So. Linda came. We went to the Dubliner Wednesday evening, but went home quite early as a party of girls (very drunk, it must be said) decided to sing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” out of tune (so out of tune, in fact, that it took quite a while to figure out what they thought they were singing) and compete with the live band playing “Irish” music.
Thursday we were awakened by a marching band marching (duh) past outside at around 8 am. They were very good, though it’s hard to appreciate that sort of thing in the morning when you’d planned on a lie-in. Anyway, we got up and made tea (PG! Yay!) and lounged in front of “lifestyle” programmes on BBC Prime until about noon, when we finally decided it was time to step outside. We walked down towards town. In Sofienbergparken we found a fairground and so were well and dizzy by the time we got to Grünerløkka proper. We had an absolutely fabulous lunch (tapas) at Delicatessen, and a bit more of a wander after that. The weather had been dodgy for a while, and it started raining, so we had coffee at Cafe de Stil (they have the best coffee!) and then tried to find a movie to watch. Unfortunately we had both set our hearts on “Two Weeks’ Notice” or something similar, and nothing even remotely promising in terms of feel-good and happily-ever-after was on the board, so we headed for home and rented Orange County on our way instead.
Orange County, by the way, was a very funny film, though not, in my opinion, wholly sucessful. It starts out very well, with a kind of absurd twist to the whole thing, but towards the end the surrealism peters out into a typical Hollywoody happy ending sort of thing. Now I’m all for happy endings, but the ending of Orange County felt to me a bit as if they’d run out of ideas and money and needed just a few quick takes to wrap the story up. It’s still recommended, though.
Voices in my head: Murmurs – You Suck