Crockery....

After a very busy month, we sat down at the weekend to finally watch Kevin mcClouds 'Escape to the wilderness' and watched a  couple from Wales’ adventure in northern Sweden unfold on the TV. They had followed their dreams of living off grid with their Huskies and lived a pretty sparse, but i have to say beautiful, existence with their dogs, collecting water from the river, rolling in the snow (you know you want to) and chopping wood to keep their 2 stoves going 24/6. There were 2 things that really stood out for in me in the programme - the first, that when he started talking about food he almost went into some kind of trance, especially when on the subject of battered sausages and indian takeaways, and the second thing was that he had used expanding foam to fill around his windows! 

Now you might be thinking how did I notice the expanding foam, but it was actually the first thing I spotted after thinking “what a great looking cabin and that external woodturning flue looks a bit dodgy”. You might think - expanding foam, so what? But whilst i don’t want this to be a rant about the bizarre virtues of expanding foam I’ve seen used in cars, by builders who couldn’t work out how to fill a gap and on some lovely old buildings in the past (now there’s a Dragons Den product - "conservation" expanding foam) it just made me chuckle that expanding foam had even reached the wilds of northern Sweden….i’m guessing it’s probably better than stuffing lichen and moss in the gaps (or is it?) …..

Now surprisingly (despite the expanding foam faux pas), I thought …."these guys are amazing - what an adventure", even to the point of making their own clothes from reindeer skins, or only having a fridge under the house and having to hike for 30 minutes for a shower, or to Skype his children from his car abandoned in a car park ( i assume within range of a free wifi….done that before, but don’t tell anyone ;)…). I particularly liked his external ablution block consisting of shower and sauna that he made, and that he went starkers whilst Kevin retained his modesty with a pair of boardshorts whilst they went for a snow dunk outside (although i like a good sauna I’m yet to be brave enough to throw myself into the snow afterwards (butt naked or otherwise)).

We are back at "Litj Stuggu Vollen” (the name i’m told our house used to be called many years ago and I think means "small house on the hill/valley" but probably means "knackered house falling down the hillside”) in 4 weeks time. The usual bizzare pre trip lists and purchases (see previous posts ref the Dyson and the Khazi ;) )are well underway, as are preparations with the builders with the work we have already(at least i think we have) booked in for this year and what we might be able to achieve next year (funds allowing). The packing this year time has taken a slight twist in events and I quite fancy taking a musical instrument to make the most of the beautiful summer (apparently there has been 3 days of summer so far…. ;/)  evenings and evening daylight. During the summer solstice, sunrise was at about 3.05 am and sunset at 23.50 according to my weather app, but i suspect in reality it probably felt like it never set. For the trip in a few weeks I’m therefore anticipating very light nights and  as such been trying to source some cheap blackout material to take so at least the kids might sleep a little and not wake me up at 3.30!  

We will of course get proper blinds at some point, but stick on blackout seems the way forward at present. Anyhow……the cheapest place i could find blackout material wasn’t from a child friendly mums type internet shop, but actually from a marijuana growing emporium i found on line in birmingham! I believe its all legal but i did have to chuckle when then advert said that all deliveries come in discreet packaging! Suffice to say it tuned up this week, all 8 linear metres of it (enough to do our and the guest bedroom) and as far i can tell its doesn’t smell like its been stocked next to a collection of seedlings…..i guess the sniffer dog at Gatwick might tell me otherwise though. (apparently they have internet access in prison so hopefully i’ll be fine…..)

Right, back to light evenings and things to take……well if you read one of my earlier posts then i thought i might see if i can squirrel my banjo away for the trip (see Shalkletons banjo story), in this way i can actually practice without annoying anyone (apart from everyone in the valley when the sound resinates) but more importantly i can sit on my porch doing my bad version of duelling banjos. Its also gives me an great excuse to use this photo i found on a Norwegian photo archive website (verdalsbilder.no)  entitled “med pipe, trekkspil go banjo” depicting 2 young woman (girls) playing a banjo ukulele, accordion, but also bizarrely smoking a pipe ………..now i’m sure I saw a pipe on that blackout material website….

Oh yes and crockery……..well like i said, its been a very busy month and we often talk about life being like spinning plates, trying to keep them all going at once, well sometimes they fall off, but the trick is when the do break to shout ‘opa’ in a greek stylee, pick up another one, get it spinning and carry on……... or alternatively not pay your taxes and then leave the EU….(in a greek stylee).