It�s odd sometimes, the way some things remind me of other things. I heard two seagulls today, as I was leaving home, and memories of going to Norway as a kid came flooding back. My mum, for those of you who aren�t aware, is Norwegian. She is from this tiny little fishing village, in the far north. Farther North than Trondheim, which is pretty far north to some people. Farther North than Tromso. Just stop before you get to Hammerfest on a map, and you�re there. It is only a small village, inaccessible by car, so we used to take a two hour ferry, that always made me sea sick. We�d go down into the lounge, and I would lie on the plastic cushioned benches, trying to ignore the sweet smell of waffle mixture and coffee, and trying to concentrate on watching a fuzzy picture of �Allo �Allo! with Norwegian subtitles being shown on NRK � the only TV station that hasn�t left the 1950�s in terms of the presenters appearance. When we arrived at the harbour, we�d be greeted by the scent of the seawater corroding the slimy metal of the boat, and the fragrance of fish in a nearby unit, having been recently caught, and the cry of the gull�s overhead. There isn�t much in the village, just beautiful houses made of wood, painted in any colour imaginable with a complimenting shade for the trim around the gutters and the window frames, and tarmac roofs. The gardens are usually neatly kept, and not particularly different to the garden you might find n the North of Scotland, with the exception of perhaps a local stream running down from a glacier through the landscape, or a towering white flagpole with the Norwegian flag flying at the top. None of the houses are more than 55 years old � The Germans burnt every building in the North as they fled at the end of the Second World War, leaving a wake of Norwegians trying to find shelter from the harsh winters. I read that one such group of Norwegians, on the other side of the fiord, found shelter for a long winter in an upturned fishing boat. There is a pub there, that seems to have a habit of being burnt down every five years or so. It is owned by this blonde man, who has lines of hair sewn into his head as a transplant. His scalp reminds me of a Barbie doll, the way those lines are so uniform. There is a post office in the concrete basement of a house. You go in, with your little key for the little steel post box. The houses don�t have numbers there; the address is usually the name of the recipient, the village and postcode. There is a beautiful little white wooden church, with a wooden steeple. Everyone from the village is buried there, and the graves all point out towards the whitest sand beach, and a cold, azure sea, and beyond to the mountains and glaciers. At Christmas, it is traditional to put a lantern on the graves, something I think is a lovely idea. I�ve never seen it in winter, but I imagine dark marble headstones poking out from feet of snow, and a dark grey sky (as the sun doesn�t rise above the mountains for a good few months in the winter) and all these little lanterns flickering in the wind. Memories of going to the boathouse, and tentatively exploring my grandfathers fishing boat, and my great grandfathers fishing boat, and my mothers old bicycle. Gazing in the dusty sunlight that creeps behind me through the doorway at an archive of old thick fishing ropes, and floats, a museum and a testament to the way it was. There is a barn where my grandparents used to keep animals. A huge wood barn, with two floors, and now filled with chunks of wood and timber used over the years, and old saws and a scythe they still use to cut the grass and scatterings of dried mouse droppings. People don�t bother knocking on your front door when they come to visit in the village. People leave the front door open. When a visitor comes calling, they usually take off their shoes and boots, and walk across the wooden floored hall with its rag woven rugs and scent of soap and cakes and fish. They knock on the kitchen door and let themselves in. Then a pot of coffee is put on the stove to boil, and the cakes are served and people stay for hours, sometimes until 2am, chatting and catching up. We used to go berry picking in the daytime, and try to avoid being bitten by the mosquitoes. There is only one television channel in service that we can get at my grandmother�s old house, NRK. It comes on around 6pm, and shows 1980�s Czechoslovakian animations for the children. Then through the evening, there will be a documentary, perhaps from the UK, with subtitles, and perhaps an old 1980�s comedy. In between programmes, there is a presenter, with immaculate hair, and a fresh faced look and perhaps a vase of flowers, speaking kindly to the presenter. And later on, an old film, from the 1970�s, perhaps from Paris. On rainy days, I�d lie in my great-grandfathers old bed (I was named after him) and write stories, or read books. In the summer, I could lie awake at night, until 4am, without needing to turn on a single light since it was still daylight. I�d go through a biscuit tin from Queen Elizabeth�s Silver Jubilee, of old photographs dating from 1890, of members of my family, and fading blue handwriting on the back of who they were. My mum would wash clothes in the stream, or in the twin tub that sits in the corner of the bathroom my dad and uncles built in the 1970�s. Before that, there was only a shed to go to, with a box and a deep hole cut into it that went into a pit and served as a toilet. In some parts of rural Norway, you still find public toilets like that. And then it was with the sound of cars driving past on the roundabout that took me from this daydream, and I still had to go to work, and I still had to take the train through the suburbs to the city. I wish I could take you there, I really wish I could. love and day dreams idles ===== http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corduroysmoke/ starting playground gossip and passing notes __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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