Getting connected

For someone who lives so far away from family and many of my friends, I've been very slow off the mark with Skype. I did download it a few years back but found it slowed my laptop down. I also got lots of nuisance messages from various Turkish men, and I never actually made a call using it. I eventually uninstalled it. However, under pressure to support the long-distance friendship between my elder daughter and her best friend, who moved to Singapore last year, I've tried again with Skype. Today my daughter had a 45-minute video conference with her friend. As Hannah Montana might say: man, it was awesome!

The friend played her guitar. The girls giggled and gossiped. It was fun. And as I sat next door, eavesdropping, I could see the possiblities Skyping might offer once we move. In particular, I'm going to miss the two writer friends I meet every wednesday; we talk through our wroks-in-progress and convince ourselves we're not delusional in wanting to produce novels. We laugh. A lot.

Now I think, it might still be possible to continue this post-Norway; I'll just have to forfeit the prawn sandwiches and cafe mocca. I might even have to wear a bikini if it's too warm. It won't be the same but it's sure better than nothing.

It may not have been love at first sight for me and Mr Skype, but I think perhaps this slow-burning affection we are now developing may be more likely to last.

The long goodbye

For a while I told myself I was finding it difficult to blog because I'd been in Norway so long that nothing seemed strange enough to be interesting to write about anymore. Now my excuse is that as we're leaving in a matter of months, and this fact colours everything I do here. Everything is tinged with a sense of sadness. After five winters of complaining about the weather, I've come to realise that I don't mind snow after all. In fact, I'm very attached to my snow boots and wonder why I ever missed wearing proper shoes. This weather takes the decision-making process out of deciding what to wear; it doesn't matter as long as it's warm. Did I just say that?! OMG! I HAVE BEEN HERE TOO LONG! This dawned on me in all its certainty, when I looked up lovingly at the ugly grey buildings behind Raadhuset, the same horrible crimes against architecture and beauty that I used to hate. Trouble is that I say that I've been here too long but I don't mean it. I love it here. But I'm not prepared to make the financial sacrifices necessary to stay. So I know we need to go. I'm sure we will have great adventures somewhere else, most likely, somewhere tropical. I kind of hope though that we can come back to Norway after a few years away. I keep telling myself that we will. But that's all a long way in the future.

For now we still have Spring and part of Summer to look forward to here. I have a novel to finish. And this morning I'm going to Toni & Guy to get my roots done while I still can without fear of coming out of the salon with an orange head - this happened twice in Asia. Tomorrow we drive to Denmark for my mother in-law's 70th birthday. Mmm. Maybe there will be one advantage of moving to the other side of the world, if that's where we are going, after all.

A bit of culture

This afternoon we took a rare outing to a museum. My elder daughter is doing a project at school on explorers; she’s doing some French bloke called Jacques Cartier (as in the jewellery) while her friend is working on Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian.We couldn’t just fly off to France (or even find a Cartier store) so instead we went to the Kon-Tiki Museum on Bygdøy which honours Thor Heyerdahl and shows exhibits on his various expeditions.

I came away thinking you’d want to be insane to try cross the Atlantic on bits of wood tied together with string but each to their own I guess. I fear death too much to take any such risks; especially death by shark attack or drowning. Mr Heyerdahl lived to be the ripe old age of 87.

Ra II

Glamourous Feet - the Arctic version