The Susanne

Handed in my essay at 14:59 and can now only keep my fin­gers and toes crossed and hope for the best. Have begun read­ing the lovely little book that the girl recom­men­ded and I can hon­estly say I agree with her, this book is endearigly, enthrallingly sweet, cap­tiv­at­ing, hil­ari­ous all at once. I’m def­in­itely not going to sleep until I’ve fin­ished it, although I really could use some sleep. Have barely slept a wink for two nights in a row whilst com­plet­ing two very import­ant essays in three days and feel close to faint­ing, but at the same time strangely exhil­ar­ated. I actu­ally did it! I think instead of crawl­ing into bed I’m going to stroll down to my favour­ite café/shop/restaurant Mat og Mer to cel­eb­rate with my book and per­haps a glass of wine. Or maybe a coffee would be a better idea — but then, I’m done, I can drink whatever I want now and read whatever I want although I find myself strangely drawn to my course read­ing lists, per­haps it’s the intense three day essay mara­thon that did it, maybe my brain is so full of renais­sance lit­er­at­ure that that is all it can under­stand and relate to and wish for. Except for En rekke avbrutte forsøk (A series of inter­rup­ted attempts) which is the book I’m so in love with right now… Well, I’m off I think! Here’s just a tidbit from the party on Thursday; I’ll not go into any long tale of how fun the party was or how amaz­ingly Filo­lo­gen turned out or how proud I am of myself and the rest of the people who’ve worked on it, here’s 1000 words and then, ta-​ta! x

Work today was hectic and stress­ful and even though — or pos­sibly because of, you never know when fate wants to kick you while you’re down — I man­aged to get my boss’ bless­ing to work on my essay during lulls, I had no chance to because all of Eids­voll seemed to have decided that today was the big ‘let’s go to the library-day’. I now have about four hours to com­plete my essay and, well, I’m not doing too well. I keep glan­cing over at the book I brought from work as a sort of carrot, wish­ing it was Tues­day so I could read it. I don’t know if anyone can really appre­ci­ate my pos­i­tion today: I spent hours and hours sur­roun­ded by books, books, books, and lend­ing them out to people and advising them on what to read and look­ing up books on travel, theatre, food and hunt­ing and all I wanted to do was pick out about a hun­dred of those lovely books and bring them home with me. I couldn’t allow myself to do that, of course, as I’ve less than two days to finish two essays and I’m so easily dis­trac­ted I’m having a hard enough time stay­ing away from the books I already have piled up in my room. But oh… all those lovely books! And some of them looked very lonely, it was like they were look­ing at me with big puppy-​dog eyes, saying ‘please take me home and love me?’ — I just had to force myself to look away.

But then a girl came in to return a stack of books and I noticed a few of my own favour­ites in the pile. And then she poin­ted at a little yellow one and said ‘this one was so amaz­ingly beautiful’ and I was sold. I took it out imme­di­ately and placed it in my bag next to The Castle. And come Tues­day I’ll open it up on the title page and pos­sibly not put it down until I’ve fin­ished it, at least I know I’ll be savour­ing it, enjoy­ing every minute and every little word and phrase of my regained free­dom. As a  reward of course, which means I have to really get both my essays done, and done well, well enough to pass at least. Oh I hope I can do it. Please let me pull this off!

Yeah, yeah, I know, every blog post in east­ern Norway today is bound to be all about the snow. I don’t care though, I want to write about it too! Having spent too little time and effort on my phon­et­ics assign­ment which was due today — in fact decid­ing to leave the third and last ques­tion till late last night as I thought it’d take a half hour, max — I had quite a shock when I finally did take a look and dis­covered that it was really pretty com­pre­hens­ive, and also that I had no idea what it was about! I was going to have to read pretty much the whole inton­a­tion textbook  to make any sense of it. And all this I dis­covered at around eleven last night. Yep. So I skimmed through most of the book which is thank­fully quite a little one, set my alarm to six and went to sleep — by far the most sens­ible thing I thought.

And then I woke up at six just as planned and looked out the window and saw only dark­ness except for a lit window here and there and then… a thin, red stripe of sun­rise just begin­ning to appear over the rooftops in the dis­tance. And a few minutes later, as the the world was becom­ing ever lighter, out of thin air appeared hun­dreds and thou­sands of tiny snow­flakes! Soon there was a light, white cov­er­ing on nearby roof tops, and soon after that a layer of snow had begun to build up on my window sill. How amaz­ing. I’ve never wit­nessed the first first snow before!

I got through my assign­ment, amaz­ingly made it to uni on time as I com­pletely forgot to allow extra time for the chaos which is Oslo every year (without fail) when the first snow comes, made it through my lesson, handed in the assignment… And finally had a chance to look around me. I bought a cup of strong coffee and sat down to read The Tem­pest, how­ever I ended up just star­ing out the window for half an hour, at the snow and at the people walk­ing past and two guys who had a little snow­ball fight on their way to the café entrance and a girl wear­ing a bag that would look much more appro­pri­ate at the beach than in the winter won­der­land that Blindern had become. After a while I gave up and went to meet Lis­beth at another café nearer where we live — some­how I am much more dis­cip­lined when in the com­pany of others. I sup­pose it must be because then they will know if I cheat! Leav­ing campus I came upon a quite poetic sight: roses still in mag­ni­fi­cent bloom, covered in snow. Beau­ti­ful, don’t you agree?

