My work here in the UK is with a concierge company which, amongst other things, helps people make travel arrangements. We have been simply inundated with requests recently because of the chaos caused by the volcanic ash fiasco: people stuck in all parts of the world slowly getting madder and madder at volcanoes and Icelandic people, for stopping them get home.

Throughout the crisis I kept on thinking about John Candy and his polka band in Home Alone, the group of guys in the van who give the mother a lift back to Chicago. How many people found themselves in similar situations across Europe? At the concierge we deal with the prosperous who are chartering jets home and catching taxis from Rome to Primrose Hill, but what about the riffraff who were stuck in Magaluf? How many have been obliged to hitch rides with quirky musical groups in their beat up tour buses?

The reason I ask is because I am realising that moving to Norway is going to be isolating if air travel bites the bullet and becomes a thing of the past. I’ll have to catch a steam liner home to see my family, take out new mortgages to finance round-the-continent train journeys or prostitute myself to truck drive through Holland and Belgium! I’ll be ostracised from society, banished, exiled by the banality of nature. Or could it be that this is the first signs of nervousness at leaving my homeland behind? Hmmmm. Well, one thing is for sure; we will not be able to fly out there to start with because of Ida’s enormous amounts of shoes.

So first things first (second thing actually, the blog was the first), I need to work out how we are going to get there with all our stuff. I’m thinking about hiring a van over here and dropping it off in Norway My next post will have some actually information on the logistics of hiring a van, and then maybe this blog will start being of relevance. Peace and happiness and all mercy to the god of Eyjafallajoekull.

Opprett en blogg

The opening to any diary is always shrouded in justification, or an explanation of why it has been so long since your last entry. Sometimes it is even worse, touching upon the melodramatic: “why do I do this?”

Well, my reasoning is fairly simple: I’m moving to Norway to live my girlfriend Ida. We’ve been together 5 years or so and I’m really bloody excited about it. OK? I want to write down all the things that happen to me over the next few months, so that I can look back on it and laugh, and maybe help some other poor helpless sod who falls in love with someone from Nordic Narnia.

I’ve been quite busy the past few months just getting back into the flow of the UK (we’ve been travelling round the world for a year). And now the proposed move to Norway is swinging into view like a cruise ship rounding the corner of a fjord. It’s about time I got my act in gear.

The first thing I’ve done is to set this blog up: no mean feat considering I had to do it all in Norwegian. I’m using my girlfriend’s computer which inexplicably opens all websites in Norwegian on my login, and English on hers. I’m used to clicking ‘logg på’ on hotmail instead of ‘log in’, but ‘Opprett en blogg’ opened a whole new set of phrases. Some of it had me pulling my hair out, but I did smile when I read the Norwegian stock equivalent for John Smith is ‘Nordman’. That’s what I am going to be; Wil Nordman, master fisher and cross-country skier champion. I’ll eat fish all day long, hibernate in winter and respect the Polar Bear Police just like all good Norwegians.

This is the start of quite a journey, assuming that ‘Publisher Innlegg’ means post and not ‘send to trash’.