Digital Love - A One Woman Show by Rachael Støver

I became a Binärpilot fan a while back. I like this little sketch by Rachael Støver that tells the story of her romance with the Norwegian musician who created Binarpilot. It's an interesting story and very much the product of our time.

No News...

I walked with my daughters down to the fjord last weekend. It takes about half an hour. We had a fishing rod with us and tried to cross onto the pontoon from which we sometimes try to catch fish, but the ladder had been taken away for some reason. Next to us, sitting on the harbour wall, were two ladies looking out over the unruffled water towards a misty autumn view of rocky mountains and the distant waterside town of Tau. They seemed to be celebrating something, eating sandwiches and drinking a bottle of pink champagne.

I walked with the girls a bit further up the coast to where the shoreline has been built up so that there is less seaweed to tangle the fishing line. Like most of the coast around Stavanger, the rocks at the shore here have been rubbed smooth by glaciation and slip, like the humped backs of whales, into the sea. Beside us, on the railway line that runs along the coast, electric trains zipped past occasionally, grey and sleek.

At the point where the shore becomes suitable for fishing, we met two quite haggard looking men. They were both tall and thin, their faces creased and worn in a way that suggests a life of survival and hard labour. Their bicyles lay on the grass, very rough and weather beaten objects. I greeted them as I passed and they shyly said hello to us. We fished for a little while, casting the lure far out. But as always, we caught nothing. It was getting cold and so we did not stay long.

Passing the men again on our way home, we stopped to watch one of them gutting a fish he had caught. I think it may have been a wrasse, it was quite bright on the belly slightly orange and blue speckled. As he cut it open it made an unpleasant burping noise. In his bucket he had three more. When the other man caught a fish, he took it off the hook and dropped it into my daughter's net. My daughter looked at it, then shook her head. The man laughed and threw it back into the sea. We spoke a little with them. They were Polish, with only broken Norwegian and no English. I thought they were like a pair of boys that had grown old while fishing and playing outdoors on their bicycles together.

We walked back to where my wife was waiting to pick us up in the car. The two ladies were still there, huddled a little more closely in their fur-hooded parkas, the pink champagne nearly finished. The sky was also just beginning to turn pink, and they had not moved, despite the chill in the air.

Northern Lights

Tar

Workers have been repairing the road outside for the past week. First they bulldozed away the sleeping policemen, then they chipped out the manhole covers like fossils from bedrock. Now, finally, they are laying the tarmac. Yesterday they upgraded one side of the road, today the other, starting their machinery at around six o'clock this morning.

Tonight, I jogged around the block, watching how the new black tarmac gleamed under an almost full moon. If it weren't for so many yellow porch lights, I think I might have been able to conjure a romantic vision from it.

Discovered earlier today, a set of footprints can now be seen on the grey slate steps in front of our house. They are permanent ones, printed in tar. Oddly enough, they are quite neat, rising in confident strides towards our front door before suddenly disappearing.

Clear Skies

Perhaps once a year we get a day when the sky is completely empty of clouds. Usually when we look out of our window, we are very aware of the clouds, sitting like a lid on a saucepan. But sometimes when the lid comes off, there is an amazing feeling of buoyancy, as if one might just float away into space like a puff of steam.

Clean Up the World Weekend

I got up at 8.30 on Saturday (early for me) and got ready quickly, then drove the family to Sola Beach where we picked up litter for an hour as part of Clean Up the World Weekend. Trying to get a black plastic oil bottle out of a stream, my foot slipped in. The stream had a sign saying that it was not fit for children to play in as it contained faecal matter.

While the rest of the family walked up and down the beach, picking up cigarette butts, I cleaned up just around the area where we had parked the car. I filled a large dustbin bag. Several items I found were unknown squidgy parcels in tightly tied plastic bags carelessly flung into bushes. So what did the people who flung these things expect? That their squidgy parcels would simply disappear? Yuk.

