flats

The Àrd, India Street

Towers of the Old Trinity College, Park

Public Sector Reform - a Proposal for Reform of Governance

Stirling's Hinterland

I was due to help facilitate a session at a conference called 'Imagining the Future: Public Sector Reform', but an air traffic control fault at Prestwick meant I didn't arrive home until near dawn. Sleep was calling; it was non-negotiable. By 10am, I awoke and scanned the programme; the blandishments from consultancy firms would be in full swing with prospective bids in the offing. I would be too late to make the 2-hour journey to catch the Minister's speech. I phoned my colleague and apologised. It turned out that our session was not even taken; the consultants had run over time, and the afternoon session was truncated.  

The day before, the Scottish Government had set out its proposals for Public Sector Reform- a proposal for reform of local governance. It was long overdue, but full of contradictions and muddled thinking about how to tackle the wide-ranging issues.

These proposals had been anticipated, and the Sceptical Scot had asked the Mercat Group if we could produce a couple of articles giving a local government perspective. I had submitted a draft paper on the Reform of Local Governance before going to Sweden in mid September . It would need to be heavily updated to respond to the Scottish Government proposals. 

My colleagues produced papers on the context and the need for some principles for local government reform whilst I rewrote my earlier paper, which was published as two articles by the Sceptical Scot. 

Scottish Council Reorganisation-Get it Right Next Time,  and 

Unleashing Scotland's Creativity - Reform for a Realistic Productive Place Based Democracy . 

The articles were published on 14 October and 15 October 2026. The response has been positive, and not only from those in local government. We have been invited to give evidence to a Scottish Parliament Committee.

Antibiotics and/or Fresh Air

 

Loch Ard Trail

There were only 14 of us at the weekly exercise class instead of the usual 20 or so. It was autumn and the first wave of viral infections was wafting in. Three days later, I succumbed and spent a day indoors coughing and wheezing. I thought the answer was to get out and help with the monthly path maintenance in the village, which I had done for the past seven years, though not much in the last year. Hedges were cut, grass was trimmed, and auld acquaintances were renewed; I was reinvigorated by the fresh air, or so I thought. A night of coughing and spluttering and little sleep told me otherwise, and it was Sunday. 

After a repeat in the next 24 hours, I cancelled my exercise class and called the pharmacy. The friendly pharmacist examined me and told me I looked terrible. He prescribed some antibiotics. I gave them a couple of days to kick in and decided on a walk in the Loch Ard Forest, where I had run almost every day for thirty years. I was walking easily and called in on a couple of old neighbours to catch up on life and swap stories about ailments. One had had a stroke, and another was about to have an exploratory operation. One couple had bought electric bikes and downsized their dinghy. Both households were repairing and preparing their houses to stave off the threat of care homes. I was inspired by their fortitude.

But the antibiotics didn't seem to be having much effect; I was still wheezing instead of sleeping. I was stuck in the house being sensible; I had binge-watched the new series of Blue Lights, and even tuned into Celebrity Traitors, not really my thing, but the way they edited Stac Polly, 55 miles away, into the episodes proved that the editors were traitors. The next day I went to watch Gregor run in the Trossachs Half Marathon. I enjoyed the walk along the River Forth to Lemmahamish Pool near the start and finish of the race; a route I had run every Sunday morning for many years. 

Gregor was leading the race after two kilometres but took the wrong turn onto the Ultra event route by mistake and had to loop back to the start, adding an extra 3.5 kilometres. He was at the back of the field. He decided to make it a training run and to see how many of the field he could catch up with. At the finish, the organiser expected the winner to finish in one hour 22 minutes; the route of the trail had changed since Gregor had won it a couple of years ago in one hour 16 minutes and now included 300 metres of climbing. The first runner arrived in one hour 24 minutes; Gregor finished 5 minutes later.  Allowing the extra 3.5 kilometres at an even pace, this would have given him a time of one hour 16 minutes. He elected not to go through the finish line; he said it was his mistake and just wanted to do his warm-down.

