Last month
 
 

All Hail June! - or rather, June is all hail. Thick layer of it outside the window and heavy clouds of it swirling up the valley and rattling the windows. At least our road isn't as bad as today's picture from the main road between Bergen and Oslo (left - click for enlargement and map). Excuse me - must go and put another log on the fire.

3 June - traffic delays in Ørsdalen - see short video clip here.

Holiday pay - They do things simply in Norway, we were told, years ago. Like the system at road junctions (you must always give way to any traffic turning into your road from a road on the right, provided that the road in question has more than one house or public building on it and provided that there wasn't a little yellow lozenge sign by the side of the road since the previous road on the right). When four cars meet at a crossroads, all four usually sit still for a while, trying to puzzle out who should go first, before all pull forward at the same moment. Another simple solution, of particular relevance over the next couple of weeks, is "holiday pay". Salary in June is different from all other months because for the sake of simplicity it is assumed that everyone will take their annual holiday in June-July. The system is quite simple (we are told). In fact, it was further simplified a few years ago, which resulted in salary officers from all over Norway going on a week's course to help them understand the basics of it. It runs as follows. Each month other than June, a worker is "paid" 9.1% extra salary, which is taxed at the normal rate but then withdrawn again and put into a holding account. In other words, you've paid a little more tax than your month's salary would indicate and you've put some money aside. In June, however, you are paid your month's salary as usual, but are then deducted five week's pay (assuming you get 5 week's annual holiday). This means that most people receive a negative salary in June. With me so far? However, all the money saved up each month during the previous calendar year is paid out (and, you may remember, tax has already been paid on this), which covers the negative salary and provides a normal month's salary, which in addition is not taxed, meaning that most people receive slightly more in June than other months. Assuming, of course, that you worked throughout the previous calendar year. People who arrive in Norway from abroad tend to get something of a shock their first June, when not only does no pay arrive but they are even told that since they have received a negative salary, they will have to be deducted some more in July. For people who start work during the spring, even their second June will be a disappointment, because their second year's "holiday pay" will not be based on a full year's salary. It's all a bit more complicated than that, of course — that's the simplified version — but you get the idea. "But surely", the Norwegians say, "you'll get your holiday pay from last year — doesn't every country have this system? How would they manage otherwise?". Obviously, after so many years in Norway, this is a long-forgotten problem for us, but having changed jobs at Christmas I'm facing a very complicated paycheck in June!

Comments Norah - June 14th, 2015 I am glad you have not insisted on a comprehension test after the details on holiday tax & passport delivery rules. I would have failed. Tim - June 14th, 2015 You'd be in good company, Norah! The holiday pay is always good for a few surprises - for instance I received a quite unexpected cheque for £12 as "holiday pay" from a funeral that I played for last October.

4 June - off and away - Tim is off to Amsterdam and Germany today to play concerts, and Katie off to Kristiansand tomorrow for a swimming competition, leaving just Tracy and Thomas Andrew to run the place between them. A quiet weekend is expected in Ørsdalen.

8 June - all back to normal -
Katie enjoyed her trip to Kristiansand — and put in good performances with some new "personal best" times. The only downside, apparently, was that her favourite bookshop has moved out of town, too far to walk!

Tim had a good trip, including a concert in the German town of Bocholt (which is twinned with Rossendale, where most of Tim's family live) and concert planning in Holland. The weather was thirty-something degrees warmer than at home, which came as something of a culture shock. Fortunately, the trusty hotel website came up with a hotel that had a private lakeside beach for swimming ... (picture, right - click for 11 snaps from the trip); review of the Bocholt concert here.

On the Dutch-German border it was asparagus season, so every field had a little stall selling "field-fresh asparagus" and the hotel menu consisted of buttered asparagus, asparagus soup, asparagus with steak/schnitzel etc, asparagus omelette, asparagus-flavoured ice cream, asparagus coffee ...

