The strong girl has a horse and a monkey

Ever since I moved here, people have been amazingly kind, helpful and generous to me and staggeringly patient with my general ineptness at life. Sigrid and Steffen, who I rented an apartment from for a couple of years before I bought this place suffered particularly because they were so close. Whether it was was questions about heat pumps, water coming through a ceiling, lost AirPods in the snow or even really difficult stuff like an inability to change a lightbulb, they helped me out. I invited them across one evening as at least a small gesture of gratitude for what they had done for me. Just before they left, I asked the fateful question - “I don’t understand how to heat downstairs”. I’ve obviously got my super duper heat pump now for upstairs but I’ve never worked out how to heat downstairs apart from using an electric heater which doesn’t seem right. And to give an idea of how little clue I’ve got about downstairs, I still haven’t managed to find the off switch for the lights in the downstairs bathroom after nearly 2 years.

They said they’d have a look, we went downstairs and immediately they said, you do know you have underfloor heating don’t you? Oh the shame. I had wondered about the white box on the wall with a temperature display (usually very low!) but it had never occurred to me it might the magical source of heat for downstairs. But of course it hasn’t proved to be one yet. Within moments of him being home Steffen had sent me a link to an instruction manual so I set to trying to work it out. Apparently it had a setting where you could change the language which was v exciting but for the love of me I couldn’t find it. Eventually I realised that the manual was to a quite sophisticated system whereas the one I had was more like the Temu version. I found the instructions for mine but alas made no progress at all so just left it.

A couple of days later I headed off to Bodø and when I got home I was greeted by that lovely sound of a fuse going pop. One of the few things I am able to do is flick a fuse switch back into place but I then spent the evening getting up and down as it kept popping. I eventually worked out it was the freezer so with much regret I consigned it to history and unplugged it. Ordered a new one from Power in Sandnessjøen next day and although it is disappointingly smaller it at least fits in the space in the kitchen so I’ve saved myself a few trips up and down the stairs. Very kindly, Steffen and Sigrid said they had the use of a trailer for the day and if I wanted they would take away the old one for me so that was done as well.

After all that, you can imagine my horror when the damn fuse started popping again. I was greeted with a cold shower the following morning and an emergency phone call went out to the kind chap who plugged in my heat pump. He came round, looked at the electrics and explained that the problem was in fact the underfloor heating and the fuse wasn’t able to cope with the water heater and heating at the same time. So after all that it seems I chucked out a perfectly fine fridge freezer, bought a new freezer and now have to get more cables / fuses installed. I’ve had better days.

My Krebs concerts have continued - they are every 3 weeks so it worked that there was only one in March. The lucky venue for an hour of Krebs and me massacring the Norwegian language was Løkta. There was actually an excellent turn out for the concert - I was told there was 25 which is roughly 20% of the island’s population so not too shabby at all. I had a long wait for the ferry afterwards so I had told my colleagues that if there was more than 3 seconds of applause I would do an encore. And to be honest I don’t think I even waited the full 3 seconds. There were even 3 young kids there, one of whom was wearing a rather fetching cowboy hat - surely a first for a Krebs concert. All of them must have been under 7 and I know what you’re thinking - how badly must have they been behaving during the day to be subjected to a Krebs concert? But they were all very well behaved - Krebs obviously speaks to the masses. There was also a rather splendid spread laid on afterwards which was much appreciated. Even with my encore and the food, there was still plenty time to kill afterwards before the first of my 2 ferries to get home, and in an unusual turn of events I was actually able to help out somebody who had a problem at their house. Admittedly Katya and her daughter’s problem was a Harry Potter Lego set but it was nice to feel useful!

In March, a couple of colleagues and I were sent of on to a course which I believe was entitled “Introducing new salmes (hymns) to congregations”. I only “believe” that was its title because by the time it came up in the staff meeting I was at my “zoned out” stage so when I was told that I should “write that date in the diary” Not wanting to display my ignorance (or at least no more than usual), I proceeded to open my diary and make vaguely wobbling moves with my pen. At the conclusion of the meeting I chased after Trine to get the proper info.

The meeting was in Brønnøysund which in kilometres is roughly the same distance from Dundee to Aberdeen but it’s heck of a lot harder to get to. I had to get up at 5am (after waking every 30 minutes to check the clock), drive to Herøy where I would get the first of 3 ferries (just to get there). It took us roughly 4 hours to get there. The lady taking the course was a very lovely soul - she was a composer and took us through all these new salmes. Now, I’m afraid I’m a tad (ie very!) old fashioned when it comes to hymn texts. I like them to be spiritually uplifting/ thought provoking etc. What I’m not looking for is, and I quote, “send angels to catch the bombs like we swat mosquitos”. When we got to a line about “help guide us the labyrinth that is NAV (the social security office)” I found it so irritating that I almost got up and walked out. Indeed one of the priests actually put her hand up and asked if there were actually any mentions of Jesus in these new hymns? I did a cursory check and it seemed to me that in the 86 verses between all the new hymns, the closest they got was “Joseph’s son”. And I also felt that some of the music was needlessly complicated - one of the hymns was 8 bars and had 7 different time signatures! That all being said, the food was fabulous. And spare a thought for poor Trine, she had to listen to me mutter darkly in both Norsk and English for the entire 4 hour journey back.

But if I knew one thing, it was that Finrod would be happy to see me when I got back and that he would be very sympathetic to his carer after a terrible night’s sleep and a very long day. And how did he demonstrate this affection? By waking me at 3.12 am the next morning so that he could go out. And if that wasn’t bad enough he did the same thing the next day as well - although granting me an extra 10 minutes or so so it was 3.25. And did he go out straight away? Oh no. He dragged me out of bed, made me stand beside an open door in subzero tempatures, he then did his “dance” and decided, you know what I am a bit peckish so went to eat something. This happened a couple of times over the next 10 minutes and I for my sins in the end I eventually picked him up, gave him a big hug, and then chucked him out.

I was taken by the urge to see the new Jodie Foster film at the cinema in March Not only did I have no idea about the plot beforehand (I never check) it was a French language film with Norwegian subtitles. I thought it would be a good challenge to see how much I could follow. The first word was a very English expletive so I was off to an excellent start and though it did get more challenging I like to think that I understood most of it. Was quite pleased with myself. Unsurprisingly I was the only person in the cinema. I obviously have bit of a reputation now as the chap selling the tickets said to me “Alone again!”. I’m choosing to interpret that as “nobody else has bought a ticket” rather than “still got no mates?” He did give me a free coffee though so can’t complain.

Disappointingly I have not been able to go swimming as regularly as I would have liked. They have started putting a bouncy castle and volleyball net in the pool on a Saturday morning to appeal to the masses so I’ve not been able to get in my lengths. Not that they told me about this though. Oh no. Took my money very happily. They didn’t seem to think it was at all odd this single old man was going in to a pool filled with entertainment all by himself. But I thought to myself, well it’s the holidays, that’s fair enough and look forward to going back the next week. But it happened again! Took my money and didn’t say anything. This time there was another bloke as well and we sat in the sauna for a while to justify the expense and then I did a couple of widths in before giving it up. And imagine my annoyance when I was sitting having my traditional coffee and twix afterwards and I heard the person on duty (tbh not the same person who had fleeced me) say to a customer, you sure you want to buy a ticket, you can’t swim because of all the toys?