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One Less Thing I Have To Do

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I feel blessed. I have just returned from a short cruise in The Artic along the North coast of Norway. The weather was perfect, not a wisp of wind and clear skies. The Aurora was spectacular, dancing like a fiery angel on night three, and visible every night. During the day, the sky was equally beautiful with various gradations of blue blanketing a snow covered rocky mountainous terrain. At the North Cape, the temperature dipped as low as -17. It is an amazing part of the world made habitable by the Gulf Stream that prevents the sea from freezing.

I am now a proud member of The Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society. The annual general meeting is the third Saturday in January and takes place in Hammerfest, the world’s most Northern town. I’m looking forward to it.

On the final morning I was stood on a mountain overlooking Tromso. It was silent. There wasn’t even a whisper of a breeze and the birds had all emigrated. The snow was dry, powdery, compact, perfect for skiing. Norwegians are born with skis but it’s never appealed to me. My ankle no longer has the flexibility it should since I broke it some years ago, so skiing is too late for me, and, for that, I’m grateful. The trip was populated largely by people older than me on a bucket list quest. I don’t have a bucket list but I’m glad I can cross skiing off my something-I-should-do list.

Here on The Afterword, many of us are getting grizzly, our joints are stiffening up, our minds are less nimble and we are getting beyond certain activities. What, dear Afterworders, are you happy about never having to do in the future?

In the meantime, here’s a wonderful track by Colin Harper. I quote, “The Svalbard archipelago, discovered in 1596, lies halfway between Norway’s North Cape and the North Pole. In an iron vault deep underground the world stores the seeds of 1,400 varieties of things that grow, as insurance against global calamity. Both geographically, and in terms of the survival of humanity, it is the last place on Earth.”

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  1. I spent the years upk to 50 vaguely thinking I would learn to drive one day. Now I am 50 I’m coming round to the idea that I never will, which is a relief.

    • I had no car for a few months last year. I managed surprisingly well. In fact, bus journeys now there are Wi-Fi and ipods are positively enjoyable.

      Do you live in a city, Gatz?

      • Chelmsford, which has been a city for about 5 years. So far this has meant we got a John Lewis and every other building in the town city centre has been turned into a restaurant, but has led to no improvement in the fairly ropey First bus service. Crucially I work in the town city centre, and the pleasant two mile walk each way is often the highlight of my working day. Also, The Light drives so we get out and about at weekends and for longer journeys. I just don’t need to day to day.

          • Never ridden a bike in my life; another thing I never got around too. The resulting lack of road sense is probably another reason why it would be a bad idea for me to drive.

            ‘Wondrous’ might be a bit generous for central Essex, though the county in general is greener and prettier than it is often given credit for.

            • When I was a kid in the 50s my dad used to take me for long rides on the back of his BSA Bantam (sandals, shorts, no helmet) to explore the countryside an easy day’s ride from Southend, doing brass rubbings, having lunch in pubs (cheese sandwiches) and occasionally breaking into one of the many derelict old wattle and daub cottages littering the countryside.

              The villages round Chelmsford were often the destination – Chignall Smealy, all those Rodings, Shellow Bowells (!), Great Leighs, Littleton Green…later of course there was learning to drive on disused WW2 airfields, but that’s another story.

        • Chelmsford is an hour away from me (I’m outside Cambridge). In December, I traded in my old car at the Chelmsford VW dealership. This week, I saw it in again in a village 8 miles from me. What are the odds?

        • I’m going to be in Witham this week. I might make it into Chelmsford – visit Oxfam Books, and Waterstones, and that’s probably it. Though I hear there’s now a Hotel Chocolat, so I might get some Eton Mess for the wife.

          • There certainly is. What used to be the broken-concrete car park behind the High Street is now the upmarket Bond Street shopping experience (entrance opposite Waterstone’s), anchored by that new John Lewis and including Hotel Chocolat. Witham still has good charity shops and a better than average Wetherspoons, but that’s about it.

