“Nice eyelashes”

On Friday 20th May, I was delighted to welcome my dear friend Jen to visit for a week - just think, a whole seven days of speaking English without feeling bad for not knowing the appropriate Norwegian equivalent.

Alas I was fairly busy with various services etc but we managed to fill up the week quite well and were generally blessed with some lovely weather. I’ve asked Jen to write a blog post about her her trip and hopefully that’ll be up in a few days and she can correct anything I’ve got wrong here!

There is a closer airport to Dønna (Sandnessjøen) but it takes heck of a lot longer to get there from Scotland so as I had done, Jen arrived in Mosjøen. It’s up in the mountains and is even smaller than Dundee airport - not even a coffee machine. I timed my arrival perfectly with the plane landing about a minute after I had parked. This was important because any longer than 20 minutes and I’d have had to pay for parking!

For our first full day the weather was gorgeous but I still had 2 services to play for. The first one was a baptism in Dønnes Kirke for a Romanian family. Bit of a result in that the service was entirely in English so had no problem following what was going on. The second service was a wedding in Herøy - the first one I had played for since arriving here. The music was the traditional Wagner for the entry of the bride and Mendelssohn for the exit. I was feeling very smug with my timing of the last cadence in the Wagner when I glanced in the mirror and noticed that who I thought was the bride was in fact the bridesmaid so had to suddenly extemporise a further conclusion to the piece. Other than that though the service went well and the couple were able to leave the church into bright warm sunshine.

Jen and I also took advantage of the weather and pottered along to the Brygga, a local restaurant, where we were able to enjoy the traditional coffee and cake on a little pier beside the water. While we were basking in the sun my car was having its tires changed from winter to summer and when it was returned we headed back up to Dønna. We continued to take advantage of the weather and went for what I refer to as the “Narnia” walk (see an earlier post). As we passed one of my neighbours, Jen said “nice eyelashes”. Now Jen has on occasion complimented me on various things, organ playing, weight loss, choirs etc but I vividly remember thinking that’s a strange one and a tad out of the blue but hey ho…. I just left it hanging in the air and we carried on. After the Narnia part of the walk we recalled seeing some kids sitting out on a rock on the water so on the way back we too trekked through marshes etc and spent a while sunning ourselves on a lovely breeze less day.

The weather on Sunday was not quite so bright and again we had to head down to Herøy for a service and lunch back at the Brygga. On our way back, we stopped off at “Et cetera” a fabulous shop full of house plants, knickknacks, pictures, candles etc. And some rather nice liquorice balls covered in flavoured chocolate. Sweet tooth? Moi?

Monday is my day off so a trip to Sandnessjøen was booked in. I “wanted” to go and see the bank about my BankID after I had failed dismally on Friday. The banks don’t open till 10 in Norway (and shut at 3) so so the plan was to get that out of the way as early as possible. We arrived in Sandnessjøen about 9am (having met Marit who is in both Dønnahorn and the Kammerchor on the ferry) which gave us a chance to do a bit of sight seeing. Jen had made the rookie error of discovering a surviving WW II coastal gun so that immediately moved to the top of list and also nearby was a recreated Viking chiefdom seat so we managed to get them ticked off the list.

On the way to these spots we were accosted by a local journalist asking us about new laws for dogs (well, owners of dogs) that were being introduced. We explained that we were really cat people (still miss you Londo if you’re reading) but that the rules seemed fairly sensible to us. Later on in the week Laila pointed out that I had missed an excellent opportunity to impress with my “there are six dogs sitting outside the cafe” (det sitter seks hunder utenfor kafeen). Finally a chance to use a Duolingo sentence and I missed it. Nuts.

A quick visit to the bank followed - you could see the lady’s face fall when she saw me. However the plus side was that my problem with BankID was solved very quickly: you can’t have one till next year.

Obviously the next step was to console with cake and coffee so we found a little cafe at the top of the Main Street and gave them some business.

One of the main objects of the day was to purchase a new black suit for the upcoming concerts. I did have one in Dundee but I got rid of it as it was slightly too large after I had lost a lot of weight over the lockdown. Admittedly it probably wasn’t as oversized as it had been after all the cake that has been consumed since I arrived here. Jen had kindly brought one over for me (along with some other items - most notably some decent tea bags) but we decided it wasn’t as flattering as might be so….. A pleasant time pottering around the shops was had and new white shirt and black suit (dress in Norwegian) was purchased.

