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4 April - a slow-moving game.
They say that chess is a slow-moving game, but it seems that poohsticks is even slower.
Those poohsticks
from six weeks ago have still not made it under the bridge.
"Come back in a fortnight to see who's won" turned out to be a hopelessly-optimistic assessment
(click small photo, left, or other photo, below right, to view the river as seen from our house this evening) - still completely solid.
We're hoping to be able to declare a winner before the summer, provided no-one cheats and moves the sticks
(people have been skiing regularly up and down the river for the last couple of months).
Talking of cheating, we regretfully have to bring you: Intrigue and skulduggery Norwegian-style: pulling the wool over people's eyes - the plot unravelled. We've pointed out before that even in Norway, not everyone plays by the book. This was proved yet again this week when a terrible swindle was unravelled, which has caused great indignation amongst the ladies of Sandnes (the town where Tracy's church is). Sandnes is home, naturally enough, to Sandnes Garn - the region's main producer of knitting wool. They have a factory shop in which, in amongst the crates of brightly-coloured balls of wool, you can study four sectors of humanity: ladies busying from crate to crate, fingering the different textures ("this one's lovely and soft, dear"), a depressed huddle of males reading the free husband-newspapers thoughtfully provided by the management, a cluster of children drooling into the freezer (they sell ice creams as well) and three or four sociology students writing dissertations on the inter-personal interactions they can observe. But to these sectors of humanity we must now add yet another group, representing the darker side of human nature. When stocks of a particular colour or batch are running low, the shop gather up the remains and put them on one side. Every Wednesday morning there is a crate of heavily-discounted "bin-ends": a source of joy to the knitters of small garments. But recently this joy has been dashed - every time new supplies have arrived, the crate has been rapidly emptied by a couple of women. Have they been knocking off jumpers for grandchildren galore? No - they have been buying up all the discounted wool and re-selling it on the internet, at a profit! In an attempt to solve the problem, Sandnes Garn tried changing their opening hours (though I'm not sure quite how that was meant to help). However, they have now introduced rationing: any individual customer can only buy a certain number of balls of discounted wool in any one week - unless, of course, it's someone they recognise as a "genuine" knitter, in which case the rule is quietly waved. So peace is gradually being restored.
Although, as you can see from the photos (click small picture, right), the river is still frozen solid and the mountains still snow-covered right down to ground level,
there are signs of impending spring: the trees around the house have started to turn rusty-red (photo here),
which means that they'll turn green in a couple of weeks - more or less on schedule.
6 April - after weeks of sunshine and dry weather, it's overcast and gently snowing this morning: but the sun keeps trying to break through.
So it's a baking day (yum! - click photo left for larger pieces).
There's very little news from round and about.
Our good friends in Finnsnes (including Jon, who is a loyal contributor to our comments) have been waiting for snow to arrive properly,
and it's obliged. Here's a photo of someone in Finnsnes who was called out to repair the internet
connection and found that the connection box was under more than 8 feet of snow; digging took longer than mending!
We've got off very lightly.
9 April -
New arrivals today - four lambs which will spend the first few weeks being fed in the barn before going out to graze in our fields.
(photo, right - click for enlargement).
They'll probably be joined by others in due course.
Thomas Andrew (who is home this week) has driven to his flat in Sandnes to collect something.
Previously he's done the journey in his tractor; this time he's taken a car - to celebrate getting his car-driving license today.
Congratulations!
On the way home from the test centre in Egersund he was reminiscing about learning to drive as a 13-year old in Haworth,
about driving a Mercedes hire car at the same age in Germany (on an extremely quiet dead-end lane)
and about the past few years of driving cars around Ørsdalen (where Ørsdalen rules apply).
"The only trouble is", he pointed out, "it won't be as much fun now that it's all normal and legal".
But I think he's having fun this evening.
13 April - The fun continues.
Life seems to be a constant succession of highs for Thomas Andrew, who today went out and bought his first car - a Ford Escort.
It came complete with a number of spare parts (new rear hatch, bumper trims and so on) which we brought back in our car -
so when we arrived home Katie greeted us with "I didn't know Andrew's car was coming as a flat-pack".
The lambs are thriving and feeding well (click photo, right, for three pictures).
It was a bit of a blow to have to get up at 6am this (Saturday) morning - the one day in the week that we normally get a lie-in -
but in the event, Katie was up, out and feeding them before we even stirred.
The months of cold, dry, sunny weather are at last coming to an end. Although there's no sign of it this evening (photo here) - the river is still frozen over and the sun still reflecting merrily off the snow - the forecast is warning of rapidly-rising temperatures and heavy rain, resulting in floods and landslides tomorrow. "Don't drive unless it's necessary", says the met office and police.
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14 April - The forecast was right. As I went out into the dark and rain tonight at 10ish to let the dogs have a final wander in the garden, there was a clap of thunder from nearby, which went on, and on, and on. And continued as crashes and bangs on the mountain just behind the house. It wasn't thunder but a monumental avalanche. When it comes light tomorrow I'll go and see what new rockscapes have appeared!
15 April - poohsticks on the move. After a night of torrential rain on the still-frozen ground, the water has been pouring off the mountain and the layer of ice that has been covering the river ever since Christmas vanished overnight like, well, like snow in Spring (photo of the river this morning). Those poohsticks will be in the sea by now, and who won is anyone's guess. Probably for the best.