At 10.30 we dropped my daughter at the airport which is close to the beach. I waited on the pay parking (without paying) while my wife took her to departures. She has gone to Bordeaux to stay with a French family and practice her French for a week. From e-mails, it sounds like she is getting on well with the family she is staying with.

At 11.30 we arrived at the Lundsvågen naturskole where there was a work day out for families of small children. I helped my younger daughter to catch fish off the end of the jetty and then we had a barbecue before heading out to sea in a powerboat with a Jolly Roger mast to play at pirates. The weather was lovely, the mountains across the fjord a bluish shade of grey.

This morning (Sunday) I had a lie in which is something I need after a general deprivation of sleep during the rest of the week. I had lunch (spaghetti pie) and then cut the lawn at the back which was ever so thick, the grass long and wet. The lawnmower engine kept dying on me.

Then I took my daughter down to the park on her bicycle. We admired the excavation work going on around our neighbour's house on the way down the road. The builders have removed a huge quantity or trees and bushes, several lorry loads of soil, and are now blasting away the bedrock around the house. It is a bit like a scene from a Roald Dahl story. It's easy to imagine that one day the house will be standing all alone on a pinnacle of rock with a chasm on every side.

In the park we discovered a vast bramble bush covered in big blackberries which clearly nobody else could be bothered to pick. So we picked most of them and filled a plastic bag. Deep inside the bush we met some French neighbours, and got scratched scrambling back out of the bush to shake their hands. We also found a wild apple tree and I knocked some fruit down by throwing a stick.

My daughter loves to play at the park by the lake and as I watched her I remembered that intense pleasure from childhood of going to the park to play: so intense that I can remember many of the specific occasions all of these years later.

Sailing to Orkney

Sailing
Originally uploaded by Famous Frankie

I spent this evening helping to prepare the yacht for our voyage to Orkney on Friday. We had to change the forward sail for a larger, more ocean-going one that would increase our speed in what we expect to be quite light winds. We dumped the dinghy ashore as it won't be needed. We also had to visit the supermarket to buy food for the 2 day crossing, enough for 4 people. This may or may not get eaten, depending on how rough it is... My children sat in the shelter of the cabin as it was raining. I'm thinking hard about protective clothing...

Norwegian National Day

After a win at the Eurovision Song Contest last night, Norway was feeling ready to celebrate its National Day today on the 17th May.

In Stavanger, the day begins with a children's parade in which my family was involved. We were up early, even before the traditional loud bangers went off at 7 am to wake up the town. At 8 am we were ready to leave the house and hung up our flag on the flag pole outside as we left. The timing of flag display is supposed to be promptly adhered to: hung up at 8 am, taken down by 9 pm. Almost every house on our road was flying a flag outside by 8 am.

We drove to my daughter's school and met with a large crowd in the play yard. Everyone was smartly dressed or in traditional costume. We met a French friend from the Provencal region wearing his own traditional costume: a black beret, a patterned silk shirt and a black jacket.

By 9.30 we were walking through the town alongside our chldren. Children of all ages and from all around Stavanger took part, many dressed in costume. Others played in musical bands.



The streets were lined with onlookers, many of whom were wearing traditional costume. I was glad I had put on a tie, but still it didn't seem right that the folk in costumes were the ones watching us parade..



The costumes are distinctly different depending on which part of Norway the wearer's family comes from. The women wear long, heavy woolen skirts covered in embroidery and white embroidered shirts overlain by extravagant silver jewellery decorated with symbols. The men also dress up and look quite 19th Centuryish in knickerbocker-style trousers and court jackets, some with black felt top hats.

At the end of parade we had circled back to the school play yard. Everybody was eating polser (hot dogs) and cake or ice cream, building up energy for the following rounds of parades: firstly for the 'Russ parade' (for students about to take their final school exams), and then for the "folk parade" (for adults) due to begin around 4pm. A full day of flags, hot dogs and parades.

