Goodbye Norway, Hello Malaysia

After almost six years living on the edge of a large field where deer roam and skiing tracks run from the door in winter, where we can look out onto hills and Oslo Fjord, we're moving to a tropical city of skyscrapers, traffic jams and slightly less-endearing creatures than deer. It's not quite a case of country hicks moving to the city, as we've lived in Asia before: two years in Singapore, three in Manila, but going back is going to be exciting and certainly different. and very, very sweaty.

When we arrived in Norway at the end of 2004, I had two daughters, aged 3.5 and 2 years old. They'd never seen snow; I'd never dressed myself or a child for it. We're leaving with a 3.5 year old son in addition; Norwegian souvenirs don't come much better than him. He'll miss his matpakke with Prim, his pølser, the snow, his best buddies Andre and Markus, and much more. I hope we'll manage to preserve his Norwegian language and forget the brown dairy products and sausages.

I won't even go into what I'll miss, because I'll miss all of it, even the feckin' snow. But, it's a time to look forward, to pastures and Blogs anew. There's a substantial English-language press in Kuala Lumpur, as well as plenty of cultural idiosyncrasies for a foreigner to write about. I'm certainly looking forward to that - once the novel is finished, of course. We have friends in South East Asia and we're going to embark on travel adventures as a family. I can't wait to show my girls Singapore, where they were both born. The kids are going to love swimming every day, and will forget about those nasty parkdresses they wore for half of every year they spent in Norway. We'll miss the bright summer evenings but will sit smugly on our terrace in November and think of the dark days and nights back up north.

And then there's the food. I'll be honest and say that it won't be a wrench to change the Nomad family kitchen offerings and savour what Malaysia has to offer our palates. If the chicken a Malaysian friend brought to our BBQ last weekend is anything to go by, then I'd better find a gym in KL very, very fast! Already we have a brunch and dinner booked with two sets of friends when we arrive. Yes folks, in Malaysia, the Nomad family is going to be able to afford to eat out!

Thanks to all of you who have read and commented here since 2006; I hope you'll follow me to Malaysia as I start over and attempt to see the world with fresh eyes. There will certainly be cockroaches, complaints about the heat and traffic, and a longing for the relative transparent bureaucracy of Norway, but I know there will be far, far more. Join me on my adventure: Irish Nomad in Malaysia.

We're leaving Norway in 2 weeks, and after a trip to Ireland, will head to KL at the end of July. I'll update via Twitter as we go, when I have internet access.

Bye for now :)

Win a trip to Northern Norway

I dislike travelling. Hardly a nomadic trait but there you go. I move from one country to another, and once ensconced in whatever house we choose as our latest home, I tend not to venture far. I am rarely a tourist. This is partly due to the fact that we spend much of our holiday time going back home, to either Ireland or Denmark, but it’s also down to the fact that with three youngish children, travelling anywhere is a planning and logistical exercise this insomniac tries to avoid. That’s why, after almost six years in Norway, I’ve hardly been anywhere. I’ve done one winter work day in Bergen, arriving and leaving in the dark, and seeing only the inside of a drab engineering office (where all the women, to my disgust, wore unflattering jeans).
I’ve spent one wet holiday weekend near Arendal. Another wet weekend on the edge of Hardanger Fjord. And. And well that’s it really. Oh I did go to one book club meeting in Spikkested. That’s my version of Norway: Oslo, Baerum, Bergen in the dark, Arendal and Spikkested.
It's not too late though, even with only four weeks left in the country. Thanks to Innovation Norway's latest marketing campaign, I can now make virtual postcards of myself visiting lots of Norway's most beautiful and popular tourist sites, all without lifting my bum off my seat. I might even win a prize by doing so - a trip to Northern Norway (in person) is on offer to the winners. But of course, I don't like traveling and I'm going to be on the other side of the world by August, so I'll give this one a miss. That's not to stop any of you lot out there entering the competition. Oh, it seems that you have to be British, and ordinary, and presumably photogenic, which disqualifies me completely - phew!

