So, I have a free day in Stockholm to explore all by myself, which is pretty sweet. I am in Stockholm for a sales meeting and the flight home last night was over £500 and tonight the same flight is less than £150. Thanks British Airways. Any way it gives me a day to explore and since I am not being hosted I have just myself to look after. It’s great when you come to another country and your hosts go out of their way to make sure everything is fine for you but sometimes it’s nice to go out on your own and not have someone worrying that everything is good.

The day started well as I slept till 08:25 and had a long and late breakfast. My only complaint about Sweden is the coffee, there’s no Costa’s, Starbucks et all to show them how it is done and the Swedish coffee is very strong. Can I have some hot water please? Still it fortifies you for the day ahead. I wandered out onto the quay to catch the water taxi over to Grona Lund where I headed off on foot to the Vasa Museum where they have the 17th century ship the Vasa in a fancy shed all preserved and looking spick and span. How do they have a ship built in 1660’s to show everyone you might ask and I did too? Well, it set off on it’s maiden voyage, sailed off from the quayside and after 1300 meters it keeled over and sank.

Red faces all round not least for the designer and the shipyard owners, the Admiral and finally the King. It seems that in their hurry to design and build the worlds biggest ship they screwed up the design. It was too narrow, had too little ballast and was carrying too many cannons. It was lucky to have sailed so far. A further complication was they added an extra gundeck which was too low in the ship and just above the just the waterline. One little keel over and the water rushed in through the gun-ports and next thing the biggest ship in the Swedish navy was at the bottom of Stockholm harbour. Of the 150 men and two women on board about 30 died and the rest managed to reach the shore.

In the ensuing Court of Enquiry they decided that the ship builder was guilty of poor design, the Admiral was guilty of ignoring advice that that the ship was top heavy. There was no censure of the King who insisted that the ship carried 72 cannon. Kings clearly do not make egotistical choices when ordering ships from their shipyards.

I took a walk round the center and on the walk back to my hotel, where I had left my bags; I dipped into Fotografiska the Stockholm photographic gallery. Now I have a lot of out of focus and badly composed photographs and I usually delete them. I should of course offer them for publication and become a renowned photographer. I would be feted for my vision and inspiration. I would be paid loads of money and be invited to symposia around the world. That’s just me, but I like my photos in galleries to show something, a view I have not seen, a well composed portrait or a great view of a building that I could not possibly be able to photo. There is enough of my photos round here for you to see, but that’s what I want from an exhibition. An out of focus photo is just that an out of focus photo. It is not art; it is not clever, it is just out of focus.

I arrived at Arlanda airport just in time to catch the earlier flight at 18:10 and the guy at the bag drop asked if I was on the earlier flight. I said no but it would be great if I could change to that flight so I would arrive home earlier. No chance. So my flight is delayed and the take off is scheduled for 21:35 rather than 21:10 and we have an announcement, “We are sorry for the delay to the departure of your flight which is due to the late arrival of the incoming flight”. It’s completely disregards the responsibility of the airline, “Would that be the BA flight which you have full control over then? It is down to you to make sure the airplane arrives on time.”

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