3 February - winter at last? - It's February. We're supposed to have been under feet of snow for weeks on end. In the event, the ski slope hasn't even tried to open, the rose bushes are budding and people are laying next year's lawns. "It'll all end in tears", we've said — but the winter weather has kept away. Today, at last, a little snow has fallen — (photo, left - click for 2 pictures) but the forecast is for warmer, wetter weather returning in a couple of days.

Comments Norah, 5 February I have just finished reading your january report. If the Viking replica ship does think of raiding Wales do let me know - they would surely come here & I would have a grand stand view. You can tell them how to recognise my house because - believe it or not - the scaffolding is back! I had a similar incident to you when two huge slates came down in a storm.This time I also had a barricade in front of the house, so it felt like living in a fort. In fact, if you care to look at the Welsh Highland Railway site which shows the new station, there is my place, plus scaffolding. My first opportunity for world fame ruined - Davies Law again. Tim, 5 February I'll certainly suggest it as a new raiding destination: tea and bara brith available, as well as a custom-made fish-drying frame ready in place. I'll be in the first raiding party.

10 February - a test - T&T did a test today. We drove the hour and a half to Stavanger, spent exactly four minutes completing the test and then drove home again, aided by a bag of warm cinnamon buns from Ikea. Ultimately I suppose you can blame the four-minute test on Brexit. As of this year, Norway is rescinding a law that prohibited dual citizenship, meaning that we can apply for Norwegian passorts in addition to our UK ones. After living here for 30-odd years we feel it's a reasonable thing to do, and will make travel within the EU so much easier (even though Norway is not in the EU either, it is in Schengen and EFTA). But first we had to pass a test to demonstrate that we know enough about Norway. I downloaded the curriculum. What we needed to know filled 35 tightly-packed A4 pages of text (some 15000 words in all) and included useful knowledge such as the following (all genuine items from the list):

• Harald Fairhair (picture, right) became King of Norway in the year 872
• Norway’s surface area is 385 199 square km, 365 of which are occupied by Lake Mjøsa.
• A little over 90% of the 40 000 people who die in Norway each year have church funerals
• The Sognefjord is 1308 metres deep
• Singing was a compulsary subject in Norwegian schools in 1800

By the time we got home an email had arrived telling us that we had both passed and are knowledgeable enough to hold Norwegian passorts.

13 February - a funeral with a difference - One of the 90-odd% of the 40 000 was having their church funeral today in Måløy, part-way between here and Åndalsnes, the NRK news reports. When the family got to the churchyard they found that no-one had dug a hole. After some discussion they decided to have the wake first and then the funeral afterwards. The family had ordered a large cake from the cake shop, but when they arrived at the wake, they found that the shop had forgotten to make it. When reminded about the ommission, the shop rushed round with a similar large cake that was a cancelled order. Unfortunately, the text on the replacement cake read "Happy 50th birthday". Having scraped the text off the cake and eaten it, the family returned to the churchyard to carry on with the funeral. Unfortunately, in the meantime the undertaker had driven the hearse away, complete with coffin, and no-one knew where they had gone. It took four and a half hours to find them. Coffin re-located, someone managed to find the missing gravedigger and persuaded them to come out in the evening to dig the grave. The funeral finally took place after 8 in the evening — long after dark. At least no-one can claim it wasn't a memorable event. The other less-than-10% don't know what they're missing.

14 February - walk in the hills - In order to walk off a rather generous bun from a café, we explored a new (to us) track up into the hills. Grey skies meant that we only went a couple of miles before turning back, but it's a good candidate for a longer excursion another time.

Looking for a new car? - Then we suggest this one, currently on sale in Norway. Engine purrs beautifully. Advert here, if you want to put in an offer. We actually drove past it today, while visiting someone, but didn't stop for a test drive or to tickle it behind the ears.

26 February - fire - We had some visitors here for a couple of days last week, so we naturally showed them all the sights in Ørsdalen: the lovely waterfalls at the top of the valley, the impressive waterfalls in the middle of the valley, the line of waterfalls at the bottom of the valley that sometimes blow upwards instead of falling into the lake, and the fire station. Regulars here will remember the fire station — a shed about the size of a bathroom just next to the graveyard, containing a trailer with hoses (one end in the river, the other at the fire) and petrol-driven pumps. We all have a twice-a-year training course, along with a key (or rather, we all know where the key is) because the fire brigade can't get to the valley quickly enough to be useful, unless an over-enthusiastic neighbour sets the whole mountainside alight. Other than that, I don't remember there ever being a fire in the valley, until now. Someone had apparently stored some jumble for the next bring-and-buy at the village hall a bit too close to an electric heater. A neighbour noticed the smoke and rushed across to do his fire-brigade bit. The newspaper (click image, right) shows a photograph of him, looking suitably damp and heroic while surveying the damage, under the headline "Put out the flames and rescued the village's gathering-place". Of course, he may or may not be thanked by the villagers: we keep having earnest discussions about what on earth we can do with the village hall, which really isn't what anyone would have chosen to have, and is rather impractical, and terribly well insured ... he really should have just made another coffee and looked the other way for a while. Then he would have been a local hero. But never mind. The newspaper has taken the opportunity to run a secondary article entitled "Ørsdalen - the village where everyone can put out fires".