Here are the details:

‘…Innovation Norway, the official Norwegian tourism and trade organisation, has launched a major new UK marketing campaign to find four British ‘postcard models’ for a series of photo-shoots in Northern Norway.

The competition will be hosted on a specially designed Facebook page (http:// www.facebook.com/postcardmodels). Applicants will upload images of themselves into picture-perfect Northern Norway postcard-scenes to enter. Applicants require ten or more ‘likes’ from their Facebook friends to qualify for the competition.

Catherine Foster, Country Manager, Innovation Norway UK, said: “The aim of this initiative is to highlight the fantastic scenery and exciting activities you can experience in Northern Norway.

“Targeting nature lovers aged 25-65 who enjoy outdoor activities, we are hoping to find ordinary individuals, who have a vibrancy about them to match the Norwegian landscape.”

To apply, potential models must be available to travel to one of three destinations in North Norway with a partner of their choosing from August 14-17, 2010.

The winners will take centre stage in a photo-shoot with a professional photographer in beautiful Northern Norway landscapes. Postcards will subsequently be printed and sold in Northern Norway.

Please take a look at http://www.visitnorway.co.uk/postcardmodels and http://www.facebook.com/postcardmodels for further information.

So go on, have a go.

Norway's National Holiday

The local school parade

My son (with flag) and his buddies in party mood

Well it's our sixth consecutive, and final, Norwegian National Day. At this stage we're a family well-equipped with flags and rosettes, and manage to cobble together enough half-decent clothes for the kids to look smart. Around half of Norwegian women wear the national costume, the Bunad, which comes in many intricate designs and usually consists of a full-length wool skirt, wool waistcoat and a white blouse. Men wear a trousered or knickerbockered version, with fancy socks and shoes, and sometimes a hat. These outfits take the 'what will I wear?' conundrum out of formal occasions as for which they are used, including weddings and baptisms. A friend of mine expressed relief over this but I think I'd miss the excitement of playing dress up on the few occasions it is merited. Bunads can cost thousands of Euros so you can understand people wanting to get their money's worth.

We've been here long enough that when we go down to celebrate May 17 with the local barnehage and school we know people and have started to feel like members of the community. It has taken time but it is a nice feeling. In some way, it's an achievement, as making in-roads in Norway when none of the family is Norwegian can be a challenge. Hey, that surprise third baby just keeps paying dividends ;)

I already know a lady on the Kuala Lumpur May 17th committee so I'm certain we'll be celebrating Norway's national day next year too. I doubt the wool bunads will be in evidence with temperatures in the thirties and 70-80 % humidity, but you never know. We'll be there with our flags and rosettes; assuming I'm able to find them once we get to the other side of the world.

And the talk of moving begins

Over 80% of Norwegians consider Norway to be a near-perfect land to live in according to a survey discussed on NRK radio the other day. I imagine the small percentage that doesn’t see the relative Utopianism of the UN’s best country to live in, in the world, has never lived abroad. They’ve definitely never lived in Ireland, that’s for sure.

Every time I speak to my parents they recount tales of doom and gloom, and not just on the subject of the weather and the latest of their acquaintance they took to the church (my Dad’s euphemism for going to a funeral). No, the recession is biting hard over there, with unemployment soaring, public services failing and a property boom turned most emphatically bust. While there at Christmas I couldn’t believe the number of people I met casually who spoke of family and friends forced to work three-day weeks, something in Norway that is associated with quality of life and balancing work and family, not being forced to take pay cuts.

Novelist Anne Enright has written very eloquently on the topic of Ireland’s recession in an article entitled ‘Sinking by Inches’ in the London Review of Books here.

