Category: Little Voices archive entries

I listened to one of my favourite songs this morning – “Kråka på taket” by Di Derre – and suddenly realised that though it’s still a great song it has completely lost its relevance. A very odd feeling. Other songs, of course, have also undergone a change lately. As an example, Vonda Shepard singing “I Only want to be with You” used to be something I hoped it might be possible to feel, not quite believing it was ever going to happen, but wishing for it nonetheless. And suddenly it’s pretty much a constant soundtrack – occasionally drowned out by whatever my brain – apparently – finds interesting at the moment, but there in the background ready to reappear once the disturbance has gone away.

Other things have changed to. I never thought I was particularly possessive. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve never had any occasion to before. Nowadays I find the phrase “Mine, all mine” running through my head with frightening frequency.

Voice in my head: Climie Fisher – Love Changes Everything

Perhaps one ought to learn Gàidhlig?

1. If you were to go on a diet (not that you should, babe, you look marvelous), which of the “fad diets” sounds the most appealing to you?
I’ve got a postcard on my fridge saying “I’m on a seafood diet, I eat everything I see.” I think that pretty much accurately sums up my attitude to fad diets (and most other forms of dieting).

2. I only ask, because with the holidays coming up, there will be a lot more food in our house than usual. It tempts me. Maybe if I exercise I can loose some now, and eat then and have it all balance out. Do you get much exercise?
Much? No. The Scottish Country Dancing helps. As does the fact that I live up four flights of stairs – no elevator.

3. (snip) Have you ever raided someone’s junk pile that was left out for the garbage truck? Or gone dumpster diving? What did you find?
Yup. No very exiting finds, though. A couple of picture frames out of one. A book out of another.

4. Also in that same dumpster was the most awful shade of bright green carpet you’ve ever seen. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe it if I showed you (and I will try to get a photo). Do you have any memories of ugly carpeting in your home or someone else’s?
Most of the places I lived in in England had horrible carpeting, but then I hate wall-to-wall carpets anyway, so it wasn’t necessarily the design of the carpet that was at fault. In Worthing, though, the living-room floor was covered in these brown and yellow swirls, looking much like something that ought to be flushed down the toilet quite quickly before stinking up the bathroom completely. Not nice, but you learn to ignore it.

5. As summer draws to a close, it means fewer outside chores. One I won’t miss at all is mowing the lawn! What summertime chores will you be glad to see go away for the winter months?
Ah. The joys of not having a lawn! Having no garden basically means I don’t really have any summertime chores. The one thing about summer I’m glad to see the end of for a few months is the warm nights that prevent me sleeping.

6. Of course, it is hard to mention fall without at least touching on football. Do you have a(ny) favorite football team(s)? Do you and your family root for the same teams to win?
Huh? What’s this football you’re on about? Seriously, I couldn’t care less, whether it’s American football or soccer. All one to me. My family, well, they’re another kettle of fish entirely.

7. (snip) If you were to visit California, are there any Bloggers you’d like to meet up with?
I don’t think so. I’m not actually entirely sure where the bloggers I’d most like to meet are located, but I don’t think any of them are in California.

It’s obviously Friday afternoon, I’ve just had to use four attempts before managing to add a column to a table.

In a short while I’ll be off, off to Bergen in fact. Janne is – was it 30, dear? – next week, so Martin and I are going for a spot of celebration. We come bringing haggis. And some other stuff.

And so I’ll get to see my “nephew” again for the first time in, oh, over a year. Not being a very good aunt, am I?

So. Need to go catch a train. Thing is, I’ve just realised that I’m starving, so I need to eat something. Preferably before I get to Bergen, which won’t be for another 3-4 hours.

Of course, we could eat at Pizza Hut at the airport. Judging from when Linda and I ate there this summer, it’s an entertaining place. We almost chocked on our food when the people at the table next to us started quarreling about who was going to eat the last pizza slice. Not as in they all wanted it, but as in none of them wanted it. For heaven’s sake, they were four people (mother, father and two teenage daughters) and they’d managed less than one standard size pizza between them. We left one slice and a couple of slices of garlic bread, but there were only two of us and we’d had extra garlic bread because they were out of something or other. As I said, we almost choked. We were already giggling because the people at the table on the other side were being very weird too. Shortly after I decided we had to leave or I’d openly start laughing and pointing my finger at people, which would be rude. So far I think we’d managed to give the impression that we were talking about something very funny. Which we were, of course, but something other than our fellow guests, I mean.

Rambling now. Will stop.

Am hungry.

Voice in my head: Vonda Shepard – I Only Want to be With You

My grandfather’s in hospital. It’s – allegedly – nothing very serious, his blood sugar is waaay down and they want to keep him in over the weekend, partly to get it up again and partly to ascertain whether there is any other reason for this than the fact that he’s hardly been eating at all lately.

