Eeeeeeeee

We bought a house! It is very cute. And that yellow ‘sold’ sign? It doesn’t mean someone else snapped it up before we got our act together. That’s us. We did it.

It was nerve-wracking. We made the offer yesterday morning, then had to wait twenty-four hours to see if anyone would up the offer, and if the owners would accept it. (That’s the way they do things here – each house sale is potentially a twenty-four hour auction.) The wait ended at 9am, but I start work at 8. Today we had a planning day. I tried very hard to concentrate on a Norwegian discussion of which I understood, oh, about ten percent, while watching the imperceptible inching of the hands of the clock. I kept looking at the second hand to convince myself time was actually moving, but it wasn’t ticking as fast as my heart.

I was steeling myself to wait until 9.15, but Michael rang at 9 on the dot. Having apologized in advance for answering my phone in a meeting, I raced off to one of the empty kindergarten rooms.

‘So what do you think’, said Michael, ‘did we do it?’

‘JUST TELL ME!’

‘Yes.’

It’s walking distance to town; it has a garden and a deck and lots of lovely windows; the rooms are square and friendly and full of life. It’s an old house, but it was completely renovated four years ago. We can move in at the end of January.

We are very happy. Mostly about the house, but also about the fact that we can stop house-hunting now! Hurrah!

I still can’t quite believe that we really get to live there.

Some other excellent and totally unexpected news capped off the day, but I won’t tell you about it yet because it’s not set in stone and I don’t want to jinx it. But the waiting and the hoping aren’t over quite yet.

 

And can I just say

In case there is any doubt, Michael is totally forgiven for tacking a paragliding holiday onto a conference when I had no hope of joining. He brought me back a macbook pro. And it is beautiful.

 

Postcards from the sky

I wasn’t there this year, but I haven’t forgotten

how, in the right wind, you soar up the slope

to join the jelly beans in the sky.

The launch site is a green and distant memory, mere patchwork

and the snowy mountains are all yours.

Afterward,

your feet on the ground as your wing falls slack,

you’ll never forget

the staircase of air

the aeons of sun.

* all credit to Michael for the amazing photos!

 

Clouds and mountains

Last weekend we drove north.

We had many spectacular picnics.

I love the colours of the lichen and the clouds.

In the evening, the river spun moonlight.

And all in all, it was magical.

 

Graduation

Was brilliant. Loved my hat, which in fact was black, not green, but the robes were green which suits me fine. My supervisor said she always associates me with green jewellery.

It’s past bedtime now but I just have to tell you about it. It was very formal, and just so much fun. The staff of the school of English paraded on stage, decked out in all their finery.

It was brilliant to have my brother and Michael there. We went out for lunch with my supervisors, which was so so nice, and can I just say once again how I love them and they are just fantastic and I couldn’t have asked for better, and if I had to do it all again I would, and I’d do it with them.

It rained but I didn’t mind.

And later my friends and I went out for dinner at Hansa’s, which if you are ever in Leeds you must do too.  So it was pretty great. And THANK YOU – to my supervisors, to my sponsors, to my parents and grandparents who were there in spirit, and to my friends and especially J and M for celebrating with me (and for taking the pictures!). It’s been an awesome journey. One part of it is over now. That is a little bit sad as well as exciting, and it was nice to have a ceremony to mark the end of it. But many paths, I hope, have only just begun.

 

Everybody’s happy!

After Norway’s stunning victory in the Eurovision last night, the annual 17 May parade was even more fun than usual.

It was perfect flag-fluttering weather: warm, windy and bright.

Everybody said ‘hurrah! hurrah!’ You even needed to say ‘hurrah’ instead of ‘hei’ (hello).

We learnt from our mistake of turning up in scruffy clothes last year and dressed up for the occasion.

Parents turned out in force to watch their babbies’ big moment.

Michael said it would never work in Germany: troupes of blonde children and marching bands waving flags and yelling ‘hurrah!’ I think Norway’s nationalism is sufficiently benign as to not offend anyone, except possibly the Swedes. An historic victory against Sweden was achieved at Halden’s very own fortress. But Sweden awarded Norway 12 points in the Eurovision last night, so all must be forgiven.

The Russe (graduating final year high school students) were out in force with their red overalls and hangovers, celebrating the culmination of two weeks of mayhem. (We saw a group of them sitting around a campfire on a roundabout at two a.m. the other night.)

I envied the dresses. Each region of Norway has its own colour and pattern. When all’s said and done, who wouldn’t want to be Norwegian for the day?

 

Many wonderful things

I am in Austria. Very close to Switzerland. If you climb a mountain – or, with much less effort, take a chairlift – you can see into a lake that touches Austria, Germany, Switzerland. I am surrounded by improbable lushness: meadows peppered with dandelions, mountains swathed in patterned cloaks of dark and bright green, the pine trees interspersed with deciduous trees in the first flush of spring. White blossom still flowers in the valleys, but everything is in leaf. Here, May is the most beautiful of all months. Winter is gone and summer is yet to settle, but the air is warm and the green burgeons with promises.