The next day,  I spent two hours clearing the burn of rubbish, a stone dam and dismantling a beaver dam that had been built by local children using branches that had been dumped on the slopes by a local landscape contractor.  I had finally eliminated all the Japanese Knotweed on my side of the burn and was preparing the banks to plant some meadow grass. Gregor came round to watch Liverpool v Manchester City (0-3); the weekend was ruined, and I coughed the night away. I went to the exercise class the next day; my cold had stopped, so had the cough, and the course of antibiotics was complete.  I was feeling better; the antibiotics and/or fresh air had worked. Perhaps I should focus on the latter.

Fungi

Reflections with Friends

Mouth Of Loch Ard

Trail along the River Forth

Lemmahamish Pool

Top Ten Cities

Aileen's Favourite City

As a baby boomer, I have given up buying newspapers; they are ridiculously expensive compared to an annual online subscription. My parsimony is no surprise, as recent studies have found baby boomers to be the most frugal generation, having grown up during rationing and the waste-nothing years of the 1950s. We are also less likely, according to research using data from the UK Biobank, to suffer type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure because of sugar rationing during our early years.  Apparently, this also leads to less anxiety. This may explain why we challenged authority and rebelled against conventions in the 1960s, changing tastes in music, fashion, and moral codes. Who would have thought that the Swinging Sixties resulted from taking less sugar!

I now read the paper in bed when I wake up without having to go to the shop. The downside is that online newspapers are very formulaic, and they tend to post articles about the top ten of everything, from best mince pies to Donna Summer's best record; it's Hot Stuff. Presumably, it is cheaper to get some influencer to provide a personal top ten; this enables the online newspapers to bulk up without the need for expensive journalism. 

I must have been affected by this populist trend, and when I was in Stockholm, I asked myself: would Stockholm make one of the top ten cities I have visited? It had some of the qualifications: a capital city, fine buildings and public realm, museums,  a significant history, an excellent public transport system and was very walkable with pedestrianised streets, EV vehicles and lots of green spaces, and it was built on an archipelago of islands that led to the Baltic. 

I made a long list of 20 cities and then began paring them down to my top ten. Ranking them is a different matter; it would take forever with so many factors to weigh up, so they are listed alphabetically. I have made solo trips to Istanbul and Stockholm in the past eighteen months and selected both. The others, apart from Sydney and Kuala Lumpur, were all with Aileen. She had a more discerning taste than I and, if asked to rank them, would have said Venice every time.

Hong Kong          Waterfront location, density of development, diversity

Istanbul               Seaboard location. Bosphorus, Size, Mosques, Ferries, Diversity

Kuala Lumpur    Food, Architecture, Multicultural, Green Space

Paris                     History, Planning, the Seine River, Walkability, Cafes, Art and Museums 

Rome                    Ancient History, Buildings, Food, Walkability, Vatican, Vibes

San Francisco      Honeymoon, The Bay, Hills, Green Space, Architecture, Laid-back, Food

Stockholm           Archipelago, Buildings, Culture, Green Space, Public Transport, Friendliness

Sydney                 Harbour, Bridge, Laid-back, Outdoor Living, Beaches

Vienna                  History, Culture, Palaces, Art, Cafes, Public Transport

Venice                  Car-free, Canals, Walkability, Architecture, St. Mark's Square

And the ones that just failed to make the cut were:

Berlin, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Krakow, Madrid, New York, Seville, Vancouver            

Saying Farewell to Venice, 2019

Stockholm

In the Royal Palace

 Stockholm, 17 - 21 September 2026

As the 16-carriage express train pulled into Stockholm station around 4 pm, my phone buzzed with news that the Social Democrats and their potential partner parties had won a 3-seat majority in the General Election. Eureka, the Swedish Democrats, an extremist nationalist party, would be excluded from the next government. The journey from Goteborg had taken three and a quarter hours, through a landscape of forests and lakes with the occasional settlement, usually hosting more industrial buildings than houses. I stood outside the station and got my bearings; my hotel in the heart of Norrmalm was about a mile north and uphill from the station. I decided to walk to soak up the vibes of Sweden's capital city, with its array of impressive buildings, green spaces, and a pedestrian- and cycle-friendly urban realm.