            • I see from Google Maps where it is – I might have a gander.
              Witham is really on the edge between south (urban) Essex and north (rural) Essex. All the old coaching inns along the high street show it used to have charm, but there’s not much left of the town beyond charity shops, really, Not that my dad gets out of an evening much, but when we did, The Woolpack Inn was where we’d drink and play pool badly.

  2. As mentioned here recently, I’d never go to another rock concert. Never enjoyed them even as a youngster, but thought I ought to. Now there’s no way I’d subject myself to the throng of eejits with their phone cameras and pathetic adulation for the preening music makers.
    Not sure I’ll ever bother travelling again. I mean proper, long-haul travel. Sitting on a plane for ten hours is just way too boring to contemplate. Although I do hate European winters, so if I came into money somehow, I’d consider it.
    Might never buy clothes again. Got loads of the buggers and only really wear the same ones – T and shorts all summer, T and pullover and slacks all winter. (Not really sure what to call my trousers. They’re not trousers in any formal sense. Since leaving school I have never worn proper, formal trousers. Nor have I ever worn jeans. I find both way too conventional and uniform and I am an unconventional rebel, yes. They’re sort of nearer to sweat pants, but not quite.)
    Pretty sure I’ll bever hand write a letter, or send a Christmas card or postcard ever again.

    Oh, and meat. I’d never call myself a vegetarian, cos in the increasingly unlikely event that I came round your house for dinner and you cooked meat, I’d happily eat it no probs. But I’d never buy or cook the stuff myself again. Youtube has been too much of sn eye opener into how disgusting it is.

    • Oh and alcohol. Gave it up three years ago, best decision I ever made, should have done so years earlier. Didn’t realise how much I’d love having a clear head at all social events and no hangover the morning after. Just brilliant. Doubt I’ll ever bother with it again.

    • I quite like the solitude of long haul flights. I’ve got a pair of Bose Noise Cancelling earphones and I can watch movies (mostly) uninterrupted. Granted, the screen is small but that is offset by not being asked what was said, what’s happening etc.

  3. I am jealous @Tiggerlion. At different times I have been to Tromso, Reykjavik and Northern Finland with the specific aim of seeing the Aurora.
    Failed every time. My son saw them in Iceland in bloody September. It is not meant to be.

    On the subject of things to no longer worry about. I will no longer wear a tie – so out of fashion I can’t say I miss the hideous things.

  4. What a wonderful trip.

    As above, I have never driven a car and never will, and that’s fine.

    Dinner parties. I used to attend and host them sometimes but having children has put paid to that and wow, the relief. You don’t have to hold them, or ever go! Hurrah. Quick lunch with a friend, cup of tea and a bit of cake one afternoon, that will do fine.

    Going to the cinema. When I was younger I loved going to indie cinemas, two or three times a week, sometimes alone. A great way to see unusual films. I’d also go to the multiplexes freqently. Like most live gigs, going to the cinema is just too expensive, unpleasant and annoying so I’m happy with a DVD or download.

    Having said that- I would like to see more stand-up comedy; it’s just not the same watching a DVD or YouTube clip. Again though you have the problem of twatty audiences so, hmmm.

    • I actually miss the big screen, the bigger the better. For example, I really wish I’d seen Blade Runner 2049 recently as I saw the original six times when it was first released. My telly is big but not big enough, I suspect, and I don’t have surroundsound. Yes, the cost is ridiculous. All I really need is someone interested in the same films as me.

        • I too hate the cinema. Not only cos of the, ugh, people, but also the lack of a pause button, the lack of decent cuisine and the fact that all films here in abroadsville are dubbed. So I bought me a Banq film projector for about €700. If you have a white wall in the house to project onto, it really is a home cinema.

          • Try and invest in a projection screen. White paint is ok but it makes the image pretty dull and flat. Screens reflect a certain amount of the light and really do make a difference. As with everything, different grades and prices are available.

            • I shall ignore your advice with polite but firm nonchalance, Davey. I’m very happy with the white wall. The picture looks pretty perfect to me.

