Dad, why are you vacuuming the refrigerator?

And the snow came heavily. At the start of November the first snow of winter arrived and for the first time since I arrived in Norway I decided to be preemptive and clear a path for me to walk down to the road and also dig the car out. And what blessed bounty was bestowed upon me as a reward for this virtuous deed? I dropped one of my AirPods in the snow. That would be one of the AirPods I had bought in London the month before to replace the AirPod I had dropped in the snow last winter somewhere outside the Herøy Omsorgsenter. At least this time I knew pretty clearly where I was standing when it fell so I felt I had a fighting chance of recovering it. But of course white on white is not the easiest to differentiate and there was no obvious hole in the snow that the pod would have disappeared down. I eventually consulted Google and it reminded me of the “Find my” app. I used this and every so often I would hear a beep that told me it was at least nearby. But I never could pinpoint it exactly and it seemed to fade away on occasion. I eventually resorted to asking Sigrid if she’d be kind enough to help me - I figured that her being a lot younger than me meant she’d have better ears. And this was after bothering her already asking if she had a garden sieve I could borrow in the hope of speeding the process up. Of course by this time it had started to snow. What the other neighbours must of made of seeing Sigrid and me, crouched down, picking up and bringing to our ears clumps of snow before throwing them away. The snow started to get a bit worse and for whatever reason the beeping of the pod seemed to be getting louder and I felt bad for Sigrid so thanked her and said that I’d be ok to find it by myself. Inevitably I wasn’t so resorted to using a shovel and bringing that up to my ear. See aforementioned comment re. neighbours…. But eventually gold was struck and as I held the spade to my ear I heard the unmistakable sound of beeps and after dumping it on the step I finally retrieved it. Needless to say, I have since refined my “inserting AirPods into ears during Winter months” technique to avoid this again.

Bless his cotton socks but Finrod continues to bring much joy and I always shout “hello” when I get back in. Not that he pays a blind bit of attention to that. Open the cupboard where his treats are though….? In the cold winter evenings he is excellent company. Curled up on my lap as I do my Duolingo or watch some rubbish on the TV. That being said, there have been a few occasions where he has been sick. My suspicion is that he sometimes eats too fast and he pays the penalty. The first couple of occasions it was downstairs where it may go unnoticed for a while but bless him, he has obviously paid attention to my muttering about not knowing he’d been sick. The most recent occasion he threw up right outside my bedroom door so that I discovered it much sooner than usual by stepping bare footed into it as soon I exited the bedroom in the morning.

Much to my own surprise, I really enjoy the part of the job where we go into the care homes and hold services. I never play any preludes or postludes particularly well, I am v self conscious about the fact that the troops aren’t probably that deperate to hear a Sarabande by Johann Kuhnau etc so try and play really softly which means some notes don’t sound etc but the services themselves go well. The last time we were in Herøy they had the exercise bikes out. The residents are able to sit down and pedal while a large screen showing various locales that you can imagine cycling around. Much to our surprise Dundee was not one of the available options but St Andrews was. I was able to regale them with various tales - that cinema is now owned by Tiger Woods, that’s where my dad worked, that’s where William and Kate met for coffee, there are some ruins and of course, most importantly, that is where I stood in a very long queue as a young lad wondering whether we were going to make it into see Star Wars for the first time.

At the beginning of November, in a moment of madness, I booked myself a quick jaunt to New York. I had discovered that they were reviving Chess the Musical and it was surprisingly cheap to get there and back so went then rather that wait until next year. I love the musical and indeed I wouldn’t have done this for any other musical. The plot is a “tad” dubious but the music is wonderful. It’s a long way to go for just one musical so booked myself some tickets to other performances and even added a 5th one while I was there.

Despite repeated efforts on my part to arrive prepared on how to get to my hotel from the airport I seem to fail every time. In London my mistake was getting on a train going in exactly the opposite direction I required. This time I had got it into my head for some reason that the “Express” I required was a train so spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a train station before realising it was a bus I was looking for. Journey went much more smoothly once I had sorted that out.

As is my want, I had found a cheap and cheerful place to stay that offered a “light breakfast”. The Scandic Hotel across the water here offers a fabulous breakfast with a huge selection of food - where I stayed in NYC, the selection was “do you want this slice of white bread toasted or not?” But as they say, you get what you pay for. I was actually quite pleased with the location - there was a Starbucks and McDonald’s near by so I could start the day with a proper coffee and finish the day with a hot chocolate and apple pie. Actually when I say I was pleased with the location, it was good for the aforementioned eateries and quite handy for getting in and out of the city but not so good due to the fact it was right beside a highway. They do not exaggerate when they say the city never sleeps. And the heater in the room wasn’t the quietest - sometimes I wasn’t sure whether a fleet of lorries had driven past or it was the heater going on. But I didn’t go all that way to spend much time in the room so shouldn’t complain.

