Back To Reality

Only 18 hours ago I was staring at fjords and mountains, with a night sky filled with stars and the constellations in a cold, quiet air where only the snow crunching footsteps of a few chilly adventurers could be heard. Now I'm back in my flat where the heating has been on solid for two days so everything's steamy, there is no food in the fridge at all and my W7 bus ride involved overhearing a girl talk for ages about how she 'wore some make-up in year 7, and a bit more in year 8 yeah, but now I wear loads cos you gotta dress like you're always goin' out for the boys to fink you're tick innit?' Sigh. I hate the returning from holiday bit. I stepped off the plane and was handed a free Daily Mail as though the world knew I was feeling all relaxed and chilled from my trip and needed a well timed injection of bigoted hate. I raced my damaged suitcase with its 1 and a half wheels to the train back to Tottenham Hale and ran directly into a crowd of rush hour zombies, all of whom were so engorged in their need to mindless trek to a job they hated that they seemingly ignored the heavy bag I was carrying and barged me every which way but loose. Er, that doesn't make sense, but I'm very tired and I remembered that being a phrase. I've been up since 3am. I think I'm allowed.

Don't get me wrong, I've been looking forward to returning to the flat and in excitement texted Nat and Tom a countdown of minutes to my imminent return, aiming to burst through the door with a sitcom like shout of 'Funnies! I'm home'. I think that's hilarious and could easily be followed by some canned laughter and an awkward story about the One With The Bin Bag or something equally as dull. However Tom is currently in Scotland and Nat's phone doesn't work, so instead I burst through the door to find Nat getting dressed in the living room with a look of startled confusion. Not quite the plan. However its nice to back in our lovely home. What's not so nice is that within minutes of sitting down and putting my laptop on, work has already begun again with bookings to be booked, writing to be written and phonecalls and texts and emails and tweets and facebooks and on and on and on and on and all I'd really like to do is sleep and wake up back in a fjord. Well, not in it. That'd be freezing. And wet. By it. Definitely by it. I'm also stone cold broke due to stupid Norsk costs, we haven't even got any bread in and I'm currently chewing on the Toblerone I bought in the airport. Yeah I totally bought one with my leftover Norwegian Dollars. I've never done that whole 'buying a giant Toblerone thing' before and as I wielded it around like a lightsaber for sugar addicts, I wondered how on earth you can get nail scissors confiscated as security yet I could buy two of these and clobber someone to death baton-style with ease.

I'm catching up on news about floods, street massacres and the UK government handing the NHS over to people who are swayed more by pharmaceutical companies than actual welfare and ultimately, as a result, I'm already wondering how to plan another holiday. I had such an amazing time in Norway that I very much want to go back, possibly on the Whale tour trip of the Northern towns. The Norwegians are pretty awesome people. They do very little wrong. I mean, they have free wi-fi everywhere, they eat brown cheese, they smile and talk to you and lots of them are pretty. Also after a trip to Tromso museum yesterday afternoon I saw just how environmentally friendly they are as a nation, just how important science and evolution is to them and how dedicated they are to bringing their children up well. I mean really, how can you fault them? Oh wait. Everything's stupidly expensive and they like whaling. Ok expensive you can get buy. I mean, they have a good economy because they still cleverly have things to export unlike our wonderful society that managed to sell only money that didn't exist. Yeah well done. Why not make huge shipments of unicorn meat next dickheads? Norway on the other hand has oil, gas, wood and fish among others. So, not really bad for them that the economy is all going well.

But whaling? Whaling? Its odd that a country's vice seems so at odds with its other principles. They had a series of touch screen videos in the museum that you could play with. Often they would include humorous sketches such as a women reading the 100,000 year weather forecast explaining Norway's landmass or a fashion commentary on weapons through the ages. It worked. Then others were opinion polls. One for example said 'Do you believe man is responsible for global warming?' and there was a button for English/Abroad and one for Norsk. With that one and most of the others the Norwegian response was always on the ball. However, with the question about whether whaling should be stopped, abroad said 80% yes and Norway said 75% no. They are adamantly keen on saving the polar bears, the seals, many arctic birds, foxes and other species. Yet those big hulking masses of blubber can happily be harpooned for the sake of some chewing gum. Horrible times. I love whales and it makes me really sad. I guess maybe that's why they are so good at everything else. And they had the vikings with all that raping and pillaging so I suppose brown cheese and the nicest smiles go some way to try and make up for that.

I like to think that by liking beer I can probably be a bit shitty with some people and not have to amp the niceness up to mega as I like to kick puppies in my spare time or something. That's my views. Anyway, overall, Norway really rocks, and I will be back to see all the things I couldn't this time such as the Northern Lights, moose, bears and whales. Happy whales. Till then, holiday's clearly over. I'm going to begrudgingly get on with work and see if there's anyway some of the brown cheese I smuggled back will go with Toblerone.