              The only drag is, I have no curtains on my windows (I live rural) and have to wait til it gets dark enough to see the projection. Which takes ages in the summer.

                  • Totally agree about the Cinema, don’t really enjoy it any more,
                    Big Telly, Nice surround sound and recently upgraded to 4K is better I think than a less than clean and incredibly expensive cinema.
                    Watching the newly scrubbed up Blu-Ray of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World as I write, a beautiful picture and stunning sound. And I can stop it if I need food, drink or a comfort stop.

                    • How on earth did you all become so jaded?

                      Going to the cinema isn’t about the food or your dicky bladder. It is about a communal experience whether it is one carried out in silence or punctuated by laughter or gasps. That is what makes the cinea so captivating. It gives your stomach and phone a rest fot two hours and you fucking WALLOW in the film.

                      This week was absolute hell for me, on Thursday I was working in London and the tube tracks looked so bloody inviting. I finished work and had a couple of hours to kill (no pun intended) until I had a podcast taping to go to in Leicester Square (The Bugle for those interested – was excellent) so I went to see Ladybird at the Curzon in Soho.

                      OK its an arthouse chain so you tend to get a different kind of audience – particularly in the mid afternoon – but it soothed me like nothing else. I imagine a cold beer on a hot summers day must do the same or a shot of arm heroin. However I have attended films in all sorts of places and rarely have I encountered any of the perils and annoyances that blight peoples cinema trips.

                      Yes if you go see a boneheaded blockbuster at 8pm on a Saturday night you will get idiots laden with snacks on their phone throughout cos people ain’t no good. So choose another time. Most chains have memberships and cards that give you cheaper options – the ODEON unlimited films for £18 a month which is about 1 and half tickets these days.

                      There is no doubt that older films that I have seen a dozen times on Blu-Ray or DVD I have always enjoyed much more in a cinema. Dr Strangelove was never so effective or funny as when I saw it with a packed out audience and Les Diaboliques tension never tauter shared with people who knew and those who were unaware of its twists and turns.

                      If you cant go 2 hours without a drink, smoke, something to eat or empty your bladder or bowels then seek medical attention.

                      All I hear are excuses from cumudeonly old germphobic gits watching via rose tinted glasses and scared to leave home for fear of missing a Richard Thompson retrospective on BBC4.

                    • I have to admit I am very jaded with most things so bear that in mind re: my posts. 🙂

                      You’re right of course; the indie (or indie-seeming) cinemas are great. I think I had too many nights at the Streatham Odeon.

                    • I get the impression you’re not a very happy person, DFB, and I’m genuinely sorry about that, but for those of us who are, I don’t think staying at home is about being jaded and miserable; quite the opposite in fact – I think it’s more about embracing selfish contentment, wallowing in the pleasure of one’s own home/family/head.

                    • Gary you seem to hate things that have molecules, Its like a long vomit of negativity that oozes out to cover the place.

                      I actually think you may well be a comic character creation so spare me your faux sympathy

                    • Crikey! I didn’t know that not going to the pictures was such a terrible thing. In my defence (though I don’t really need to) some of us work quite long hours so coming home, sticking a film on and putting your feet up for a couple of hours is much more of a treat than you’ll ever know.

                • I still associate cinemas with a big treat because the visits to see Disney films were childhood highlights. Then there was the glorious 1977-1984 period where every film seemed to be brilliant, funny and exciting. Probably more to do with my age at the time (11-18).

                  Curiously though, I will watch the occasional film on a long haul flight but I’d rather watch the sitcoms and documentaries. I will make a point of going to the cinema if it’s something I simply must see, on my own if necessary. I did that for the Damned United. No one I know here in NZ will have a clue what it’s about and why it was a big deal. So I found it was being shown in an arty cinema. Big packet of maltesers and the big screen – you won’t hear a peep from me for 90 minutes.