Coincidently after coming across Ms Enright’s piece yesterday, I received an email from a young Irish engineering graduate who has just arrived in Oslo with two friends in search of a better life*. ‘Our journey was motivated by a sense of hopelessness with the Irish economy, and a desire to check out the grass on the other side,’ he said, citing Norway’s low unemployment rate as one of the attractions here. I left Ireland 16 years ago with similar motivations and qualifications. There was no hint then to people like me that the Celtic Tiger was gestating for its short but dramatic life.

If this young man stays for the next year or so, I believe he won’t want to ever leave Norway. In my heart of hearts I now don’t want to either. But yet we are, as a family, committed to exploring other parts of the world and feel that there are other challenges ahead. We’d especially like the chance to live again in South East Asia where two of our children were born and where we would all benefit from exposure to very foreign cultures whilst enjoying a sense of adventure together.

My husband’s job finishes here in the summer and we expected that over the next few months he would get to consider his options in terms of location and job. What we didn’t expect was the phone call that came last Monday evening. His employer wants him to take up a position in …Ireland. Not only Ireland, but a very remote part of the west of Ireland; you could hardly move me further within the western world from a branch of H&M. And so on I joked as I coped with the shock.

We don’t want to go, for many reasons, some complex, some simple, both personal and professional. No matter where we move, leaving our near-perfect lives in Norway will be a wrench, but I have tried to console myself that in leaving we will resist the urge to 'play it safe' and open ourselves up to new possibilities and life-affirming experiences. What I didn’t bank on was going home. Will keep you posted.

*If by any chance someone reading is looking to employ an english-speaking Mechanical Engineering graduate, particularly if you have any connection with the bioengineering/biotech industries, I know a young man who'd love if you'd read his CV.

School Weigh-Ins

People in Norway seem pretty fit compared to those in Ireland. At least they don’t let a bit of rain – or even a deluge – put them off going outdoors. We’d be housebound these days if that was the case. In Norway, chucking kids outside in all weathers, seems to lead to adulthoods filled with cycling, roller-skiing and hiking all over the place; still in ridiculous clothing. And then the snow comes of course... Well, they were born with skis on – ouch! – weren’t they, these Norwegians?

Well despite this high level of activity, obesity is a growing problem here just as it is in the rest of the western world. According to Aftenposten, the authorities are so worried about the increasing numbers of overweight children in schools, that they are re-introducing a school weighing programme, which was abolished in 1997. The reason they stopped weighing kids ten years ago was because it was deemed too traumatic for the children. I can imagine. This time they’re going to be more discreet about it so children don’t have to see how much they weigh. The idea is to monitor kids – weighing them during first, third, seventh and tenth class (ages 6,8, 12 & 15) so that if a weight problem occurs, the school nurse can try steer a child towards a healthier fat-reducing lifestyle. Presumably though it will work the other way too – if a child is underweight, then that can be tackled too.

I can imagine what will happen though. All this data will be very useful in publishing surveys on which is the fattest kommune in Norway, which is the lightest town, what’s the fattest school in Norway, etc. Mmm. I’m not sure about this. Weighing kids seems quite an old-fashioned measurement of good/bad health and I certainly don’t weigh my children for fear it becomes a habit they can’t break as they grow into teenage girls.

My gut (!) instinct is that weighing kids in a school programme isn't going to do what it is intended to do; lead to a reduction in obesity. It'll just provide concrete data on the problem. Prevention is better than cure so perhaps it might be more efficacious to implement healthier eating habits and send these kids out onto the football pitch more frequently. Weighing them once they are already overweight, and then expecting them to lose it, seems a bit like putting the cart after the horse. But what do I know?

Autumn Beauty

Sognsvann

More Good PR

This is a quote from an interview I read on the Independent newspaper's website yesterday. It's with the 84-year-old writer and activist Gore Vidal who is a tad angry over the state of the USA these days.

Is there any hope? "Every sign I see is doom. But then people say" – he adopts a whiny, nasal voice – "'Oh Mr Vidal, you're so negative, can't you say something nice about America? It's a wonderful country, everybody wants to live here.' Oh yes? When was the last time you saw a Norwegian with a green card who wanted to come here because of the health service? I'll pay you if you can find one."

