"Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" with The Beatles

It was twenty years ago today…

Not just the first line of Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper, but also today’s slogan.
Twenty years ago I was woken by my mother who told me that the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, had been murdered.
My responses were (in this order):
* So what, let me sleep.
* My arm hurts
* Fuck. Why have they canceled "Go’morron Sverige" just for that!? (In fact, this response repeated it self through the day when all TV-shows where cancelled)

Some people say it changed Sweden, that it was an end of an era, and that our innocence as a country where completely lost that morning. Well, I guess you might say that I didn’t completely understand the significance of this event…

I also had broken my arm severely two weeks before (it was completely covered in a very, very heavy plaster…this where the eighties…there where no light materials) and I felt (as I still do when I’m sick) very, very sorry for my self and didn’t like that something else stole my pity and cancelled all my TV-shows (I couldn’t do much more than watch TV all day)…

For me Olof Palme was just another politician (and in some ways I guess he still is for me - I know they say he did some good things but it is just to abstract for me to relate to). One of my strangest memories of all times is still when I some weeks after the murder had to witness a "minute of silence" in a class of first graders, and they where all crying and writing poems to Palme ("I miss you!", "I will always remember you" and so on) – a person they hadn’t had the slightest idea existed before he was killed…but they where forced into some sort of national grieving which I’ve never seen ever since in this country.

These where certainly strange times for this country, and we where tumbling around like a newly waked teenager, not knowing where we had our arms or legs.

Well. That said, it is still one of the mornings I remember clearest in my life, and it is still a disgrace for the Swedish police that they haven’t captured the killer (new tips emerge every year the 28th of February…today also) and I guess they never will. Maybe it was Christer Pettersson, maybe it wasn’t. I guess we’ll never know.

At last…something completely different.
Important words of today!

Semla = Semla (dah!) or Cream bun
Fettisdag = "Fattuseday" = Shrove Tuesday
(Thanx F2!)

Keep readin’
Tomorrow’s a new day and a new song.

Song of Today: "Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" with The Beatles