I find myself in Aberdeen, though “Why?” is a relevant question as there is no Spirit of Islay on the horizon (due to several crewmembers falling ill they had to break the race). Oh well. We are enjoying the city, and will make our way in a somewhat sedate pace down to Prestwick on Tuesday for Linda’s flight home. After that I have days and days to spend before I have to catch a plane from Stansted on Sunday (which I’ve just booked – no boat obviously means no sailing for me and so a plane ticket seemed like a good idea).

We’ve had an absolutely cracking time in Ireland – I will try to collect my wits (which are, quite frankly, a bit scattered at the moment) and give you a short run-down before we leave this B&B tomorrow (it has free internet access, can you believe it?).

The friday five does it again…

1. What were your favorite childhood stories?
My favourite book was one by Philippe Fix called “Serafin og hans makeløse mesterverk” in Norwegian. It’s still one of my favourite books, in fact. A little later C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia were read and reread and reread and… – I used to read them at least once a year until recently, lately the frequency has dropped a little, mainly because I know them practically by heart.

2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?
Well, the above, obviously.

3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?
I’m sure I have a good example for this one, but I can’t quite think of it – I’ll get back to you…

4. How old were you when you first learned to read?
Six – the year before I started school – my grandmother taught me to read with the help of one of those kids’ blackboards.

5. Do you remember the first ‘grown-up’ book you read? How old were you?
No. I was reading ‘grown-up’ books from a reasonably early age. At home I could basically pick anything from my parents’ shelves, and though we were not allowed to take any out at the library before the age of 12 (or was it 14), we were free to roam the grown-up section and read in situ as long as we didn’t disturb anyone.

Linda has just checked her bank on this internet terminal, and since we paid for several unecessary minutes, I thought I had better use them… I’m so stressed out now that I can barely stand still, but as we’ve checked in I should start to calm down soon. Only a few more hours and we’ll be in Britain.

Will check in later, but for now, hope you’re all having a fine time without me.

To dissipate some of the reisefeber, I will do the daily double today…

1. Do you have any hidden talents?
Eh? Not that I know of, but then I wouldn’t would I?

2. Do your offline friends know about your website?
Yes, most of them do, and if some don’t it’s not for lack of me telling them about it – I just have a few offline friends who don’t actually use the internet much (weird people), and are therefore not particularly interested. I certainly don’t try to hide the fact that I have a website, or that I blog.

Voices on the stereo: The Bee Gees – You Win Again (hence, additional voice in the room: My own, singing along)

One of my new rules of travel seems to be: Before visiting a country make sure to read up on blogs written by its inhabitants.

So that’s what I’ve been doing on and off for a few months, though it’s obviously somewhat pointless. What I’m looking for is “local colour”, you know, names of venues, descriptions of local attractions and so on. But expecting to find that in a “local” blog is just silly – I mean, how useful would my own blog be as a guide to anyone visiting Norway (answer: Not very). Still, I ‘ve been reading some, so I thought I’d mention a couple that I’ve enjoyed in any case.

The leptard, whatever that is, is also a fan of Joyce, which has to be good, and also, incidentally, has a completely non-blog-related link to a friend of mine, which is always interesting.

Stunned.org does actually throw up some localised stuff every now and again.

Heart of a poet – currently resposible for most of my Moon River humming.

Last day of work (yay!) before the holidays, and the Friday Five comes up trumps:

1. How are you planning to spend the summer?
Well, in 52 hours I’ll be leaving for the airport to embark on “Linda and Robin’s great Irish (and some English and Scottish, too) Adventure”. That’ll cover the next two weeks. After that it’s nose back to the grindstone – working the rest of the summer (I will need some time off again in September). There will be interruptions in the form of weekends, obviously. Hopefully we will manage a long-talked-about weekend in Arvika and I really need to go to Bergen at some point.

2. What was your first summer job?
You know, I can’t remember… Probably the girl-of-all-jobs at my dad’s place of work, because I worked there for several summers on and off. I did all sorts of odd stuff – it’s a research institute of the biological persuasion – numbering all the lakes in Finnmark, catching butterflies, sorting through riverbed samples for anything resembling animal life while breathing in the fumes from the alchohol used to preserve them (which left me rather light-headed), sticking errata notes into 1000 newly printed conference proceedings. You know, the usual stuff…

3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?
Uhm. Ireland? It’s not as if someone pointed a gun at our heads and said “I know you’re just dying to go to Bali/Yukon/Patagonia/Uzbekistan, but you will go to Ireland and have a miserable time instead!” If money was no object, I’d quite like to go to Bali, Yukon, Patagonia and Uzbekistan as well, but Ireland is actually the first choice this year.