You can read the rest of the article here if you're not too busy hunting for a Norwegian dying to get into America.

BBC Radio 4 Interview

Yesterday evening around 1830 my phone went. It was someone from the BBC in London wondering if I could do a short interview on my thoughts on Norway's place at the top of the UN's list of best countries in the world to live in. I was really caught on the hop which was a good strategy on their side as I didn't have a chance to come up with an excuse to say why I couldn't possibly do it; the only reason being pure fear of making an ass of myself. I'm happy to do that here but not on BBC Radio 4.

So they called me back after a few minutes during which I charged the phone just in case. I then got to listen in to what was happening in the studio; there was an interview going on with one of the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine. All I could think of was please, please don't let one of the children burst into the room while I'm doing this.

The interview pronounced my name right which I was very impressed by. Even the priest back in St Patrick's Parish in Kilkenny used to have trouble with it from the pulpit. Not my name exactly but my surname, shared by my dead relatives who the priest used to ask us to pray for, prompted by some money in an envelope from my mother. Praying for the dead always seemed to me as a bit like putting the the horse after the cart, but I digress.

So I told the BBC man how wonderful Norway is. I wasn't lying. It is a great place- I didn't bore them with tales of winter weather, mind you. I reserve that for you guys. The radio presenter also cunningly asked me if I thought Norwegians realized how fortunate they are. A great question. I said that my experience is that Norwegians who have never lived abroad take the lifestyle they have here for granted; I referred specifically to the example of year-long paid maternity leave on this. But there are lots of other things too. He also asked if I was ever going to leave Norway. Er maybe, but I'll be very sad to do so and think if we do move one that it will be hard not to compare a place to here. Although if I'm blogging by a pool, beside a vineyard, in Australia (no. 2 on the UN's list) that may not be the case.

Anyway, I didn't seize up, mix any names up, or forget any words which happens on a daily basis when just talking about what's for dinner. I did however guess very wrongly on UK's position on the UN list - I guessed 7th, he said 22nd I think. Ah well, I still love the UK. It's definitely got the best radio shows in the world ;)

The programme was called PM on Radio 4. I don't know if you can download it; I certainly won't be doing so. I'd die of mortification to hear my own voice.

p.s. Only a few minutes after I finished the interview, my phone rang again. It was my friend Elizabeth, who lives in Vienna, who hasn't called me in almost three years. She was listening to the radio in her kitchen, heard my voice and then rang me to congratulate me. She says that she reads my blog too. It was lovely to speak to you Elizabeth and very kind of you to call. Thank you.

An open letter to His Gorgeousness the Prime Minister

Dear Mr Stoltenberg,

Let me start by congratulating you and your colleagues on your election victory. It was hardly a surprise that the sexiest man in European politics* (I’d say the world, if it weren’t for the delectable and evermore powerful President Obama) was last night elected to a second consecutive term as the Prime Minster of Norway. Not that I think the Norwegian electorate voted for you based on your looks; they are far too sensible for that. Or are they? I don’t know, actually, not being one of them.

The fact is Mr Stoltenberg that as a 38-year-old with more degrees than some thermometers, an excellent credit rating, a clean driving license from two nations (the ones with the ‘special relationship’ in case you are interested) and a shared tax bill over the past five years residency in your great country that runs into millions of Kroner, I am not considered trustworthy enough to be a member of the Norwegian electorate.

My 17-year old neighbour, who turns 18 next month, is still at school, dates a long-haired boy with trousers that never conceal his Bjorn Borg underwear, never reads a newspaper, dresses exactly the same as every other 17-year-old girl in the country, and thinks the word 'fuck' is Norwegian for 'cool', was able to vote yesterday, but I suspect didn’t bother. This, while I, a former preschool board member, Year 2 class representative and all around upstanding member of the international community, who persists in reading Aftenposten everyday despite the absence of anything interesting to read, avails gratefully of your excellent public childcare system and feeds her daughter brown cheese on a daily basis (this alone makes me practically Norwegian by naturalisation), has no right to vote. Why is that, Mr Stoltenberg? Can it really be because the front of my passport says the word ‘Eire’ and not ‘Norge’? Isn’t that a tad petty in these times of globalisation?

