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1 April -
Two years ago on 1 April we put up a fake webcam picture, actually taken in January or February and showing deep snow, when in reality the valley was green and pleasant.
This joke rebounded on us the following morning when it really did snow heavily, to the extent that we weren't able to get out to one of the Easter services.
This year, snow was actually forecast for today, and it duly obliged (photo of our road this morning, left - click for enlargement).
We got off lightly, though, in comparison with Sunndal (near where we used to live, and not far from Beth's) where 5 feet of snow fell during the day (photo, right - click for enlargement).
3 April -
Tracy is away for a few days. Unfortunately, this is because her dad is ill and she�s visiting.
She�s travelled by car (partly in order to bring some things back, partly in order to get a bit of work done on it and partly for the convenience of having it), which meant taking the ferry to Denmark and heading south.
She decided to stay the first night in �rhus, which is just a convenient distance from Hirtshals, where the ferry from Norway arrives in the evening.
We spent some time looking for a suitable hotel in the city centre, but when we couldn�t find one with car parking and a decent breakfast and that wouldn�t be too noisy at night (something we�re not exactly used to these days in �rsdalen) we booked one a few miles out in the country, which turned out to be very pleasant.
This was a good thing, as it happened, because on the very day she should have arrived there, �rhus was full of members of far-right organisations like the English Defence League out on an international get-together and there was talk of riots and of whether or not there would be anything left of the city the following day.
We weren�t really surprised. Over the past couple of years Tracy has expressed a desire to visit an assortment of places.
�Let�s go to Iceland�, she said. Unfortunately, Iceland erupted shortly after.
�Here�s an advert for a nice-looking hotel in Sharm El Sheikh�.
Sadly, the hotel was swept away in the floods the following week,
and Sharm El Sheikh was later terrorised by a shark that kept eating people.
�I�ve always fancied going to Japan�. That plan was also short-lived.
Some places that she�s mentioned are still standing � Greece was a potential holiday destination and it�s only nearly gone bankrupt �
but her most recent plan was to visit Mali (we have friends there),
where there�s just been a revolution and it�s proving difficult to evacuate people. We�re now developing a new plan.
We�ll write to a selection of governments and offer not to consider them as holiday destinations, for a suitable consideration, of course.
For the last couple of days, Thomas Andrew has had a bit of trouble with his tractor, which has not wanted to start.
Yesterday he bought a new starter motor and (very impressively) took off the old one and fitted the new - a job that took long into the night.
It now starts perfectly.
Today he's been out for a 12-hour working day, pulling down other people's logs from their forests and making enough money to pay for his new starter motor.
Dinner was a sleepy affair (photo, left - click for enlargement).
It's been another beautiful day - classic Easter weather, with hot sunshine glistening on new snow and the evening moon rising into a clear blue sky (photo, right - click for enlargements).
4 April -
Busy, in an idle sort of way, enjoying the sunshine, contemplating which trees to chop down next and (in Andrew's case) replacing his speedometer (I suspect the old one didn't go fast enough).
Such idleness, in fact, that there's nothing more interesting to report than taking the dogs for a walk along the usual route.
You've seen it all before, but then, so have we and it's still pleasant in the evening sunshine, so if you've nothing better to do you can come along by clicking the photo, right.
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5 April - If this news page is running a little behind time, it's because the internet is out of order in �rsdalen - again. It always goes off just before a series of bank holidays so that it will be a few days before it's fixed. So that means also that the phone's not working for the moment.
6 April -
The police in Sogn og Fjordane county report a quiet Easter so far.
Their biggest case is that someone has found a piggy-bank with money in it, in a street in Leikanger.
According to the police operation leader (quoted on the NRK news) there is a name on the piggy bank, but "there's no-one of that name who lives around here".
So they're wondering whether it is owned by a passer-by.
The old road through �rsdalen (which runs almost past our house).
Because it's an old road the picture's in black and white (left - click for enlargement).
Three-year-old Ella looks pleased with herself, sitting on the brand-new snow scooter she's just won in an ice-fishing competition (right - click for fuller picture).
8 April -
Happy Easter!
Tracy is driving through Germany at the moment, on her way home and I've just finished the Easter morning service at church
(and am using the church's internet - we still have neither internet, email nor telephone until after the bank holidays, so apologies for not being in touch!).
10 April -
Both Tracy and the internet have now returned, so we're all contactable again.
Left - everyone lends a hand gathering wood - click for enlargement.
