3 October - Same procedure as last month - Tim has once more slipped away to Germany for 10 days; the currently-busy Tracy is coming together with friends for the weekend. The forecast promises a week of sunshine and warm weather, which will be lovely. In the meantime, a few forest photos (left).

9 October - Neustrelitz by night (click, right, for 2 photos).

11 October - It's also lovely by day, of course! Here are three local photos.

13 October - T&T now reunited!

18 October - Autumn in full flow at home (photos, left).

22 October - The low-speed getaway - It happens, even in Norway - someone stealing a getaway vehicle to escape a crime scene. Just such an event is reported in today's paper, exactly as I'm sure such things have been reported today in Britain and elsewhere. Well, not exactly, perhaps. Life has a slower pace over here. The stolen getaway vehicle was a combine harvester, which meant that once the police had been rung and they hastily finished their coffee and drove to the scene, the offender had managed to get four hundred yards or so. "We asked the driver to stop, but he didn't want to," said the policeman, who was in hot pursuit on foot. So after a while the police "broke a window and got control over the driver".

Months behind with the story – I’m sorry. Once I’d got a few days behind, so much was going on that it got steadily more and more difficult – and eventually impossible – to catch up. You’ll get the gist if we start with a summary of people:

Tracy has been working full-time for an international organisation called Agenda 1, where she is among other things director of operations for Cambodia. But she is also working rather more than half time as priest-in-charge of the rapidly-growing Ganddalen Church in Sandnes. And writing a research paper on a huge and special revival in Sandnes in the 1950s. So, just to take the current quarter year: in January she spoke at a week’s conference in Bangkok, came home for the weekend to take Sunday’s service at Ganddal and then headed off to lead a fortnight’s work in Bangladesh, was home a couple of weeks before leading a church-development programme on the south coast of Norway, and following that up with a fortnight in Cambodia. The following quarter will include visits to Cambodia, Thailand, Krakow and possibly Vietnam.

Tim also has coincidentally been doing two full-time jobs as well as various supporting roles.

We wrote earlier that Beth and Gjermund had bought a house on an island just outside Molde. There is more news too (which we weren’t allowed to publish back in October). On 13 December they had a daughter. She is called – and before I write this down I want you to say the word “Sophia” a few times – OK? – that’s the pronunciation, but it’s written, of course, the Norwegian way, Sofie. And she’s lovely. Naturally, we’ve cooed over her (and the parents too). She’s very bright and lively, with lots of black hair – just as Beth was at the same age.

Matt has also been working on two different jobs. Still doing church work as the “day job” he has also been taking qualifications in electrical automation. His electrical-engineer grandad would have been proud (as are his parents, of course) as Matt heads back to his first interests. And Lilly is finishing her degree this summer, so they will be able to spend more time together, which will be very welcome.

Thomas Andrew is not to be outdone. You will recall that his first year at the farm was literally a “washout” – record non-stop rainfall every single day of summer and autumn 2017 meant that there was not a blade of grass to be harvested, and all winter feed for the sheep had to be bought in at ruinous prices. All hopes were pinned on 2018, when not a drop of rain fell from May to September. Despite pumping water up from the lake, there was again no grass to cut — and hopes of at least something in the autumn were dashed when drought abruptly turned a long period of non-stop rain which ruled out any hope of a harvest. He sat down and considered the future against the gloomy predictions of future weather disruption from global warming and took the very courageous and sensible decision that his farm at Lauperak was just too vulnerable to such problems. He disposed of stock and farm and used the proceeds to take a professional HGV license and immediately got an excellent 9-5 job working with a good company in Lillesand (on the south coast, near Kristiansand). (His vehicle here, complete with "Thomas" on the door). So for the first time he has regular working hours, free weekends and holidays and an excellent salary. In the long term he is still considering buying another farm – but a more climate-proof one.

Katie is in her final couple of months at Hogwarts (lots of projects to submit and final exams coming up) and is busy applying for university (she is currently leaning towards Trondheim). So she too will have big changes this year.

So I hope you'll understand — and forgive — how these pages got left behind. So most of the odds and ends of life will sadly have to go unrecorded for these months. 23-24 November we had a snowy weekend in Tonstad together with some friends (seen here standing on a frozen lake). Even that was not merely a jolly – they had just had a traumatic experience involving the death of a mutual friend, so it was more of a recovery weekend. But we had some fun anyway. The first week in December, we were back in Germany enjoying a quick break, with some lakeside sunshine (photos, left) and Christmassy town centre complete with Christmas market, before returning to a chillier Ørsdalen (photos, right). All the usual activities around Christmas, including the annual trip to Stavanger and 9 lessons and carols in the cathedral, as well as an inexplicable sudden rash of Messiah performances for Tim.

Norway's many querks, though they have gone on as usual, will also have to go mostly unrecorded. Oh, all right then, just one:

During military manoeuvres on 8 November, a Norwegian navy frigate (the "Helge Ingstad") propelled itself into Wikipedia by colliding with an oil tanker and running aground. "It's all right", said the navy, "it's in shallow waters". So five days later it sank altogether. It turned out that the commanding officer was asleep at the time of the collision (it threw him out of bed) and the ship was being steered by an apprentice. There is a tape recording of the dialogue in the wheelhouse immediately before the accident, which (genuinely) runs along the lines of:
"Watch out for that oil tanker over there!"
"What oil tanker?"
"You really should do something or you're going to hit it!"
"Oh, that oil tanker" (craaash!).
Here, in fact, is the recording:

No, sorry pardon, that was a different one, from a different navy lark. But it was something very similar.