    • Haven’t set foot inside a cinema since 1983, when I saw “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” in Aberystwyth (can’t remember the name of the town’s fleapit cinema in those days).
      I’ve never been much of a movie fan. The last one previous to that was “Close Encounters Of the Third Kind”, also in Aberystwyth. That must have been in 1978.
      I have a small stack of unwatched DVDs from about 10 years ago that I just never could be arsed to put on. I don’t buy them any more.
      Of course Christmases etc. at relatives houses, I get to see the odd movie. Never at home.

    • I regularly go to the Manfords Comedy Club in Oswaldtwistle. Stand ups I`ve never heard of, I dont check them out beforehand, so what I get is usually an unexpected delight. The audience is local, usually regular attendees and well natured and out for a good time as you get in the provinces. Give it a try, you may well enjoy it!
      http://manfordscomedyclub.com/

      • I used to go to Screaming Blue Murder comedy club in a pub in Hampton Wick every week in the mid-80s. I loved it for that very reason – the unexpectedly brilliant unknown performer. The regular MC was one Eddie Izzard who hadn’t really started to do it himself as yet – and, funny and charming as he was, I really would not have picked him as the one who was to hit the big time, so to speak.

        • I think my slight trepidation re: stand up is the possibility of audience participation- saw Simon Munnery years ago, in his Alan Parker guise, and our table were, er, ‘encouraged’ to join in which was mortifying. Just need to make sure I’m not front and centre, I guess. I know that most comedians can sense if you’re not up for it, though.

          It’s definitely my aim to go to at least one comedy gig this year (I listen/watch more comedy than music these days); just need to get my big girl pants on. Most people I know like the Enormodome comics though so I guess I’ll be going solo.

          • I dont see how enormadome comedy works. Surely it should be off audience reaction? I go to Manfords with my best friend, his wife, his wifes sister and husband, his mother, his two sisters and their friends and his sisters daughters. We sit on the second row. If any comic decides to heckle/pick on any of the above it does become a bit of a free for all but all in good humour!

            • Only enormodome comedy I have done was The Pythons and that was more like a gig any way with the songs and everybody knowing all the words to the sketches.

              Most comedians that aren’t Macintyre and Manford level still do the art centres and small theatres. Bill Bailey regularly has dates at the comparatively tiny Leicester Square Theatre through the year.

              • Yes, that’s true- even relatively well-known ‘Mock the Week’-ers still do some quite small venues.

                Apropos of Domes, John Robins calls Salford’s The Lowry ‘the Hubris Dome’ : about 1700 seats, hard to fill.

                • I’m well placed in that have a couple of local arts venues often used as warm ups for tours and Edinburugh Festival.

                  Saw Bridget Christie do two shows back to back including A Bic For Her in front of 30 people to launch her nationwide tour

  5. The northern lights are on my bucket list, too, Tiggs. I’ve recently become aware of cruises up that way and, as I rapidly approach 50, the idea of a cruise ship becomes increasingly attractive.

    Yesterday I had to read the text on a very small label. Up close it was out of focus. Far enough away to be in focus, it was too small to read. I am not yet fit for the knackers yard, but I can see it on the horizon.

    • I couldn’t recommend it more highly. The staff were all lovely, the food great and the trips were extremely well organised. It’s expensive but pretty much everything is in Norway. Expect to be mixing with mainly sixty and seventy year olds.

  6. Children

    Kids now grown up.
    Yes, there is still the looking out for, care, hope etc, but they’re old enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.
    However, the apparent freedom this should bring has been replaced by having 3 dogs.

  7. Shaving every day is something I don’t miss one bit. Having arrived at a goatee by accident, I am now required to keep it. About 5 years ago I had a month to myself and my then 2 dogs, taking to Scotland in my brothers then elderly camper van. The 3 of us toured the highlands and islands. I didn’t shave as I didn’t have to. In the shower block on Tobermory quayside I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, alarmed to see what appeared to be the more annoying one of the Hairy Bikers staring back, immediately getting rid of the sides to my nascent beard. On return to England the squeeze refused me from returning to a smooth face. I now swiftly scrape my cheeks every other day or so, finding that a chore, but I don’t like the stubbly look either.