10 June - The courier firm tried a new technique this morning. Katie's passport needed renewing, so after the usual efforts to get a non-smiling, straight-at-the-camera, unobstructed photo, we sent off the documents and waited the call from DHL. It duly came. "Parcel for you. Can we leave it on the counter at the petrol station in Vikeså?" I was just on my way to the airport, heading for Holland, and I didn't want a passport lying around on a petrol-station counter for days (even in Vikeså), so I made it quite clear that for once they had to do what they were contracted to do and deliver the thing to me at home. Or Else. I was at the airport and just trying to get through security when I got the panicky phone call from a driver. It felt like he'd been driving for hours along a narrow lane with overhanging rocks on one side and a steep drop down to a lake on the other. He was afraid of being attacked by trolls. And there kept being tunnels. I promised him that Tracy was at home and would make coffee for him. Apparently, he arrived eventually and delivered his packet, but was not very talkative. For some reason, when the passport office sends out a new passport they return the old one a few days later, so I knew that a second package was on its way. The call has just arrived. "DHL here. Our driver has just left and forgot to take your package with him in the van. I'll drive out specially with it, if you'll come and meet me half way". I had to admire his creativity, even as I callously said: "no, it's not urgent. Bring it tomorrow instead". I suspect that the staff at DHL are now sitting round a table with cups of coffee, trying to hatch out a new plan. We'll see what they come up with.

11 June - Spring? Summer? Autumn? - At last the sun has come out and the temperature moved up into double figures: hammock weather on the balcony today. But the trees seem confused. Some of them seem almost to believe that below-zero weather in June means that summer is over and autumn on its way: at least, some of the leaves seem to be getting suspiciously colourful (photo, above left - click for enlargement). But perhaps that's just our over-cooled imagination.

Six years on - 11 June 2009 we moved in to Ørsdalen, so we're now moving into our seventh summer here. We're starting to get used to it.

12 June - Mafia on a visit? - Tim's colleagues from Sandnes church came out for a day trip to Ørsdalen. Delightful day with good food outside in the sunshine. They look a bit scarey, though (photo above right - click for enlargement) — but the "godfather" on the left is the parish priest, the one behind him is a deanery priest and the one at the end of the table is the parish administrator. They're all very nice really.

13 June - swimming competition - Pleasant day out at the "Stavanger Open". Couple of personal best times for Katie, so she was pleased too. It's hard to take photos of swimming, so here (left) is an "abstract" picture of an underwater Katie in Stavanger - click for enlargement.

14 June - "end of session" services - Tracy's and Tim's churches both had outdoor end-of-session services today, marking a reduction in activity for the summer. In Tracy's case, no more services until the autumn! At the Norkirken event, the service (especially memorable for its demonstration of how lively flannel-board characters can get when used outdoors on a windy day) was followed by a barbeque, games and activities including boating on the lake/river (click photo, right, for several pictures). Tim's service was also followed by barbeque and games, but these remain un-pictured because he skipped off to the Norkirken event (picture of the service here).

19 June - The last day - of school, that is, before the summer holidays. Last before-six-in-the-morning until mid-August!

I was playing the organ for a funeral today in Sandnes. I suspected it was going to be unusual when I arrived at the chapel car park and had to thread my way through row upon row of motorbikes. Gathered around the door were a couple of hundred very well-built men and women with leather jackets and beards (the men, too). Inside, they were playing Pink Floyd over the loudspeakers. Two things struck me as unusual about the service. The first was the choice of hymns, such as the classic Norwegian hymn: "Ingen er så trygg i fare som Guds lille barneskare" (No-one is as safe as God's little flock of children) - which was not altogether what I was expecting. I couldn't quite put my finger on the other thing that was unusual. I realised part-way through that this was because it wasn't there. A coffin, that is. I thought for a while that it was, in the words of another well-known Norwegian hymn, "O salige stund uten like(t)" (sorry, can't translate - you have to be Norwegian to get that one) - but I found out later that he'd already been cremated and they were just having the funeral afterwards. Good that not everything is always the same.

21 June - The longest day - Celebrated with dinner at a restaurant in Stavanger and barbequing giant marshmallows in the garden in the evening (photo, above left - click for enlargement). It's not going properly dark now (just a bit twilight-ish around 1 in the morning) and the sun is still shining strongly on the mountains opposite until after 10 at night.

Midsummer - The longest snow - Although we've now had a few hot and sunny days, this year Midsummer's Day has an unusual twist - we can still see snow from the house. Only patches, admittedly, and well up the mountains, but we've not had snow in Ørsdalen so late in the summer before. According to the news, there's currently seven times as much snow as usual for the time of year in southern Norway.

23 June - Driving to Sandnes - We had to drive to Sandnes today, even though the weather in Ørsdalen, as usual, was significantly sunnier than in the town. It takes just over an hour to drive, and it's always nice to have company, so if you've got an hour to spare you can come along. It's our answer to "slow TV". Click picture, left, to join us on our journey. In some places, such as when we were pulling away from the house, the sunlight has caused reflections on the car windscreen so you get a clear view of Tracy's bandaged arm. The journey is in two installments: 40 minutes to get from the house down the lanes as far as the E39, followed by 20 minutes of main road and increasingly urban driving.