On the ferry back to Bjørn, we met Marit again. I do try really hard to incorporate Norwegian when I can but a lesson was learned that one shouldn’t mix the languages in the same sentence. The look of horror on Marit’s face when I said I had bought a dress for the concert…..

I had a rehearsal for the confirmations that were to take place later in the week on Monday evening so we combined this with a chance to rehearse for the wee virtual concert we planned to put together.

After a bite to eat, we took advantage of the continuing lovely weather and went out for a walk again in the evening and despite having driven/ walked passed my near neighbour’s house for over 2 months, I finally noticed their glammed up pink car. ‘Wow, look at the eyelashes on that car Jen”. The withering reply: “what did you think I was talking about on Saturday?” Me: “…”

One of the places I have been keen to visit since I got here was Heidi’s Chocolate Factory which is a short walk from my place. We wandered down there and admired it and went further out into the little marina-like place they have where we spent time trying to get some reflection pictures. Suffice to say Jen has a much better eye for it than I do.

Tuesday morning was not a great morning for Jen - I had a staff meeting and then a funeral. Wasn’t great for me either - had my first real disaster at a service. All modesty aside, since I’ve got here I think I’ve played quite well, but there was an element of confusion on Tuesday for which I fear I must take most of the responsibility. The order of service usually has the hymns on it and the last page is generally the hymn that is to be sung at the graveside. I should have known that this wasn’t the case and indeed it was clear in my email. However, all the service was finished by the time we sang the second hymn at which stage the coffin should have been carried out. The priest said something (and it did occur to me as I started playing that I thought he had said the key words “sing” and “hymn” - in Norwegian of course). Nonetheless I ploughed on with my little voluntary based on Abide with Me. I became aware that nothing was happening and that it was obviously meant to be another hymn. So while continuing to play with one hand, I grabbed first the order of service, then the very large hymn book, looked up the title index and then found the appropriate hymn. Fortunately it was in the same key as Abide with Me so I subtly (honestly!) segued into the correct hymn….

We had more time for a walk in the afternoon so packed a flask of coffee and went for a walk up Dønnafjellet which is 6.5km from my door. We were really lucky with the weather so were able to enjoy some really spectacular views.

Wednesday morning we decided to spend recording our concert. There’s a lovely acoustic in Dønnes Kirke and it was great to work with Jen on some French song. The organ has only one manual which does put a limiting factor on what one can play. We settled on a French programme and Jen chose a couple of beautiful songs by Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saens. The recordings generally went quite well apart from one of the organ pieces where we forgot to press the record button…. I also asked Jen if she’d be kind enough to take some photos of the church that we could use as a slide show to play during the solo organ pieces. If you watch the video I’m sure you’ll agree that the pictures are fabulous.

https://youtu.be/CbdYk-4yLP8

Laila kindly organised a trip for us to Heidi’s Chocolate Factory on Wednesday evening - it is still out of season so it was opened especially for us. We had hoped that Laila would be able to come with us but alas she didn’t feel strong enough. Heidi’s is a fabulous place in a beautiful location. And there was chocolate - what more could you ask for?

Our last full day was Thursday and poor Jen again had to be dragged to another service. This was a v important one with the confirmation of some youngsters in Dønnes Kirke. The church was full downstairs and due to the overflow I even had some people sitting upstairs in the organ loft. Jen entered into the spirit of things and tried to sing along with the Norwegian hymns.

Being slightly nervous about the potential of cancelled ferries or any other sort of natural disaster I suggested we go up to Mosjøen the night before her flight and explore the area. I hadn’t realised at the time but Ascension Day is a national holiday so after rushing all the way up to Mosjøen without even getting changed into something casual we discovered that absolutely nothing was open. The hotel is set on the riverside and on the opposite bank there looked a fabulous walk among the hills but as I had a funeral the next day I hadn’t bothered bringing anything casual so alas we couldn’t take advantage of a nice walk.

Despite everything being closed we dumped our stuff in our rooms and went for a potter round to at least see what we were missing out on. Jen, as usual, had done her research so we were at least able to get a very decent Indian meal in the evening.

Friday brought lots of sad and guilty emotions. I had another funeral to play for and the only ferry I could get meant abandoning Jen at the very small airport waaaay too early. I felt so bad. Even the joy of the chocolate coated liquorice balls we discovered in the hotel couldn’t take away the guilt I felt. However, at least for future visitors we’ve learned some very valuable lessons.

As I mentioned at the start, I’m hoping Jen will write something for this blog so do keep a look out for it in the next few days.