It is strange to think that on Tuesday I was in Adelaide, on Thursday and Friday I was in London, and now I am here. A week of contrasts if ever there was one. It was very sad to leave. It was just so nice to hang out with my family and catch up with my old friends. My brother and my grandparents drove me to the airport, and after a coffee and a very chocolaty raspberry muffin and at least three hugs from each of them, I felt bereft as they walked away. On the plane, I thought – why am I leaving? What am I going back to?

Autumn in the Adelaide Hills.

But as soon as I arrived I knew. Apart from being with M again, which is just brilliant, there is so much to see here! So much to explore and think and dream. I really enjoyed the two days in London. I usually just transit through London, but this time M had organized a two day workshop and they were all staying in the rather lovely Goodenough College, so I got to piggyback. I just loved wandering around all the green squares between the London University buildings, pretending to be Virginia Woolf. I’ve been to that section of London before but never spent much time there. Spring is in full swing and the huge trees are raining down little umbrella-shaped pollen things.

I spent an afternoon in the British Museum. It is all wonderful but I was especially amazed at collections of medieval and Roman rings – how strange to think of the hands that have worn them! And then on Friday evening we wandered around the Tate, which is possibly my favourite art gallery in the world. It’s all been re-hung since I was last there, and there are themed collections: ‘poetry and dream’, ‘energy and process’. I loved the way the words wove between the pictures, and the layout of the rooms made the paintings and sculptures talk to one another.

I started writing this in Austria but actually now I am in Switzerland. M is working here today and we are going back to Norway tonight. I haven’t been there in nearly two months! His parents joined us in Austria and we had a very relaxing couple of days. They made friends with the neighbours. Monica did a brilliant job of combating her fear of heights – she came with us as we drove over a high pass in the mountains (see above), and even went on two chairlifts!

Michael and I each had one beautiful paraglider flight – I was up for more than an hour and could have stayed up much longer if I wished. How strange to be able to work the air currents and drift above the mountain ridges and the trees.

We had a minor disaster yesterday when M tried to launch in a tail wind and didn’t take off in time and flew straight into a clump of trees. Luckily he wasn’t hurt but we spent nearly three hours extracting the glider from the trees! They were about four metres high, so not strong enough to climb but too tall to reach the top of. They were perched on a steep slope in a patch of snow, so there was a lot of sliding around. We even had to chop a couple of them down with a borrowed axe! Anyway, no harm done, and we are rethinking our safety policies…

But all in all, everything is beautiful. My viva is two weeks from today – I wonder if my examiners are reading my thesis yet.

 

Happy birthday

to my lovely man, who takes me soaring above skylines

where we watch the earth glow, glitter and fade.

 

Larger than life

I’m loving the internet right now. I’m in Singapore airport, exploiting the free wireless. After twelve hours on a plane, preceded by two days of dazed wandering around London, preceded by seven hours on a plane, it’s quite remarkable to be so connected. In the past couple of hours, I’ve had an email conversation with Michael, a facebook chat with my uncle, a skype chat with Mum, as well as exchanging facebook comments with cousins and long lost friends, watching the live status updates of my Leeds friends, discovering friendly comments on my last blog post, and reacquainting myself with the blogs of my blogfriends. So I find myself surprisingly connected to all my worlds, whilst – relatively speaking – in the middle of nowhere! Everyone even seems to be awake…

I have been delaying writing about America because I don’t know how to squeeze it all down to a blog post! But I will use this hour before I need to head over to my gate, and see how far we get.

We started off in San Diego, where you can stand on the jetty and photograph the surfers. Just a little north of the city is a brilliant coastal paragliding spot, Torrey Pines. We didn’t have our gliders with us this time, but watched a couple of people making the most of less than perfect conditions.

San Diego was brilliant. We’ll be back.

Then we drove inland, to the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful and strange and overwhelming. It’s exhausting being close to something that you can’t fit into your senses.

I loved the colours. The way the rocks rainbow out beneath you.

But by the end of the afternoon, it was definitely too much to take in. I sat on a stone wall while M wandered round the corner to take more photos. I stifled the irrational fear that he was about to slip and tumble down it. I’m not usually scared of heights. But this was something else. I thought of the David Hockney painting. I watched the tourists from every corner of the globe. Nothing could dent its immensity.

To be continued… (Many many more larger than life encounters to be disclosed…)

 

Late night footnote checking

About to call it a night. Listening to the Beatles (it’s necessary to listen cheerier and cheerier music as the night goes on). Remembering this night. Can’t believe it’s only two months ago. As ‘Penny Lane’ plays, I can smell the smoke of spurting fireworks, mixed with the just-rained-on sea smell of a winter much milder than this one. I rememember jumping up and down. Holding someone’s hand. Belting out ‘Hey Jude’ over the smoky, sparkling square at the top of my lungs. All the glittery lights. It’s still going to be a good year.