I can’t help being worried, though. And I’m worried not so much about him – though that as well, obviously, as about what’s going to happen to my grandmother if it turns out there’s anything seriously wrong. I talked to her last night and one of the first things she said was how strange it was to be alone in the house. She’s got plenty of relatives nearby, but this is “nearby” for the Norwegian countryside, which means, well, an hours walk for me – too far to even contemplate for her. And she doesn’t drive, she never had a chance to learn because that was my grandfather’s domain. Seems silly now, but at 80 it also seems a bit late to start taking driving lessons.

So I’m worried.

In other news, Martin alerted me to the fact that my mother’s in the paper (she’s been interviewed about the disappointment over the failure of the local bus company to get their new electronic card-based payment system to work – it’s been delayed for years now). I’m somewhat worried about the sentence:

Familien, og særlig sønnene mine som studerer, kunne tenkt seg blant annet muligheten med halvmånedskort.

Or in English: “The family, and especially my sons who are students, would be interested in the season ticket option.” (My emphasis.)

Sons? I have more than one brother? You’d think I would have noticed, wouldn’t you?

The Friday Five was off last week, but then, so was I.

1. What vehicle do you drive?
I don’t. I don’t have a driver’s licence (and believe me, you really don’t want me to get one). Ok. I can see this is going to be somewhat pointless unless I start referring to a car I ride in. Right. Well, Martin has access to the company car, so that’s the one I most often ride in currently. It’s one of these minivan-thingies. And it’s bright green. That’s all I can tell you.

2. How long have you had it?
Had? Ok, skip that.

3. What is the coolest feature on your vehicle?
Lots of space for luggage… And it being free, of course.

4. What is the most annoying thing about your vehicle?
The seats aren’t exactly the height of comfort.

5. If money were no object, what vehicle would you be driving right now?
I’d have an old MG sports car. I wouldn’t be driving, though (see q1), I’d leave that to Martin.

Uhm. Think that was still pretty pointless, but whatever.

I arrived at Prestwick as scheduled and got to Irvine easily – for free, too, as there was no one to take my money either at the station or on the train. Anyway. Stopped off for lunch (and my first pint of cider) before locating the B&B. There were still hours to go before the others were likely to turn up, so I headed down to the harbour to breathe the sea air. Mmm.

Finally, the others arrived. Well, when I say the others, I mean Martin, of course. Not that I wasn’t glad to see the rest of them, too. I’d just been contemplating finding a pub to wait for them in, and having company is always nice, but I can’t claim that I would have been devastated if they’d decided to stay with the boat another week – there was really only one person I was anxious to see. So they arrived.

*insert (mostly) quiet jubilation and lots of lovey-dovey stuff here according to your own taste and/or imaginatory capabilities*

We had drinks in The Keys and then food (haggis!) in a pretty nice pub called The Ship Inn, before retiring to our respective beds.

In the morning the others were off before we even got up, so Martin and I had a nice leisurely breakfast (to the soundtrack of – appropriately – “Take My Breath Away” sung by the host in the kitchen, he had a good voice, too), and then made our way back to Prestwick to pick up the hire car. We were lucky in that they didn’t have the car we’d booked (a class b) so they gave us a class f instead for the same price. A Ford summat-or-other (well, what do you expect? It was grey, anyway), much roomier than the one we should have had. No complaints there.

Martin’s never driven on the left before, so that was interesting. Also, the car was larger than any he’s driven before, so figuring out exactly where the corners were in relation to the rest of the world took a little while. No sweat, though, he’s an excellent driver (I don’t even think that’s a biased view, but you never know), and we were able to hand the car back three days later without any accidents (or even near-accidents, which is more than can be said for the car we had at the festival – when he was no longer driving – but more of that later).

We managed, after a little confusion in Ayr, to find the correct roads to take us to Wigtown. It is a well-known fact that all roads lead to Rome, what is less well known is that the other end, all these roads lead to Ayr. At least that’s what it seemed like. Anyway, as I said, we found Wigtown, and immediately set about cleaning out all the bookshops (or at least all the ones that were open on a Sunday afternoon). We had another excellent haggis dinner at The Ploughman and then stumbled back to the B&B where we attempted to have a nightcap to sample some of the whisky Martin had picked up during the sailing trip, but fell asleep in the middle of it.

We woke to a wet and chilly Monday morning, but both of us were all smiles in any case. After a couple of more bookshops (any that opened early enough) our first stop that day was Bladnoch distillery. They were busy cleaning up after the night’s downpour, so they sent us off on a tour on our own, which we didn’t mind at all. Both of us have had enough tours of distilleries to know the process off by heart and I was round Bladnoch in July in any case. The only pity was not getting to see inside the warehouse, but this was compensated for by the entertaining company of a black cat – a better tour guide than some I’ve had at other distilleries. At least he didn’t talk nonsense but let us get on with peeping inside the washbacks and stills (they were not in production, so the vessels were all empty, don’t worry, I don’t think they’d have let us round on our own if they were actually distilling…).

