Street life - The silly season

A Californian setting sun, I am told, is that much more beautiful because of the visible pollution in the air - it produces a haze which enhances the hues at sunset, softening the silhouettes of the ubiquitous palms running along the coastline... I did not think much about the pollution as I watched the ball of fire extinguish itself in the Pacific Ocean, I easily overlooked the industrial monstrosities close to Huntington beach and Manhattan beach while driving along the shore - it's easy to ignore everyone and everything when summer rolls in, wouldn't you say?

I hope that in summer you all become as obtuse and as childish as me, kicking off tight shoes and long trousers, enjoying the sensation of salt on your scalp (even though many of you do not wet your hair in summer because of 'the blow-dry' - which I think is one of the greatest comedies in my summer life), rubbing the sand off burnt cheeks - thinking, ah thank God it's summer, lovely, lovely summer (and various other boggling thoughts).

Californian sunsets are a fast-fading memory; though I continue to bask in the memories of my recent trip there, I am no longer in the land of dreamers and wasters. I am still, however, bathed in solljus, but now I am under a very different sun - a sol that lingers in the sky until 11 p.m. and soon rises back up at 4 a.m., never setting in the northernmost part of this country - this is the sun of solig Sverige!

The beaches and promenades are full: the shorts are short; the legs are brown; the people are conversing wildly... cool teenagers hang around in clusters, listening to Swedish pop from tinny-sounding stereos, elderly ladies nibble on herring down by the boat marina, gossiping about their daughters' lazy husbands... Down on the sands of the rather common playa de Lomma beach, a plethora of blonde children walk out in the shallow water and peck with small fists into the sands, they dawdle, standing on one leg like seabirds, looking out into nothing... golden girls are tanning madly as pasty boys walk up and down the white sands, bare-chested and raw pink, eyeing up the girls, showing off their incredible athletic skills, where a mean dribble quickly turns into a show-stopping handstand. This time, I am the turista and all these ice cream eating blondes have not travelled far from home.

It is an overwhelming experience of life around Oresund, or rather, The Sound, the strait separating the Danish island of Zealand from Skåne, the southern Swedish province. A congregation of seagulls flock in and rip open a plastic box of forgotten grapes, across the calm waters the nuclear energy plant sits quiet and heavy, the Sound Bridge - whose hybrid name is Øresundsbron, shimmers like a coronet behind thick glass, and as I enter into the water for a swim the seawater is efficiently cold and refreshing in a more exotic way.

But now I am seated indoors for most of the day; busy with preparations for this year's Kinemastik Short Film Festival, looking out of the window only when my curiosity is piqued by a murder of crows cawing or the cathedral bells clanging. So silent and peaceful and sunny is this small town I find myself in, so deliciously dull and safe, so very different from the sinister nights of Los Angeles where it was ghettobirds circling overhead, where the night sky was punctured with a thousand shimmering stabs of light, shattered by the constant sound of emergency, urgency and surveillance.

Now the streets are silent once more, bicycles rattle gently over the cobblestones, the people linger, reluctant to return indoors when it is so warm and light outside. Through the window the sound of a band can be heard playing in Stortorget; I am reminded of my grandfather's band march records... it is exquisitely fuddy-duddy, and yet it is timeless, the distinct summer sound of a live band, before the advent of rock 'n' roll, telling me that I will soon be home under the scorching sun, swimming all day, eating candyfloss and drinking warm Kinnie all night, as the sweaty banda, always slightly stunata, plays for us all as we celebrate the silliness of summer.