Until the Wraps Come Off

I bought an old print and wanted to get it framed so I went down to a little framing shop I pass on my way to work. The shop should have been open when I got there. There was a opening hours notice on the door saying they closed at 4pm, and it was only 3pm, but the door was locked.

Then, through the dusty window, I noticed a young woman inside moving boxes around behind a desk, so I knocked. She looked up and slowly came to the door. Can I help you? she said in Norwegian. Do you speak English, I asked? Yes, she said. Would you be able to frame a picture for me? I asked, feeling as if I might be imposing on her.

She invited me inside and we chose some card and a frame. I wanted a frame that would match another picture, so she said she would order it for me. Very good, she said. And your telephone number? It's written on the back of the picture, I said. Okay, I'll ring you when it's ready. Fine, I said, and I left.

After walking a few yards away from the shop, I stopped and said to myself: is this normal? No receipt. No costing. I don't have their address or telephone number. Why there isn't even a name over the window of the shop...

I thought about going back and asking for a receipt, some information about likely cost, but then I decided against it. This was Norway. Everyone is trustworthy. Nobody steals. It would be embarassing to even ask.

Three weeks later, and I had begun to wonder when she was going to call. Each day I passed the shop and it looked dark inside. I thought back and remembered how the woman had asked me if I was in a hurry. What did that mean? Was this going to take two weeks, one month, three months? I had no idea.

Then, the other day I was driving past the shop and I noticed that the windows were covered with brown paper. Immediately I pulled over to the side of the road, did a U-turn, and went back. I parked the car and walked around the shop. There was bric-a-brac piled at the side. On the inside of the windows, brown paper had been stuck, hiding all but the presence of shadows inside. On the window was a hand-written notice: "Vi PUSSER OPP" and below, a telephone number.

Immediately, I feared the worse. What did it mean? Could it possibly mean: We've pissed off? No, surely it couldn't. If that was the case, they wouldn't have left a telephone number. When I got to work, I asked my colleague what the sign meant. Oh, he said, they're just, hmm, what's the word, renovating.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I rang the number. A gruff old voice replied at the other end. "Do you speak English?" I asked. "No." said the gruff old voice. I tried to communicate that I had seen a lady about framing a picture and asked how long it would take, but the message didn't seem to get through.

Now I guess I'll just have to wait until the brown paper comes down. I think it could be a while.

Trotting

trotting
Originally uploaded by Paul J Everett


I spoke with a retired Norwegian oilman this evening. He was sturdily built with a grey scrubbing-brush moustache, a broad face and wide apart eyes. He had quit his job a few years ago after a company merger, leaving with a good redundancy payment and intending to go back to work after a short time off. Eight years later he now considers himself retired. His home is Norway, but he spends many months away, either in the Far East or at sea, sailing with friends. His preferred occupation these days is following the horses. A couple of months ago he placed a 105 kroner bet on a combination stake and won 640,000 kroner. Divide by ten and you have the value of this win in pounds sterling.

Most horse racing in Norway is not the traditional British-style horse-back riding, but what my Norwegian referred to as "trotting". The "trotting" horse pulls a light-weight carriage in which the driver sits. Many cities in Norway have "trotting" tracks and take it in turn to stage races on different days of the week. Bets are placed either in high street betting shops or on the internet. The typical bet is to predict the winner of a sequence of five races. If you're certain the winner will be one particular horse in each race, you bet on only one horse and your bet will be 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 kroner, or 1 kroner. But of course, you'll be very unlikely to win. More usually there will be some races you feel confident about the winner and others not so confident, so you'll bet that one of several horses in a particular race will win, then your bet depends on how many horses you fancy like this: 1 x 3 x 1 x 5 x 7 = 105 kroner.

This is the bet my Norwegian made when he had his big win. One of the horses he was certain would win belonged to an associate of his, a wealthy Norwegian race horse owner from Stavanger. When my Norwegian rang his friend to let him know the good news, and tell him that he had won by betting on his horse, the friend said: "Since when have I owned that horse?"