I have nearly used up three of the six birthday presents from Crocodile Uppsala…four presented and two to come which works out at one a decade. The best present I could have wished for and sufficient unto itself is Nicholas John himself. I am pleased at the way he has turned out and watch his life unfold with curiosity. The next item on my wish list is grandchildren. Andrea has travelled the world with him for seven years so my hopes are not misplaced.

How much credit I can take is a moot point. Any man can be a father but not every man can be a daddy. I made an inspired choice for his mother…although there is the thorny issue of who did the choosing. I am on my third viewing of the Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth’s courtship rituals in seeking to understand this. Mr d’Arcy proposed last night and was refused. Marriage & Misunderstanding would have served as well as Pride & Prejudice…but not as catchy.

Ayn Rand’s first-raters have something of the Jane Austen about them. The two appear together in book lists but few feminist writers have had the courage to tackle a comparison of the Austen and Rand heroes and heroines. The pitfalls of the political incorrectness of both in gender matters is no doubt the reason…but there is common ground in the insistence of both Austen and Rand that the exchange of true value is the only basis for truth and love in marriage.

Before Nicholas John left home in 1994 to go to university…by way of Nambour High School…his mother took principal parenting responsibility while I took over during summer vacations…a long one in America and Sweden stretching through June to September…a mixed blessing for Ingrid as midsummer is a magic time for the Swedes.

Ingrid has all the photographs from our 15-years together and I dropped a subtle hint…as subtle as a sledge hammer as Connie was fond of saying…that a CD of these would make a rather nice present. I live in hope. The apartment is the fourth gift. He did not go to Mozambique to give me five weeks of glorious Swedish summer but not everybody makes their place available when they are not using it. Perhaps if they did house prices would plummet. Housing Benefit has a Six-Week Rule for the property-poor. Why not one for the property-rich? It’s Common Wealth.

On my arrival here three weeks ago alongside the note of welcome was a Svenska Filminstitut Presentkort with 200 kronor on it…and enough money for three trips to Ljusterö and back. Yesterday I spent half my film ration on Davy Jones’ Locker. The film was much too noisy…the current Hollywood fashion…and needed editing and some pretty basic rescripting as the plot is too convoluted. Enjoyment comes from special effects…and Johnny Depp…not from the story line. But films are made for computer games and merchandising so closer acquaintance may solve this.

In 1982 when David Halprin and I were working on the Center for Conspiracy Studies project I used to spend the occasional afternoon relaxing at Harvard Cinema with its rolling two-film daily programmes. You could sit as long as you liked. Some of the pairings were pretty weird…like Singing in the Rain and Yellow Submarine.

Susan May and our four children would often accompany me. Oscars Theatre is reviving the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers classic so I thought of Susan as I walked past the theatre after the film on my way to Fridhemsplan. Phantom of the Opera ran there for several years and made my niece Anna Lundell a minor celebrity…though not for the best of reasons. Anna was pencilled in to crew for Vemara in September 1998 but managed only Visby to Klintehamn after the weather delayed us and then Connie fell ill. Susan sent me a transcript of the talk she gave to the Jackson Historical Society in New Hampshire earlier this year about her uncle Jake May...and tells me she is on the mend.

It was around this time that I met up with a larger than life character O. Richard Maeglin from Muscatine Iowa…a 40-something Huckleberry Finn who had turned fence painting into a successful local enterprise and owned the local bank, the travel and insurance agencies and a warehousing business on the Mississippi which ran through the town. Dick was in Cambridge looking to put some matching funds into the Anti-Nuclear Movement.

David Halprin and Dick Maeglin had a mutual acquaintance at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco who turned out to be one of Rachel Kowalczyk’s former boyfriends. This explains why I was drinking coffee in Berkeley wondering where the sixties had gone...and if there was any truth in claims made for it...while on my way to persuade the Tides Foundation to throw some funds at a rather under-researched project so Dick could match them.

The outcome of my Californian trip was some money from the Tides Foundation for David Halprin to carry on doing aikido, Dick Maeglin scuttling back to Muscatine to save his bank as his business empire started to implode in the wake of his imminent divorce…and me high 'n dry with no money, no wife and my romantic love affair on the ropes.

Dick…bless him…despite his dire finances still put his fingers in the till to take out the last few thousand dollars for my sorely depleted coffers which kept American Express at bay for a few more weeks. ‘I promised it and I keep my promises!’ ‘But you didn’t promise it and you need every cent you can lay your hands on.’ ‘I may not have promised it to you. But I had decided to do it. That’s good enough for me!’ Only John Galt and Mr d'Arcy would argue.

