For those of you unable to be here on Saturday here's a video (please excuse the quality, it wasn't very bright at that time in the evening) of Västerås Male Voice Choir singing one of the many traditional songs sung at this festival.

The last day of April is celebrated here in the usual way (food and too much drink, at least that how I celebrated it). Valborgmässoafton is called Walpurgis Night in English apparently! There seem to be many different explanations about it, but this year it fell on a Saturday, so we didn't get a day off for the first of May, which is a public holiday.

I hope you enjoy the film, it should give an idea of what the evening looks like. Unusually it didn't rain or snow, and wasn't particularly cold this year. If I remember rightly we went to our first Valborg just a couple of weeks after moving to this country and there was still snow on the ground.

After the singing there was the obligatory speech followed by fireworks, which were quite nice. On our first Valborg teenagers ran around throwing bangers about amongst the drunken visitors, that didn't happen this time.

The news on the radio every first of May always starts with 'an unusually rowdy/calm Valborg' but there are always incidents somewhere faithfully reported.

Well I drank too much and as a consequence didn't manage to go cycling with the cycle club as planned on the Sunday morning.

I did however manage to travel to Stockholm on the Monday and see some friends that were over from England. In the afternoon we played some string quintets, and in the evening I listened to their performance of Hindermith at Mazer. They were very good, as were the group that played a Mozart piano quartet after them. Thanks to Kathy, Gary, Phil, John and Solbritt for a very nice day. (Yes you did count five names, so with me that should have been a sextet, but Gary doesn't play. He was with his wife Kathy)