Yesterday was my last full day in Stockholm…perhaps for a while…and I had a few errands left to do so I took the Orient Express to Kungsträdgården…the scene of one of the world’s first Green Protests in the late sixties over an old gnarled oak tree that the authorities planned to pull down to make way for a subway exit. Sverigehuset used to be the place to go for Things Swedish…like Carl Larsson’s books My Home, My Family and My Farm. My Swedish Monarchy book also sold well from the best bookshop in Sweden for Scandinavian Literature in Foreign Languages.

Carl Larsson was on my list once again. But topping the list this time round was a DVD of Ingmar Bergman’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute which is well-nigh impossible to get in England. Somewhat miffed by the disappearance of Sweden House I crossed over the road to Nordiska Kompaniet. The last time I was here with intent was for a Jan Guillou Book Launch in 1980. I bought his book and gave him a free copy of The Rise & Fall of the Swedish Green Party (1982-1997) which he probably threw away when he got home…assuming he kept it that long.

In NK’s Music Department on the top floor an assistant found me a US edition…and format…by The Criterion Collection for 399 kronor (£30). This was progress of a sort but I noticed that the copyright was with Sveriges Radio 1975 which gave me another avenue of investigation. So I noted the reference and left it at that. Once upon a time back in the Days of Vinyl I had a rather nice presentation pack but must have given it away…and of course there is Google. But it was turning out to be a frustrating morning so I switched to my Research Mode. Anna Lindh had been knifed to death a few floors below me so I wandered around among the lady’s lingerie to get myself on camera.

Nordiska Kompaniet on Stockholm’s Kungsgatan is the most elegant department store in Sweden. And Ladieswear on the first floor is where you go to rub shoulders with B-List Celebs and admire Sweden’s Rich & Famous. Magdalena’s mother Dagmar was Chief Buyer here after her husband died and in 1960s Sweden this would have been one of the top jobs in the business. So we are talking Tiffany’s of New York or Harvey Nicholls of Oxford Street. In the normal course of events NK is not the place a lone assassin goes to knife to death Sweden’s Foreign Minister.

Three other things struck me. Firstly baseball caps are not de rigour at NK. I saw just one in the whole time I was there...on the head of an American Tourist who had either wandered in by accident or was hanging about waiting for his wife. Secondly there were almost no surveillance cameras in evidence on the first floor…just one at the top of the escalator and a couple to prevent shoplifting pointing at the clothes racks. Perhaps they are hidden?

The public was told that the baseball-cap photos that got Per-Olof Svensson arrested produced two days after the stabbing came from surveillance cameras above the first floor. This would mean the attack taking place fairly close to the central atrium. Based on floor space and lay-out the chances of that were about 1 in 15…and I failed to spot any cameras anyway.

Thirdly…and perhaps I am being naïve expecting this of a business…but I thought I would find some mark of respect or some recognition of the events of the day before Nine Eleven…a plaque or a display collecting for the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund. But there is nothing there at all. NK seems to have airbrushed out the incident from their corporate psyche. I was tempted to interview a shop assistant but it was Ladieswear and I was unsure just how my morbid curiosity would be received so discretion won the day. But it was surreal. And I left the store bewildered.

Jan Guillou was in the newspapers this morning after giving a Keynote Speech at Stockholm’s Pride Festival. It was a bold choice as he is his own man and not one to take the easy Politically Correct option if it doesn’t suit him. The Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson has been criticised for staying away from the festival. But my sympathies are with Persson. My blogs could be labelled homophobic because they fail to discuss Gay Issues.

I am not a fan of The Gay Movement or a supporter of Gay Rights. As a wordsmith I object to the hijacking of the word gay and if you want to be accepted as a person whatever your sexual orientation then forming a special interest group to point out how different you are to everybody else seems perverse. I also find the idea of sticking Dicks up other men’s Arses fairly unpleasant…nor do I want to be confronted with words like Incest and Cock when checking my e-mail. The best portrayal of a man in public life wrestling with the consequences of his homosexuality comes from Edwina Currie in This Honourable House. The Ambassadors and Chasing Men also deserve better reviews than they have received. Edwina is underrated as a person and a politician…and discriminated against as a writer.

I have less racism, sexism, ageism or any other -ism than others of my acquaintance. I treat everybody as a person first and karlman or wyfman second. After that I seek to discover whether they have a good heart and a keen mind…and how they are choosing to use them. In other words my approach is that of Jane Austen and Ayn Rand. Creating private clubs to administer spurious claims for similarities and act as a homogeneous group wielding bogus collective rights against people who are not prepared to…or permitted to…join the club is not the right road to travel.