In 1991, my dad bought our very first camcorder for the family. I used it to document my day, creating a wobbly record of what a spring morning in northern Sweden looked like from the viewpoint of a short 12-year-old. 35 years later, my dad sent me the footage in the post. And just like that, I was transported back to that time and that feeling of the not-quite-spring months of Norrland.

Are you familiar with the word slask? Slask is the combination of melting snow and dirt that occurs when the temperature rises above zero. Six months’ worth of road grit, dog mess, snuff and mud slowly resurfaces through the uneven layers of grey slush. When you try to jump over a particularly unpleasant bank of this stuff, you are 100 per cent likely to end up in a rivulet of more of the stuff on the other side, which is 200 per cent likely to be deep enough to swallow your boot whole. The temperature of this melting snow is somehow colder than actual snow, and your socks will never dry again.

So noteworthy is the slask that I used the camcorder to slowly zoom in and out on the ground, the lens blurring on the filthy surface. Barely audible over the freezing spring winds is my depressed monologue on the state of it. At one point, I’m singing to myself, presumably some method of self-soothing – a sad hymn about the summer that I suspect will never arrive. At the end, however, the recording gains a sudden new tremble of optimism. In amongst the monochrome is a tiny glimpse of colour. Green! And that’s the thing about living in the frozen north. You learn to appreciate the joy of very small things. And the value of dry socks.

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