How to make a match

In a shocking bit of news, this evening Mirinda received an email from Beth in Göteborg in which she wrote that our new neighbour had died on Wednesday. That was after the removal truck emptied on Tuesday. Wednesday was when I saw all the cars outside the house. Beth didn’t supply any details, possibly because she didn’t have any.

In not so shocking news, I heard a piece on the World Service this morning which highlighted the fact that Japan is undergoing a sort of ‘marriage ice age.’ Fewer people are getting married which means, of course, in a very conservative country like Japan, there are fewer babies being born. In a shocking statistic, a third of people in Japan, under the age of 40, have never even been in a relationship.

This, in a sort of domino effect, will create an issue in the near future as the economy takes a nosedive because there’s no-one to do the work. And, of course, the ageing population needs someone to look after it.

When the government inquired as to why this was happening, it was found that young, single people had no idea how to find a partner. To help with this issue, the government has set up a dating app in an effort to act as a sort of 21st century matchmaker.

You can see why this has happened. There was the Covid pandemic when children were taught exclusively at home and couldn’t socialise but, bigger than that and so much more pervasive, there’s technology.

I was reminded of this on my walk into Trosa this morning. A group of five – a mum and dad and three teenage boys – were walking towards me. All five had eyes firmly fixed on their phones. None of them noticed anything around them as they walked. None of them communicated with each other. Each one was in their own little world. I imagine that none of them would have seen this.

Could it be that the young in Japan are so used to living inside their technology that they can only socialise in a digital world? Is this the Matrix? Or BTL?

Then, earlier this week, I heard about DreamHack. It’s something I’ve never come across though it’s been going for quite a few years and, of course, I used to test games. It involves a lot of gamers, sitting in a big space, playing games via a local area network (LAN). They each have their own small area with a table top, a chair and somewhere to plug into both power and the LAN.

After reading the rules of DreamHack, it seems that the only sounds are the clattering of keys and the squeaking of chairs as the entire place concentrates on three days of gaming. According to Jason, who told us about DreamHack, some people never leave their chairs for the three days. I can only assume the room smells a bit rank by the end of it all.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit because there are lots of other activities at DreamHack which involves getting up and moving around and, I suppose, talking to strangers. However, in terms of the overall event, can anyone not see any sort of causal link?

Anyway, none of that is a problem for me. And, actually, I talked to quite a few people today while walking the girls into Trosa. Obviously not the five people on their devices but there was the man with the Westie, the woman with the two small children, the couple with the Bassett hound and the woman on the check-out at the Systemet.

The woman on the check-out at the Systemet was possibly my favourite interaction of the morning as she showed me the newest addition to the shop. By the tills, they have installed a special walking stick holder for patrons with mobility issues. And they work a treat.

As I said to the woman on the check-out, this was why the Systemet was my favourite shop. She laughed. Obviously. I also asked her what she’d done to her hair because it looked lovely. She shrugged and said she’d washed it. I replied that was clearly why. She laughed at that too.

The woman with the two kids was in Visthuset and was fussing over the girls, saying how cute and fluffy they were. I told her about how Emma was generally mistaken for a teddy bear and poor Freya, a little lamb. She, and the kids with her, agreed.

This wasn’t the only interaction that involved the dogs. The man with a Westie explained that his dog always had a go at other dogs that were bigger than him but absolutely loved having a social sniff with dogs his own size. He and the girls spent some time getting to know each other.

In the meanwhilst, Mirinda was in Stockholm attending Swedish class. Because of our general lack of winter tyres, she drove up to the Centrum and caught the bus to the station rather than drive all the way over to Vagnhärad.

In more local development news, the new deck outside La Aduana appears to be finished though the fence has been completely removed and the decking on the green space at the harbour has been started. It is sitting on the concrete squares I photographed a few weeks ago.

You can just see the beginnings of the decking in the middle distance.

As far as the weather was concerned, the day was beautifully blue, though rather cold.