Computers are the most alarming creatures. Two weeks ago my fingers were flying across the keyboard keeping pace with my composition when all of a sudden the whole screen flipped through ninety degrees bringing proceedings to an astonished halt. I had never seen the like before. The Help Menu was of no assistance. Knowing what to ask is the key…and you never do. And it had to happen on a Friday evening in summer...so the Microsoft Helpline was no help until eight o’clock on Monday morning when it opened for business. I even made a concerted assault on one of the many Microsoft Chat Groups…a technical one…but to no avail. No one had encountered my problem before.

But I am not one to be defeated by a large dumb beast. So I turned my head sideways and finished what I was doing and then did something else with the monitor turned on its side. Perhaps that would shake the icons loose…or cause them all to fall to the bottom of the screen. Finally I gave up the struggle and took myself off to bed…perplexed.

But I do not give up easily. On Saturday morning I woke up at five o’clock determined to solve the mystery. Whatever else you may think of computers they have one very big thing going for them. Big dumb beasts they may be but they are big dumb logical beasts. Screens do not suddenly flip themselves sideways…contents and all…without a reason…or…forbid the thought…viruses…the very last thing I wished to contemplate.

I had been moving at high speed. I would retrace my fingersteps slowly and deliberately. Perhaps by a process of elimination…now let me assume that my flying fingers had brushed the Control key...something that has happened to me in the past with curious results. After trying every combination of Control+ another key…and discovering some interesting combinations…the screen remained resolutely sideways. I thought fondly of all the computer whiz-kids I know in Sussex. Perhaps I should email them about my woes…they would be opening for business in six hours time. Sweden is one hour ahead of England and it was not yet six. But first one last go at cracking it. How about Control+Alt+F1…or F2…or F3…?

I felt like a safe breaker…which was not far from the truth. Suddenly the beast confounded me again. Now everything was upside down. My son would never believe this and would accuse me of having done all manner of foolish things with his computer. Then that Light Bulb Moment. I had reached ‘R’ when the screen flipped. Just maybe in windowspeak R stands for rotate. I pressed Control+Alt+R again. Eureka! The screen flipped itself round another ninety degrees. Now I was bending my neck the other way…progress of sorts. But I knew I had it sussed. Computers are the most alarming creatures…but they are logical alarming creatures. One more Control+Alt+R did the trick and I was finally back where I started. I breathed a big sigh of relief as a wave of smugness washed over me.

Young…hmm…William was a very happy bunny. He took himself off to breakfast in full Hubris mode before reading the newspaper to keep Nemesis at bay…one of the salutary effects they have. However awful your situation out there things are much worse. And so it was…a normal day in Baghdad with another fifty killed…chaos in Beirut as the Swedish Foreign Office evacuates its citizens and leave the Lebanese behind to be massacred by Israeli forces massing on the border…the world continues to ignore the genocide in Darfur…a tsunami kills hundreds in Indonesia.

The next time I met up with Alan I suggested we try Cntrl+Alt+R on his AppleMac laptop. He was hesitant but eventually got into the swing of it...there is an excellent Macshop round the corner in Sundbybergscentrum if all else fails. Not a flicker of interest from the G4 Powerbook. So it is a Bill Gates…or Nicholas John…Friday Night Special. But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself…just for fun. But no law suits please when you wake up with a crick in your neck after spending the day with your head on its side and the screen refusing to return to the upright position.

In the spring of 1982 when Rachel Kowalczyk changed my life I was working on three Anti-Nuclear Projects. I often wonder whether the FBI has this fact on file. Just in case they do let me correct the record…the evidence of the STASI Files left by the Yanks after the Fall of the Berlin Wall suggests they may need it. But goodness knows what use they make of these records…helps them to place my name on a list so they can turn me away when I show up at New York’s Kennedy Airport? ‘Hi. I’m William Shepherd…real name John Doe…may I come into your beautiful country please?’ ‘No! Have a nice day!’ Next time I will fly into Montreal and cycle into North Dakota from Manitoba.

In 1982 elections were being contested for the Cambridge City Council and David Wiley was standing for re-election on an anti-nuclear platform that included shutting down MIT’s Draper Labs and declaring a Nuclear-Free Zone. I was also busy lobbying for Helen Caldicott...the Australian doctor who had founded Physicians for Social Responsibility...to be awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize. I gave Jacob von Uexkull a private showing of Eight Minutes to Midnight at the Second Fourth World Assembly in Berlin later that year. The third project was with David Halprin…a devotee of the DoJo on Massachusetts Avenue where he practised Aikido…and one of two Harvard Law School graduates I became good friends with in Cambridge…Joe Schmidt from Seattle was the other. David’s day job was as a Massachusetts State Deputy District Attorney. But more about this third project another day.