Courses à la Suèdois;

or

Only Sweden has Swedish courses

A while ago I saw my old friend from student days. Well, I saw his car first, of course. The Porsche. He was on his way from his villa on the Riviera, bound for Brussels.

I've known him since he was called T. H. Andersson, for which reason - according to the kind of logic which rules in classrooms - he was never called anything other than 'the Tea-Bag'. After the T and the H in T. H. Andersson.

He was always one step ahead. He was for example, the first to buy a hat of Bogart model. Even in his school days he had a large income from those stencils he sold for next week's tests. He fished them up from the waste basket in some way in the teacher's copying room. He put the money to use at the Grand Hotel, long before most of us had even started to squeeze our first blackheads.

Now you could read on his visiting card "Consul T H Adlesmyg". "Well, it's really supposed to say 'consultant', but they heard wrong in Hong-Kong. They print cards cheap there", he informed me. He was a super-consultant for consultants, though just at the moment it was courses he was busy with. He ran a whole chain of courses throughout Sweden's mountain hotels, renovated castles and stately homes. There local authorities and companies paid the equivalent of 300-900 euros per weekend per person so that their employees could learn all kinds of useful things, like for example to touch one another.

One time it was therapy courses, not only normal primal therapy and gestalt therapy but everything from collective, encounter-, sex-, African self-presentation-, rebirthing-, insect-, psycho-, conversation-, Rosen-, chiatsu-, tabu-, occupational- and liberation-therapy to good old-fashioned group therapy.

The one who felt best from all this was he himself. The higher the primal scream rose up from the course centres deep in the Swedish forests, the more beautiful Porsche he could park outside his villa in Antibes.

Now he was going to expand, he was going to be the first in Europe to start up "Euro courses". Whatever goes down well in Sweden must go down well in Europe. Only better, according to him. Here there were over 340 million course participants who had not yet found their salvation, a pure gold-mine! 340 million primal screams should surely bear him up to his own skyscraper in Sydney, where he was dreaming of moving.

Now he was going to run a pilot course with a few hand-picked business acquaintances in Brussels, almost one from each country. After that it was just a question of starting up. He was going to run the same programme he'd always done. He'd already had printed visiting-cards in four languages. There was even the fax-number to the Porsche.

No doubt about it, the Tea-Bag really was a natural genius!

But something went wrong. I met him a week later. Pale and not at all in form. On his way to Sweden, as he said in resounding course-Swedish, for "regrouping, rethinking".

The pilot course had been a disaster.

Either there's something wrong with Europe, or else with the course. Nothing worked. Deeply upset, he showed me his papers.

He had started with the usual model A, the softening-up and test questionnaire which normal Swedes think is fun and which everyone answers as they're supposed to. All those who are on their life's first 'get-to-know-yourself course' anyway. Everything that Swedish participants answer is the answer-book. But not what they answered in Brussels, oh no! Just listen.

First question: It's summer. The sun is shining. You are out walking. You come to a forest. What does it look like?

Swedes usually answer something like: Beautiful, fairy-tale forest or green mixed forest, it lies there tempting and cozy for most people.

From their replies, you can read people's attitudes to life, what they hope for from the future. You get it? Those who see a cozy mixed forest approach life in a positive way and aren't afraid of change.

Do you know what the Spaniard answered? "What do you mean, forest?" He comes from Madrid and has never seen a forest.

The Frenchman saw a delicious restaurant beside a little lake, inside there was a fire crackling, a perfectly cooked Rôti de canard lay on the table, a newly-opened Bordeaux stood alongside and in the kitchen Madame was busy whipping together a wonderful soufflé!

What!!! It's enough to make you crazy.

The Italian sat with a wonderful girl on a bench on a terrace overlooking the valley, the birds twittering and the girl smelling warm and physical. He was already into the details of what he was going to do with her when I had to stop him.

The Spaniard , who by now understood what I meant by the word 'forest', answered that he would ask someone for directions so he could find his way out.

The German said he would find out when the forest was open and when it was closed, and then he would see if he could choose himself a Christmas tree and mark it in good time.

The next question was even worse: A path curls through the forest. Do you go: A, on the path; B, straight ahead without looking round; C, freely all around?

Here you should be able to see from the replies what attitude to life the course participants have, if they're adapted to collective existence or if they're dangerous anarchists.

The guy from Paris answered: "I take the car and drive through the forest." What? Have you heard anything like it? There's not a word written here about any car. But he answered that he'd never seen a forest without a road going straight through, why would anyone otherwise drive there? And how would they get home?

The German and the Englishman went on the path. That was obvious. But all the others, the Spaniard , the Italian, they all asked: It surely depends where you want to go? If it's quicker, then I suppose we take a shortcut?

Next question: On the ground you find a key. What do you do with it?

The key, you understand, that's knowledge. Of course you're supposed to pick it up.

No-how! Apart form the German of course, he answered: "I pick it up and hang it in the collection of keys I have in my living room. If it's a duplicate, then I sell it."

The Englishman said he would take it to the nearest Police station. The Frenchman kicked it out of the way, so it wouldn't just lie there and be in the way.

Next question: You see a modest flower, but one which at second glance is beautiful. What do you do with it?

This you see is one of the great key questions. The flower is naturally the Big one, True Love. In Sweden most people answer that they admire the flower for a while, but leave it where it is so others can also enjoy it. In other words, they take care of love, for themselves and for others too. They want to share.

Mamma mia! The Italian put it in his button-hole. Just like that. The German took it, pressed it and put it in his great herbarium so that future generations of his family should be able to enjoy it, he claimed.

The Spaniard asked: How can I see it if it's so little?

Only the Englishman had any sense. He studied the flower and drew it for the little book "Flowers and plants on an ordinary country walk" he was in the process of publishing, following on from his best-seller "Nesting birds in a multi-storey car-park in Brighton".

Next question: You meet a bear. What do you do?

The bear is naturally the great life's crisis, and now you can see how course participants meet the great challenge of their lives.

Swedes usually behave like people, i.e. climb up a tree, they place themselves behind thick trunks, they hide themselves. They avoid the bear but they want to study it a while, learn something from it and then withdraw. Unhurt. Both human and animal.

Do you know what the Frenchman and the Italian answered? "I shoot the bear. Immediately."

The German was even worse. "I shoot the bear and sell the skin!" And yet I haven't said a word about a rifle!

The Spaniard asked: "How do I know it's a bear?"

What do you do with participants like that? They ruin everything.

It got even worse.

Question: You come out onto a meadow and see an idyllic lake. What do you do?

Here 99 percent of Swedes answer that they throw themselves into the lake. Afterwards they get to know that the lake is sexuality and all are satisfied, for it sounds as if they were the world's greatest lovers every one. Head first.

Do you know what the Eurogang answered?

The Italian said he would first cut away the fence round the lake, and then dive in when no-one was looking in his direction. Basta.

What fence?

The Frenchman could think of opening a little restaurant on the beach.

The German preferred the idea of a camping-site, "lower investment costs". he claimed.

The Spaniard sketched an "urbanication Miramar" beside the beach, a little village of 90 villas, sold to Germans and Swedes with profitable loans. "Far too late, that's right out", interrupted the German, and a fight broke out.

The Englishman answered that he would study the bird life of the lake in his binoculars. Draw a sketch, and then walk on.

What do you do with people like that? They are simply not mature for my courses.

Said the Tea-Bag and steered his Porsche towards the nearest of his course-centres in the deep Swedish forest. Mixed forest, hopefully.