I seem to have a bad habit of typing up drafts but never getting around to posting them out. The drafts then all backlog up, and it comes to the point where I remember it happening, but not quite the timing of when it was. I’m not the sort of person who catalogues a log date with a memory, unless it was something particularly special. This time though, I think I’ll just shovel them out.
After a Japanese meal out, I was suddenly hit with an Irish accent, a relatively thick one thanks to having known several Irish people in the past with great personalities and great accents to learn from. Mister was annoyed and ran away. Feeling abandoned I called out to him in Norwegian with an Irish accent: “I’m not your friend!” Which in an Irish accent sounded more matter of fact, than I hate you. Interesting.
The shops closed early today. In Norway, it is the 24th December that is considered the actual Christmas day, rather than the 25th. Preparations for a impending party has started taking hold physically within the house. Furniture being moved, food preparation, decoration. I helped to dress the tree and also complete my “rent payment” painting.
Today I visited a wool gallery where there were “paintings” made entirely of wool dyed in different colours and then placed into position. There were mountains and streams, forests and bushes, seas and rocks. It was highly convincing and I am very impressed with the ingenuity of the use of wool as a medium for creating pictures. They were very lifelike. I wish I could have afforded one of them.
02:05
It’s late, or early depending on how you view it, I’ve ventured out of the bedroom into the adjoining hall/study. The clock has just struck 2am. It may be that I’ve had too much “kaffe” today, late in the evening, one mug of the stuff. Damn you tasty Anton Berg finest smoothest nougat that instills such heightened sense of hazelnuttiness and choco-butter sweetness. It had to be savoured with the kaffe!
So why write this entry out in the study rather than in the bedroom with the power of Wifi (Weefee here) around? Because, Norwegian houses are so designed that bedrooms are the coldest rooms in the house, short of the actual cold rooms they have for storing foods (pantry I think they’re called back in the day). I believe I have read somewhere that the human body sleeps better in a room with a lower temperature than the average living room temperature of 22C, around 15C I think. Nevertheless, I still think it’s crazy having the bedroom as the coldest “living” room in the house, regardless of the fact that I have been sleeping better that normal, regardless that I wake that little bit more perky … regardless.
Yesterday I was told by someone that she has never closed the window to her bedroom ever! Come rain, blizzard nor the hurricane of 1991, that room is more in touch with nature that the central heating. Craziness I tell you.
21:00 It’s Only Just Be-gu-uu-un
I had foolishly thought that after the Christmas radio stint in the taxi to the airport on Monday, I would not be hearing of the cheesey Christmas songs of the UK for some time, cheesey Norwegian was expected but not from the UK. How very wrong I am. I have had my ears squeezed with the songs of UK Christmas past, present and past past. I think the only songs that I haven’t heard yet is “Last Christmas” by Wham and that thing by Slade. They also have “Heartbeat” here.
Actually scrap that, Slade has just come on. G’ah!
I haven’t been able to see the Aurora Borealis yet – but I do notice that the constellations seem that little bit bigger. Either Orion really is closer or he’s been doing too much pre-holiday snacking before the main event. The colours in the sky are also a lot more vivid and the way the sunlight hits the valleys and tops of the mountains bring a different aura to the area. The hazes of blue, purple, pinks, oranges are so much that at sunset and sunrise, it’s almost as if the land of mountains and trolls has gone technicolour.
I’ve been learning Norwegian on and off for a few years now. For those in the know, I am learning Bokmål as that is what is taught in books and such. However, I am plunged into a world of Nynorsk, and not just any Nynorsk, this is Nynorsk + local twisting = variation of Nynorsk, which makes the spice of the language a bit too spicy. On the other hand, forcing myself to listen to people speak seems to have fired up the neurons in my brain and I’m picking up words left right and centre. I’m forced to write everything down in a book to translate later which has helped to increase my vocabulary. My spelling is “quite good” apparently and I am making my way slowly through a childrens book about flounders in the sea. I like it so much I want a copy of it myself: Det hende i Taremareby by Ingebrigt Davik.
Out here, the basic elements of survival are needed and I am a complete novice at encouraging barely glowing cinders into a roaring flame without the assistance of matches or lighters. But I’ve taken to making sure the ovens are so well banked that I’ve seemed to have taken it a step too far, according to the thermometer, 28C too far.
So, we’re in the cold vast north, the arctic tundra is closer than ever before and we are twiddling our fingers at 11pm in the evening. In the distance the mountains cannot be seen, pitch black as they are. The snow on the tops glow a dark grey blue, but other than that, it is highly likely one walks into it should one not be watching where one is going. Soon there is a stop to the finger/thumb twiddling. It seems, that the British have their train spotting and the Norwegians have their deer spotting. Late at night, these animals like to roam free of prying eyes.