I made it to the café and remembered to snap a photo of Freddy the Flamingo whom I met briefly at a bar­be­cue in Fulham a couple of months ago. Charm­ing little lad, I think he has found a little girl­friend at last and has appar­ently decided to join her in Oslo for some romantic winter fun:

And now… Well I’m going to make myself some strong, black tea and settle down to Vol­pone. Last few days before the final dead­line which looms ever nearer, and as the party for Filo­lo­gen is tomor­row I shall not be able to get any work down tomor­row night. Or Friday morn­ing either, pos­sibly — depend­ing on how the party goes! Oh and have I men­tioned how excited I am to finally get my hands on that magazine? yes? Well I’m sure no one will mind just one last rant. I’m so damn excited I want to laugh and cry at once! Hon­estly! I believe the odds are quite great of seeing me jump­ing up and down look­ing ecstatic should anyone find their way to Uglebo tomor­row night from around seven.

Movie night with the sister –  what a lovely concept. And what a lovely night. A while back we placed an ad at finn.no which serves as a kind of ebay to us living in stone age Norway, asking if anyone owned (and would be will­ing to sell us) a copy of the movie Vill­hesten (The Wild Horse) from 1994. I’d write all about it but I’m simply too lazy so if you want you can read about it (in Nor­we­gian) on Nor­we­gian wiki­pe­dia here. Grow­ing up as a horse crazy little girl it was one of my favour­ite films and I even belonged to a book club called Pennyklub­ben which was all about horses, and they had sponsored the film and sent all their mem­bers the single with the theme song from the movie: Du Følger Vinden (You follow the wind). Yeah, you guessed cor­rectly: I played it non-​stop.

So a lovely girl replied to the ad and my sister bought the film and tonight we were finally able to sit down and watch the movie we’d so been long­ing to revisit. And oh what a won­der­ful film it is. It had me back in 1994 in an instant. I felt the old long­ing for my own horse, long­ing for an adven­ture like the girls in the film, long­ing to listen to the song again… and again and again! Alas — the single is long lost. I ask myself how I could have lost such a treas­ured object, but the truth is I got over my horse crazy stage at some point and prob­ably threw it out during one of my tan­trums which usu­ally occurred when I was forced to tidy my room, or maybe it was even lost long before that time. I’m ser­i­ously con­tem­plat­ing pla­cing another ad just for that little cd single. With just one or pos­sibly two tracks on it — but then I only need that one, that song that can still make me feel like a ten year old girl whose greatest ambi­tion is to own my own horse and go for long rides every day. Ah…

But my life is quite changed since then. My ambi­tions now are much higher and the pro­spect of them much scar­ier. I’ve still not com­pleted all my oblig­at­ory course work for the semester, my mind just refuses to co-​operate, every time I sit down to work my mind blanks or freezes or I get a head ache from the stress of it all. I wish I knew how to calm myself, col­lect my thoughts and just do it but I don’t — I con­tinue to doubt my own abil­ity to the point where the self doubt becomes a self-​fulfilling proph­ecy and the end result is… well I don’t know the end result yet but the situ­ation at the moment is far from great!

But I still treat myself. The other day I decided to buy myself a cook’s knife which I’ve been want­ing for a long time, a san­toku knife but I don’t think it’s an actual san­toku. The little leaf­let that came with it says it’s a san­toku but I’m sure that’s just a descript­ive term and it’s really a fake. It’s def­in­itely lovely though. So light, fits so well in my hand and does my every bid­ding with no trouble at all and I’m simply smit­ten with it.

I also allowed myself a little night out on Friday after spend­ing many hours read­ing and taking notes for my essay on Vol­pone (yes, still on that! Will it ever end I ask you! But then I know it will, for the final dead­line is on Sat­urday). I had made plans with Lis­beth to go out but then I texted her saying I had to stay home and study because I simply didn’t deserve to go out. — And then I changed my mind of course and allowed myself some fun. And oh, we had fun. We had moji­tos at qba, a bar at Grünerløkka where Hilde works, and the Aus­tralian boy who danced whilst making our drinks man­aged to get grass straws in our drinks. They still tasted fine though.

And we met a lovely dog who tried to eat our faces and my camera. His owner came out and I apo­lo­gised to her for get­ting him all excited but I don’t quite remem­ber her reac­tion. I sus­pect she was stone sober and found me annoy​ing.The dog loved us though! (and yeah, I’m a cat person not a dog person. And I still liked this dog)

Tomor­row is my last chance to finish my phon­et­ics paper then have to really get down to Vol­pone: I’m making myself hit the lib­rary so hope­fully that will give me that extra push. Also it will keep me away from the kit­chen which is always a big help, today I made a quick couscous soup which I read about and it just soun­ded so lovely. I used some minced beef because it was on spe­cial and some tomato paste and it was amaz­ing! Mmmm. Although I think I put a little too much couscous in there - I’ll use less next time. No photo - it simply didn’t look as good as I would have liked. It tasted deli­cious though and really, that’s what mat­ters isn’t it?