While the ”news channel of the year” (SKY) is on full blast here showing pictures from an old storm (it must be, they showed the same sequence over and over yesterday and then this storm, Johanna, hadn’t reached the UK yet) I keep thinking of the one day of canal boating which everybody in my family remembers.
It was on our third day canal boating ever. Before that we had felt like idiots in side winds on the Severn, behaved like idiots in Shroudport, but as we went slowly north towards Kidderminster the weather cleared up and everything seemed so much brighter. We found a pub which we decided would be the place where we would see the Eurovision Song Contest (because Denmark had a really good song that year and we hoped that they would win, which they also did). After having checked out the pub, however, we decided it was of such a character that we didn’t want to moor the boat outside it, so we took the boat up about 500 meters, to what looked like an opening in the forest. By then it was time for dinner, and since it had started to drizzle and get dark, we didn’t get a proper view of what it looked like outside then.
Next morning I woke up about 6 to bird song. And it was hot. I made myself coffee and went outside while the rest of the family was still sleeping and when I opened the door to the front deck I could hardly believe my own eyes.
The place we had found was just beautiful. The forest floor was blue with Bluebells, along the water’s edge grew Primroses. The forest was old oaks and other leafy trees and what they lacked in fully grown foliage was compensated by the Ivy and other climbers growing on the trees. Nearest to the canals grew Spireas as tall as trees (here they get to maximum one meter) and in full bloom. On my right side a mare and a foal were grassing and on the other side a doe and a bambi were drinking water. Further up in the hills I could see sheep with lambs, there were ducks with babies and a swan mother and her two children also. And as I sat there, a rabbit with her baby came out, a heron and her baby, it was like everything was in bloom and everything had babies. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky and it was about 20 degrees early in the morning. It was like somebody had dropped me in a Beatrix Potter picture book.
As the family woke up, they all came out and I think we sat there for one hour all very quiet not to disturb anything. The kids were 12 and 13 then and even they were amazed at the extreme beauty of that place. It was like we were the first people who ever had been there, yet when we moved further up, we realised that what we thought of as forest, probably only was about 50 meters wide and the world’s first industrial area was right behind it. Which makes the experience even more amazing, come to think of it.
Monday 10 March 2008
Thursday 6 March 2008
Dedicated to my Favourite Coat and the People who Made it
It’s now just one week till we will be leaving and in the mean time we have got most of our questions answered thanks to canalworld.net which I found on the blog of my new pen pal Les.
On the question of “what to wear” we got so many varied answers that it was hard to chose. I noticed one about ski- or sailing clothes being too colourful for the canals and thought “yeah, sure, among all those “subtly coloured” boats, Pål and I will stick out like sore thumbs”! So for those of you who have worried about us “sight polluting” the canals, I can now assure you that a) the rental company supplies us with rainwear (and in the preferred canal colour) and b) we do live in the country, so we can do “country cheek”, besides green is my favourite colour. Actually it seems like my favourite coat will be “the right thing” for the canals.
I bought my favourite coat when I was 25 (31 years ago). It was then and would still be now, the most expensive garment I have ever paid for, yet in the long run it has turned out to be the most economical thing I have ever bought. It is an all weather jacket produced by a famous British company originally bottle green, but by now faded to an even prettier green more like olives. It has never been very fashionable and yet never totally out of fashion for the right weather either. I have worn it every winter for 31 years and some times in the summer also, and not one button is missing, not one seam is broken. My mother has paid me to buy three new coats in this period (and I think that both my mother and the coat are good for a couple of more). As some of you by now have figured out, the coat was actually made before we people of the north started to outsource all the things we were clever at to south east Asia, so the coat spots a label that probably has become a collectors item these days: “Made in Britain”!
My mother thinks that I should soon start to dress “more mature”, and she might have a point since I am pushing 60, and the coat looks a bit worn, I admit to that, so I was sort of thinking of retiring it but I took it on one more trip to Italy last year. A gorgeous and very elegantly dressed young Italian woman came over to me in a bar, looked at the coat and said admiringly: Viiintich! She actually thought I had bought it in a cool second hand shop and told me she was looking for a coat like that herself! The coat now has it’s second spring! If it’s fashionable enough for Italy, I can wear it anywhere! And I bet that some time in the future my grandchildren might argue over who is going to inherit it!
As I have gained weight I once asked my son if I looked fat in it. “No” he answered like a good boy (because I have taught him to answer that to all women if they ever ask him that question), and then a bit more quietly; “but you do look a bit like a green Mummin-mamma”! So if you see somebody on the canals like that: It’s me!
