Down on the farm...

As I type, I am sitting in a room with three people, all of them asleep. I am scintillating company, it seems. I join you from Norway having been on some sort of latter day Thelma and Louise-esque flit across continental Europe in a ten year old Peugeot. Brad Pitt didn't take advantage of me and run away with all my money, but there were a couple of close calls.

It has been something of an emotional whirlwind, I can tell you. We went to a fake beach in Amsterdam, a strange hippy commune in the centre of Copenhagen and to an authentique Swedish restaurant in Gothenburg to eat meatballs. They were not like the ones you get in IKEA. The waiter was so hot and blond I almost threw myself at his feet and begged him to whisk me away to a log cabin and take me roughly but tenderly and then to have his babies and do his laundry with a washboard in a pristine mountain stream. Sadly I soon realised that not only am I not capable of producing his babies but also that (a) he was a straight as a Canadian pine and (b) there aren't any mountains in Gothenburg. One can dream, can't one?

You wouldn't believe the breathtaking scenery in Norway as we drove over the mountains. Frozen lakes (yes, in June) snow-capped peaks, signs saying 'beware of elk crossing'. The real deal. It isn't actually very far across Norway but being that the roads are so small and the speed limit so low and the mountains so well, big and numerous, that it took eight hours. I'll say that again. Eight hours. Well. I didn't know what was more numb by the end of it, my buttocks or my brain. One even becomes immune to incredible scenery after eight hours. You could've told me that Barbara Cartland was swimming up the fjord with Orville on her back and I wouldn't have given two hoots, as they say. I shall reserve time to go back to said picturesque mountains and appreciate them at a more leisurely pace.

Norwegians are most odd. They have a tendency to (a) get enthusiastic about extremely plain food (e.g "Hmmmm! Boiled potatoes! My favourite! These are just like my mother makes them! (i.e. no seasoning and not peeled properly so they've still got the black bits in)) and (b) break in to song at every possible opportunity, usually at family lunches or dinners. More often than not it's the House of the Rising Sun or Over the Rainbow. Nobody has done the Mull of Kintyre yet but there is time. The other thing they tend to do, following the age-old maxim of 'there's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropropriate clothing' is (c) get entirely cagged and bagged for even the simplest expedition. I tried to go for a walk in the woods earlier in a pair of canvas trainers and the whole family looked as me as if they were about to make some sort of collective citizen's arrest.

The reason I am not asleep is that I'm giddy with excitement as the prospect of going to the new local English bar later, Oswald's. I am told that this is a modern building which has been kitted out with the traditional English pub essentials and that a slight clash of styles has ensued. I can imagine that they have not managed to recruit a throng of bearded local crustacea to prop up the bar from 11am until 11pm every day, for example. How a hardwearing floral carpet in burgundy and taupe is going to sit against Scandinavian pine cladding and Velux windows, I don't know. How sitting with a pickled egg in one hand and a pork scratching in the other shouting 'Get your tits out, Helga!' at the passing local totty is going to work against the backdrop of crystal clear fjord waters lapping at a shale beach as the waning arctic sun slowly drifts towards the horizon it's hard to say. One could go on. All I know is that it's got to better than the other Norwegian attempt at an English bar I have been to, rather more authenically called The Halfway House. If my memory serves me correctly it had been an apartment and had had a somewhat hasty makeover. It was not unlike one of those IKEA mock-up apartments they have in the corner of the showrooms with a makeshift line of optics in one corner and a couple of beers on draught. There was still a shower fitting in the men's lavatory and the only indication that it was supposed to be English was a collection of postcards displaying shots of famous London landmarks, all of which had been placed in those four-for-99p IKEA photo frames and stuck on the wall. Something of a half-hearted attempt, I'm sure you'll agree. Its one trump card was that some dog rough Glaswegians were present last time I was there, filling in nicely for the local crustacea contingent.

I drove a tractor today and moved some wood on a farm. And dismantled a fence. Well, you know what they say, when in Rome...