I ended up buying tickets for 3 Broadway shows while I was there. Suffice to say that I have such discerning taste that 2 of the 3 have already announced closing dates (and one of them may have closed down already). Indeed I watched a video when I came home where a chap ranted about the 3 worst shows he had ever seen - and of course 2 of them were the above. He had an unbelievable rant about the first one which I assumed was the worst but was only the 3rd worst. Haha. And yes, the other show I saw was the worst one. To be fair, I think I agreed with all his arguments, though not so passionately, but as I had seen them “in preview” I got my tickets quite cheap so didn’t feel so strongly about it.

The first show I saw was Chess and as hoped the music was fabulous and I did enjoy the staging. Wasn’t sure about the key change at the end of One Night in Bangkok (and indeed the lack of clothing for a lot of the performers in that number) and a segue into one of the songs was a bit too klunky for my taste. People get very het up about the thinness of the plot, particularly in the 2nd half but I just go along and enjoy the music and live experience. Very glad I went.

Next on my agenda was Rob Lake with special guests the Muppets (no. 3 on the reviewers worst shows). Before the show I ended up having a lovely chat with the usher up in my “cheapest seat I could find area”. I thought I would impress her with my “I originally come from Scotland and now live on a small island off the Norwegian coast”. However, she somewhat crushed this by claiming to be descended from the first slaves that were brought across from Africa. And she’s now bought some land in Ghana and building a place. Slightly more impressive than “Did I mention I’ve got a cat now?”. As to the show itself, it started off with Rob claiming it was to be a history of magic which sounded interesting but this theme seemed to last for only the first trick. The Muppets didn’t really appear that much (they were the reason that I had bought a ticket) and if memory serves only did one trick. Gonzo was fired out of a cannon and amazingly appeared inside a box on the other side of the stage. Pretty sure I could have pulled that one off myself. It was all ok - nothing spectacular exciting and as my tickets were quite cheap I went away reasonably content. And as the reviewer pointed out, surely one of the most obvious things to have was Waldorf and Statler criticising the show from one of the boxes.

The next day I had “Christmas with the Rockettes At Radio City Hall” on my agenda. Not something I would normally got to see but I thought what the heck, while in NYC…. There was a crowd outside the venue shouting and as I approached I thought it was a bit odd having such vociferous advertising right outside but it transpired that they were protesting the use of live animals in the production.

It was a spectacular show - the stage was huge, there were 2 theatre organs that appeared and disappeared from the sides, singers, dancers, and a live orchestra. The orchestra played on a riser at the front of the stage and up and down it (fairly standard) but when it then started to move across to the back of the stage? That did impress me.

Most of the show was your traditional fun Christmassy fluff - Santa Claus, Jingle Bells etc but about 2/3 of the way there was a sudden change of tone when it became a Nativity play. And when the Wise Men came on, did they not have real live camels with them? No wonder they were complaining out front.

I had gone to the matinee so there were still a good number of hours left in the day and I had to decide whether to go back to the hotel or not. I eventually decided to stay in the city and find a cheap and cheerful evening show. I ended up going to see The Queen of Versailles (aka the worst of the 3 musicals seen by the above reviewer) by Stephen Schwartz and starring Kristin Chenoweth. And god bless the Americans, they do love a star on their Broadway stage. I knew absolutely nothing about the show and spent a pleasant evening at that theatre but I have to admit to coming away filled with a bit of unease about the plot. It’s based on a true story and a reality show and the subject of the show is one of the producers which gives an idea about how much critical balance or a moral lesson was involved. (Spoiler alert - none).

My last full day I spent up around the Central Park area - I wanted to see the John Lennon memorial and find the Robert Burns statue. Dundee has a copy of the very same statue (unveiled two weeks after the NYC one) and I thought it would be fun to go and visit it. Goodness me I am useless with Google maps - took me at least an hour to find it despite very frequently being within 100m or so of it but I did get there in the end. There’s a rather fun page at McGonall online about the unveiling of it in Dundee. Dundee’s great poet William McGonagall tried to perform his new poem there but they wouldn’t let him - example lines “ This statue, I must confess, is magnificent to see; and I hope will long be appreciated by the people of Dundee”. Excellent stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.

In the evening I had a bit of “proper culture” at 92NY. I had purchased a ticked for a guitar concert - the first half featured a transcription of Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 (one can never have too much Bach) while the second half was on electric guitar and the main piece was Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich which I really like. This was meant to be the final work but after the interval the guitarist explained that for reasons which would become obvious he had swapped the last 2 pieces around. This last piece featured lots of weird effects and involved de-tuning the strings as he played. The audience loved it while I couldn’t help but think of Tom Lehrer’s comment “…anything from the ridiculous to the obscene, or, as they say in New York, sophisticated”. My lack of enthusiasm was obviously noticed by the chap sitting behind me - he leaned forward and said “You’re clapping very quietly”. I didn’t hang around for the reception afterwards.

The trip back was v civilised, I knew not to look for a train station to the airport, the plane was very full so they asked me if I’d be happy to put my luggage in the hold and it would go all the way to Sandnessjøen (result!), and all the flights ran to time. I’d have preferred if they’d run a bit late as I had a 10 hour stay in Trondheim airport which involved being able to see a plane go to Sandnessjøen without me on it but if one buys cheap tickets one must grin it and bear it.