On the question of “what to wear” we got so many varied answers that it was hard to chose. I noticed one about ski- or sailing clothes being too colourful for the canals and thought “yeah, sure, among all those “subtly coloured” boats, Pål and I will stick out like sore thumbs”! So for those of you who have worried about us “sight polluting” the canals, I can now assure you that a) the rental company supplies us with rainwear (and in the preferred canal colour) and b) we do live in the country, so we can do “country cheek”, besides green is my favourite colour. Actually it seems like my favourite coat will be “the right thing” for the canals.
I bought my favourite coat when I was 25 (31 years ago). It was then and would still be now, the most expensive garment I have ever paid for, yet in the long run it has turned out to be the most economical thing I have ever bought. It is an all weather jacket produced by a famous British company originally bottle green, but by now faded to an even prettier green more like olives. It has never been very fashionable and yet never totally out of fashion for the right weather either. I have worn it every winter for 31 years and some times in the summer also, and not one button is missing, not one seam is broken. My mother has paid me to buy three new coats in this period (and I think that both my mother and the coat are good for a couple of more). As some of you by now have figured out, the coat was actually made before we people of the north started to outsource all the things we were clever at to south east Asia, so the coat spots a label that probably has become a collectors item these days: “Made in Britain”!
My mother thinks that I should soon start to dress “more mature”, and she might have a point since I am pushing 60, and the coat looks a bit worn, I admit to that, so I was sort of thinking of retiring it but I took it on one more trip to Italy last year. A gorgeous and very elegantly dressed young Italian woman came over to me in a bar, looked at the coat and said admiringly: Viiintich! She actually thought I had bought it in a cool second hand shop and told me she was looking for a coat like that herself! The coat now has it’s second spring! If it’s fashionable enough for Italy, I can wear it anywhere! And I bet that some time in the future my grandchildren might argue over who is going to inherit it!
As I have gained weight I once asked my son if I looked fat in it. “No” he answered like a good boy (because I have taught him to answer that to all women if they ever ask him that question), and then a bit more quietly; “but you do look a bit like a green Mummin-mamma”! So if you see somebody on the canals like that: It’s me!
Tuesday 4 March 2008
About Vikings, the Forefathers of the Hooligans
Scientists have found out that 80% of the British have common genes with the Norwegians. And since there are about 60 million British, that should be about 48 million people descending from the Vikings in Britain, as opposed to only 4.5 million in Norway. I know that the reputation of the Vikings in Britain is that they “raped our women”. Well, a few may be, but those 80 per cent actually tell that there either have been a 1000 year old cover up to protect rather promiscuous British women, or the libido of the Vikings were something… few Norwegians have got today.
And as for the nuns they supposedly raped in Ireland. Most of them had actually been given to the convent because they’re parents couldn’t afford to take care of them. And now pretend that you are a young, Irish girl of this sort. Would you go with a crew of rather tall, blond and good looking guys back to the cool city of Lade (Trondheim, then the capitol of Norway), or would you prefer to stay put with the bold, fat guy in a draughty and moist convent? And we know what catholic monks are like today; there is no reason to think they behaved any differently in those days. And as for the “barbaric” Vikings, what do you think your history would be like if it was written by Irish monks? Besides, they only raped pretty nuns (that’s why girls in Trondheim are so pretty today).
In a mosque in Istanbul that used to be a church, they found runes cut into the banister at the top gallery. For many years they couldn’t say whether it was made by a Viking or what it said, but when they did (they carbon dated the wood or something and of course an Englishman cracked the code of the runes), it changed the history of the Vikings a bit. It said “Håvard was here” (like the first Kilroy ever)!
I picture Håvard being a young shipmate, bored stiff with the sermon taking part in a foreign language seven stories down, so he takes out his pocket knife and tags. A more modern Viking (Hooligan) would in this instance take out his spray can and tag something similar on the church ceiling, I imagine. But thanks to the “tagging” of Håvard, we now know that the Vikings were literate, since even people who had to be that high up (the further down the posher the people) could write. And from thereof the scientists have deducted that the Vikings were cultural people!
