I'm in the Northern university town of Umeå this weekend, playing harp and harpsichord for the academic doctors' graduation ceremony.

One part of it was extraordinarily positive, that I can't remember a time when so many people have expressed appreciation in Sweden, there must have been 20 people who said something detailed, personal and heart-felt with warm and meaningful eye-contact, including senior academics, I was asked for my autograph, several people who knew me from before referred to me as a 'kändis', celebrity, someone wanted to buy CDs, one journalist wanted to do a newspaper interview in depth later on, I was invited to give workshops at the music conservatory in Petrozovodsk, the organiser remarked specially on my own doctor's gown and hat, the word 'wonderful' cropped up rather often, which is a rarity here in Sweden, and so on.

The programme book was beautifully and imaginatively produced by someone called 'Print and Media': but I must say I don't find 44 pages of vertically-folded A4 a comfortable format to hold, and because of that folding it wasn't until several days afterwards when I opened it out flat to scan it that I realised that the curlie-wurlies behind the leaves were actually numbers and they were 1965 and a backwards 2005, sharing its '5' with 1965 to mark the university's 40th anniversary.