Echoes of death

I suppose like so many people my thoughts have gone to the people of Norway, who have lost so many of its population, especially young people, this weekend. 

I suppose part of my reaction is that I remember Oslo & Norway with great affection. My father worked there for a couple of years. He rented  a house just outside Oslo. One summer I went & stayed with him for about a month.


For me this was a rare opportunity to get to know my father. This may sound an odd thing to say, but, for much of my life, my father worked abroad or very long hours, regularly over 100 hours a week, with the result when he was at home, we ended up tiptoeing around so as not to disturb him.

I was a little anxious about going to stay just with him. My mother & brother remained at home in England. In the end my parents suggested I invite a university friend to go too so I would have some company during the day - Dad would inevitably be working - but she didn't stay for the full period of my trip. The first week Dad took off work to show me some of the sights, to locate the local shops, bus stop & train station so I'd be able to get around without him. I don't think I ever spent so prolonged a time with him, unshared with anyone else, in my entire life.


Norway I associate with crystal clear air, a cleanness I'd never seen in England. I wowed over the sculpture park, saw the ruined Viking boats & the Kon Tiki I'd read about so long before, went round the folk museum with its fabulous stave church. We went up into the mountains, climbed up a ski slope (it must take some nerve to set off down one of them!), walked in the woods around a lake. 


It was wonderful & carefree. So safe feeling. So unlikely a place for such a massacre.


I suppose it didn't help when we went to the Pub yesterday to discover the best friend of one of the barmaids  had been involved in a car crash on the M6 over the weekend. She was instantly killed. The friend was just 19, far too young. Not surprisingly the barmaid was off work. She just couldn't stop bursting into tears.