17 April -
Exercising the dog on a beautiful, warm spring day.
Ice has been replaced almost overnight by two-inch-high daffodil shoots; the smell of frozen ground by the first smells of spring
(not a concealed reference to Tracy getting very warm on her bicycle ride).
20 April - Come home to a living fire?
No - it's not as dramatic as it looks.
Since it has at last rained this week, it was now safe to burn off the old grass without danger of setting the whole forest alight.
So this evening we burned the field closest to the house - tomorrow we may take another one.
For the moment it's all black and charred - but the new grass will grow much better as a result.
And Katie was able to toast some marshmallows in the process (photo, right - click for enlargement).
The neighbours have been doing the same thing, so there is a faint smell of burning grass on the air and little columns of smoke here and there (photos here).
26 April - Hard to believe that it's nearly the end of April, when we're waking up to yet another snow morning in Ørsdalen. On the whole, though, the snow and ice is melting - bringing the usual avalanches and rocks on the road.
Sadly, there have been many reports from around Norway of accidents and casualties due to the melting of the snow and ice.
Three skiers were killed in an avalanche in Senja, another slipped off a mountain ledge,
and yesterday a car was hit by a rock that fell off a mountain just while the car was passing
(photo).
The music-horse-box -
It was a day of the unexpected here - but in a more positive way.
We've mentioned earlier that there's a useful website listing things that people are giving away.
Being a very prosperous area, "unwanted items" can be of very high quality.
Tim's piano has been suffering since our move here.
The dryer climate has meant that the soundboard has dried out and the tuning pins have been slipping, which means that the piano is horribly out of tune all the time.
There is a possible treatment for this, which entails drilling little holes in the soundboard and injecting a special fluid which re-expands the wood -
but although we've bought the fluid the treatment seems a bit risky: there is a chance that the patient won't recover from the operation.
This morning, Tim noticed that someone was giving away a piano.
Not just any old piano, but a high-quality Sauter one.
The advert was new and had accidentally got into the wrong section of the website, which is why no-one else had already spotted it and grabbed it first.
And so it was that within a short time, Tim and Andrew were on their way to Sola (where the airport is) with a horse trailer, to collect a piano.
The idea was that this piano would serve as a stand-in during the operation and as a back-up in case everything goes terribly wrong.
When we arrived at the house, we found that it was down narrow driveway on a very steep hill, with a gravel surface.
Luckily, years of manouvering with tractor trailers has made Andrew a world champion at getting trailers into (and out of) difficult places,
so he did the slithering down to the house - and back up again afterwards (which took two attempts due to the steepness and slipperyness).
The piano turns out to be like new - it has probably never been opened up and still has its original guarantee certificate inside.
These are very expensive instruments (a new one costs around £12000-£15000) - so getting something like this free of charge is a real blessing. (photo, left - click for series of pictures).
Needless to say, we managed to create an interesting situation on the way home. Katie was at a birthday party while Tim and Andrew were collecting the piano, so we dropped her off on the way and picked her up again on the way home. This meant that the car, with horse trailer behind, was parked outside the entrance to the party just as people were being collected. Katie - amongst the first out - immediately went into the horse trailer to look over the new instrument. As parents arrived and got out of their cars, they had to walk past the horse trailer. As each parent approached, Tim jumped up and down a few times inside the (closed) trailer making whinneying noises, while Katie played a piece on the piano. I wish we'd had a video camera to capture the reactions.
27 April - Four years today since we bought this house and mountain.
Doesn't time fly?
But at the same time, we seem to have been here for ever - and certainly, when we look back over these pages, there's a lot of memories.
The family has spent the day outside, doing jobs ranging from making a wattle fence to letting the lambs out for their first experience of life outside the stables. Ready, steady, go! (photo, right - click for enlargement.
30 April - Through the tunnel - I drove through the Ørsdalen tunnel this morning towards Vikeså and emerged … into a snowdrift. Snow on the roads, I ask you! It’s May tomorrow and we’re supposed to have taken the studdied winter tyres off weeks ago. Oddly enough, it was green and springlike at the Ørsdalen end of the tunnel but deepest winter at the other end. This happens from time to time, depending on which way the wind’s blowing and where the snowline happens to be. Once more, as has happened quite a few times before, I was taken right back to a French lesson at school – an experience that evidently sat so deeply that it’s stayed with me all these years. We had to translate a descriptive article from the Figaro newspaper. The article was about a road tunnel leading out of Paris. The gist of it was that you drove into the tunnel amidst all the buildings of Paris and emerged a short time later into an arcadie de poussin. Being an ignorant youth, this made me scratch my head for a long time and reach for the dictionary. Arcadie translated neatly as "arcade", so we were into rows of things. Poussin were small chickens. So we ended up driving into the tunnel in the darkest city and driving out onto some country road on which we were running over chickens left, right and centre; the translation became a carnage of feathers and squashed poultry. My finished product was read out loud by the teacher for public amusement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t framed and put on the wall as well as a permanent humiliation. It’s probably still there. How was I supposed to know that Poussin was a painter of Arcadian landscapes? And so, whenever I drive into the tunnel in one season and emerge at the other end into a contrasting season, I still cringe quietly and give thanks that French homework belongs far in the past.
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