Cats, and a bear with a sore head - A few weeks ago I was giving a lecture in Sandnes. Although I was trying to make the subject as approachable as possible, at one point it wasn't possible to avoid a set of complicated powerpoint slides where people had to notice some similarities. The worry was that people would be overloaded by this and wouldn't concentrate afterwards. It was (as often happens) Matt who came to the rescue, telling me that current research (which he has to keep up with as part of his job) recommends showing a random picture of a cute cat in such circumstances, which gives people a feeling of pleasure and helps clear heads of the strain of thinking, like a sorbet between two particularly heavy courses in the sort of meal people don't eat in Norway. It worked very well. Perhaps too well, in fact — I think the cat is about the only thing people remember from the lecture. Cat research is continuing, it seems. Today's NRK news (just after a story advising anyone who meets a bear on Dovre mountain today not to play with it because it's likely to be cross and headachy after being hit and winded by a passing train this morning) tells us that "Gleden ved å se videoer av søte katter oppveier den dårlige samvittigheten for å bruke arbeidstida på det, viser ny forskning" ('The pleasure of watching videos of cute cats outweighs the guilty conscience caused by doing it in work time', shows new research). So here you are. Enjoy!.

Sankthans (Midsummer night) - the annual village barbeque on the beach was a blowy and somewhat chilly occasion this year (photo, right - click for enlargement).

25 June - A belly-flop - One story that we've never got round to writing about, although it's been going on the whole time we've been in Ørsdalen, is the new diving board in Lake Mjøsa at Hamar. Lake Mjøsa is Norway's biggest lake and we used to drive its whole length (73 miles) on our way to or from Måndalen, or, before that, Lurøy, so we know it quite well. The story is that the council in Hamar decided at the end of 2008 to spend £4000 on a diving board for those hardy swimmers who venture into the rather chilly waters of Mjøsa. In 2009, about the time we came back to Norway, they approved a rather bigger and more ambitious floating construction (photo, left) at a cost of £150 000. Over the following years, we've seen occasional references in the news to price increases in this project. In 2011 it was up to three quarters of a million pounds and it hit the million-pound mark somewhere in the course of 2012. By summer 2013 it was put into the water at a cost of £1 500 000, when someone suddenly realised that the lake gets a bit rough sometimes and the thing hadn't been designed to cope with waves. Correcting this problem would add another £1 500 000 to the price - an increase from £4000 in 2008 to three million pounds some seven years later. The council spoke many times about scrapping the project, but the trouble is, once you've sunk so much money into something it's hard just to take a hammer (no pun intended, really) to it and turn it into firewood. In the event, they managed to finish it a couple of weeks ago for less than three million and received some compensation from their consultants, but even so it's hardly been a triumph of budget planning. And Mjøsa is much too cold to swim in this year.

26 June - Paddle your own canoe - As we couldn't go diving in Mjøsa, Katie went for a long-distance Kayak journey today on one of our (rather shorter) lakes - a little under 5 miles (the stretch from 14.00 to 19.35 on the "driving to Sandnes" film clip - see 23 June). She's just joined a Kayak club and has taken to it like a Katie to water, so she was up for some training today. Tim had a shorter tour as well, Tracy and Fudge spectated and even Thomas Andrew turned up to watch, so it became quite a family outing. Click picture, left, for 7 photos.

Comments joanna - June 27th, 2015 Hi, well done Katie and Tim was the threat of the cold water so bad as to make you look worried? Tim - June 27th, 2015 Mmm, maybe. But the worried-looking pictures were right at the beginning, while we were concentrating on trying to get used to the kayak again (it's a river one; flat underneath and very light in the water, so it has a strong tendency to go round in circles until you get the stroke just right). Lovely day, though!

28 June - Less expensive diving board - Most of our local lakes have a little diving board anchored in the middle - all at a cost of well under three million pounds. Most, in fact, are home-made, like this one (photo, right: click for enlargement) which is waiting patiently for the warmer weather, promised for the coming week.

Katie has gone off to the south coast for a week to help lead the children's work at a mission camp there. Matt will be joining her for part of the week, so she is looking forward to seeing him there. With Thomas Andrew also away for the week, the house is suddenly feeling very empty: just Tracy and Tim left!