The hotel was modern, with a large corner room on the top floor. Very Swedish, with all amenities available, and the receptionist gave me recommendations for good nearby restaurants. An hour or so was spent exploring the neighbourhood before selecting an Italian restaurant. The waitress was Palestinian and had settled into Swedish life with ease and gratitude. It appeared that Stockholm was a well-integrated cosmopolitan city, although my Swedish novel bought in Goteborg and partly read on the train suggested a darker side. The next few days had to be planned taking into account the weather forecasts, which were for mellow autumnal days with occasional showers.

A three-day ticket for the metro and buses for £16 and provided freedom across the city. First up was Gamla stan, the heart of the city, an island wedged into the waters between Norrmalm and Södermalm. The Royal Palace, Cathedral, and Nobel Museum were there, along with the panoply of attractions that gravitate around these magnets of global tourism. It was still early, and the streets were quiet. I admired the patterns of the cobbled streets and felt my way towards Stortoget, the square adjacent to the Nobel Museum. I entered the museum when it opened, and a guide was assigned to the first group of visitors. It is not a large museum, and the talk she gave was so much more revealing than I could have achieved by pottering round in my usual style of sampling whatever attracted my attention.

Alfred Nobel was a chemist and linguist whose wealth arose from the invention of dynamite and gelignite. He became the owner of Bofors, a steel producer that he transformed into an armament manufacturer. His wealth came from inventing ways to kill people; this reputation rankled with him, leading him to bequeath his considerable estate to more noble causes. Five prizes were to be given annually to eminent people of any nationality in the fields of physics, chemistry, medical science, or physiology, and for literary work. His final Prize was for the furtherance of international fraternity or Peace and was to be managed by the Norwegian Parliament, which would nominate five independent judges. This was to ensure that Sweden would not be seen to be influencing the decision. I was greatly moved by the tour and spent the next half hour in the cathedral, seated on a bench and reflecting.

A visit to the nearby Palace was tempting but there is a limit to how much culture can be observed in a day. I walked down to the harbour areas and booked a boat trip to the archipelago for Sunday. And then sauntered along some of the busy pedestrianised shopping streets, and had a late lunch in the dining pod of a cafe that spilt out into the road. I took the Metro to one of the coastal stops where a walk along the seafront to a large park looked inviting. The weather was changing, and I was confronted by docklands, dark clouds and a longish walk to the nearby parkland. It was time to rest my feet having already walked miles, so back to the hotel to read my novel and watch some news on TV.

The next day began with disappointment; I had read that there were tours around the Parliament and made that my first objective for the day. The guard on gate duty told me that there were no tours when the Parliament was not sitting and that in Sweden it took weeks before the next government was agreed following an election. The Royal Palace was close by, and the posters in the square outside made it look appealing. It is a monstrous building that could hold Buckingham Palace in its basement, where the crown jewels were kept with a collection of swords and crowns that belied the modest lifestyle of the Royals. King Carl XVI Gustaf and his wife Sylvia had been married on my birthday, 50 years ago, after he became King in 1973. He was stripped of Executive powers in 1974, and from the photographic exhibition, they seemed to lead a very normal life, despite the history and opulence of the palaces and crown lands, which are managed by the Swedish Royal Court. 

Meetings of the Parliament take place in the Palace several times a year, and receptions for visiting heads of state are held in the Palace. There was a sumptuous gallery based on the Palace of Versailles and a reception room adorned with furniture, clocks, and display cabinets with extravagant uniforms that were probably even more expensive to make than if they had been sold by Fjällräven.

This made me think it was time to visit one of the large parks that surround Stockholm. I headed by Metro and then bus to Hagaparken, a Royal National City Park founded by Gustav III. There is a large lake that provides a 12-kilometre path that would have made a perfect run a couple of years ago. The University of Stockholm is located on the other side of the lake. A late lunch in a massive tented structure provided a rest before a splendid walk alongside the Lake; the park is home to many royal palaces and follies. Once again, the rain clouds were gathering, so a return to the hotel before some heavy rain that meant not going out. 

Sunday was an early start to catch a boat from the quay at Strandvagen through the vast archipelago. The boat made rapid progress, slipping past dozens of islands, most of which had jetties and boathouses for islanders. Some islands had small beach huts, some larger dwellings with boathouses for larger craft. After an hour and forty minutes, we arrived at the island of Grinda, where we had 4 hours to explore an unspoilt island before catching the return boat. The island was lush with oak, pine, and birch trees, and clearings for sheep and cattle. Unfortunately, it was out of season, and none of the three cafes was open, and the holiday cabins were all closed at the end of the season. Two of the clearings were reserved for campers, and at the season's end there were a few tents and groups of campers were barbecuing lunch. The walks were splendid, particularly those that followed the coastline as they snaked around through the trees and pillows of granite.

