At last, some white

I guess it's inevitable, but I feel a little bad to characterize this month as generally depressing :). It's entirely possible this is not the first time I've felt this way, and probably wont be the last. The daylight disappears fast, with the good-intentioned but ultimately pointless conceit of daylight-saving-time merely delaying the inevitable. The snow is generally yet to make an appearance, and thus we are left with a world largely colourless, dark and miserable.

This last day of November, however, has somewhat redeemed itself with the first proper fall of snow this year. (Yes, there was that dump last month, but it was overall too warm and every last bit of snow disappeared within a day.) The latter half of the month had been quite cold as well, repeatedly heading below zero, so that now the snow has arrived, it's likely to stay a bit. 

Of course, what would be really awesome is for it to get a little bit warmer (it's hovering close to -10 most nights) so it snows some more! Alas, it's still too early for any cross country skiing. But one hopes maybe it's not too far away. Yes, I know I'm being rather optimistic :).

As usual, the last months of the year mean a very busy time at work. In some ways I'm already looking towards the last couple of weeks of December. There's no saying what we'll be able to do by way of travel or celebrating the festive season, socially at least. But if last year is anything to go by, just having some time off would in itself be quite a nice thing.

Which is not to say I want to wish away the next few days. Cos that's the thing, regardless of how well or badly things are going, this is as good a today as I'm ever going to have. Today. And tomorrow is a new day with its own possibilities, joys and disappointments.

Speaking of disappointments, I'm not sure Ready Player Two was entirely a disappointment. But I did feel a bit let down. I feel like a lot of pages were given over to moping and navel gazing (I'm looking at you Parzival!). I guess while the first book had the significant novelty factor, there was little fundamentally new in the setting of this sequel to detract from the less than awesome plot line.

So now I'm back to The View from the Cheap Seats and enjoying it rather a lot :). I'm currently deep into the section with introductions for books, graphic novels and other things that Gaiman generally seems to have enjoyed, and the enthusiasm and the persuasiveness almost makes me want to try out most of the books in question! 

At the same time, I'm now in a sort of slow sporadic reading phase. No longer ploughing through book after book. Which rather fits in well with this book with its short and more or less discreet accounts of authors, films, comics and whatever else Gaiman seems to want to write about. A good counterpoint then, to the rest of life, which seems to be hurtling onwards. Not under control, but then when is one ever under control, really? :)

All those colours, blowing in the wind

What can one say really, that can sum up the feeling after returning home from a truly fantastic holiday? :) Well, it was good to be back :D. Jokes aside, I have to say that the trip to England was the best thing ever! Nothing really beats spending quality time with family.

Once we were back though, I was happy to see that the autumn colours weren't done for the year here in Asker! In fact the last few weeks we've enjoyed an unusually gradual shift through the yellows, oranges and reds as finally, come the end of October, most deciduous trees have shed their leaves.

It's made for a pretty good backdrop to several long walks while we've been making the most of some pretty gorgeous weather on the weekends!! But there's nothing hiding the fact that the days are invariably getting shorter and shorter.

We even had an early dump of snow! So there's always more of that to look forward to. At least I hope so. But I'm also hoping any more snow shows up after I've managed to switch over the winter tyres :). It'll be interesting to see how this winter pans out. In more ways than one.

On the books front, I decided to pick up The View from the Cheap Seats after some years. It was fun dipping back into Gaiman non-fiction briefly :). Before long, it was time for the latest book club offering, The Shroud Solution. About which, to be honest, the less said the better. Browsing through the racks of the library yesterday though, I found the sequel I'd pretty much forgotten I'd wanted to read: Ready Player Two.

A much anticipated autumn trip

This has been quite the month! Getting fully vaccinated meant that plans could be made to visit family in the UK for the first time in a very long time! There were still hurdles to cross of course, planning, booking tests, sorting out a lot of practicalities... We ended up getting the pre-flight tests at the airport a few hours before the flight. It seemed practical, but not necessarily the most conducive to peace of mind. But in the end all was well and we made it!

Flying after a gap of nearly two years wasn't necessarily as odd an experience as I'd expected. Most of it was more or less as usual. But having been away from groups of people for a long time, sitting tightly packed into a fully booked aircraft was a bit disconcerting.

Since then we've been very much enjoying the break and the opportunity to really catch up. As in a work context, but even more so in many ways, video calls just don't lend themselves to the openness of conversing. Even though video calls are definitely better than nothing :).

The weather's been overall very nice! We've been able to go on a few trips, including a canal walk which provided my first experience of canal locks in operation! (Which was particularly interesting after reading Three Men in a Boat!) There was a very cool visit to Stourhead where I was rather mesmerized by the grounds with the changes of elevation, the woods surrounding the lake with Roman temples in miniature dotted around. There was a definite sense of otherworldliness, something of a lost world tucked away from bustle of daily life.

We've also got a few runs in! After what was my first run for nearly a year, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my various niggles and pains seem to have more or less disappeared in the interim :). Yes, I'm getting older, but the body does still recover, just takes a lot longer.

On the books front, in between book club stuff, I decided to catch up on some Jackson Lamb! The two novellas were very quick and easy reads. The Drop & The List showcasing I think the best of Herron's writing style. For a change minor characters had centre stage :). It also served to bring me back into the world of Slough House and provide some backdrop to Joe Country.

