It used to be, and still is to some extent, quite common for individuals or families to own more than one property – one which they live in during the long and cold winter months, and one which they live in during summer weekends and summer holidays.

The one that Helena and Pelle own was built by their father before he died tragically in a car accident in 1966. It is a wooden house that has been added to and extended several times in its life time and now has the capacity to sleep around 15-people.

It is in a stunning location situated in the middle of a forest looking down on Lake Mälaren, the fifth largest lake in Sweden.

Places like this are known in Swedish as “Landet”, which literally translated means, the country. I have had connections with that place since I was 15-years old and it definitely rates as one of my two favourite places in the world – the other one being our family’s beach house at Pukehina, New Zealand.

Sweden has around the same population density as New Zealand. It is around twice that land mass of the UK and only has a population of around 9-million – this means that Sweden has vast areas of wilderness with a very rich wildlife including elks, deer, foxes, squirrels, some bear, some boar and a handful of wolves.

Most people in Sweden have the right to an annual leave of from 5 to 7 – weeks. For us, a lot of that time was spent at Landet as was most weekends during the summer months when we weren’t on leave. But Landet is also a cool place to visit in the winter too (not that you can really stay there overnight as there would be no running water at that time). It transforms into an amazing winter landscape with lots of snow and temperatures can drop down to around -30 C. The lake freezes to a depth of 1-2 metres allowing ice skating or long walks on the lake or even taking the car for a bit of a spin if you want some adrenaline induced fun.

The story I have to tell here took place in late September 1991. It was a very warm autumn night, the skies were clear and there was no wind at all. Everything was completely still and quiet.

It must have been between 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning when I woke up – it was pitch black outside. As per normal, I had had a few beers with my evening meal before going to bed. Whenever that happens, one of my brain cells wakes up a couple of hours later and takes my still slumbering carcass outside for a piss. I was very much on autopilot!

I was wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt and must have I ambled up to the nearest rock. There, I would have fumbled around for the old todger, pointed it at the selected rock and let go a very satisfying high pressured stream of a beer/urine mixture.

Things did not go entirely as planned. As soon as I had started to pee, the rock got up and towered over me. It let out a very indignant “OOOUUUUEEEEEEE!” and proceeded to gallop down the hill towards the lake. It was such a still night that I could hear the echo of its hooves for quite some time – my only reaction: I stopped peeing!

It took a little while for the rest of my brain cells to wake up and process what had just happened – I had pissed on an elk.

I put the willy back into its boxer shorts home and ran indoors and shook Helena awake. She opened one eye and wore an expression that seemed to say “This had better be good or you’re dead!”

I was quite hyper and excitedly exclaimed: “Helena, Helena, I just pissed on an elk!!!”

I fully expected Helena’s excitement to match mine but all I got was: “Go back to bed dickhead; you’ve been dreaming…asshole!”

 Well, I did go back to bed and after a while I did fall back to sleep. The next morning as I woke up, I did feel like a bit of an idiot as it did feel as if it had been all a dream. But when I went out and inspected the place where events of the previous night supposedly had unfolded, I could clearly see where the elk had been sleeping and its frenzied footprints as it had scrambled to escape the foulness of my fire hose.

I immediately showed Helena and all she could say was: “I’ll be buggered!”.