Je m’appelle Graeme. J’ai douze ans.

If memory serves, one part of my job description was to help out confirmation classes here on Dønna/ Herøy. Obviously at this stage my Norwegian is still a bit ropey and I fear my contribution would be “There are six dogs sitting outside the café” which to the best of my knowledge never featured in any of the parables. That being said, I discovered that the last meeting of the class before the actual confirmation was to be a barbecue and clay pigeon shooting. Count me in! There’s a shooting range on the short cut between where I stay and Bjørn and I dutifully rolled up on Thursday evening. It wasn’t great weather but it has been worse since I’ve been here so can’t complain. Norway is a very “green” country and I made what I felt was an important contribution by failing to get even close to hitting anything thus allowing my “pigeons” to be recycled.

On Friday I was delegated the extremely important responsibility of switching the heating on for the Sunday service in Nordvik. The switch that I was shown the dutifully flicked and I then spent Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday morning fretting about whether I had done it right. Nordvik is cold at the best of times…. I turned up 2 hours before the service, stepped into the church - it was freezing. 1/2 an hour later Svein and Stig turned up and I rushed down the stairs to apologise for the cold. Transpires that we were all confused about which switches controlled the heating and all I had done was put on the porch light all weekend. On the plus side I got a wee round of applause at the end of the postludium (and also I think a laugh from a friend who shall remain nameless!)

Following this Svein and I had to nip down to Herøy to catch our private ferry to Husvær for another service. For the first time in my career I had to play an olde fashioned harmonium which meant I had to pedal like mad through every voluntary and hymn - on the plus side I’m sure I burned off some of the calories that I will have ingested via the very nice waffles and strawberry jam afterwards.

Monday I spent patronising various cafes on the mainland before another house rehearsal with the chamber choir. I fear my reputation now precedes me and the cakes are always pointed out when I arrive. Any reputation I have here in Dønna and Herøy is not based on any ability I may have on the organ but on a/ my love of cakes and b/ the korps/ corpse issue from about my third day here!

Tonight (Tuesday) we had the first meeting of what we hope will become a choir to perform at various services. As you’ll have been able to tell from the posts, it’s not the same as back in Dundee where it’s a regular time each week in the same place - I’ve now played services at 7 different churches here (it would have been 8 but one was cancelled due to a power failure on the island) so we’re not sure how it will work out. I was pleasantly surprised to have 4 parts at the first rehearsal and with a good tail wind it looks like we might even make it into double figures. I’m looking forward to getting some of the old classics out again. It’s obviously a good chance for me to practice a bit more Norwegian as well - even it was mostly just pronouncing the various voice differently. Still probably an improvement on my previous attempt to do a rehearsal in a foreign language when we were in Orleans with the University Chamber Choir - “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Graeme. J’ai douze ans. Apres quatre. Une, deux, trois, quatre”….

Another slightly embarrassing moment when I was asking a colleague if she was able to make it this evening and I apparently asked her if she wanted to come tonight which had slightly different connotations…..

In other news I have signed a lease for a pad in Bjørn so I’m able to move there at the start of June. Roughly speaking Bjørn is equidistant from both my offices which should cut down the travelling quite a lot. I’ve also started looking at cars which appears to me to be a much more stressful job than it is in Dundee. Nothing as simple as pottering along to Arnold Clark’s (other dealerships are presumably available) - no, here you search the entire of Norway on a website to find the car you’re looking for. You can always narrow it down geographically, but as I mentioned in my first ever post, Norway is a BIG place and Bødo (5 hours 39 minutes away according to Google maps) is local! Anyway, I think I know what I want to get so we’ll have to see how that pans out.

I’m v excited about getting my first visitor in a couple of weeks. Jen is coming out to stay for a week and much as I’m enjoying the challenge of learning the language, I’m looking forward to not wracking my brain for Norwegian words in every conversation!