DAGEN 'H' IN SWEDEN
Fast forward to 7.38 mins for the 'change-over'! Footage from Malmö, Limhamn and Skåne.
M O N D A Y, 4 S E P T
The painter still didn’t come.
The postman came and in great hopes I charged down to see if there was a letter from Anya. There was! - which means she wrote the very day she got my letter. And she wrote a “telegram” back, a very long one. I was killing myself the whole way through. She starts off: “STOP – START – STOP…” and ends: “THIS WILL COST ME POUNDS – STOP". She has some ‘terrifillous’ news – EMI have replied! They say they are in daily contact with "Mr Polnareff" but, as far as they know, he isn’t going to London – ??? Simply don’t get it. You’d think they’d know when he was next recording.
Poor Anya is "a little miserish" about her results – she failed Chemistry.
“Read some ‘1984’. Honestly, his imaginings are worse than the foulest things of this century!”
But really it makes me depressed just reading it, I think he goes too far. It becomes so fantastical it gets boring.
I went for a walk down to the garden, and back up the road. I have to get out. I feel so enclosed.
After supper we saw an Alan Whicker programme about people in this country who have considered committing suicide at some time or another, and the Good Samaritans who help them. In every case it’s loneliness that is the cause, I do hope I never get like that. Daddy says it's boredom that has a lot to do with it, and basically it comes from lack of education. I quite agree.
’24 Hours’ was on ‘Dagen H’ (Right Hand Traffic Day) day in Sweden: yesterday they changed over to right-hand side driving! It’s all working beautifully, it cost £40,000,000!!! But it will be worth it because the number of accidents they’ve had from Norwegian and Finnish cars coming in every year is tremendous.
“No glitch! The day Swedish traffic moved to the right”
At 4.50am on the morning of 3 September 1967 the traffic in Sweden was directed to the right side of the road... and allowed to proceed at 5am.
During the night, over 300,000 road signs had been changed, and every car had an H reminder sticker on its dashboard. Roads, crossings, roundabouts and flyovers had all been redesigned. Apparently, Swedes couldn't wait to drive on the right, and would try to pick up hitchhikers so they had someone in the passenger seat to help them make the transition.