Tracy has just arrived in Dhaka for her latest week-and-a-bit's work for Agenda1. Here is a film clip taken from her hotel window this morning. One or two differences from home; mostly that the fire station isn't in a small shed by the graveyard (presumably).

28 February - Just for the contrast, here is looking out of our kitchen window in Ørsdalen this morning. A little less traffic.

So what does an organist do? You might well ask, at least so far as the church part of the job is concerned. After all, there aren’t services, or even funerals, all the time. So here are some highlights from my week.

• Monday: day off.
• Tuesday: Make a pot of coffee. Go to a staff meeting. It’s half-term holidays, however, so no-one else was there. Back to my office in church. Plaster has been falling off the walls above the stairs to the gallery and the cleaners have just vacuumed it up. But it’s still peeling, so I get a long brush and sweep the wall so that the stairs are again an inch thick in plaster dust. Run away and hide. Some water has leaked through the spire and run down the walls of the toilet room on the balcony, so I get out the pot of white paint that I keep for this purpose, and a brush, and paint over the marks.
• Wednesday: We’re moving the church offices into the upstairs of what in the distant past used to be the Rectory. But it all needs re-wiring, which means removing the plasterboard and insulation from all the rooms. I’ve brought an axe and a crow bar. Day of exercise.
• Thursday: Starting the annual “Bible week”, which has lectures and all sorts of events, including reading out loud the whole of the New Testament in the church. In a diversity of languages to emphasise the world-wide nature of the church. I get given Matthew 10 and take revenge by reading it in Welsh (with Norwegian subtitles). Half-way through my chapter, an old gentleman in the congregation gets to his feet, turns to the others, and says rather loudly: “what’s he on about?” He is shushed and sat down again.
• Friday: Work from home to avoid getting tangled up with building projects, eisteddfods or vengeful cleaners.

Then it’s Sunday. Service and hope that next week will be a bit more … well, organist-like. Whatever that entails. Actually, it can entail strange things: an email has just arrived from a couple who are getting married in the summer and want me to play "Canon in D and Beyond" by Pachelbel. I'm wondering whether they were brought up on Toy Story ("To infinity and beyond!")

Great news this evening - Matt and Lilly have today bought a flat in Sandnes. I hope to provide some pictures presently. Congratulations!

We've referred in the past to the saga of the constantly-delayed new Berlin airport (currently due to open in October, but who knows). In the course of checking something, I stumbled over the fact that Google has thousands of reviews of the new airport. Full of curiosity I started to read them:

• Tonnes of parking space and the most environmentally friendly airport in the world. Greta would approve for sure. Zero emissions since 2012! No other airport can boast that. Visit the Ye Olde Cables shop. Bargain prices guaranteed! [a reference to the several times the entire project has been re-wired]
• Nice place, queues are really short, Flights take ages though, I've been waiting for twelve years.
• I was looking for rest from the stressful and noisy everyday life in Berlin. You can find it here. It is best to set up the deck chair on runway 1 and listen to the twittering of the birds. Glorious.
• Please never finish building, otherwise you will not be able to joke about it any more.

2 March - a new hero? - Woke up this morning to surprising news — emails from Thomas and Tracy pointing out that the village hall (see "fire" story 26 February) currently looks like this (photo supplied by Thomas). I should point out that T&T are both currently abroad in different countries, establishing our alibis. Presumably last week's fire caused or worsened some sort of electrical fault which in turn caused this week's event, but at least no super-enthusiastic neighbour rushed to put it out. And it seems it's as the fire brigade has always said — by the time they get here there's just enough left to cook your sausages over.

Comments Norah, 14 March I enjoyed the trip to Dhaka - incredible to think of Tracy filming that. Of course, I felt quite at home reading about the fire station, also the village hall where I remember a jolly fair. In fact, I still use a small dish bought there. I also recall my embarrassment when foolishly asking for tea instead of coffee caused consternation. Congratulations on passing your test - with distinction I hope. The information acquired will be really useful for you. We have had endless gales & rain here but the weather man, doubtless feeling guilty about all he had to offer, said cheerfully that 'Storm Dennis will leave us soon & is off to meander around Norway'. You must have been very grateful for this. Now we have coronavirus to think of and already the shops are running short of certain goods and events are being cancelled.