15 April - Back in 2010, Katie had a black lamb called Berit (see photo here). Berit - now grown up - had three lambs last night, so Katie has been looking after them today (photo, right - click for larger pictures).
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18 April -
We're greatly enjoying a visit from a good friend, Jon, who we've not seen for some years as he's been in the US.
After following these pages over the years from the other side of the Atlantic he's now going to get his own view of Norway as he's on his way to Finnsnes, near Troms�, to be organist there.
It will be fascinating to follow his exploits on his own blog.
The rest of the family is following in a few weeks - and also calling in here on the way, which we're really looking forward to.
In his blog, Jon has included an excellent composite photo of �rsdalen (click on the picture to enlarge it if necessary. Our house is two thirds of the way towards the right).
20 April -
We've mentioned several times that the internet in �rsdalen is unreliable and that it keeps breaking down.
Naturally we've mentioned this on a number of occasions to the company that supplies it.
After an Easter without internet I wrote and said that it really wasn't good enough and I wasn't prepared to pay for such rotten service.
They wrote back - a most uncharacteristic email for a Norwegian company, but then, they are based somewhere south of Oslo so they're just southerners - and said that according to their terms and conditions if the internet doesn't work it's just too bad, and that if I don't pay for it they'll sue me.
I forwarded the email straight away to a reporter on the regional newspaper.
Someone getting a sub-standard internet service in �rsdalen was worth a double-page spread in Wednesday's paper, but the big surprise came today.
According to an article in today's paper (left - click for enlargement) the chief executive of the regional development office, on reading my story, contacted the County Council and together they're looking into whether to revoke the internet company's county-wide agreement.
If this news page comes to an abrupt halt it means either that we've been permanently disconnected from the internet or that the company has come and got us.
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We're just leaving for a visit to Grimstad, to celebrate Matt's 21st birthday today.
21 April - ... and now returned, after a lovely visit (photo, right - click for enlargement).
We stayed the night a few miles from Matt's college.
Because we had the dogs with us, we couldn't stay in the posh five-star millionaire-style hotel that we undoubtedly would have chosen otherwise,
but had to find the kind of slightly dillapidated motel where they don't mind a couple of large dogs sharing the room.
We'd booked (and paid for) a family room at one such place on the old (now bypassed) E39, but when we arrived at the front door of the motel at 4 in the afternoon it was closed and a note on the door invited us to phone "night service".
Night service told us where the keys were hidden and invited us to help ourselves to a room key and go in.
We took the lot and investigated them all.
In all fairness, the place was very clean and in good order, if rather well-worn, and very well equipped with modern TVs and so on (despite the complete lack of security there).
But none of the rooms were family rooms.
We rang "night service" again and offered to take a couple of rooms (without offering to pay any extra).
"Would that be all right for you?", they asked. "Please take whichever rooms you like."
So we spent a pleasant and comfortable night before getting back around lunchtime on Saturday, in time for Tim to play for a couple of weddings and Tracy to go to an event at her church.
The first of Tim's weddings had a soloist who inexplicably chose to sing Leonard Cohen's song "broken Hallelujah"
(a song that focusses on King David's unfaithfulness with a bit of equally inapt Samson and Delilah thrown in and includes obscure but evidently unsuitable verses like:
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair).
I don't know whether the solist was trying to make a point or simply was hoping that no-one understood English.
The second wedding was a great deal better planned, as indeed it should have been since the groom is a core member of the congregation.
But we all know what happens when it's important that everything is right.
The vicar made a slight slip - got the groom's name wrong (though he knows it perfectly well, of course) - and once that happens then derailment is almost inevitable.
After the end of the wedding, the vicar was holding his head in his hands wondering how he'd managed to repeatedly call the groom by the wrong name.
22 April - Bodies in church.
What does your well-equipped vicar pack in her car as she's heading off for church on Sunday morning?
Bits of wood, a tub of sand, a sponge and a body (photo, left - click for enlargement).
I've a feeling there might be a belated Easter theme going on here.
Hope she doesn't get stopped by the police on the way.
This evening, Tim played a concert in H�yland church, just outside Sandnes, to help raise money for work in Cambodia. It was a successful evening, which was well attended and raised �800 or so. The end of quite a busy weekend.
Our friend Jon seems to be enjoying himself in his new home, Finnsnes, and we remind you that he's keeping a blog which is full of his first impressions of life in Norway.
25 April - Pigs have flown.
Norwegian pigs say "nuff" rather than "oink".
Sheep and cows take advantage of the extended Norwegian alphabet to say "b�" and "m�" respectively, whilst bears, for reasons best known to themselves, say "brum", even when they're not prentending to drive.
