30 Nov 2018
Norway: The Lofoten Islands & Oslo
I recently went to Denmark, my fourth Nordic country, and it’s made me all nostalgic for my other three Nordic adventures… and they really were adventures!
My first adventure to a Nordic country was Norway in August 2010. It was the summer before I went to university and I spent most of the trip wearing my bright red school-leavers hoodie, displaying the CLASS OF 2010 names for all of a remote Norwegian island to see.
Naturally, all of these words will be based on my memory of events from nearly eight (what the…) years ago but there will still be a big collection of photos. I was just as snap happy at the age of 18 as I am now, although camera quality has definitely improved since then.
It took us 3 different flights to get to our first destination of the trip, the final plane being a tiny thing with propellers. The locals on the plane were wearing waterproofs and woolly hats making me reassess my choice of converse and jacket.
We’d arrived on the Lofoten Islands; known for fishing, connections to the Viking age and stunning scenery.
I think the first thing that struck me when we came out of the teeny tiny ‘airport’ (basically a shed), apart from those dramatic mountain peaks of course, was the colour. Glittering turquoise water, bright orange seaweed, pristine white beaches and deep, comforting greens. Even when the clouds hung low, those colours were still distinctive; although when the sun shone, they were absolutely glorious.
It was easy to forget we were within the arctic circle when the sun came to say hello but a cloudy day was equally as beautiful, creating an air of mystic about the place; I was fascinated with the way the clouds rolled low over the mountain tops.
We stayed in Svolvær, a small town and fishing harbour and in many ways the capital of the region. It was full of burgundy and white cabins, precariously balanced on stilts over the water. We’d hired a little white cabin on the water’s edge in the harbour area. I particularly remember looking out the bedroom window at the view of mountains and sea, as well as walking along the harbour on our first night. There were so many fish-drying racks, like the skeleton structure of buildings. There were no fish on them whilst we were there but we heard how thousands of fish would be hauled in from the sea and hung out to dry on them. Right at the end of the harbour was the statue of the Fisherman’s wife, waiting for her husband’s safe return from the sea.
There was no darkness in the entire time we were there, it was the first time I’d ever been in a restaurant with ‘whale’ and ‘reindeer’ on the menu and I’d never seen mountains like the ones I was surrounded by. It truly was an adventure – ‘close your eyes and hope for the best’ was our motto for the four days we spent on the islands.
I remember the ice bar, full of ice tunnels and sculptures, and drinking a (blue?) drink out of an ice glass. I remember the mini Viking festival with Viking boats, fire juggling and market stalls. I remember the village of Henningsvær, dubbed the ‘Venice of the Lofotens’ (‘they bigged that up’ – direct quote from my dad). I remember the beaches that looked like they would fit right in the Mediterranean.
A highlight of the trip was definitely our fjords boat trip. We geared up (I seem to spend a lot of my trips to Nordic countries wearing puffy boiler suits) and hopped (cough stumbled/wobbled) onto a speed boat. We then bounced on the water, weaving through the fjords at high speed. I honestly have no recollection as to what the guide was telling us, but I was stunned by the scenery; the pockets of snow dotted along the mountains, the tiny inaccessible beaches, the waterfalls cascading down the rock faces, the snake-like path of water curving in front of us. It was breath-taking.
The darker side to our adventure was driving across a bridge one evening and finding a young woman on the wrong side of the barrier, ready to jump into the water a long, long distance below. Thankfully, between my dad talking to her and a police woman intervening, she came back over to the safe side of the barrier but the image of her stood there is not something I will ever forget; it made me wonder what the realities of living in such a remote location are.
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| Taken at midnight |
After Lofoten, we flew to Oslo for our final two days. My memories of Oslo are much vaguer; I think because the Lofotens were such a unique experience. My diaries describe Oslo as central London, a seaside town and a French village all in one. Make of that what you will.
I do remember coming out of Oslo station and seeing a man injecting heroin. Needle, vein, everything. I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Toto.
A slightly odd introduction to a city we otherwise enjoyed. My overwhelming memory is that of the opera house. I adored that building. It had gentle slopes, appearing to rise from the water and stretching all around the roof, giving you the opportunity to walk all over the building and take in the amazing 360-degree views. Inside, the lobby was made up of 15m high glass windows with timber ramps wrapping around the auditorium in the heart of the building. The sun beaming through the windows created lots of little rainbows dancing on the marble floor.
I also remember the genuine bemusement at seeing the sky get dark after being in continuous daylight for four days. I remember the Vigeland sculpture park; more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland and the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist. And I remember some kind of festival on the waterfront; music and dancing against a back drop of the sea and mountains.
Fun fact: the novel that I have been writing on and off since I was 18 was profoundly influenced by my six-day trip to Norway; so in a way I have been writing about this place ever since.
