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Today was the 6th of June. It was a lovely sunny slightly windy day. We stayed at home and relaxed for most of the time. In the afternoon our daughter and her family, including husband and our two lovely grandchildren came to visit. We had a BBQ, enjoyed the jacuzzi and relaxed.

The 6th of June is a bank holiday in Sweden. This is because it’s the national day. Most shops are closed, and people generally stay at home or meet friends and chill. The 6th of June is also the day when I defended my PhD thesis way back in 1986. That particular day was very interesting, not just because of my PhD thesis but also because of the party we had in the evening and the events that happened there.

My faculty opponent didn’t find much to question about my thesis at least not the content instead he decided to complain a lot about the language. Him being Norwegian and me being British meant that he didn’t have a lot to come with, so the discussion was quite short. After the afternoon’s deliberations, the committee awarded me a pass, leaving everybody happy so that we could go on to the party later in the evening.

My parents had travelled over from Port Sunlight to see the culmination of my “Studies on nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry”, and like most people present, they did not understand much of what was said, but appreciated my achievement.

Academically, the highlight of a post-graduate education is passing the formal defence of the thesis, but in the real world, the highlight is the party held afterwards. At the time, the defendant, me in this case, was expected to finance the party and to provide a suitable bar (it’s called “groggbänk” in Swedish). In preparation for the party, I had persuaded a friend, who commuted on a weekly basis to Finland, to supply me with a steady flow of duty-free booze. By the time of the party, my “groggbänk” was well stocked, as became apparent during the evening (Some, but not too much, artistic license is applied in the remainder of this entry, as the result of hearsay, and more or less vivid reconstructions after the fact).

My opponent, the Norwegian guy, took a liking to my mother, inviting her up to dance several times, which my supervisor proceeded to point out to my father. His response was that she was a big girl and could look after herself. Thereafter he offered said supervisor a whisky from the bar (at my expense, I might add).

All went well during the party, with live music, lots of dancing and general merriment. Some time, close to midnight, somebody pointed out that our new post-doc seemed to be a bit tired. This being the case, we ordered a taxi to take him home. The taxi promptly arrived, and our post-doc was positioned in the passenger seat while we waved goodbye and went back to the party. A few minutes later, I was tapped on the shoulder and found the taxi driver needing my attention. He explained that he had a slight problem in deciphering where our post-doc lived. I followed, along with a few other people out to the taxi to find a happy post-doc in the passenger seat. The taxi driver asked him “Where do you want to go?”

“HOME” was the answer, or rather hoooome! As he was new to the lab nobody was quite sure exactly where he lived. In the end somebody fetched my supervisor, who was still at the bar with my dad, and we got the whole thing sorted out.

Shortly afterwards, I found my dad drinking whisky with my opponent while my supervisor sat talking to my mum. We, Bitte and I, danced away the rest of the night and, as the sun came up above the horizon we went “hooome.” 😊