doings

November 2012

1 November - Matt has just delivered the photos that he took at last month's wedding, so we've enjoyed re-living the trip. Here (click photo, left, for a short sequence) are some pictures of the family.

Andrew pointed out a "for sale" advert for a fibreglass roof box - "due to change of car" (picture, near right). Someone whose sense of humour doesn't desert them even when catastrophe strikes.

It's a long time since we had a "what is it" competition. So here it is. What are these (photo, far right - click for enlargement) and what are they used for? Prize (marzipan pig) to the first person to send a correct answer, either by email or better still via the comments box.

Comments:
Joanna - November 3rd, 2012
Definitely 'things a purpose'
Jon - November 5th, 2012
Some kind of ice screw?
Tim - November 5th, 2012
On the right road. Can you be more specific?
Jon - November 13th, 2012
Others say pigs for shoes, but I'm not sure, unless they are for very high platform shoes!
Jon - November 13th, 2012
Eureka - I can taste the marzipan already! Piggs for truck tires: http://www.innkjopslaget.as/34548/2344/34557-6651.html MAXI GRIP skrupigger
Tim - November 13th, 2012
They are, just as you say, "piggs" (two out of the two hundred that Thomas Andrew has bought for his tractor tyres) - so your marzipan pig will soon be flying in your direction. Congratulations!
Tim - November 21st, 2012
Swine flew - that is to say, the marzipan pigs have flown (air mail) and are heading your way. Enjoy!

Answer
Jon B. has correctly identified them as "piggs" - the metal studs that you put into tyres to help them grip on icy roads. These ones are an inch long and designed for tractor tyres; you can buy them in an assortment of lengths for any purpose, including short ones for boots and medium-length ones for cars. For cars, however, it's much more usual to buy winter tyres that already have them fitted, in addition to being made with a particular grade of rubber blanding that grips well on slippy roads. Jon even identified the make - (MaxiGrip; if you're interested there is also an alternative make called BestGrip).

Before we thought of the competition, we were tempted to announce that Thomas Andrew had just bought 200 pigs - before pointing out that the "piggs" in question were just tyre accessories - but thought better of it, partly because the same joke had already been made in Jon's blog. I can, however, now tell the story of an old friend from the north of Norway whose English was quite good and very confident. He and his wife were planning a visit to the UK during the winter, for which he had to drive his car from home to the ferry (winter tyres were, of course, essential for this) so he wondered whether driving on studied tyres was legal in England. He chose to ring the police in Newcastle and asked them the question: "Tell me, is it legal in England to drive with pigs on your wheels?". He was surprised how difficult it was to get a straight answer from them.

6 November "Cheerio as you go ..." - Living where we do, there's no shortage of wildlife. Some of the visiting creatures are large and welcome (the deer, for instance), whilst others are small and less welcome. I'm not refering so much to neighbouring children as to mice. We long ago discovered that the idea that mice like cheese is just a legend put about by the cheese marketing board. What they really like is cheerios, the sugary breakfast cereal. Cheerios, of course, aren't very pliable, but fold one up in a piece of Norwegian brown cheese and it becomes utterly irresistable to mice and men, as well as easy to stick to a mousetrap. Being kind-hearted people we don't really like setting mousetraps but there's not much choice at this time of year, when the creatures are all looking for warm winter accommodation. Last week we were catching an average of seven mice per day in our little selection of traps: one under the bin, one under the balcony, another in the stables and so on. This week it's down to three a day: either the numbers are dropping or the word has got out. Visit that house on the hill and you don't come back. And it's a good job, because we're running low on cheerios and the last piece of brown cheese has just gone on a biscuit (for human consumption). Time to go shopping.

Brown cheese is a staple commodity for all Norwegians (people as well as mice). It used to be said that all Norwegians travelling abroad always took a block of brown cheese with them (because you can't buy it abroad - even elsewhere in Scandinavia), along with a cheese slicer (because you used not to find those either outside Scandinavia). But there are dark clouds on the horizen. The latest baggage-scanning equipment being installed at all the major airports is unable to tell the difference between brown cheese and TNT, which means that all Norwegian suitcases are getting diverted into bomb-proof basements and subjected to "controlled explosions". So if you meet Norwegians on holiday in far-flung parts and they look fidgity, wide-eyed and distressed, you should put it down to brown-cheese withdrawal and offer them a coffee.

Tim and Tracy's bed was shaking violently at 2 o'clock this morning. No, this diary is not becoming X-rated - the problem was one of wind. That doesn't sound quite right, either: a storm was blowing across the lake and up the valley, shaking the walls of the house and seeing off any remaining leaves from the trees. We are, however, taking comfort from the fact that apart from last week's snow, the winter is taking its time in coming and most mornings the temperature has been plus degrees rather than minus.

Two or three weeks ago there was a national door-to-door collection for Amnesty International. On her way home from work, Tracy had called in at the hole-in-the-wall in Vikes� and got some money out so that we would have something to offer the collectors (they get very depressed otherwise). She put the money in her purse and the purse on the car seat next to her, before straight driving home. Later in the day she looked for the purse and couldn't find it. There was clearly no-where she could have left it, but it wasn't to be found - despite a thorough search of likely and unlikely places and even the offer of "reward" for finder (which usually gets things found quickly in our house). But today, long after being given up on, it jumped out from behind a book in a dark corner of upstairs and was greeted with great jubilation. And Tracy, in accordance with biblical principles, has gone out this evening for dinner with the other ladies of �rsdalen. (Actually, the latter was a pre-arranged event: the village ladies' association, or, as our boys call it, the "kvigeforening" (but you have to be Norwegian to understand that one, sorry)).

