Kilkenny Literary Visitors

We’re currently on our annual summer holidays in Ireland during which the kids get their thrice annual hair cuts (3 for the price of 1 in Norway), I have salon-smooth hair for two weeks, and my husband uses my brother’s old mountain bike to cycle from Kilkenny to Carlow every second day as part of his Birkebeiner race training.

The best thing about coming here in August is Kilkenny Arts Festival. Not only does this offer lots of street entertainment for the kids but it also brings some great writers to the city to plug their wares giving me the opportunity to hang out with literary types. Well sit on a plastic chair in the audience in front of them for an hour then queue up and get my book signed.

Next week I’m going to readings by 2009 Orange Prize short-listed Kamila Shamsie, 2009 Booker long-listed Colm Toibin (who curates the literary events at the festival) and a newcomer Peter Murphy who has written a great book called ‘John the Revelator’. Last year I got to meet and have books signed by Sebastian Barry and Anne Enright. I told the latter that I wished I could write like her. ‘You should write like yourself,’ she replied kindly. ‘No, I’d much rather write like you!’ I gushed. Yes, I’m sure she was impressed. To Mr Barry I must have come across as an even bigger twat. He asked me what I was doing in Norway. ‘My husband is in gas,’ I said. Yep. Am really hoping to keep the head this year and keep the idiocy to a minimum. Maybe I'll mention my own writerly leanings. Ask an intelligent question from the audience in front of everyone. Neither of these scenarios is likely as all the events are too early in the day to calm nerves with a drink without smelling like an alcoholic. Still, I can fantasise about becoming Colm Toibin's newest best friend for another eight days, about chatting with Ms Shamsie on the merits of multi-point of view narratives for just two more, and then it'll be back to the barren literary landscape of Norway where such fantasies don't even exist.

I'll let you know how I get on.

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.

Beach relief

Kalvøya Beach, July 3, 2009

My last post was a gripe about litter at the beach. I’ve hardly had a chance to write since as we were spending so much time at the beach. And not the same boring beach every day either. No, last week we went to four different beaches all less than 15 minutes drive from our house, and came home to our hot house, tanned and sweaty, toting sandy towels and an empty cool box. It was almost possible to believe we were living in a country that wasn’t Norway. I started to imagine that I could never live in another country ever again, that Norway is paradise. OK, so maybe there was a touch of heat stroke involved but seriously, when the sun is shining, I can't think of a better place to live in.

Folks, I even went swimming in the fjord! I haven’t swum in non-tropical waters for at least 20 years. Last week, the alternative was to expire in front of my children while wearing a bikini – not the way I hope to go.

Well this week we’re back to rain and cooler temperatures and to be honest it’s a relief to de-sand the house, pack away the bikinis, and sleep with a duvet again (all temporary of course. We don’t’ want summer to be completely done with us). For the moment though, no more night walks in search of fresh air and to check that the children haven’t stopped breathing in the tropical heat from which the only relief involved getting into the car and turning up the air-con to hurricane level. Not ideal sleeping conditions.

I bet the guys and gals who clean up the beaches are sitting back with a coffee and a newspaper this morning, grateful for the inclement weather. After last week's work overload, I think they deserve the break.

Out of the mouths of babes

Until I was fourteen, I thought the middle syllable of vagina was pronounced gin as in ‘gin & tonic’. I’d never once heard the word uttered aloud and remember distinctly the BMX track I was playing at when I heard it pronounced correctly by a boy with a clearly more enlightenend ubringing than mine. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the context.
During a visit the other day to Kilkenny’s only public playground, I discovered that children in Ireland today, well some of them at least, display no such lingual ignorance.
The playground, a haven of mayhem, is a very popular place during the summer holidays with too few benches for grown-ups desperately trying to keep an eye on their charges who flit around the place in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of colour. In fact, if lucky enough to get space for your bum on a seat, it’s a challenge to hold onto it as safety and decorum dictate that you have to get up and down every few minutes to either relocate your children or reprimand them or both. I noticed one grandmother cannily place a newspaper on her bench spot every time she had to get up to tend to her charges, a trick I’ll remember for next time.
I imagine that if I was under-10 with heaps of energy, I’d think the playground was, in the vernacular of the young, deadly, with plenty of swings, weird roundabout-things, various climbing apparatus and slides. As a highly-strung parent, the climbing frame which at its apex seems to reach around 12 feet off the ground, does look, literally, deadly.
There is a circle of swings facing inwards so that children can swing and chat face-to-face at the same time; they also, rather predictably, try to kick each other. My long-legged semi-Danish offspring came worryingly close to succeeding making me wonder what size child the designers had in mind. This circular set-up does of course encourage social banter among the young ones.
I’m not sure how the following repartee started but I tuned in to hear D1 laughing at a boy who nearly fell off his swing.
D1: You’ve got a flower up your nose.
Boy: Calls her something I don’t hear.
D1: You’ve got a carrot up your nose. Hee hee.
Boy: Calls her something I can’t hear.
D2: You’ve got a poo up your nose. Ha, ha, ha!
Boy: You’ve got a vagina up yours! (perfectly pronounced but anatomically innacurate)

