I’m on holiday, OK?

Climbing the old lighthouse at Torungen

Somebody, [Moo], said it would be a good idea to write a post saying we were going to be on holiday so don’t go looking for a post over the summer because there wouldn’t be one.

This is fine in theory, and I agreed. And here it is. The only problem as far as I can see is that nobody reads our posts anyway, so they don’t know that there won’t be one for them to miss.

But because I’m the youngest and I always, usually, sometimes when it suits me follow the advice of my elder sister, I am writing this post. I am in Norway atm, on the Oslo Fjord. I don’t know where Moo is exactly but she will be chilling [1]. We have learnt to chill. It wasn’t invented when we were young but we are making up for lost time now.

I’m not going to start a rant about what life used to be like in the 60’s and 70’s, though frankly I could and I might make it interesting. But now we are nearing our dotage it’s about time we had a bit of chill, I mean we have been busy girls all our lives so, you know...

‘Chilling’ is a bit of a funny expression to be honest, particularly now when the weather is so hot. The other reason I find it odd is that I constitutionally do not like to get cold, so no, I don’t want to chill – I want a nice stable temperature.  I presume it means to take the heat off the situation in an emotional rather than a literal physical sense, but even here I prefer emotional warmth to chilly cold. Suffice it to say I will accept the word in the sense of slow down and stop working, relax and drink tea, especially if it comes with toast and marmite or at a pinch chocolate digestives.

Somebody said to me yesterday that they thought I was a very busy person. This cheered me up no end as I have always secretly worried that I am lazy. I think I am a lazy person actually, but one with a lot to do. But, I’m thinking that if I have been labelled a ‘busy person’ then by rights I deserve a chill time.

Fishing near Arundel. I caught a cod....

So, back to the Oslo Fjord: that’s where we are based but I drove three hours down to the south of Norway this morning. and I am sitting in a cabin in the shade. My husband is sitting outside in the hot midday sun reading a book [he will regret this later, trust me], while our Norwegian friend is getting the boat ready for an outing [2], while our friend’s wife is cooking us lunch. She is frying chicken fillets and tossing a crisp green salad. I spied a couple of bottles of red in the kitchen earlier, so although they DON’T HAVE ANY TEA [let alone completely no digestives and even less Marmite] I might just survive.

How’s that for chilling?

Notes:

1 Moo would like it to be known that she is not actually chilling. No. She is working out how to use her new camera so she can be a super duper photographer [my expression not hers] and fill ours and other pages with exquisite, cool images. So good luck with that, sis.

2 Our trip was to the Arundel region, and we climbed the old lighthouse, manned by the uncle of Morten Morland who is a cartoonist in London for the Times etc [by the way] and we went on a fishing trip and I caught a cod. Which the Norsk friend can clean and gut [thank you very much] and we will eat...