I had circumnavigated the island after 3 hours and had chats with campers, islanders and fellow tourists. With an hour to kill, I pitched up on the verandah of one of the closed cafes and read my book. It was a shortish walk back to the jetty; the heavens opened, and the forty or so visitors squeezed into a large wooden shelter to await the boat for the return trip. The day had been a wonderful escape from the city; it had that end-of-season feeling, and I would be travelling home the next day. In the evening I rewarded myself with a return visit to the nearby Italian restaurant for some prawn linguine and a glass of wine,

Monday breakfast was another chance to enjoy fresh fruit, muesli and yoghurt, pancakes with raspberry jam and excellent coffee before grabbing some fruit for the return journey. I packed and caught a metro down to the station to stash my small suitcase in left luggage and free myself for a final lap of the city centre. The goods on display at the department stores were high quality and reasonably priced, but I had no space. The furniture was particularly appealing, making IKEA look very ordinary. By noon, I was weary and found a bench in a square opposite the Parliament Building to read for forty-five minutes before returning to the station for a snack and to reclaim my luggage before catching the train to Goteborg.

The comfortable train with excellent spacious seats and lots of legroom gave me time to finish my book before I was joined by a Swedish Scientist for the last hour. We had a long conversation about Swedish life and culture, Scotland and world events. He was positive about Goteborg but had a huge resentment about the use of electric scooters in the cities. They were a danger to pedestrians, a bit like the fast food electric bikes that travel at speed in Glasgow's supposed pedestrianised streets. I returned to the bookshop where I had bought my novel on the first day and thanked the assistant for recommending it. I had, unusually, managed to read 537 pages, and it had helped me understand some of the Swedish cultural problems, although being a crime novel, it seemed a lot darker than the easy-going vibe that had been the undercurrent of my visit. 

The bus to the airport was an easy 25-minute trip, but at the airport there was news that an air traffic control glitch at Prestwick meant the return flight would be delayed by a couple of hours and not be departing until after midnight. Fortunately, Goteborg Airport is a well-designed, clean airport with ample seating and numerous modest cafes. Getting through customs and passport control was a cinch. 

Unlike the arrival at Edinburgh, where we had to wait for a bus to take the passengers from the landing stand to the other end of the airport. We had to climb four levels of steps and walk about 600 metres to the Passport Control, where the queue at 1:30am took 15 minutes. About one in four passengers, including myself, were sent to a manually controlled gate because the passport readers were unable to detect our bleary-eyed faces from the passports. Then another 10-minute wait for the luggage to arrive before the half-a -kilometre walk to the airport shuttle bus, which surprisingly arrived in 5 minutes and took us to the car parks. It had taken 1 hour and ten minutes from landing to getting to the car. Edinburgh Airport never fails to disappoint. Take me back to Sweden.

Church at Odenplan

Royal Apartments

Crown of King Karl XIII

Gamla stan

Cathedral

Stortoget

Nobel Museum at Stortorget

Perfectly laid cobbles everywhere

Hagaparkan lunch stop

Hagaparkan Lake

Royal Palace

Strandvagen

Archipelago Trip

Island summer huts

Island residencies 

Grinda

Perimeter path on Grinda

Grinda

Grinda beach

Grinda Trails

Leaving Grinda

Djurgarden Fun Fair

Baltic Ferry

Sweden and Göteborg

Lunch at a Haga Cafe

I grew up with fantasies about countries from watching films, TV series, listening to radio, and reading encyclopedias. They always fascinated me. America had everything: scenery, modern inventions that everyone seemed to have, red indians and lots of fun things to do. Our family Doctor was Jewish and regaled us with tales of the kibbutz, which reshaped collectivism and drew in young people from all over the world, an international outlook with a cooperative way of living. Russia was the biggest country, with immense resources, amazing technologies that took them into space, and they topped the medal tables in the Olympic Games. And Sweden was awash with ideas, talented people like Alfred Nobel and innovative products that belied its small size. 