I'm not sure how much or how little I liked Joe Country to be honest. Which is a thing I find with most of the novels. It's a great story, very much in keeping with the feel of the series. As with the other novels, one gets to see a little more of the characters of the Slow Horses. (The ones that survive anyway, and sometimes those that don't.). But as the layers get peeled back you wonder if you really wanted to know more :). But I suppose that in part is the charm of it.

I can't say the same about The Child. The charm bit that is. Caught up as I was in planning for the UK trip, I never got around to getting a copy early, but then found one in the airport on the way out which meant the flying time was well used. Reading a large chunk of the book on the flight with limited other options of entertainment was a good way to start. I managed to get it finished fairly quickly, but instead of a sense of enjoyment, there was mainly a sense of relief :|.

It's a well written book for sure. It also deals with serious issues in an empathetic way. I guess the general sense of foreboding that cast a shadow over the whole story felt rather stifling. Was that intentional from the author? Was it just my own impression? Regardless, it will be interesting to see what the others have made of it.

The last warmth of summer?

So what's been happening this month? Feels like a lot actually! Some great, some not quite as great.. but I suppose such is life. The end of the Norwegian summer holiday seems to always unleash a great bursting wave of activity and general restlessness that crashes against the peace and calm of the preceding months. Causing chaos. Well, not chaos, but that's what it often feels like to me anyway.

Which is why, I usually take my summer holiday just about when everyone is coming back :). As mentioned earlier, this year we went for another nice long cycling holiday. Along large parts of Peer Gynt vegen this time! The weather, while proving extremely unpredictable, was nonetheless very kind to us! Only actually raining on us a couple of the days and even then not particularly hard :).

Distance-wise this trip was about half what we did last year, but was in no way less spectacular! And each day turned out to be of a somewhat different nature. The first day a lot of time was spent climbing up into the hills as we left the Gudbrandsdal valley behind us, and as such the landscape twisted and turned to reveal new vistas every so often, with farms and lakes sprawling in the sometimes wide, sometimes narrow valleys. A rather long and slow day of cycling, but it got us to the highly recommended Ruten Fjellstue hotel. It turned out, actually, to be the first of a couple of very nice places we stayed at during the trip!

The second day was a story of basically two valleys. Cycling mostly downhill along the first one, enjoying the mesmerising views of Espedalsvatnet at the bottom of it. And then up the next one along more narrow meandering streams that occasionally broadened out into decent sized lakes :). Eventually, we reached Peer Gynt country. So for those not in the know, Peer Gynt is an iconic play by Henrik Ibsen that gets performed every summer by the stunning lake Gålåvatnet, and we were spending the next couple of nights at Gålå overlooking said lake!

Luckily, this was soon after the Peer Gynt festivities, and the place was pretty quiet. We got to enjoy the beautiful views and some walks in the vicinity as we took a break from cycling. But the next day, we were off again, this time cycling one of the more frequented stretches of Peer Gynt vegen through landscape that was more high plateau than valley. The views were correspondingly wider, more open, but no less enchanting :).

It didn't take us too long to make our way down to Skei, even though we tried to take as long as we could, making small detours and stopping often :). Skei is very much the popular-ish skiing town not too far from Oslo and in my opinion this makes it a bit less pretty. Still, we enjoyed our stay as well the best breakfast of the whole trip!

The final day was spent climbing over into the valley next door for the first part, skirting lakes, dodging thunderclouds, enjoying the last of the properly wild views and paths till we finally hit proper tarmac and a reasonably sized river. Which we proceeded to follow all the way to Lillehammer and our train back! Via a very nice dinner at a café in a very pretty park in the middle of town :).

Back home, this time I'd decided to take a few extra days off to not feel like it was straight back to the daily grind after lots of cycling :). So there was enough time for some relaxing and enjoying the fact of being on holiday while more or less everyone else all around was not :D. There was also time for a visit to Oslo for a very enjoyable day consisting of a chamber orchestra concert, a long walk along various waterfronts, watching some exhibition diving off the Oslo Opera House (!!) and a very nice dinner!

Feels a bit crazy that all this was only a few weeks ago as the Covid numbers since then have not been pretty. But then, vaccination numbers here have been correspondingly very good. Which leads me to this weekend. Got my second dose Friday evening, and that was that for the next day or so :|. But having come out of it the other side, things are looking better :). A bit of a waste of absolutely stunning weather during the weekend though :P.

On the books side, I guess rather as expected, I haven't quite been devouring them one after the other as I had been earlier in the summer :). It was quite a fun experience finally reading Three Men in a Boat in it's entirety! I did really enjoy Jerome's way of describing the world around him, especially the historical anecdotes, which take on a more layered meaning read a century and a half later :).

The book club book this time was pretty awesome as well! Ignorant as I am of Eastern European authors in general, I was entirely unaware of Bohumil Hrabal. But reading his I Served the King if England was an absolute treat! I felt like I managed to not rush it, to savour the telling, and yet ended up reading it quite quickly. The layers to the story just kept getting added to as one went along till at the end everything was transformed... rather like the snow covered landscape on the last pages. Definitely looking forward to the discussion :).

After a somewhat wet and extremely blustery few days or weeks, I can't quite remember which, it's been lovely weather these last few days! Sunny, temperature in the twenties. Will this prove to be this summer's last hurrah? Who knows. There is much to hope for in the weeks that come, but will everything we hope for come to pass? Again, who knows :).