Norway was my first introduction to the Nordic countries and it kick-started a dear love for them.
25 Nov 2018
Christmas At Kew
The time has come lads. It's Sunday morning, I’m sat in bed with the remains of an almond croissant on a plate next to me and, for the first time this year, I have crept into my iTunes, nervously looked around and hit PLAY on the Christmas album. That’s right, Wham has just finished and was immediately followed by The Pogues. I am grinning like a loon.
Last night, I took a mosey on down to Kew which I quickly decided was a place I could happily live should I happen to stumble across a million quid or two. What a large range of gorgeous houses and fairy-lit cafes; I am here for it. Alice and I had an early dinner in Ask and then, of course, headed to Kew Gardens to kick off the festive season.
I have been wanting to go to Kew Gardens for their dreamy Christmas lights trail for ages and it did not disappoint.
Christmas music was playing, the smell of mulled wine was well and truly in the air and the lights were spectacular. We walked through them, under them, in them. There were live flames, lasers and glittering disco balls. There were lights covering the trees, bobbing on the water, projected onto the pathway. There were enormous Christmas trees and a whole load of amazing displays; the best one probably being the finale across the water in front of the greenhouse. The greenhouse lit up in hundreds of different colours, there was music from Love Actually and Frozen and images projected onto water spray; similar to what we saw in Singapore. Who needs to travel half way round the world eh?
It was so blady festive and, yes, a little bit magical.
A few pictures:
10 Nov 2018
Why I Blog
I’m sat in Costa working on my novel chapter-plan and Elton’s John’s Step Into Christmas just came on.
I am here for it. It’s making me itch to dig out the Christmas bedding when I get home but I have a feeling G would spout something about it only being November.
Anyway, yes, blogging.
If you pay attention to the world of blogging then you probably have a definition as to what a blogger is. And, by that definition, I am a rubbish blogger. Because blogging these days is about so much more than writing a blog post. It’s an entire industry full of ‘influencers’; bloggers, youtubers, instagrammers. It’s a living. An entire career. It’s Instagram themes and scheduled tweets, engagement and stats, sponsored posts and hashtag #ad, hashtag #gift. There are bloggers who have become celebrities, magazines dedicated to the world of blogging and an entire online community of brilliant, like-minded people.
I was, unbelievably, unaware of all of this when I set up my own blog. In my defence, I’d just spent three years in a university bubble and another year in a what am I doing with my life bubble. I’d been kinda distracted okay.
In a way, I have always blogged. I’ve kept diaries, on and off, my entire life. I’ve had diaries that lasted for approximately 2 days, diaries that lasted months and are full of details of school crushes and diaries from most of my holidays (the time I'm most consistent when it comes to diary-keeping). I think it was the delight that was MySpace where these diaries first started taking an online form and there have been various other online-versions of my diaries since. So, along with the fact that writing is my biggest passion in life, it was hardly surprising that I would decide to start up a blog; my own ‘corner of the internet’.
And then this whole new world opened up to me. I discovered that there were a lot of bloggers, that it was an entire flippin’ industry that had somehow passed me by. Honestly, I was thrilled. Not so much about the fact that you could earn money from a blog although that was pretty darn cool but about the fact that there were all these voices out there that I could turn to every day. I now can’t imagine a day where I don’t check into my bloglovin feed and check what new articles my favourite bloggers have uploaded.
And after a tough 18 months trying to find my way post-uni – where I barely wrote a word – I finally felt like I had a creative buzz again. Here was something that allowed me to write, take photos and just generally be creative with no limitations. I genuinely believe that blogging has improved my writing, my photography, my editing and taught me a load of new skills as well (although quite frankly, html code will always be a permanent headache).
I didn’t even tell anyone I had a blog for a good while (shout-out to G for being my solitary reader). And then one evening, after a few months, I nervously decided to share my blog link on Facebook. And some time after that, on twitter. And so on. These days, I couldn’t care less who knows I have a blog and am finally used to family and friends knowing details of my life before I’ve got around to telling them.
But I’ve never really gone much further than sharing my blog on social media. And, quite frankly, I’m becoming pretty poor at that. I could write an entire blog post on why I barely go on twitter these days but that’s probably one for another day. I forget to promote my blog most of the time, I’m rubbish at engaging with other bloggers (even when I think they’re marvellous) and the idea of me having an Instagram theme is laughable (just the thought of the restriction stresses me out).
It’s not that I don’t find the fact that blogging has become an entire industry really interesting and I find it freakin’ incredible that we can now make a living and work for ourselves just by setting up our own online space. I particularly love seeing my favourite influencers* doing well for themselves.