4. What was your worst vacation ever?
I don’t think I’ve had any “worst” holidays. I know this is not logically possible, that one or two of them must have been less brilliant than the others, and that that would make them “worst” by default, but I can’t remember any holidays that I haven’t enjoyed. There was the one year when I was at a camp in Sunne, Sweden and we were assigned a space for our tent which was in – well, no other way to accurately describe it – a hole in the ground, so that after the first rainfall we had 20 cm of water in our tent. That could have been miserable, but in fact we had a great time and laughed about it even then, not just in rettrospect. The closest I’ve come to “bad times” while on holiday has been towards the end of a stay when my travelling companions have been getting on my nerves because I haven’t been allowed enough time on my own to recouperate from all the company.

Oh, and there was that long weekend in Senegal. We drove down from the Banjul area across the border into Senegal and stayed at a hotel where the food was terrible (there was fish – I didn’t like fish – and potatoes – I didn’t like potatoes – but in my defence my parents like both and they thought the food was terrible, too) and we couldn’t swim in the sea because there had been an upsurge or something of portugese men-of-war. Parts of that one were terrible, but I had a pretty good time anyway, enjoying the novelty of replying appropriately to the greetings of “Salam maleikum” and then have people jabber at me in French to which the best I could do was shrug my shoulders (I had had a little French at school, but the only thing I could remember clearly was “Ou est la chatte?” and I figured this would not get me very far in conversation) and say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French” as clearly as I could in English.

5. What was your best vacation ever?
As you’ll gather from the previous answer, I think most of my holidays have been pretty amazing, so it’s hardly to single out one in particular. In honour of this year’s choice, I am going to settle on the previous holiday Linda and I had, when we went to Wales for a little over a week. We travelled down from Telford (where I was living at the time) to Hay-on-Wye (which was brilliant, but unwise, because it meant our backpacks were unecessarily heavy for the rest of the trip). We then stoppen over one night in Cardiff before heading out along the south coast. Memorable moments include:

– the B&B we booked in Carmarthen, only it turned out it was quite a way outside Carmarthen… No poblem, “Let me know which bus you’re on and I’ll come and pick you up” says the landlord. We arrived and were treated to scones and tea and then announced our intention to walk to the nearest pub for the evening meal. We were given directions and the startling instruction – from the landlady – “Now, girls, if you get too drunk to walk home, give us a call and we’ll come and pick you up.” Maybe they just liked driving? On the way to the pub we passed a field full of sheep, not an unusual occurrence in Wales, it must be said, what followed was more unusual, though… Along the field we were hidden from view for the sheep (and they from us) by a hedge. We got to the far corner and the gate and the sheep saw us and – as one – charged at the gate. We both jumped several feet back. We’re used to Norwegian sheep whose utmost reaction upon seeing you is a half-hearted bleat, and here sheep were actually running…

– the truck driver who picked us up when we tried our hand (no pun intended) at hitch-hiking and insisted on driving into – I think – Haverfordwest, where he had no business, to drop us at the bus station, because “Hitch-hiking is very dangerous!” (to be honest I’d be more afraid of the tourists than of the inhabitants in that part – if a car with foreign license plates had come along we’d have pretended to be enjoying the view and pointedly not be looking for lifts, I think)

– the local pub we fell into in St. David’s, which had a very grand name (The Empire Hotel or something), but was rather shabby, where we spent a long time in the lounge – which had comfy, plush-covered sofas – not getting served much as the barman was in the other section chatting to his regulars, and we finally realised we had much better move into the bar, where we found uncomfortable stools but genial company, including a guy who did boat trips out to the bird-covered island just outside St. David’s (can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called), which we were persuaded to join the next day (though somewhat sceptical as to his ability to get up in time considering the state he was in by the time the pub closed).

Ah, memories.

(Link from Anything but Ordinary)

(Found here, though I can’t figure the rest of the site out.) Not so sure about the “without egoism”, but otherwise seems pretty acceptable. What is a tree type anyway? (Btw. the first two lines of the result, tree type and heading, are white text on white background, so you’ll need to highlight to see it…)

The Guardian has had a poll to determine the worst sex scenes ever on film, which is an excellent idea, as much of a priceworthy thing to do as the Literary Review’s worst sex award for novels. Nothing spoils a good plotline more than inappropriate/ridiculous/interminable sex scenes. Out of the Guardian’s top five I’ve actually only seen The Titanic, and can confirm that yes, the “hand on window” is pretty stupid. My own personal “favourite” is not even among those that have received honourable mention; I’m referring to The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, where they have sex on the marble staircase. No comment, except: “Ouch”.

Excellent!
You’ve clearly been spending some time at the bookstore.
You got 12/13 correct.

My results for the Famous First Words quiz at msn. Am especially pleased as I have only actually read 3 of the correct answers (and only 18 of the 52 alternatives altogether) and so my powers of deduction (and my ability to pretend to knowledge I don’t actually have) has obviously not decreased much since my days of lectures and exams.

(Found the quiz via What kind of sick weirdo are you? – which is a great name for a blog.)