Eat less cake

Three simple words but they brought a disproportionate amount of joy to my life. My Duolingo course seemed to go through a massive reorganisation so I took the opportunity (which I had been toying with the doing) of going right back to the start. Having lived in Norway for well over a year now I've got a much better grasp of the rules of grammar etc. I had made good progress with the course but I never felt I really understood. You can make a certain amount of mistakes with spelling/ accents etc in each answer and you'll still get it "right". I'm guessing that because Norsk is a much less used language than say German or French that there isn't much guidance. It was many months before I realised that each adjective (for example) comes in 3 different forms - "normal" / "neuter" (add a "t") plural (add an "e"). And don't get me started on words like "sykkel". God the number of times I got that wrong when trying it in plural / definitive form/ definitive plural. Shudder.

I really like the new version of Duolingo - it actually seems to be designed for using in the real world. Asking for directions/ foods/ shopping etc. That being said, I do miss the wonderful turns of phrase that one would learn that one would never (I hope!) use in real life - "there's a man with a knife standing behind the curtain" being a classic of the genre. It was on my second time through the course I finally learned the word for "less" - "mindre". No more "I eat too much cake" or "I must not eat so much cake". - I can now say "I must eat less cake". Obviously I only say that. God forbid I ever actually follow through!

It has been a bit quieter over the last few months but as always there are new things to experience. Our temporary minister over July and August was Anders and I have to say that I liked the way he thought. We had a meeting before our first service to go through where all the hymns etc were to be and afterwards I pottered up stairs to the organ gallery to get all my music sorted. 15 mins before the service is due to start, Anders comes up and says that since the only people here are for the baptism we"ll make it a shorter service. We'll lose a couple of the hymns - just pay attention and I'll announce the others as we go. A few days later, we had a service at Herøyomsorgsenter and the lovely lady in charge asked us if we would like coffee and waffles before the service and we settled on "before". Definitely on my wavelength. Haha.

Over the summer we had a few weddings at which there were some interesting moments. For one service, the bride stopped half way up the aisle to sing a song to the groom and at another they had requested taped music for the exit which led to one of the rare occasions when the organist made it out of the church before the wedding party. The reason for the quick exit was to get back down to Bjørn to catch the ferry to Lokta. Norwegian TV were doing a series of live broadcasts of a cycle trip round the area. I had been spectacularly grumpy leading up to it because I had completely misunderstood the purpose of what we were doing. I knew we were only going to play a couple of numbers and supposed it was to be background music. After consulting the timetable it looked like about a 7 hour round trip to play for about 10 minutes. Both Sabine and I thought we were to provide background music as the troops cycled past. Alas this was not the case. Transpired we were the "entertainment" to fill time in the live broadcast as the ferry travelled to Lokta. On the plus side it meant that we didn't have to get off and just came straight back. So we started to set up in a little space on the passenger deck and the presenter came to speak to us and asked if we'd mind playing upstairs on deck so that they could also film the scenery. The presenter ( a famous comedienne I gather) had a quick word with us and I had thought I had been quite categorical about "please don't talk to me" on Live TV. Up we pottered to the deck and set the keyboard etc up. As we both assumed it was a background thing, not a lot of rehearsal had gone into this (for "not a lot" read "none"). Anyway, the broadcast started and they interviewed Sabine and I took the opportunity to stand as far away from the keyboard as possible so that there was no danger of being talked to. Our first piece was "Maple Leaf Rag" which only had a couple of minor hiccups as we played it. Much to my horror, the lady came and spoke to me afterwards. Live. On TV. Shudder. She asked me a couple of questions - obviously I didn't understand vast swathes of what she said and as I type I can't really remember what she asked. Or to probably be more accurate, I can quite remember what I decided she had asked me. At the conclusion of an interview that will not go down as one of the greatest in the history of Norwegian TV we played our second piece. It was Take 5. Because it was live TV I foolishly ploughed straight into it rather than taking the time to get the rhythm clear in my head. Not entirely convinced I played very many bars with 5 beats in them. And then the wind picked up. So I ended up playing Take 4.5 with one hand while trying to hold the music onto the stand. The joys....

I do love the ferries though - one of the perks of the job is travelling to the various little islands. Anders and I had to take a speedboat out to Gåsvaer for a service. It meant putting on all the safety gear etc which always adds a certain frisson to a trip. It was impractical to take the keyboard with me so I was to just play one of the harmoniums in the chapel. In what turned out to be a slight misjudgement on my part, before the service started I pulled out a couple of stops, played a couple of notes and thought "that's fine". I have come across a collection of short preludes by Carl Nielsen which I use regularly for services where I'm playing an instrument without pedals. In a moment of professionalism I thought, what I'll do this time is play a piece in the same key as the first hymn and it'll flow seamlessly. Alas the harmonium had different ideas. As soon as I started playing, the instrument decided that I wasn't playing enough notes so added some extra ones in and then in tribute to my Scottish background added a sort of bagpipe drone as well. On the plus side, the drone was in the right key. But I couldn't help think that the congregation must be thinking that this guy came all the way from Scotland to play like THAT? As the service progressed I made inroads in how to make it sound better - play less notes so by the time of the last hymn it was almost one finger in each hand. I'm sure the congregation could tell when some musical moment was approaching the slump of my shoulders as I got ready.

On the plus side the coffee and cakes after were very good. I was slightly anti social so after packing my plate with goodies I sat at the far end of a bench to eat them. Alas the people on the other end of the bench eventually got up and what was a bench rapidly became a see-saw....

I'm currently playing with the Sandnessjøen Storband as they prepare for their 50th anniversary concert at the end of September. Very excited to get to play tunes like The Pink Panther and Fly me to the moon. One tune is causing me stress though - I thought it was called The BB Blues and was a tribute to BB King. At the first rehearsal closer examination revealed it was actually called The B3 Blues and the organ was the featured instrument throughout with lots of soloing etc. Indeed, it is causing so much stress that on a Sunday morning when I'm not playing at church I find myself listening to a recording of it and trying to steal ideas (sorry, I mean "be inspired by") from The Real Thing.

I was able to nip home for a few days at the start of August to see friends and family. It was lovely to spend some time with the kids and actually remember to get a picture of us all together. Also great to see some friends as well and far too much food was consumed. Sadly I didn't get to see as many people as I hoped - holidays/ covid etc but hoping to be back in October/ November so fingers crossed.

I've included some pictures from my walks round Dundee that I didn't take the last time - HMS Unicorn, the clock in the Wellgate Center, the grave of James Chalmers (originator of the adhesive postage stamp), a rather tasteful (if I say so myself) reflecting picture of RSS Discovery and the "submarine" in the River Tay.

I was devastated to discover when I was across that this was not (as I had thought for about 50 years) a decoy when Dundee was home to a submarine base but merely a beacon to warn vessels off the rock and just coincidentally looked like a submarine.

There is a memorial in Dundee to the submariners who are still "on patrol". One of the submariners was lost on a mission to Bodø and its wreck is about 73 miles north of where I am.

People continue to be lovely and kind to me and very patient with my "one more time please" as I try and understand Norwegian. Regular coffees are had and I invited my neighbour Steffen round for an evening of Star Wars games on the X-Box which was fun. We looked very mature and sensible in our Star Wars t-shirts. Haha.

Also continuing regular walks with our Tirsdagtur "team" through good weather and bad. Excellent exercise but am always disappointed with the step count at the end - always seems to be a lot smaller than one might expect.