You are not alone of course in denying me my democratic right. The US, Singapore and the Philippines had the same attitude towards me. Only the UK gave me a vote as a tax-paying long-term resident, a right I exercised on the day Tony Blair swept to power in 1997. Well, we all make mistakes, don’t we?

My own country doesn’t allow me to vote either, by virtue of my absence, as there is no overseas voting system for Irish citizens. However, as I haven’t lived there since 1993, the only government policies likely to affect me are taxes on airport travel and inheritance, and possibly third-level education for non-residents, I don’t feel this is in anyway unfair. I do think however, that having half my income taken in taxes in Norway (not to mention the other non-income based taxes I pay everyday while working on my considerable shopping habit) while being denied the right to vote in how these taxes are deployed within the society I live in, is frankly taking the piss.

So Mr Stoltenberg , once your victory hangover has cleared, and you have a little time on your hands, I wonder if you might consider the plight of the tax-paying foreigner so that when the next election comes around, in 2013, I might get to vote (online if news reports are to be believed). It could then be, for both of us, a case of third time lucky (assuming in the meantime that age doesn’t rob you of your good looks and I don’t decide to go pay my taxes somewhere else).

Mvh,

The Irish Nomad in Norway.

* I realise that Carla Bruni might not agree with this statement but I am willing to go stiletto to stiletto with her over it.

Resilient Oslo bucks the global trend for crisis

One of the questions almost everyone asked us during our two-week stay in Ireland was, 'How are things in Norway?'. They weren't meaning how are things with us, but how is the country fairing financially as Ireland, if the media is to be believed, sinks further and further into an economic gloom with unemployment creeping upwards and people's spirits and equity in the opposite direction.

According to an article in last Sunday's Observer, 'The global recession has hit almost every country hard. But Norway is faring better than most'. Click here to read the rest of the piece.

Excuses

Reasons, randomly assorted, why I haven't been blogging:

1. I've spent more time on the beach in the past few weeks than I have in the previous three years.

2. On non-beach days, the weather has been so cr**p, that I haven't wanted to spread the doom and gloom that hangs around the house in such weather.

3. I'm hanging around the house with three children.

4. One of these children is a toddler, a text-book terrible twos type toddler. (I've been fortunate enough to have a more socially acceptable type on two occasions before - yes by that I mean girls - but third time I wasn't so lucky).

5. The toddler is a boy.

6. I only typed the first sentence of this post before being interrupted by having a Hannah Montana piece of cardboard thrust in my face for inspection. There are many such interruptions.

7. When the God of Children Entertaining Themselves Indoors in Inclement Weather smiles down on me I do things like laundry, remove dried oatmeal from the table, floor, everywhere, and feed my latest Facebook addiction called Bejeweled Bedazzle or something like that. If you want to avoid wasting great swathes of your precious leisure/cleaning time, DO NOT go near this ridiculous game. Seriously, don't.

8. I've nothing new to say about Norway. I've been here almost five years and now think it is perfectly normal to have a packet of brown cheese in the fridge, to remortgage the house to pay parking charges, and to wear wellies in the city centre on a sunny day. Well it is, isn't it?

9. I'm spending all my free time writing my novel. This is a whopping great lie. I just want you to know that I am STILL writing a novel. Haven't abandoned the great oeuvre yet. No, not yet.

10. I've run out of excuses - no I haven't. Toddler has just emptied a spoon of porridge over his sister's head. Gotta go.

Terrace temperature

For anyone who thinks of Norway as a cold country - well, it's not always....