(What do bears say in English, by the way?)
All this has nothing whatever to do with today, but I've just declared it summer by removing the "pigs" (the metal studs on the winter tyres) from the car, so that it now says "brum" rather than "clip clop" whilst driving along.
It's a good feeling, so I bought Katie and I the year's first ice cream (on special offer at the petrol station) to celebrate the arrival of summer.
And on the way home there were sheep lying beside the road into �rsdalen for the first time this year.
Almost overnight all the trees have sprouted brilliant green leaves.
Even the hedgehogs that have been hibernating in the stables have now started to snuffle around and demand breakfast.
One of the things we enjoy about keeping this diary is that we can look back at the previous year (and even two years ago) and remember things.
Glancing back at 22 April last year it seems we were equally struck by the suddenness with which all the trees turned green - on just about the same date.
The year before, though, after a particularly hard winter, it wasn't until 5 May.
We've mentioned before the two "competing" versions of Norwegian (see story on 27 January this year).
One of the inevitable problems with this parallell system is that forms and official documents are produced centrally by government departments in Oslo (where everyone writes naturally in Bokm�l and has reluctantly learned some Nynorsk at school).
This week the Department of Transport hastily withdrew their Nynorsk driving license application form after hearing that the medical questions on it were being read out loud as the entertainment at a doctors' conference in West Norway.
The doctors were having competitions to guess what the questions meant and were rolling with mirth at the extraordinary and old-fashioned terminology - a kind of "King James" Nynorsk.
The Head of Communications for the DT was presented with the form by a journalist and asked what the questions meant - but he had to confess that he had no idea and had to run off and get a Bokm�l copy to find out.
26 April -
Dominating the news at the moment, of course, is the trial of the man who murdered the children at Ut�ya and bombed the government building last year.
There have been mass gatherings outside the courthouse (as well as other places around Norway) - but just as before, not demanding revenge or reprisals, but laying down flowers and - today - singing a song ("barn av regnbuen" - children of the rainbow) that was very popular a few years ago.
This was special because Breivik had referred to that song as part of what he regards as the indoctrination of children to be nice to other people, which he objects to -
so singing this song was a way of affirming national values.
See film clip.
Apparently a group of observers has come over from America to look at how the Norwegians are reacting to all this, and they have described it as "a model for how to respond to a national tragedy".
There is so much to admire in what we're seeing.
The BBC news has picked up on this story as well.
27 April. Third anniversary of signing the contract to buy our bit of �rsdalen. They've been three good years, on the whole! Treated ourselves to waffles and jam for supper.
Some embarrassment this evening at the church in Gulen (just north of Bergen). A 9th-century cross just outside the church marks the spot where the Gulating - one of the oldest and largest parliamentary assemblies in medieval Norway - used to meet. The church administrator was concerned, however, that a tree that was growing close by might one day fall on the cross - one of the most important bits of Norwegian heritage - and damage it, so she hired some local farmers to fell the tree. They felled it straight onto the cross, snapping it off just above the ground. Now they're wondering how to put it back together before the state antiquities people notice.
28 April.
Relaxing outside on a beautiful sunny Saturday (photo, left - click for more extended picture).
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30 April. Tomorrow, two things will officially vanish from Norwegian life. They�re both small and trivial enough, but both in a sense make us feel that we�ve been around for a while.
One is the 50-�re coin. When we first came to Norway in 1987 the smallest coin in circulation was the 10 �re (equivalent of the British 1p).
These (picture, right) were tiny silver-coloured coins which even then were worth so little that they were regarded as rather a pest. They were taken out of circulation in 1993, while we were living in M�ndalen. Now it�s the end of the line for the 50-�re coin (5p), meaning that there will no longer be any coins worth less than 1 krone (10p). It won�t be long before small children will be asking, ��re � what on earth were they?�. We remember that 1993 also saw the introduction of a new idea � a little number-plate sticker that was the equivalent of a tax disk on cars. Up to that point there had been nothing to show whether the road tax had been paid for that year, but ever since 1993 the authorities have sent out these little self-adhesive rectangles each spring. Every year we stick a new one on top of the pile, until after five or six years the accumulated layers of stickers become so thick that we have to cut them off with a knife and get rid of the glue before we could put a new one on. This year there will be no new sticker � the whole system has been done away with because there are so many roadside cameras with number-plate recognition that the authorities can automatically check cars against their database. So tomorrow, if we�ve nothing better to do, I can scrape several years� accumulation of tax stickers off our number plates.
