Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
enough, and then suddenly the lights come up on the day's host, looking faintly startled, as if he had been
just about to do something he wouldn't want the nation to see. The host, always a handsome young man or
woman with a lively sweater and sculpted hair, fills the long gaps between programmes by showing endless
trailers for the rest of the evening's highlights: a documentary on mineral extraction in Narvik, a Napoleonic
costume drama in which the main characters wear moustaches that are patently not their own and strut
around as if they have had a fence post inserted rectally (but are trying not to let it affect their performance)
and a jazz session with the Sigi Wurtmuller Rhythm Cadettes. The best that can be said for Norwegian
television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
I began to feel as if a doctor had told me to go away for a complete rest ('someplace really boring,
where there's nothing at all to do'). Never had I slept so long and so well. Never had I had this kind of leisure
just to potter about. Suddenly I had time to do all kinds of things: unlace my boots and redo them over and
over until the laces were
precisely
the same length, rearrange the contents of my wallet, deal with nose
hairs, make long lists of all the things I would do if I had anything to do. Sometimes I sat on the edge of the
bed with my hands on my knees and just gazed about me. Often I talked to myself. Mostly I went for long,
cold walks, bleakly watching the unillumined sky, then stopped for coffee at Kokken's Caf￩, with its steamy
windows and luscious warmth.
It occurred to me that this was just like being retired. I even began taking a small notebook with me on
my walks and keeping a pointless diary of my daily movements, just as my dad had done when he retired.
He used to walk every day to the lunch counter at our neighbourhood supermarket and if you passed by you
would see him writing in his notebooks. After he died, we found a cupboard full of these notebooks. Every
one of them was filled with entries like this: 'January 4. Walked to supermarket. Had two cups of decaff.
Weather mild.' Suddenly I understood what he was up to.
Little by little I began to meet people. They began to recognize me in Kokken's and the post office and
the bank and to treat me to cautious nods of acknowledgement. I became a fixture of the hotel bar, where I
was clearly regarded as a harmless eccentric, the man from England who came and stayed and stayed.
One day, lacking anything at all to do, I went and saw the Mayor. I told him I was a journalist, but really I
just wanted someone to talk to. He had an undertaker's face and wore blue jeans and a blue work shirt,
which made him look unsettlingly like a prisoner on day release, but he was a kind man. He told me at
length about the problems of the local economy and as we parted he said:
'You must come to my house one evening. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter.' Gosh, that's jolly
gracious of you, I thought, but I'm a happily married man. 'She would like to practise her English.'
Ah. I'd have gone, but the invitation never came. Afterwards, I went to Kokken's and wrote in my diary,
'Interviewed Mayor. Weather cold.'
One Sunday afternoon in the hotel I overheard a man about my age talking to the proprietor in
Norwegian but to his own children in Home Counties English. His name was Ian Tonkin. He was an
Englishman who had married a Hammerfest girl and now taught English at the local high school. He and his
wife Peggy invited me to their house for dinner, fed me lavishly on reindeer (delicious) and cloud-berries
(mysterious but also delicious) and were kindness itself, expressing great sympathy for my unluckiness with
the Northern Lights. 'You should have seen it just before Christmas - ah, fabulous,' they said.
Peggy told me a sad story. In 1944 the retreating Germans, in an attempt to deprive the advancing
Russian Army of shelter, burned down the town. The residents were evacuated by ship to live out the rest of
the war billeted with strangers. As the evacuation flotilla left the harbour, they could see their houses going
up in flames. Peggy's father took the house keys from his pocket and dropped them overboard, saying with
a sigh, 'Well, we shan't be needing those any more.' After the war the people returned to Hammerfest to find
nothing standing but the chapel. With their bare hands and almost nothing else they built their town again,
one house at a time. It may not have been much, it may have been on the edge of nowhere, but it was theirs
and they loved it and I don't think I have ever admired any group of people quite so much.
From Peggy and Ian and others I met, I learned all about the town - about the parlous state of the
fishing industry on which everyone depended in one way or another, about the previous year's exciting
murder trial, about accusations of incompetence concerning snow removal. I began to find it engrossing.
Hammerfest grew to feel like home. It seemed entirely natural to be there, and my real life in England began