National Day

 

Norway Wins Eurovision

Back in the days of my youth when I was a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, Ireland used to win a lot and Norway used to get null points. Well to say I'm shocked to wake up this morning and discover that Norway won this year's contest says a lot about my childhood-initiated prejudice. (Ireland didn't even get into the final this year).

The thing is that I've been singing along to this song for several months on the car radio and I absolutely love it. I just had no idea it was Norway's Eurovision's entry. It's not that the competition, including qualifying rounds, doesn't get a lot of air-time here; it does. Too much, in fact. But I've just avoided watching any of it.

So well done Alexander Rybak and collaborators. Norwegians will be very proud of you today on their national day. Gosh, even I'm feeling a little misty-eyed. Must be here too long. Or maybe it's the thought of getting to cover next year's event, assuming it's held in Oslo, for whomever I can convince to give me the job.

Have a listen. I think it's fab!

Hytte Life

 

Spending the weekend in a ‘hytte’ (cabin) is as common for Norwegians as Sunday shopping is for Irish people. So far though, we’ve only managed one weekend away from Oslo in four and a half hours. Until the weekend just gone by. 

Now, my version of a cabin is a brand-new or recently-renovated house complete with dishwasher and flatscreen TV but I do know people with cabins that don’t have running water or toilets. Yes, people actually drive for hours every weekend to get away from the trappings of modern life such as flushing toilets and showers. Well, not me. Ever.

We went to a tiny settlement of only a few houses - where people live all-year-round, miles and miles from civilization and shopping -  at the innermost point of Mauranger fjord. It was so stunningly beautiful that I didn’t mind that it rained all day Saturday, even though only a few miles away we could see the sun shining. It seemed we had hit upon a micro-climate.

Luckily the satellite dish meant that the kids had many more television channels to watch than they have at home. It was a bit strange, driving for almost six hours each way, over snowy mountains, within spitting distance of glaciers, to the edge of civilisation in fact, to watch Sky News. 

We were the first ever family to stay in the hytte we rented since the previous occupants died in the 1950s. They were a pair of blind sisters. Can you imagine, living right on the edge of a fjord and not being able to see it? 

This makes me want to scream! (U2 sacrilege)

Kurt Nilsen is a Norwegian singer, with a fantastic voice, who won World Pop Idol several years ago. He has teamed up with three other male singers – one of whom looks and sounds about eight years old but isn’t - to make records, television, concert appearances, and money singing cover versions of other artists’ hit songs. Fabulous voices do not fabulous music always make!

Twice this morning I switched on the car radio and had this horrendous balladic, harmony treatment of U2’s ‘With or Without You’ inflicted on me. This isn't one of U2's best songs -IMHO-but it still doesn't deserve this treatment. I’m started to get tetchy with the radio button as a result. I think it’s atrocious. Absolutely atrocious. What d’you think?

Kurt and co - please stop messin' with my heritage!

Here's another clip; this time with expressive eyebrows:

Living dangerously

I learnt some interesting facts about moose from yesterday’s Aftenposten. Gosh I miss The Irish Times. But, anyway.  Page nine, full-page story, headline: ‘Moose threaten the forest’, tells us that in 2007/2008, 2094 moose were killed in traffic (844 were killed by trains). Poor moose. Poor drivers. As the article points out, moose are the largest animals living in the wild in Europe – having seen a few, this is totally credible – so you can imagine that the people who lived to report their moose-collisions probably wrecked their cars and possibly a bone or two. It got me thinking: isn’t living in Norway a little bit more dangerous than living in Ireland?  Consider the following health hazards:

1.     Moose collisions.

2.     Icicles/Ice slides from roofs of buildings (see previous post).

3.     Choking over the prices of lettuce, milk, bread, kids’ shoes, chicken,… this list could merit its own blog, so I’ll stop there.