11 November New solution to an old problem? (Click photo, left).

We're on our way to �lesund to see Beth. Will try to park better than this person did at Beth's car park in �lesund earlier today (it wasn't Beth!) (right).

Comment:
Sandy - November 14th, 2012
Give our love to Beth xxx

16 November Safely home after an enjoyable trip.

We started with another perfect journey by Norwegian rail, taking a sleeper compartment on the night train from Stavanger to Oslo, followed by the morning train from Oslo to Domb�s and then the early-afternoon train from Domb�s to �ndalsnes. We then took the local bus "home" to M�ndalen for an all-too-seldom visit to good friends there. The following morning, one of these friends (Dagfinn) drove us to Vestnes to catch the �lesund bus. After spending the rest of the day at Beth's we set off in the evening to drive down the coast road, taking with us a new back seat for Tim's car. We stayed overnight at a lovely hotel in Skei (3-and-a-half hours from �lesund), left early in the morning and arrived home in the evening. The journey home from Beth's (which is about a fifth of the length of Norway) took some 13 hours of actual driving time, including six car ferries, countless bridges and two undersea tunnels (one of which was 5 miles long and reached over 850 feet below sea level). Click here to see a map of the route we took.

If you stayed awake while you were reading that, you should now be asking yourself where the car came from in which we set off to drive home (given that we travelled up there by train). The answer is that Norway has a wonderful system. When people on generous expense accounts hire a car from one place they are able to return it somewhere else - if they're willing to pay enough. Of course, the car hire company then needs to get the car back to its original base. Individuals can register themselves on a system by which they can view a list of cars that need returning - and if there happens to be a car that needs to go somewhere appropriate they can deliver the hire car back home without paying for it. Sometimes - as was the case today - the car-hire company will even pay the petrol and expenses (in our case we paid well over �100 for the car ferries and another �25 or so for road and tunnel tolls). So we collected a hire car from Herz in �lesund and returned it at their expense to Stavanger, where we'd left our own car.

All in all, a great mid-week "weekend away".

It was between the last two ferries of our journey home from Beth's, just by the deepest of those undersea tunnels, that this car (photo, right) came to grief today. But can you make a guess at the cause of the accident? Click the photo for the explanation.

19 November - Whisky Galore! It's been an exciting night at SAS, the Scandinavian national airline. In case you don't know, SAS has been in financial difficulties, due partly to increased competition by lower-price airlines like Norwegian. Bankrupcy is on the cards - unless the company can be saved by the governments, the banks and by a new agreement with the employee organisations to cut wages and costs. The deadline for a rescue was midnight last night, and at bedtime it looked rather as though SAS would not make it until the morning. This morning, however, there is an extension in negotiations and it looks as though the patient might pull through. The crisis has, however, had some odd side-effects. Yesterday all pilots were instructed to ensure that their planes were completely filled with fuel, so that if the company went bankrupt overnight they could still get the planes home. The regular flight from Stavanger to Alicante therefore made the journey with its wing tanks full of fuel. This fuel became very cold on the way, meaning that when the plane reached warm Spain, condensation formed on the wings and froze because of the freezing fuel below. All Norwegian airports have de-icing machines, but Alicante doesn't normally have this problem, of course. After an hour and a half's wait the pilot suspected that the wings weren't going to thaw out on their own so he sent for an inspection truck with a lift and personally emptied three bottles of whisky over each wing. This had the desired effect and the plane was able to take off, the passangers basking in a haze of satisfaction and alcohol. The announcements just after take off informed passangers that refreshments would be served - but there was no whisky today because the captain had just used it all. (photo, left - click for enlargement - might be almost anything but is actually a photo of a Norwegian SAS captain throwing a bottle of whisky over an airoplane wing).

21 November - Happy 18^th birthday to Thomas Andrew! We went out to our favourite Indian restaurant this evening to celebrate (photo, right - click for enlargement).

Comment:
Joanna - November 21st, 2012
Thomas Andrew a Happy belated birthday! Where does time go?
Reply - TA - November 21st, 2012
Thanks Joanna!

We've often mentioned the local "Give away" website, which constantly lists useful and useless, valuable and valueless objects that people in our local area are willing to give away, ranging from kittens to houses. One of today's offerings is this boat (left) - but whoever takes it has to collect it from its current location - which apparently is at the bottom of the sea. I thought it was too good to be true.
Comment:
Jon - November 23rd, 2012
Last week the 'give away' site up north had a very similar looking boat which looked as if it was about to sink, so perhaps they have had to advertise it more widely to get takers now it has sunk!

22 November - It's been unseasonably warm for the past week - almost 20°C warmer than usual for the time of year - and the rain has come down in torrents. There's the usual flooding around Egersund, but no-one else really minds that much because it will mean cheap electricity long into the winter (all Norwegian electricity, of course, is generated by HEP, apart from a few new wind farms). Looking out from the house, the landscape is grey, misty and damp (3 grey, misty and damp pictures here).

The Lonely Planet guide has made a list of the Europe's top-10 scenic rail journeys. At the very top of the list is the train from Domb�s to �ndalsnes which we took last week when visiting Beth and which used to be our local train when we lived in M�ndalen (photo, left - click for enlargement). Number two, by the way, is the line from Bergen to Oslo, which was the first train journey that I (Tim) ever took in Norway. We can't do other than to agree with them!

23 November - From green to white. What's going on? (photo, right - click for more information).

More sheep on the road. A short film has been released about sheep farming at the other end of our lake. Click photo, left, to view film.