Why is she arguing with the wall?

At the end of June the service in Hestad Kirke was followed by Kirkekafe. Not an unusual occurrence in itself but it was the first time that I have ever had to put on a life jacket to actually get to the coffee. While the service was on Dønna, coffee was served in a house on the island of Skorpa which required a short boat trip and then a hike to a house for the actual coffee. The house itself had an interesting back story as well. If I picked up the history correctly, it was purchased by the grandfather (actually maybe the great grandfather now that I think about it and do some sums in my head) of the current owner in the 1880s. Again not an unusual occurrence you might think but the house was actually in Mosjøen so was dismantled, put on a boat, and sailed up to Skorpa where it has remained ever since.

At the beginning of July I pottered off down to Trondheim for a long weekend where I visited various cultural spots such as museums and art galleries and enjoyed other cultural activities such as the He-Man movie. It was reassuring to see that the turn out in the Trondheim cinema was about the same level I am used to in Sandnessjøen ie about 10 of us. On the Sunday, I thought it would be of benefit to me to go to a couple of services as I am always keen to hear how “proper” Norwegian organists play. I was quite proud of myself because for the first time I actually went up to speak to the organist after the service to tell her how much I had enjoyed the music she had played. I was also desperately trying to recall the name of one of the pieces as I had played it recently and could even see the music in my minds eye but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was called. At one point in the service when she was accompanying the priest, I was amused to hear her give up playing as he was steadfastly sticking to his note despite her best efforts to correct him. We recently had our own slight “disagreement” at the end of a service in Herøy - Liv-Helga has started singing a Samisk blessing at the end of the service and I eventually realised I had been playing it in the major key whereas in fact it should be in the minor. Without giving her any advance notice, I played the “correct” harmony and completely threw her off. Suffice to say discussions were had afterwards and we now stick with the major version!

It turned out that the hotel I was staying at was right outside the Rosenberg football stadium in Trondheim and indeed I could actually see the pitch from my window. Because it was still the time of the World Cup the Norwegian football season was on hiatus but there were some friendlies still going on. Rosenberg were playing and tickets were only 100kr - I’m not a great football going person but I thoroughly enjoyed a stress free afternoon watching the match. I had no emotional involvement in the result and didn't understand any of the abuse that was being thrown at the players. Blissful ignorance. Rosenberg were awarded a penalty in the last minute and won 2-1 so everybody left very happy.

As part of my Sunday routine, I like to leave nice and early so that I can do a good bit of practice before anybody else appears in the church. For example, one week in July I left at 9am for a service in Herøy at 11am. I was about 10 minutes away from the church when I passed a white car - I can remember thinking as it approached me “please don’t be Liv-Helga, please don’t be Liv-Helga, aw nuts…” It transpired that the service was in fact in Nordvik Kirke. If only I had both a paper diary and a phone diary. Oh wait.... Fortunately I had enough battery to get me to Nordvik but I really must learn to consult my diary before heading off to these services.

As part of a 2-concert series in Herøy Church, I played with a flautist that was a friend of Liv-Helga’s. When I discovered that her friend was coming to do a concert, I very rudely asked if I could come along and play a piece with her. A Fantasie for Flute and Organ by Krebs (who else). It was great to play one of the Krebs’ organ + solo instrument pieces and with such a good player. I live in hope that an oboe player might come past at somepoint - there is a fabulous Fantasie in f for Oboe and Organ which I've always wanted to play.

The following week Katya, Øyvind and I did a concert with a surprisingly large audience - Øyvind has a big fan club - and it was a good evening. Katya did most of the first half which was predominantly Baroque and then Øyvind did most of the second where it was more Romantic/ 20th Century. It would have been nice to have found a duet but the Alto - Tenor repertoire seems to be very limited. Nonetheless, the whole thing seemed to go very well and the only complaint seemed to be that there was no encore.

A big part of my job is playing funerals and my general preparation re the hymns is that the funeral director sends them to me a week in advance, I check them to make sure there is nothing obscure that I haven't done before, put them on a playlist on my iPad and Bob's your uncle. When I turned up at Dønnes for one particular funeral I was suprised to find the church dark and cold. There was planned work going on on power lines so it meant that we had no heating/ light or power in the church. I did suggest to Bjørn that he could pump the organ for me in the old fashioned way so that I could play it but for whatever reason he declined. The next problem was that the family had requested music from "The Secret Garden" played and that was going to be done over speakers via Spotify. Obviously with no power that was not going to happen so as it was an instrumental I volunteered to play it on the piano as I was going to be there anyway. I was unable to purchase a copy of it but managed to take a screen shot of the first page so played that a couple of times, improvised a bit and then played the first page again. Didn't seem to go too badly and I was glad to be able to do something for the family. However, the real stress came when I was going through the hymns. As mentioned above, I always check them as soon as I get them but for whatever reason (incompetence probably) I hadn't actually put them onto a playlist. And I panicked when I discovered that I hadn't got one of them which puzzled me because i was sure I had checked. I checked the hymn book and nope, it wasn't there. So resorting to Google, I eventually found a score online, took a screen shot and relaxed. Then about one minute before I was due to start playing, for whatever reason, I checked the hymn again and was horrified to discover that the version of the hymn I had had 2 less lines than the one in the order of service. Don't panic Graeme I thought, maybe it's a simple thing like the first 2 lines are repeated. I surreptitiously went onto YouTube to have a listen and of course, the melody bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one I was about to play. At this point, it dawned on me that I had in fact checked the hymns beforehand and that the tune I wanted was in the old hymn book. A quick dignified dash upstairs to the organ loft to pick up the old hymn book and the crisis was averted. And after all that, I think I played quite well.

I am delighted to say that Finrod is now back on fine form - he did have one more visit to the vets at the start of July ("This cat is brought to you in association with the Bjørn Veterinarian") to have some ticks dealt with but since then (touching lots of wood) he seems to be absolutely fine and back to his old self.

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