Achievement unlocked: arriving back wearing all my own clothes

It has been a busy wee while over the last few weeks, both musically and socially.

All the Easter services seemed to go well from a musical point of view apart from 2 minor incidents. Bent, who has sadly now moved, very kind wrote out idiot guides for me during the service. Sadly even this was too difficult for me and I failed to notice a prayer and ploughed straight on with a Kyrie but I don't think anyone noticed. Apart from Bent obviously. The other was on Easter Day in Dønnes. As mentioned before, unlike CH3 which we used back in St M's the salmebok (hymn book) that we use comes in various sizes - the ones on the organ just have the music and, tbf, the number of verses if not the actual text. I normally have a smaller hymn book open beside me so I can follow the text. Actually, I really just use it to listen out for "s"s to know what verse I'm on. Another difference is that the book also has each hymn in 2 languages - Bokmål and Nynorsk. And of course I wasn't firing on all cylinders and a quick glance at book made me think there 5 verses of the first hymn instead of 3. Cue thoughts of "hmm, suspiciously quiet" and "I think the choir are looking at me suspiciously" during the imagined 4th verse. I kept going a bit longer to make it seem like it was intentional and that I was only showing off because it was Easter. Shudder.

Guro, a colleague across the water, had invited me to give a concert in Alstahaug Church (beside the Petter Dass museum). In the lead up to the concert, the local newspaper, Helgeland Blad had got in touch and asked if I'd be willing to do an interview. We met up in Dønnes church and chatted away and then she took a series of photos. I have seen the article and been told it was a nice article but I have to confess that I've been too embarrassed to sit down and read the translation. The concert itself in Alstahaug church seemed to go well - didn't come away as annoyed with myself as I normally do. It's a lovely little church with a wee one manual and pedals organ. I chose the programme a while ago and put on a piece that I've been trying to learn for over 30 years. Of course when I say "been trying to learn", I mean I occasionally played it but because I couldn't sight-read it, it was therefore too difficult. Nonetheless after a fair amount of work, I think I played it ok. There was a reasonable size audience and I'm told it would have been even bigger but there were a number of people sitting in another local church wondering where I was. Afterwards Jörg and Ingrid v kindly invited me back to their place in Søvik for a bite to eat where we finally got a lovely chance to talk outwith staff meetings etc.

Other than services, there's also been a number of school visits to the church in the lead up to Easter. The kids from Herøy were quite charming and even spoke to me. One of the boys asked me how old I was and was surprised how old I was and even thought I had a lot of hair. Bless him. I did a lot better than Trine - I won't embarrass her by saying how old they thought she was.

Speaking of Trine, I'm getting more and more confident about talking Norsk and while we devoured a slice of Trine's huge birthday cake (2.5 kg!) I regaled Bård and Trine (using the past tense) about the time when I was a v young lad and sent by my parents into Lochee to get a pound of carrots. I have a dreadful memory but this is still vivid. As well as a bad memory I've no concept of measurements - I went into the shop and asked for eleven pounds of carrots. "That's a lot" the lady said. "Maybe we're having guests round" said I. "Are you sure it's eleven pounds?" she said. "Look at my note" said I. It said 1lb which to a stupid 8 year old or whatever looked like 11. Course the lady didn't pick on it either. At this point my memory goes blank. My father tells me that eventually they started worrying about me and went looking for me. Apparently I was found with an overflowing bag and a trail of carrots behind me. To make me feel better, Trine told the story of sending her husband out to get 2 or 3 kilos of oranges and he came back with 23 kilos.

The other concert we've had recently was out on Lokta. It's about a 40 minute ferry ride from here to there but due to the vagaries of the ferry schedules we had to leave here, go via Sandnessjøen at 1430 and didn't get back till 2315. A long day. Our little forsanger group performed 3 pieces, with Sabine and Bjørn also kindly performing some solos. I played the crowd-pleasing Toccata and Fugue in d (not too badly I thought) and a wee Star Wars medley I'd put together. The Bach was ok, the Star Wars not so much but at least I had the right number of beats in each bar so can put down the bad bits to "interpretation".

As always the target is to have more in the audience than performing so on that front, mission accomplished. Speaking later to Sabine, she pointed out that with an audience of around 20 or so we probably had about a quarter of the population so can't complain!

People have been v kind and inviting me out again on various walks. Råndi and Elizabeth invited me up Soldalen again. Confidence was bit higher this time so didn't take along my passport for identification purposes. The weather wasn't as kind as the first time with the wind being a lot stronger and still a fair amount of snow. So much so in fact that on the stairs at the start of the trail you had to bend down to reach the top of the guardrail.

As on the previous occasion I seemed to magically find all the deep holes hidden under the snow, frequently stumbling. But magically my feet seemed to stay dry and didn't have to borrow anybody's socks on the way back down. We didn't spend as long at the top due to the wind but the view is never less than spectacular. Coming back down is always the bit that stresses me the most, always afraid that gravity is going to take far more interest me than is strictly necessary. At the beginning of the descent, I noticed the ladies sitting down and just sliding down the first stretch. Excellent plan I thought. Sadly, all the cakes I have consumed seemed to have caught up and whereas the slid gracefully down the hill, I just sank through the snow and didn't move. Fortunately my shame was not spotted so quickly got up and stumbled my way down.

Slightly less stressful walks gave been the ones with Sabine, Solveig and Stein up Røsdalsfjellt at Våg. They meet regularly on a Tuesday evening and I'd been promising to come along for months. And Solveig has v kindly fed us a couple of times - undoing all the good work burning off calories from the aforementioned walks.

I may be flattering myself here but while sitting at Solveig's and listening to a lot of conversation I do feel that I'm understanding a lot more than I used to. Even learned how to really insult someone. Never know when that might come in handy!

Following Råndi's advice/ encouragement I've started listening to Norwegian podcast and was quite chuffed to be able to follow a lot of the first one I listened to. It was a varied podcast talking about a variety of things from a Christmas Shop to the start of World War 2 in Norway. Will keep persevering and helpfully it's starting to pay off.

Next weekend is Helgeland Kammerkor's farewell weekend so we've got a couple of concerts in Mo I Rana ( where I've never been) and Alstahaug. We have to memorise a couple of ditties - The Way Old Friends Do by ABBA and a Norwegian madrigal which is fortunately quite short. Looking forward to them and just hoping the voice lasts - not used to 2 concerts in one day!