The hell you have to run in the Lill-Jan's forest
to win the Roslags-race.
Choosing your own way.


I had hired a carpenter to fit the attic in my country cottage in Österlen, the south-east part of Scania in southern Sweden. I, as well as the carpenter, had been washed out into the countryside by the ”green” wave that swept through Sweden in the seventies. He came from Stockholm. I came from Malmoe.
He was a hell of a storyteller and I havn´t met the like of him at any time neither before nor after. Every break in the job resulted in a new story. Most of the stories were true, the rest might well have happened, who could say.
Working together in the attic I learnt a lot from him that has been useful to me ever since. Like dealing with problems in the order they appear. I was mounting a strip of wood in the ceiling and asked him how I should tackle the staircase on the other wall, when I came to it. He lowered his hammer and looked solemnly at me. "Let´s take the problems in the order they appear,” he said. ”You are not there yet!”
He told me how he had acquired this attitude to the future. It was when he was building a summer cottage for a bank director on a little skerry in the archipelago. Every piece of construction material had to be ferried over there. One morning when he went down to the beach the boatman had already loaded the dinghy full with sacks of cement. It was only a few centimeters from the water to the gunwale. “I made my objections clear, said he, given that the slightest wave would sink the dinghy.” “Let´s take the problems in the order they appear” I told him. “Let go!”

The carpenter had a illustrious group of friends. One of them was a born liar and like many of his kind the lie was the breath of life for him, necessary for him to survive, mentally as well as physically. Nevertheless he belonged to the chivalrous species so widows, children and destitutes could feel safe.
Let´s call him Sigge.
Sigge was mainly attracted by companies and authorities. That way no single person was personally affected. After all he had a rather good heart.

In the beginning of the sixties a race for motorboats was arranged, the Roslags race, which is still running every summer. You start in Stockholm and finish in Öregrund. It´s a long and rough race.
A couple of Sigge´s friends intended to take part. They would spend hours talking about how tough the race was, how you needed muscles and must be extremely fit to have the sligthest chance of winning. ”They’re talking bullshit,” thought Sigge, when they had to go for a run in the Lill-Jan's forest.
As it happened Sigge had conveniently been let out from the prison around midsummer that year. He longed for a summer of freedom. He had no job, but with his natural wiliness the prospects of supporting himself were innumerable.
Sometimes he was engaged by an old friend who was going straight after a spell in the slammer and had a fishmonger´s shop in the Hötorg market in Stockholm. Once in a while there was too much fish left when it came to closing-time. Fish that hardly could stand another day.
Sigge came to the rescue. With his torrent of words he could sell more stale fish in one hour than anyone could sell fresh in one day. The women almost trampled each other down in their eagerness to buy. When the fish was sold out Sigge easily could have sold the boxes the fish came in, even the refrigerator, actually he could have torn down the tiles from the walls and charged double for them.
Can we agree upon the fact that he had a more or less extraordinary ability to build confidence and to convince, of which the former is a prerequisite for the latter. Besides he was good-looking, something that won´t make the selling process harder.

It might well have been that it was in one of the tabloids that was used as wrapping-paper for the fish that he saw an ad, I would’nt like to say. All the same, the ad was in the Evening Paper. ‘Reporter to summer deputy editor required.’ Sigge didn’t need to think for more than a second. He jumped at it at once.
This chance is too good to be true, he thought as he dashed to the editorial office. In his mind´s eye he could see the outlines of a plan. And the start of the Roslags race was only some weeks away. Of course he had experience from working as a reporter for a newspaper, he told the chief editor, but unfortunately his portfolio had been destroyed in a recent fire in his summer cottage. But what the heck, the most important thing is what´s ahead of us, isn´t it” he enthused . Yes indeed, the editor agreed.
Sigge had ideas. Not only did he convince himself that he was well qualified for the job, he managed to convince the editor too. What really won the editor over was Sigge´s plans of what he wanted to do during his temporary job. Not only had he a most likable reporter in front of him, he had a reporter with an idea. The best thing to do thought the editor was to employ him immediately before he goes to another newspaper. The idea was to do a series of articles on the archipelago that surrounds Stockholm. It was to be about the domiciled population versus the temporary one during the summer, a tense situation that you can find all over the world. The tension in the Stockholm archipelago is said to be rather high.
Sigge was eager for his reporter´s pass. There was no time was to loose.
With the fresh pass in his hand he rushed into the biggest retailer of motorboats. “I like to tell you about a series of forthcoming articles, he said, and told them about his proposals. His goal was to get the retailer to promise him a hell of a boat with an extra powerful motor. In return he promised that the boat would be seen on every picture in every article and the company logo on the boat could be as big and as bold as they wanted it.
Of course they bought the idea. Entirely. What a great marketing! Miss a chance like this, free advertising. Fantastic, they thought, give him what he wants. Now I have got the boat, thought Sigge.
The next problem to solve was navigation. However, Sigge´s nautical experience was very thin. He had gained it as a passenger on the little ferries sloping around on the Stockholm waterways, not exactly the ideal experience for a task that awaited him. An experienced navigator was absolutely necessary.

