So, I am home. And have been since about half nine on Tuesday evening. I can't explain how great it feels to be here; with Jools and the cats. Yesterday was a quiet day, really just falling asleep on the sofa and reading the occasional periodical that were waiting for me.
Today, I am going to join a gym.
Yes, a gym. I had been going quite reguarly to the small selection of vintage exercise equipment on the boat, and actually began to quite enjoy it. And so, I am going to try and carry this on by joing gym; well, a health club this afternoon.
After being on board the ship for eight weeks, the final moments came along very quickly. Our replacements had arrived half an hour before; all wrapped up like they were going to the arctic or something.
Oh yeah, that's where we were.
Anyway, being hardy arctic types we were just sitting around in tees and shorts, and telling them tales of bitter cold and ice-bergs; it was the least we could do.
And then the shout came, taxi waiting on the quay.
Oh yeah.
So, laden down with cases, bags and equipment we totter down the gangplank and pile into the van.
How much better it is being driven along the waterfront than walking in the frozen wind. However, it does give you an appetite.
We checked into the hotel, and the shock of having a carpet that had not seen the 70s, a bed that allows one to turn over without knocking yourself out on the wall. And best of all it had broadband wifi interweb net thing.
After updating the stuff on the new laptop, then a brisk thirty second walk to our favourite bar to meet up with the replacements. It was great to be smug in the knowledge that on the morrow we would be heading south, and it was good to rub that it. Knowing that the taxi was due to turn up at half six in the morning to take us to the airport (I say airport, it was more like a large car park, but it did the job), so, we all had a three beer limit, and once that was reached we headed back to our rooms for some shut eye.
I have not said much about the guy I worked with, Yuri: he had been doing the job for four years and apparently has the memory of a goldfish, and had a similar attention span. It was he that got drunk one Friday and spet through the fire alarm.
Anyway, he apparently met up with his friends who were staying on and together they met up with bottles of odka and sat in a car park in the freezing cold and got drunk.
Again.
It was made clear that we were all adults and no one was going to wake us in the morning for the taxi; and it was not until we were sat on the plane that I thought, shouldn't Yuri be here? Yes, the muppet had managed to miss his flight home because of drinking. The company supplies us with flights, but now he was ging to have to get himself home.
Oh well.
The flight down Norway was the same as before, but having a window seat I was able to see how empty the whole of the country is. I mean no one lives there at all. As we headed south, trees began to appear, then merge into forests. There were large white flat areas; these were lakes covered with ice and snow. Most rivers were also frozen and like wide white roads.
Oslo airport is full of the usual stores that fill international airport; but full of goods priced at sky high Norwegian prices; I made do with having a salad and bought an overpriced British music magazine; and so, the time passed until it was time to board the flight to London.
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