Hej from a Stockholm pavement café, where in the autumn sunshine I nibble a kanelbulle while observing the insane beauty of the Swedes: the waitress who has come straight from the Victoria’s Secret catwalk, the waiter with a jaw crafted of Swedish oak; that lady whose cheekbones are so high they almost hit her forehead. I observe away because, of course, they are blissfully mask-free. Here I am in what a single-toothed Trump supporter might hail as the Last Free Nation in the West. Sweden: the outrider, the rogue, home of “reckless” epidemiologists who resisted the lure of lockdown. I’m not here to make some political statement on Covid-19 but because my husband arranged a work exchange in the Before Times, back when Whitty and

Source: The Times September 27, 2020 23:00 UTC