Who knows the Stockholm archipelago better than a captain from the Waxholm company, the company that for ages had served the islands, he thought. No sooner said than done. He trotted to the company´s revered headquarters. ”Let me explain,” he said with a certain charm and presented an idea about a series of articles about old captains.
At first they were sceptical but then they realised that it could be good PR for the company that had a somewhat mangled reputation after innumerable incidents. So they let him into the archives giving him access to information on all of their captains - the living, the retired, and the dead ones.
Sigge made a list of those still living but not too old. Then he visited them, one after another. ”This is the idea,” he declared with his idomitable enthusiam and told them that he needed an experienced captain for an extended trip in the archipelago, a captain with all the reefs and skerries skills as a speciality. That it was the Roslags race he mentioned more or less incidentally, scared that talk of the race might harm his proposal.
It wasn´t long before he had found his captain. The thought of a refreshing sea trip was too temptating for the captain in his unaired and dull apartment. The assignment was settled. Time and place was decided.
Now I have a boat as well as a captain, thought Sigge.

Then came the day of the race. The friends, the ones that had run in the Lill-Jan´s forest, didn´t believe their eyes when they saw Sigge and his captain. The captain was dressed in an impeccable uniform, monocle and newly waxed moustache. Sigge in a blazer that looked is if he had slept in it, a vinyl-coated little hat and a nylon skirt tigthend over his belly. They were going to compete in the Roslag´s race? That must be The Joke of the Year.
The race started. The boats roared away with the water furiously spraying around their bows. It took some time before Sigge found all the controls and switches and his friends from Lill-Jan´s forest disappeared in the distance. He did his best to follow in their wake. So far navigation was no problem. He could spot them in the haze.The sunshine was bright in Stockholm, but the fog was dense in Vaxholm, halfway to the finishing line. One boat after another had to slow down. They were almost at a crawl. Visibility was close to zero. This was long before GPS-transmittors and electronic marine charts made it possible to navigate in fog.
Sigge too slowed down. “Go for heaven´s sake, go!” the old captain shouted. When Sigge turned around he only saw the back of the captain. The captain was looking astern!

Decades of trips in the archipelago had impressed everything in the captain´s brain. When he now, despite the fog, got an inkling of details from the shores they passed he knew exactly what it looked like in front of the boat. His head was like a radar. Svensson´s jetty, steer aport. Olsson´s flagpole, steer astarboard.
Sigge had written port on his left hand and starboard on his right with a ball pen, something that had amused the Lill-Jan´s boys a lot. He did what his captain commanded and pull the throttle.”Faster!” the captain yelled. He felt happy in the salty air with memories from times past. It was long since he enjoyed himself so much.
Finally the V8-engine roared at top speed. The boats they passed seemed to be lying still, as if they were at anchor. Then they didn´t see anymore boats. They were ahead. They were leading the complete field. At the entrance of The Väddö canal they were leading by half-an-hour, an eternity in a race like this. Then the motor stopped and they had to give up.
Ah what the hell, it doesn’t matter too much, thought Sigge.
They didn´t win. But they could have.
For Sigge the most important thing to prove was that you don´t have to run in the Lill-Jan´s forest to win the Roslags race.
The most important thing I learnt from the story was that you don´t have to do as everyone else does, and that you often have greater success if you don´t.


© 2004 T5 Design&Kommunikation AB