In the shop I aquired my first bottle of whisky on this trip – a Signatory bottling of Bladnoch distilled in 1974. It’s the first bottle I’ve bought that was distilled the year I was born – it does make the bottles just that bit more interesting, I must admit.

One more bookshop (and 10 more books – anyone say “hopeless”?) and then we set off for Edinburgh, which we reached, eventually, in the late afternoon. We’d located a street with lots of B&Bs with the help of a guidebook in the breakfast room at Craigenlee, so we stopped at one near the city centre end which had “Vacancies” in the window and got ourselves a room.

No time to sit down and be lazy when there’s all of Scotland to explore, so off we go again, walking into town and managing to locate the Royal Mile and Royal Mile Whiskies at first try. Not a cheap experience, that. Not that I expected it to be, but I came out of the shop with the most expensive bottle of whisky I’ve ever purchased – a Gordon McPhail bottling of 1974 (that year again) Ardbeg. Irrestistible. At 100 pounds it was way over my previous “limit” of 50ish pounds a bottle. Oh well, I’ve tried it now and it was worth every penny – luckily. GMcPh can be a bit of a pot luck kind of buy. Very happy to find it was all right this time…

We had a bit of a wander down Prince’s Street after that and then went to meet Lyn for dinner. Dinner – at Howie’s – was very good indeed, and the company was even better, so I fell asleep a very happy Robin. I woke up in pretty much the same state – it’s wonderful what a difference having Martin around can make to how pleasant it is to wake up in the morning.

Anyway, we’d decided Pitlochry held more attractions than Edinburgh for us that day, so we set off pretty much immediately after breakfast. On the way north we realised we’d be passing Aberfeldy distillery, so we stopped off there. Though the main focus there was on Dewars’ World of Whisky – i.e. their blend – it was still very interesting and we did get a tour of the distillery. Not to mention a bottle each of the Flora & Fauna cask strength Aberfeldy…

Arriving in Pitlochry Martin decided to be lazy rather than thirsty, so we used the car to get to Edradour, Scotland’s smallest working distillery (seriously, the stills are itsy). We were very relieved to find that the coach party arriving at the same time as us required a translator, as they all spoke German, so we did not have to join the tour with them but got our own guide. After an interesting tour and a trip to the shop (and, yes, you guessed it, another bottle of whisky – a cask strength Edradour in a decanter bottle) – where we got to talk to Ian Henderson, yay! – we set off to find our third distillery of the day: Blair Athol. Yet another interesting tour and yet another bottle of whisky – this time a standard Flora & Fauna Mortlach, just because it was so cheap. Then, finally, we got around to looking for a B&B and found one immediately run by a nice little lady who was delighted to discover that we both wanted mushrooms with our breakfast (I hadn’t the heart to tell her I’d rather not have the sausage and tomato after her joyous: “Finally someone who wants the full breakfast!”).

Finding a place to eat proved quite tricky, as Pitlochry is a town geared towards the coach tourist trade and so was full of tea rooms but rather lacked pubs, but we persevered and found The Mill House which served food. Then we glanced at the whiskies behind the bar and decided that food was of secondary importance anyway, other than as cushoning. To mention but a few, we tried a Talisker cask strength which on the bottle said £6 a dram but which the barmaid could only find on the computer at £2.50 so that’s what she charged (the single was immediately turned into a double) – and we finished the evening off with a 21 year old Ardbeg at £15 a dram, a dram for savouring, indeed.

On Wednesday the main goal was to get the car to Aberdeen airport before noon so as not to have to pay a penalty charge for handing it back late. We almost made it – luckily Hertz did not insist on charging us. Having considered our luggage I suggested we change the plan – which had been to get the bus into town – and find a taxi. I’m not quite sure how we would have managed otherwise… Anyway, we found a taxi and then a B&B, and set off to explore Aberdeen – or at least its pubs.

Much of Thursday was spent browsing the various shops selling highland dress of all sorts, admiring kilts and sporrans galore, but not shopping much, except we managed to get hold of a pair of highland dancing shoes each, which should come in handy on Monday nights. While at lunch (in The Prince of Wales) we had a message from Per (the festival excursion organiser) to say he was able to pick us (and, more importantly, all our luggage) up – so off we went. After Morten, the fourth participant had arrived at the airport and we were all well stowed in the hire car, we set off for Dufftown.

Hm. Following Martin’s excellent example, I’m going to call that part 1 and see about telling you what happened in Dufftown later. Maybe. If I can remember anything.

I’ve only had one or two cups of coffee a day while in Scotland, and now I’m back at work and I’ve just had my fourth (with caffeine – I had one decaf as well just before lunch) and now I feel a splintering headache coming on. Have I veaned myself of caffeine, or is it just the unfamiliar staring at the computer that’s doing my head in?

Being back at work is a bit of a shock to the system, I must say. Coffee is helping, but a holiday would be better…

People have been asking me whether I’ve had a nice time, and then they laugh at me because all I can do is answer “Yes” and grin like a maniac.

Nevermind.

Voice in my head: Frank Sinatra – The Memory of All That