To borrow and adapt the words of WB Yeats: 'Innocent Ireland is dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.' Clearly, Mr Yeats was wrong about the romantic part; it's alive and well, in the playground at least. (For those who never had the pleasure of an Irish education, the original line reads 'Romantic Ireland is dead and gone,')

Back to Norway at the weekend, with D2 starting at her new school, S1 taking up his coveted kindergarden place, and lots of discussion about a possible move next summer. Can't say to where yet.......

Kilkenny-bound

If someone had told me 20 years ago that my destination of choice for summer holidays would be Kilkenny, I’d have told them to sod off. No way! I mean I knew that I wouldn’t be living in the town of my birth when I ‘grew up’, but I didn’t anticipate that I’d become so attached to it in my, er, prime. But here we are, finally, about to head off to the sometimes sunny south-east of Ireland (as the temperature hits 30 here in Oslo) for our fourth consecutive summer trip.
So here's to three weeks of shopping in decent supermarkets; this is particularily ironic given that I wasn't in fact ever allowed to set foot in a supermarket in Kilkenny until my father sold his grocery store when I was in my early twenties (someone might have seen me and inferred from my presence that a supermarket was better than Leahy's Minimarket - or something like that!).
More important than quality retail experiences, is seeing my parents (free babysitting), cheap booze, cheaper everything, reading loads of lovely newspapers, and catching up with many old friends. The kids love to rediscover their toys – Santa usually visits them in Kilkenny, while the retired grocer always puts Santa to shame with his generosity.
Of course, looking back I realise that I wasn't running away from Kilkenny, but from my dad's darn business, which I loathed beyond reason. That shop defined my relationship to everything; family, friends, aquaintances, myself and my home town.
But that's a story for another day (or memoir :-))
Here's to dry weather, and if the thermometer hits 20 or above, that'll be a bonus.

An open letter to Polly Pocket

Dear Ms. Pocket,
This is a letter of apology and of gratitude. I will admit, Ms. Pocket, that the first time I laid eyes on you, I thought you were a cheap, nasty plastic toy that came accessorised with multiple choking hazards. I discounted you as rubbish, hardly hiding my disdain, which I'm sure you found very hurtful. How wrong I was.
As we enter week five of the summer holidays, a period during which our household has been blighted by contagious diseases, lightning strikes and dodgy weather, you alone have proved reliable, safe and an unbelievably creative force on my children's imaginations. Who, other than Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise or perhaps Kylie, could have thought something so diminutive (and dare I say inanimate) could hold such power?
Polly, (I hope you don't think me too familiar now as I reach my third paragraph) I admit that I tried to replace you with an inflatable paddling pool, a trampoline, Nintendo DS and even books, but have realised that these objects are no match for your personal brand of allure. You are a hero amongst mass-produced Chinese toys!
I used to disapprove of your vast fleet of environmentally-damaging cars, camper vans, planes and helicopters, all in lurid colours, but no more. I'll admit to being slightly envious of your extensive fabulous shoe collection which I have to bend down hundreds of times a day to clear from the floor, while squinting at accessories smaller than my pinkie's finger nail. I try not to get irritated when you use my bathroom sink as a bath, but wonder if perhaps you could cut back on the vast amounts of liquid hand soap you use as bubble bath. Just a suggestion.
But you're worth all of this almost imperceptible trouble. My girls may emerge at the end of this summer looking pale, bleary-eyed, unwashed and hungry despite my pleas to bathe and eat, such is their devotion to Polly world, but their mother will emerge sane (well no crazier than before the summer at least), without having had to resort to trips to HoppeLoppeHell, interminable games of memory game (like last summer), or even much conversation.
As I pack for our trip to Ireland, I am of course reserving space for you whom I now consider to be as essential as nappies, 10 pairs of high heels (mine, not yours) and Aidan's favourite sippy cup to a successful (i.e. one without attempted filicide or the need to drink enough to end up in rehab just to cope) holiday. I'm afraid you'll have to leave your private jumbo jet behind but hope you'll understand the baggage constraints of travelling with the masses.
Finally, I'd like to say 'thank you' for teaching me a lesson about the dangers of judging plastic dolls shorter than Tampax, with dubious plastic hairstyles and retro taste in plastic clothing, by appearances. I was wrong to give you away the first time you were gifted to us. By goodness, am I glad you gave us a second chance. You are my hero.
Yours sincerely,
A Chastened, Grateful Mother