I am not sure the same is going to happen when 1000 years from now the archaeologists are coming across some of the signs in Britain that we find hilarious. Like with the Vikings, not all British are Hooligans. Most of them are in fact like a kinder, better mannered and more polite Norwegians, and most of the time the pubs are filled with people like that. But since other things than nice families eating dinner out, well dressed elderly Englishmen having they’re one or two beers and little old ladies chatting with they friends, obviously is happening on the weekends, these people find themselves surrounded by signs like “Do not let your children bother other guests”. So we watch well dressed, well manned and obviously prosperous English people with they’re children and wonder when are they going to send they’re kids over to bother us? Or pick flowers from the hampers (“If you want flowers, don’t pick them here”)? Or try to find another way of opening doors than using the handle (on exit pub door “Press handle down to get out”)? Or climb up in the ceiling to touch the red hot heater (“Do not touch heater, it’s hot”). Or just litter (with what? One normally gets both glasses and china plates in the pubs. There is nothing there to litter with)?
Other scientists have through research on twins found out that the characteristic we humans are most likely to inherit is our sense of humour. And if anybody should be in doubt as to whether the Norwegians and the British are related, check out our humour. It is the same in both countries, a fact most English people find quite amazing when they come here, and something we enjoy when we are in England.
It’s so nice to be surrounded by people who get our ironic, obnoxious, sarcastic and rude sense of humour. The only personality change we have to do in England is that we speak English instead of Norwegian. And we are very happy that the world language is the language originally spoken by the people who managed to turn Jordvik (a word with 4 sounding consonants and 2 sounding vocals) into something that sounds like a burp: York. Anybody can learn English!
And as for the nuns they supposedly raped in Ireland. Most of them had actually been given to the convent because they’re parents couldn’t afford to take care of them. And now pretend that you are a young, Irish girl of this sort. Would you go with a crew of rather tall, blond and good looking guys back to the cool city of Lade (Trondheim, then the capitol of Norway), or would you prefer to stay put with the bold, fat guy in a draughty and moist convent? And we know what catholic monks are like today; there is no reason to think they behaved any differently in those days. And as for the “barbaric” Vikings, what do you think your history would be like if it was written by Irish monks? Besides, they only raped pretty nuns (that’s why girls in Trondheim are so pretty today).
In a mosque in Istanbul that used to be a church, they found runes cut into the banister at the top gallery. For many years they couldn’t say whether it was made by a Viking or what it said, but when they did (they carbon dated the wood or something and of course an Englishman cracked the code of the runes), it changed the history of the Vikings a bit. It said “Håvard was here” (like the first Kilroy ever)!
I picture Håvard being a young shipmate, bored stiff with the sermon taking part in a foreign language seven stories down, so he takes out his pocket knife and tags. A more modern Viking (Hooligan) would in this instance take out his spray can and tag something similar on the church ceiling, I imagine. But thanks to the “tagging” of Håvard, we now know that the Vikings were literate, since even people who had to be that high up (the further down the posher the people) could write. And from thereof the scientists have deducted that the Vikings were cultural people!
I am not sure the same is going to happen when 1000 years from now the archaeologists are coming across some of the signs in Britain that we find hilarious. Like with the Vikings, not all British are Hooligans. Most of them are in fact like a kinder, better mannered and more polite Norwegians, and most of the time the pubs are filled with people like that. But since other things than nice families eating dinner out, well dressed elderly Englishmen having they’re one or two beers and little old ladies chatting with they friends, obviously is happening on the weekends, these people find themselves surrounded by signs like “Do not let your children bother other guests”. So we watch well dressed, well manned and obviously prosperous English people with they’re children and wonder when are they going to send they’re kids over to bother us? Or pick flowers from the hampers (“If you want flowers, don’t pick them here”)? Or try to find another way of opening doors than using the handle (on exit pub door “Press handle down to get out”)? Or climb up in the ceiling to touch the red hot heater (“Do not touch heater, it’s hot”). Or just litter (with what? One normally gets both glasses and china plates in the pubs. There is nothing there to litter with)?
Other scientists have through research on twins found out that the characteristic we humans are most likely to inherit is our sense of humour. And if anybody should be in doubt as to whether the Norwegians and the British are related, check out our humour. It is the same in both countries, a fact most English people find quite amazing when they come here, and something we enjoy when we are in England.
It’s so nice to be surrounded by people who get our ironic, obnoxious, sarcastic and rude sense of humour. The only personality change we have to do in England is that we speak English instead of Norwegian. And we are very happy that the world language is the language originally spoken by the people who managed to turn Jordvik (a word with 4 sounding consonants and 2 sounding vocals) into something that sounds like a burp: York. Anybody can learn English!
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