Dismissing these childhood fantasies has happened gradually. The USA had plundered other countries for raw materials and cheap labour, and had become one of the most unequal societies in the world despite its size and immense wealth. Israel had forsaken its role as a model for international collectivism and had become a belligerent and military state. Russia has imploded on itself as it has adopted a totalitarian form of capitalism and aggression towards Europe. 

What about Sweden? I had never been there, although I had owned Saabs for 10 years, bought furniture, and admired their commitment to a form of social democracy that made it a wealthy egalitarian country with quality universal health, education and family policies. It encouraged a partnership between the state and businesses with workers' participation. It had a relatively low Gini coefficient, like most Scandinavian countries, but that has risen in the past decade in parallel with its output of Scandi Noir novels, TV series, and films. 

I had not travelled abroad for 15 months, and when I spotted low-cost flights to Göteborg from Edinburgh, I booked a 6-day trip. I would have a couple of days in Göteborg and then travel by train to Stockholm. The early morning 90-minute flight took us over the southern tip of Norway and the northern tip of Denmark at Skagen. The contrast between the commercially driven, crowded, dysfunctional and design disaster that is Edinburgh Airport and the well-designed, efficient operation of Gothenburg Airport was palpable. The one-hour time difference and excellent bus service from the airport meant I was in the centre of Göteborg by 11am. I bought a Swedish novel at a bookshop. I asked the assistant if there were any that weren't crime novels, and she recommended a book that was about juvenile crime. At the hotel, the receptionist gave me a room straight away, although it was still before noon. One of my daughters had always given positive reviews about Göteborg; she was not wrong. 

The buildings in the city centre were substantial and pleasing, as were the 6-storey blocks of well-designed flats that were well served by local shops. The urban design was people-centred with city squares, walkways and cycleways. Trams and electric buses were plying through the wide boulevards, planted with trees and interlaced with canals. All embellished with stylish and robust street furniture. The pavements and roads were mainly granite and cobble sets that were impeccably maintained. 

There were no empty shops, and bicycles and scooters nipped through the streets at a pace that was competitive with car travel. The majority of cars were electric. I twisted my way through the massive Nordstan shopping centre and found an information pop-up stall on a nearby square where two helpful guides gave me their recommendations of what to visit in the city. This place was seriously sustainable, and the food was good, as I discovered when I dropped into a cafe in Haga, a city centre suburb that was alive with locals and autumnal tourists. The German couple sitting next to me at a large table were equally impressed; their young daughter wanted to practice her English with me.

Next up was a climb to Skansen Kronan, a high point that gave a bird's-eye view of the city. As my step count mounted, I decided to visit the Göteborg Art Museum for some respite. I trekked past the University, through busy central-area suburbs dotted with institutional buildings like libraries and galleries. I had wanted to see some Scandi modernism, but was also intrigued by the museum's collection of impressionist paintings. I headed for the top floor and found Van Goghs and Picassos amongst the Swedish Modernists. I was feeling exhausted as I tramped back to my hotel in the centre on a footpath running alongside the river in one of the many parks. I was too tired after a 4am start and 23,000 steps to be bothered going out, so I read my novel and had a snack in the hotel before an early night.

I spent the next morning visiting the parts of the city centre that I had not happened upon the day before. The market building had local produce to activate my taste buds. I walked along the canals and visited some shops in the extensive range of retail establishments that were well curated and full of well-designed items. I could have done my Christmas shopping; the quality of items was better, but prices were not much different from the UK. However, the cost of additional luggage on Ryanair would have raised my blood pressure; the cost of my seat alone had been more expensive than the flights, and the seats were less comfortable than a park bench. My train to Stockholm left at 12:30pm. Göteborg had whetted my appetite for Stockholm and would be worth a return; train and bus journeys to Oslo were available and took about the same time as getting to Stockholm, about three and a quarter hours. Oh, and there were lots of Volvos.

Kronhuset, Goteborg's oldest building

Central Canal

Goteborg Stadsmuseum

Goteborg Cranes

View from Skansen Kronan

Fish Market and dealers

In the Market

Albert Edelfelt - At Sea

Van Gogh - Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy

Picasso - The Straw Hat