With this information we acquire a car and a big torch. Are we expected to drive up and catch them in our headlights on the road? No, we’re expected to drive up to them in a field and shine the torch into their headlights. Interesting concept that they let you do that, I thought to myself and signed myself up to this latest stint. An hour later and we accepted defeat, with my prescription enhanced eye sight, and Mister being an irregular to this sport, this was a poorly planned mission. It’s the equivalent of going up a mountain without the local guide.
Back at camp, airing our results resulted in appalled looks and gasps of shock, it is apparently uncommon not to see one. Clearly we have much to learn when it comes to deer spotting.
Day 1 and we’ve slept in quite a bit, it wasn’t as cold as expected, but still a bit chilly. Only 4 hours of sunlight here, which makes the evenings feel like they go on and on. With no time to acclimatise, I quickly discover that a favourite Norwegian past time in below freezing temperatures is to get out there and see how cold it really is. Observe, how the icicles form upon the rocks and tree branches. Look at the supposedly glistening frozen lake. Is that ice hard? Can we step on it? I wonder how thick it is? Let us travel onto it and onto the centre to have a good look. So there I am, at 1.45pm, it’s freezing cold, the sun is setting and I’m in the middle of a frozen lake. Looking through the frozen clear ice, I see only darkness.
I feel that I have grown up with cotton wool around me; the wind bites and I am in an alien environment. I am trying to push myself along the frozen plate on a rickety zimmerframe of a sleigh. Trying to figure out how to turn while moving. Like an infant, I finally conceded to stop and revolve the contraption around me to face the direction I wanted. The thickness of the ice, the bubbles trapped within, the serrated lines from freezing, created such beauty with the light it captured that everything felt like it was lighted hundreds of times more than it actually was.
Putting science before fear, I was told that at 10cm thick, the ice could hold vehicles, so I happily tried to waddle my way in short little bursts of movement across the ice. My fear was not of the ice between me and the lake, but more that I have no control on walking/skating on ice, having not had much experience before.
Here and there, there were rises and falls of the ice caused by the movements of water underneath. There were particularly, sections of lines running across the lake, meeting and overlapping other lines. This was plate tectonics on a smaller scale.
I am told there are fish in the lake, I wonder whether they are sleeping down below, grumbling at the noisey humans skating their way above.
Taking the lazy route courtesy of Mister, we took a taxi to the airport. The journey was 80 minutes long and felt twice as long, the taxi driver claimed to have expected the journey to be around 3 hours, so we might have been lucky. I still think a stint on public transport might have made my purse strings smile a little better. The airport seemed deserted and only a sheet of twinkling festive lights greeted us as we entered the check-in zone to join the queue of Scandiwegians. Three miso soups later (thanks to Mister’s quick thinking), we entered tax free shopping heaven. I feasted my eyes upon the choco chutney goodness and the floor to ceiling shelves of alcohol.
Suddenly, the fire alarm went off: “Attention! The fire alarm has been sounded, please evacuate.” Everybody was then partitioned off to different exit zones, incidentally also known as the “halls to the different gates for flights”. Waiting within the halls, the Mister and I had suddenly come to realise, that maybe we really do want to buy some tax free goods. We planned our tactical plans: “if” the alarm stops and we have time to return, “should” we be out of time to look and grab bare minimum goods, “possible” change of flight times. Indeed when we were finally allowed back in we had 25 minutes till the flight departure. Mister scanned the flight departure info and grabbed alcohol, while I quickly browsed for chutneys (checking ingredients – of course). We met at the checkout desk, good team work!
So last night, the Mister went to bed early, and I sat down to finish my dinner and turned on the telly. Flicking through I landed on the QVC channel, now QVC is something that I have in the past taken the liberty to make fun of my brother, who used to be an ardent watcher when young.
Strangely, it became compelling watching, and I was almost tempted to pick up the phone and dial that free 0800 number and order that piece of equipment. My head was soon fighting itself, I could feel the left side screaming: “Switch the channel! Turn it over! This is mind numbing! Just flick it! Flick it!” While at the same time, my right responded with: “But, but look at the pretty colours… they’re selling something… I could do with that.. quick they’re selling out!”
It was a good job that my Left had plenty of answers to corner off Right’s blatant mind washed questions. Another save for good old fashioned logic and for the quivering coins at the bottom of my purse. Hurrah!