  8. I’m properly jealous of your northern lights sighting. We went to Iceland last March with the aim of seeing (and from Singapore it’s a long way) but all we managed was a very very faint green glow on the horizon one evening (which the person running the chalets we stayed at said it was the Aurora but I wasn’t convinced). That said, Iceland was one of the best holidays we’ve done.

    I keep reading that these cruises off Norway are great and have high chances of seeing, but I have a natural aversion to cruises…… maybe one day.

    • I completely dropped on with the conditions.

      With a cruise, you have to surrender to the schedule: meal times, dockings, trips. Sea sickness was only a problem rounding Cape North because the Fjords protect against the wilder elements most of the time. Just take your brain out and let the world turn in its inimitable manner.

  9. Sounds like a great trip, Tiggs. I’ve never been north of the Orkneys. Mrs H seems keen on a Norway cruise but everything about Scandinavia seems expensive. I’m an armchair traveller, really – lots of books on the Arctic and Antarctic and the like, and tales of derring do. Even after a weekend in Paris I just want to come home.

    Now that you’ve passed North Cape, you’ll have to think about Cape Horn…

    • I hope people are listening, Colin. If they click on the clip in the OP, they won’t just hear you but also some lovely flugelhorn.

      My issue with the Horn is that it is a long flight away. I hate flying. Mind you, I could always sail like Amundsen.

      • Well, as long as you don’t traverse the Antarctic like Shackleton… The flugelhorn is by the great Linley Hamilton – that horn was easier to get to than the Cape of shared name (although Linley’s diary can certainly be hard to find a window in sometimes). I’m touched that you like it – full of Arctic visions, I demoed it in my place of work (a music college) at that time, having hauled an organ or some kind into one of the store rooms of my library and brought in an 8-track digital device. When it came to recording it in a studio we couldn’t quite find the right rhythm sound on all the banks of high-end drum samples available… so we imported the simple pattern from the 8-track, and then added further percussion fills/samples in real time. It only took Linley one or two takes, as I recall. He’s incredible.

  10. On a recent flight with the excellent Norwegian Airlines, I came across a show called Tough Boats, with Ian Wright (not the ex. Arsenal striker). He took a trip from Tromsø to Spitsbergen on a giant cod fishing factory ship, and then transferred to a more leisurely cruise around the Svalbard archipelago, taking in the polar bears, and northern lights, and uncovering some heroic history of Norwegian Arctic exploration. I wasn’t expecting much from the show, but the images and the atmosphere of the place left a lasting impression.

    • If anyone fancies reading a pretty good novel set partly on Svalbard, I can recommend Rupert Thomson’s “Katherine Carlyle” (2015). Thomson was one of David Bowie’s favourite novelists, apparently.

  13. As someone who’s never seen the Aurora (and never likely to), can I ask: when seeing clips of it on Youtube, there are light displays whizzing here and there, but it’s obvious that it’s been sped up for viewing purposes.

    If I was living in the right geographical spot, and the Aurora was going full blast, what would I see should I step out the back door to watch? A light show going too slowly to perceive any movement? Movement, but fairly slow and laboured? Or a relatively speedy zip around the skies, just not quite as fast as the Youtube vids?

    • It varies a lot. To the naked eye, it is a soft, light green mist and can easily be mistaken for thin cloud. But, then, the colour increases in density and there can rapid movement in swirls or shards like a chandelier, which can ripple across the sky. Those YouTube clips aren’t necessarily sped up. There are also other colours, notably pink and blue. There was activity all four nights I was there. On nights two and four, the movement was gentle and the shapes were soft and billowy. Night one had additional swirling and some rippling shards. I was more than satisfied with that. However, night three was an even better spectacle for a good fifteen minutes. It looked like a huge angel filling the sky, flapping its wings, the feathers fluttering in pink and green.

      So, slow, laboured and misty to bright, jagged and rapid. It’s pot luck (maybe not – it’s all to do with sun spot activity).

