Travellers’ Tales- Sweden

My first few years of work after my MSc were spend hopping from contract to contract. In the early 1980’s I was working at Northwick Park Hospital, on the cusp of Wembley and Harrow. When my boss, Charles Rossiter, landed a Prof’s job at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he asked if I would like to move with him, as he had a two year post vacant there. I answered that if I was going to have yet another temporary contract, I would prefer it to be overseas.

‘Good idea,’ said Charles, a good sport, ‘Why don’t you write to Nick Day?’

Nick Day, that best of men, was head of Biostatistics and Field Studies at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, and had been at university with Charles. I duly wrote to him and it changed the direction of my life irrevocably. He hired me first as a temporary consultant to work in Singapore for most of 1985, and then for three months in Sweden in 1986. Later, he moved to Cambridge, where I worked in his unit for fourteen years, during which time my work took me all over the world.

Some of my travelling coincided with momentous events. I was in Washington at the time of Bill Clinton’s re-election to the presidency, and in Moscow at the time of the putsch, when Gorbachёv was dismissed. However, rather smaller events tend to stick in my mind.

I may have something to say about the more exotic or newsworthy places in a later piece, but for now, let’s return to Sweden. The place I was sent to in 1986 was Falun, a town of some thirty-odd thousand souls. When I got off the train in this sleepy little town in June 1986, and followed the signs for ‘Sjukhus’, assuming correctly that it meant hospital, I had no idea that my work here would give me a career in cancer epidemiology.

That first summer I spent in Falun was rather lonely. The hospital provided me with a studio flat, in a block in which it seemed to me that three quarters of the flats were unoccupied. We started work before eight and ended between four and five. Social life was family life in those days in small-town Sweden, so as a single man, my evenings tended to be long and empty.  There were two television channels, both of which closed down at around 11.30 pm, and most of the programmes were understandably in Swedish. I found myself hurrying home with childish excitement after work to see the most banal American policiers or unfunny sit-coms if they were to be in English with Swedish subtitles rather than dubbed. Barney Miller, Newhart, Cannon.

Thirty-five years later, I still work with the colleague I was sent to help, a brilliant and flamboyant Hungarian radiologist called Laszlo, who had been head-hunted by the Swedes to lead their largest breast cancer screening trial. I have been back to Sweden to work with him fifty or sixty times since then.

One memorable visit was to a major conference about breast cancer screening, in Stockholm in 1989. I boarded an early afternoon flight at Heathrow, and we took off without incident. We were over the North Sea when the pilot announced that we would have to return to Heathrow as an electrical fault had been detected. So the plane turned round and coming back, we actually flew right over the centre of London, with magnificent views on this clear day, of the Thames, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace and so on. However, as we were admiring these views, the pilot announced that we would have to fly round in a queue as the control tower at Heathrow had been evacuated due to a bomb scare. The passengers, including (especially) myself, started to look around nervously at each other. Then the plane lurched a little and a stewardess fell on the floor. At this point the bells of hell really started to ring in my head. Cabin crew are well trained. They don’t fall. I was not the only one gripping the seat arm like a vice as we circled London.

Then we were allowed to land, much to everyone’s relief. I presumed we would disembark, but this was not to be the case. Some chaps in white boiler suits got on, buggered about for half an hour, and then the pilot announced, ‘The electrical fault seems to have righted itself, so we will be taking off on our way to Stockholm Arlanda in a few minutes.’

So up we go into the sky again IN THE SAME AIRCRAFT! I was not the only passenger who had failed to be reassured by the electrical fault righting itself. We were all shitting ourselves. The crew had the good sense to have the drinks trolleys on permanent patrol. I had five little bottles of red wine before we got to Stockholm. The Tanzanian lady sitting next to me had six. There were probably Jehovah’s Witnesses being taken off that plane in wheelbarrows. Everyone was plastered. I arrived rather late at the conference.

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On another occasion, much more recently, I had a meeting in Uppsala first thing on Monday morning, so I flew out early Sunday evening, arriving in the centre of Uppsala at about 9.30 on Sunday night. Having lived in Sweden and having visited many times, I should have been prepared for this, but there was nowhere open in Uppsala at that time on a Sunday night where I could have dinner. Fortunately, the bar in my hotel was open. I ordered a beer, and the barman gave me a small bowl of peanuts with it. He looked on in what I can only describe as alarm at the almost orgiastic enthusiasm with which I devoured the peanuts.

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Back to that conference in 1989. The day after my aviation adventure, there was a question and answer session, with all the Swedish breast cancer screening trialists on the stage, chaired by a very patrician English epidemiologist called Tony Miller. During this session, Laszlo mercilessly patronised his Swedish colleagues, chiding them for being ‘negative and Lutheran’, and noting that their trials were still babies but would be very useful when they grew up. This had an effect that I have very seldom seen: it caused several senior Swedish scientists to lose their tempers.

Afterwards, I said to Laszlo, ‘If that had been a conference in Scotland, there would have been a fist-fight on the stage.’

Laszlo cackled, ‘Tony Miller tells to me I am too colourful. I tell to Tony Miller: fuck off.’