It’s just, that’s not why I set up this blog. I set it up because my creativity felt stilted and I needed a release. And I’ve kept at it for over three years because I have this desperate need to keep a record of everything; to capture memories. And for some reason, putting it online forces me to keep going. And, yes, I’m selfish about it. It’s all for me – I’m not writing things that I know the reader wants. I’m writing what I want. And I could do that and never show it to anyone, sure. The memories would still be recorded. But putting it somewhere that I know others can read it; well, that keeps me in check. Like there’s something to hold me to account if I don’t do it, in a way there wouldn’t be if I was just scribbling into a journal; no one’s going to ask me why I’ve stopped scribbling into the journal should I stop for months on end because life.
I’ve had a couple of gifts as a result of being a blogger, and have even earned myself a small amount of cash. And, yes, I found it pretty cool. But to get to a stage where that became a regular occurrence, I would have to work really hard in an extremely saturated industry. And a lot of that work would involve things that are not blogging. And honestly? I struggle to find the motivation to do those things when all I’m really interested in is putting pen to paper (or words on screen). And blogging is such a small part of my writing; there’s a lot of short stories and novel chapters that never make it anywhere near the internet. I don’t spend enough time on them as it is so I struggle to move away from them for things like scheduling promotional tweets or considering how to make my Instagram stories interesting.
In the world of influencing, I’m not really nailing it. I have no brand, am awful at self-promotion, I never comment on other people's blogs as much as I intend to and am starting to shy away from social media more and more, for the sake of my own sanity.
But I still love blogging. I still keep reading. I still think it’s incredible that people are forging entire careers from their online spaces. I still keep typing away for the pure love of it and, right now, I can’t see a day where that will stop. Even if my page views grind to a halt because I’ve not shared my links on twitter *shrugs*.
So yeah, if you just want a blogger that rambles away for no other reason than to ramble, that writes and photographs for no other reason than because, then hi. I’m your girl.
Oh maaaaan, Last Christmas just came on. Shout out to Costa’s festive playlist for helping me craft this essay.
*Some of my favourites include Hannah Gale, Charlotte Taylor, Love Taza, The Anna Edit, The Little Plum, Father of Daughters, Susie Verrill & Sophie Cliff.
7 Nov 2018
Life Lately: Autumn Edition
I woke up this morning to what I am referring to as the case of the mysterious noise. There has now been three or four occasions where we have been woken up by this mysterious noise. I thought it was some odd-sounding alarm. G thought it was an odd-sounding bird. Now we’re both confused. It’s an alarm that only goes off around dawn. But a bird call that sounds strangely alarm-like. A robotic bird perhaps? Oh and it also sounds like a wolf whistle. A pervy robotic bird.
I want to actually get up one morning and go and find out what the hell it is. But let’s face it, me heading outside at 6am is about as likely as it actually being a pervy robotic bird.
Shall I call this blog post The Case of the Pervy Robotic Bird?
Aaaannnnyway…
A wonderful thing about our flat being surrounded by trees is that I am always acutely aware of the changing seasons. In the last few weeks, I have been able to watch the trees erupt into oranges and yellows almost in slow motion. The conkers came and went, the heating went on, my knits came out of storage and, of course, my camera roll filled up of shoes-in-leaves shots.
And just like that; there’s only two months until Christmas. This has crept up on me so quickly that I’m feeling a tad discombobulated (what a fabulous word) about it. I haven’t even thought about Christmas presents; someone send me some great ideas so I can crack on with shopping yeah?
Ffs, I just realised that we are, in fact, one week into November so it is actually only 6 weeks until Christmas. Is this what getting old is; time speeding by at an alarming rate?
Two things that suddenly become a regular feature of my life at this time of year:
Camembert and cranberry sandwiches. Toasted of course. With good-quality, French, slightly smelly camembert (seriously, Tesco’s-own is surprisingly bland). They make me feel all cosy and Christmassy and I immediately feel the need to eat them when the leaves start to turn.
Hot chocolate. Bailey’s hot chocolate on Bonfire night (might have gone overboard and basically just made hot bailey’s). Milky hot chocolate made on the stove at home. Festive-themed flavoured hot chocolates that sprout up in every coffee chain at the beginning of November.
ALTHOUGH. This year, the costa menu (one which I am always unashamedly excited about) doesn’t have a mint hot chocolate. NO. MINT. HOT. CHOCOLATE.
Thank you for your concern. I’m trying to be brave but it has been a tough time for all involved.
Tbf, there is an orange hot chocolate. The lord taketh, the lord giveth….
Am currently also loving Sunday-night Doctor Who episodes, weekend cinema trips, my new Next slippers and getting lost in a fantasy novel – have just discovered the Nevermoor series and am a big fan.
I’m just enjoying a bit of down time at the moment; savouring the season, embracing routine and thoroughly enjoying empty weekends (it’s doing wonders for my novel-productivity).
Next up: festivities! Brb, gonna go advent calendar shopping.
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