Meet the parents

Well, that was an interesting weekend…

It was well after six by the time we got out of Oslo on Thursday, so it was late (just short of 1 am, in fact) by the time we arrived in Trondheim. My parents were sound asleep – just as well, really, I was way too sleepy to want to sit down and talk or anything – so we went quietly to bed.

Friday morning my father walked around the kitchen in his slippers and woke us (well, me, anyway), the kitchen being just above the guest bedroom. He was gone by the time we got up, though – he had a meeting in Oslo, ironically. Still, got up pretty early, said hi to my mother before she went off to work and then lazed around the house for a bit before heading in to town to have a copy of the cabin key cut and have a wander.

It’s actually been three years or so since I was last in Trondheim when there was no snow – it’s been Christmases mostly – so a walk around town was nice. We did manage to get the key cut, which means we can now go up to the cabin for a weekend – unfortunately we don’t actually have any free weekends before late October, so the idea of testing the canakk (a cross between a canoe and a kayakk) might have to be shelved. Anyway, we headed back to my parents’ where I proceeded to attempt to ignore Martin for the rest of the afternoon in order to scan as many slides as I could (yes, yes, you’ll get to see some).

We were invited to a friend of Martin’s for dinner, so we kept my parents company while they had theirs with just a glass of wine (oh, ok, so I was hungry so I ate all the cartilage off the chicken legs they were discarding – mmm, cartilage…). We even managed to get out the bottles of whisky we’d brought (two bottles of whisky isn’t excessive for a weekend, surely?), so that they could try them.

If you’re going to aquire a boyfriend I suggest you make sure that not only can he cook himself, but that he has friends who actually enjoy making gourmet dinners. How’s this: Home made creamed mushroom soup for starters, steak (perfectly cooked) for the main course, followed by banana fritters and home made ice cream once we could manage another bite? Mmmm. Oh, and the company was nice, too. Lucky gal, me.

We had a reasonably lazy Saturday morning – I scanned some more slides (yes, yes, I know, they’re coming) and we had breakfast in plenum – we then waved goodbye to my parents and set off for Hitra. My turn to be slightly apprehensive about being ‘introduced’… Well, apart from a few flutters of nervousness just as we approached the house, it all went swimmingly. Not that there was any reason to suppose that his family would all be horrible, but it was pleasant to find them charming, nonetheless. Any awkwardness there might have been was prevented by the presence of Martin’s almost-two-years-old nephew – he drew the attention away from me most of the time which was fine with me.

Hitra, of course, is lovely. Most of the Norwegian coast is, in fact, but that doesn’t make this particular part any less beautiful. More advice on aquiring a boyfriend, therefore: Make sure his family has a house in some spot where you really wouldn’t mind spending a lot of time. And if your own family has a cabin/summerhouse/whatever, make sure his is in as different a landscape as possible, then you’ll both get the best of both worlds.

So: Coffee and home-made buns with home-made jam for “lunch”. A drive round the islands on Saturday afternoon. A stop by the house His father’s family comes from and a warm welcome and a cup of coffee from His aunts. Deer tame enough to wait around until I had changed the lens on my camera. A little sunshine and a little rain. Pizza made in heaven for dinner. A couple of bottles of Weston’s cider because He had been thoughtful enough to suggest we bring some. A drowsy evening in front of the telly with His arm around me. Going to bed together and waking up together. Another lazy morning. A walk around the neighbourhood in the sunshine, breathing in the fresh sea air. Leaning on the jetty watching cod, crab and sea urchin (and getting hungry). Dinner at lunchtime, so good I stuffed myself and then found out there was dessert.

And then a long drive home to Oslo which didn’t really seem all that long at all.

In fact, the worst part of the weekend was arriving back in Oslo.

As I said: Lucky gal, me.