      • Pfffft. Sooner have me top of the range 4K lava lamp. If I want to feel cold I can just open all the windows. If I need to feel sea sick I just spin around for a bit with me eyes closed. To replicate the experience of being in the company of Norwegians I attempt to solve a Rubik’s Cube while simultaneously reciting the Cheese Shop sketch
        And so on…

        • Norwegians have a very dry sense of humour, enhanced by their almost total lack of facial expression. (I may be being racialist here but broad sweeps are what you are looking for, right?)

      • Never seen the Northern Lights myself, but that is a marvellously poetic description. Tigs. As you say, with a natural phenomenon, you never know what you will get or whether you will get anything at all.

          • An easy mistake to make. I imagine that most people living in Norway, Sweden and Finland have never to the far north and seen Aurora Borealis. The distance from the south of Norway to Nordkapp is the same as that to Rome. A very long country.

            Frozen trampolining? Never heard of that but I suspect there is a gold medal to be had in the Winter Olympics.

  14. I honestly can’t think of something I’m absolutely happy I’ll never get round to doing or have to do again. Well, apart from having to take exams I suppose. There’s plenty that I am now resigned to the fact I won’t get round to doing. All those places I probably won’t get to (quite possibly including the Northern Lights you jammy bastard). All those classic novels I won’t read. That amazing music I won’t hear. The classic films I’ll never see (in a cinema of course; watching at home just ain’t the same) When I was younger I was sure that I would see it all, read it all, hear it all. I won’t. I’m not thrilled about that but I’m OK with it.

  15. Swim. My kids were in the swimming club from an early age. Outside of the club, I had to be in the pool with them until they were 8. Nearly 20 years now since I’ve been in the pool or sea. Nothing against it really, but happy never having to do it again.

    Work. For a living that is(at least I hope so). Retired now, but still have a house and garden to look after, so there’s plenty of work there. Trying to work properly(a few hours a week) at my guitar, but there’s always distractions.

  16. That’s a wonderful tale of your Northern adventure Tiggs, the Baroness has spoken of taking me on a similar trip.

    Speaking of things I never have to do again is work. Done my 50 year stint, fuck it.

  17. Managed to see the Aurora Borealis three times. Twice over Yorkshire!
    Did one of the Northern Lights flights too and saw it then.
    I get emails when there is a chance of Aurora activity.
    See it if you can.

  18. That sounds a pretty cool trip, Tigger.

    I’ve never seen the Aurora Borealis, despite having lived in Sweden for 29 years.

    I have, however, been to Hammerfest, as mentioned in the OP. It was a long time ago. But I remember that the town had a church that looked like a huge bar of Toblerone. Nice.

  19. School plays, although my niece has just had a baby, so there may be some requirement to attend these grim affairs in a few years’ time. It’s not so much the performances – especially when singing is involved – it’s the environment where they take place. Oh, and the agonising chairs.

      • Actually… the ‘original’ penguin, the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), WAS a Northern Hemisphere/Arctic-fringe bird – flightless, black and white – and was first known in the 16th century, sometimes called a ‘penguin’, although the origins of that word are deeply obscure, with cases being made for it as a compound word coming from Welsh, Latin or Dutch roots. The Great Auk died out in 1844, the last one known clubbed on a islet off Iceland. There are roughly 80 stuffed auks in existence today – compared to precisely no (genuine) stuffed dodos.

        When the true penguin – the family of flightless B&W (and some with yellow bits) birds we know today was first noticed by voyagers into the Southern hemisphere they assumed it was related to the Great Auk and hence they were termed penguins.

        As it happens, I have a piece of music with CGI Great Auks involved…

  23. When i was a lad every single social gathering invariably ended up with every drunk person in the room (anybody in the room) singing this song.

    Despite the lyrics Aurora Borealis seldom appeared in our skies. One year (1959?) there was a week or so of the sky getting pink and shimmery. To be honest it was nothing all that spectacular.

    As to Tiggs question – I will never again have to sit in a meeting room listening to mission statements, quality initiatives or “C’mon everybody, let’s have some blue-sky thinking”. I am blessed.

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