Tag Archives: Rain

Light Nights and Shearing Sheep

Blog, In Darkness and In Light, Life in Norway, Writing, , ,

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

I scrolled back to last year to find out how I had formatted the immortal words “Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.” and I see that this time last year, I was excited, having just found an agent for my book. It seems unlikely at this point, that Ger will find a publisher and I haven’t made much progress in writing anything new. There has been altogether too much going on and I haven’t been in a good frame of mind for writing. It’s always hard to write without deadlines anyway, but there has been way too much time spent clearing snow and on other distractions. So for now, there’s not much likelihood of publication any time soon, though several of the publishers said they’d like to see new things from me. There was, in fact, quite a lot of good feedback, but it seems that, without romance, women’s fiction of the type I’ve written is difficult to sell. At some point, I will get started again, but I will need to work out a new strategy.

Returning to the north was difficult after a week of sun and warmth in Yorkshire. I arrived back in Bardufoss at 11:30 at night. It wasn’t dark, of course, but it was very chilly and raining. At one point, as I drove back, my car pinged me to give the ice warning it gives when the temperature is 3.5°C. I had taken Monday off, so I drove Andrew into school. He is doing his final exams at the moment. All the written exams are over, so now he is waiting to do a final, oral exam. Both John and Anna did International Baccalaureate, so this is our first experience of the Norwegian exam system, which seems to be somewhat bizarre. I knew from before, that the written exams are oddly long. You can come in any time between eight and ten, then sit in them all day, if you like, though you can walk out after ten, all of which sounds enormously distracting.

But the oral exam tradition is even weirder. Over the course of three weeks, all the students will have one oral exam in one of their subjects, but they are not told the date or the subject in advance. At Andrew’s school, all the students who haven’t yet had their exam, have to go in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. When they go in on Monday, some of them will find out that they have an exam on Wednesday, and in which subject. Those who have an exam stay and get some general extra tuition from the teacher on the Monday. On Tuesday, they are told the topic within their subject that they should prepare for and on Wednesday, they sit their exam. The rest of the students who weren’t selected for an exam, are free to go home, but of course for Andrew, this means waiting for a bus as there are only a few each day. Why they can’t just alert the students by text the night before, or early enough in the morning that they can go in if they need to is beyond me.

We’re currently at the end of the first week and happily, Andrew found out yesterday that he has been selected to have his oral exam in history, which is the subject he wanted. It also means that, once his exam is over, he will be finished and won’t have to go back in. There will be a graduation ceremony, but for me, as well as for him, it really will be the end of an era.

On Wednesday, John and I went to Ann’s to shear her sheep, at least John sheared them and I started and stopped the shearing machine. Despite it being quite chilly in the barn, John was quickly sweating. Shearing sheep is a very physical job. Goodness knows how it feels to be a sheep with winter-thick wool that is taken off all at once, but I should imagine it is both something of a shock and a relief at the same time.

Anna and her girlfriend Lauren are coming here on Monday, which I am very much looking forward to. I considered taking time off as flexitime, but having had to work the last time I booked that, I decided to take a holiday, just to be sure! It was odd being back at work for four days and hard to get my teeth into anything, though it’s great to see that my new colleague, Ingrid, is settling in well and picking things up very quickly. It looks like it is going to be a bit warmer this week, at least, which is good as it would be a sad introduction to the North of Norway for Lauren if it was still snowing in June, as it was on and off, right up to the end of May. And so, I am going to sign off as there is lots to do. I hope you all have a good week.

Waiting

Blog, In Darkness and In Light, , , , , ,

Sunrise/sunset: 08:06/ 16:58. Daylength: 8hr 51min.

I was hoping to share the first snow pictures of the winter with you today. The weather forecast was for sleet, and I know these things can be wrong in either direction. I am, at last, beginning to feel I might be prepared. Yesterday I bought snow scrapers for the car windscreen and the driveway as well as some bags of environmentally friendly, reusable grit. But for now, there is only rain outside my window, as there has been for days. The picture at the top of the page was taken on my drive to work on the last day before the rain began. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t resist stopping. I sometimes wonder whether people will see the Mattilsynet logo on the side of the car and wonder what I’m up to!

There isn’t much of interest to report at work. The seasonal meat inspection is still in full swing and I have been working there every day this week, though the drive over is often a pleasant experience. Yesterday, I glimpsed what I thought were some horses or cows in a field. I turned my head at the last minute, as something was hammering in my brain about them being the wrong shape. To my pleasure, I saw it was a moose with two almost grown calves. I still feel a frisson of delight in seeing wild animals. By the time I realised, it was too late to stop for a photograph, but hopefully it won’t be the last time.

The basement flat where we live is feeling more and more like home. Anna and Andrew bought me an Alexa for Christmas last year, and other than wrestling with her for a while as I tried to get her to play Tir n’a Noir I haven’t used her very much. But John, having researched a new lighting system that is voice activated, has set her up so that we can now ask her to turn on the lights and she does so. The bulbs are heinously expensive (I bought a new one last night which was reduced by 114kr or around around £10 [16 Canadian dollars for Iceland Penny!]) but they can be set on different brightness levels and also to warm or bright light. We also have strip lighting on a shelf beside the TV which can change colour. When it is properly dark, and especially if I work from home at some point, the lighting is going to be very important.

Anyway, John is home for the weekend, and he and Andrew need to go shopping for winter boots, so I will leave you with another photograph of misty mountains at dawn. Have a great week everybody.