4.     Stress/loneliness/depression caused by scowling, unfriendly natives – usually abates after several years in situ.

5.     Cardiac arrest brought on by excessive consumption of waffles and hot dogs. However, this is somewhat balanced out by the prohibitive cost of take-aways which in Ireland seems to be a weekly, if not twice-weekly event for many city dwellers. Absence of fish ‘n’ chip shops is also in Norway’s favour. Oh and then there’s the shoe-leather quality of the beef which means one never actually eats red meat. OK, so scrap this one.

6.     Increased risk of skin cancer. I spent five years living in the tropics with a swimming pool in my garden. I never sunbathed, never wore less than SPF 50. After the worst winter in decades, I now understand why so many Norwegian women over 40 have obvious sun-damage on their faces.  It’s now near impossible to resist the temptation to raise one’s face to the sun like a flower seeking sustenance. To hell with wrinkles, to hell with age spots and moles; I’ve survived winter, I deserve to feel the sun on my face (and arms, legs, tummy etc.).  Irish people do of course have the same desire to feel the sun damage their faces but unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) clouds, rain and generally inclement weather have a mitigating effect on this particular health hazard.

 Anyone got anymore? I can’t have exhausted the list…….

From the Emerald Isle to Africa - in 2 hours

An elephant at Dublin Zoo last tuesday.

Thirteen days ago we left Norway where the temperature was hovering around zero and the landscape was completely white with snow and ice. As I mentioned in my previous post, the sight of grass in Dublin received a rapturous welcome from the children. Yesterday we flew back to Oslo, and as we drove home from the airport, D1 remarked that the landscape looked like Africa. She's never been, but she IS widely read :-) 

I kind of know what she was getting at.  Almost all the snow was gone to reveal brown fields and leafless trees which looked like they'd been through a drought. It was 18 degrees Celsius folks. We arrived back to a very different looking country from the one we had left less than two weeks before. 

Driving around today, my spacial awareness was all over the place. Imagine if someone came along and removed all the walls along the roadsides and between the houses. It's like that. Snow banks totally gone. Everything is dusty with the detritus of winter. Toys long buried under snow are reappearing. It's like being released from an icy prison. It's fantastic. 

Right now, Norway actually feels like home and Ireland is becoming more alien to me. More of that later. For the moment, I'll just say that it's really great to be back.

Brad & Camilla

So last night we plodded down the icy hill, good shoes in hand, to a party at the Barnehage. Yes, there is a real danger here that I might be getting a social life; I've spoken more Norwegian in the past week than in the previous two years put together. One kind man, nicely remarked that I had an accent, and where was I from. 

Being the 'foreigners' of course we arrived fashionably late and hence last; Norwegians are sticklers for punctuality. Everyone who turned up got a picture of one half of a celebrity couple so that when it came to time to sit and eat you were forced to sit with someone other than your real spouse. A great idea actually. 

Well, himself was Brad Pitt and I was thrilled to receive a photo of Camilla Parker Bowles - not! Well turns out that Angelina works in the Norwegian public sector and Prince Charles, would you credit it, runs a restaurant by the fjord. 

Me and Brad Pitt retired to my boudoir just after 1 AM. Not bad for a night at a kindergarden, drinking wine out of plastic glasses. Tough luck, Angelina.

Just call me practical

The snow plough has cleared the driveway making the mounds of white stuff for the kids to play in as high as the neighour's truck. Husband has driven off to work and will be back tomorrow evening. D1 has gone to school armed with sled and helmet - well an excuse for a sled called a 'bum board' - to use at Brownies. The trampoline has still not collapsed under the weight of the snow; thank goodness we bought quality;-) 

I haven't worn a proper pair of shoes or boots in over a week and have taken to wearing ski pants as a default garment - so comfy, so practical, so economical on the laundry front. OMG! I'm on a slippery slope to Norwegianisation. Going to dust off my beautiful boots now just so I can look at them. Maybe I'll get to wear them in Ireland at April.

P.S. Speaking of glamour - what about those beautiful Obamas and their two children. Talk about gorgeous - and with intellect, integrity and great intentions to boot. Don't you just want to be their friends?