A posting about our recent house exchange to Norway should of course mention all the wonderful things about the country.
Like how wise the Norwegians have been with their oil and gas riches from the North Sea. Whilst we pissed ours up against a wall in a familiar tale of boom and bust, Norway stashed it away so the politicians couldn't get their mitts on it easily. The fund is the biggest share owner in Europe and has approximately $100,000 set aside for each member of the population for a rainy day.
Or it would be boring to talk about how nearly every home would make the final of Grand Designs.
Or how the great outdoors is so accessible that if we were there in the winter we could stumble out of the back door and be skiing - down-hill, cross-country or even off a ski-jump. In the summer we were stuck with just cycling or swimming there.
And everyone knows that most Norwegian women would waltz into 'America's Next Top Model' without reaching for their make-up bags or cosmetic surgery.
All that would be too commonplace and tedious.
So I thought I would just bring to your attention some of the things about Norway that were a bit different.
Such as how the shops give equal prominence to their opening hours as their names.
First time you see it, you wonder whether the legacy of Prohibition hangs over them to the extent that shops have age ratings. Or short phone numbers.
What is also unusual is that the suburbs of Oslo appear to have been invaded by blue trampolines.
What was strange is that there were never any children on them. Perhaps they had been abducted by aliens. It could be that the trampolines were so super bouncy that the kids had been propelled into outer space.
Also more interesting are some of the road-signs they have in Norway that we don't in England.
I also enjoyed the Norwegian police. Each time I saw them out and about on the road I was transported back to the 80s.
It's not that their VW's were particularly retro in an 'Ashes to Ashes' kind of way. Rather it shed a whole new light on one of my favourite bands of that decade, namely Scritti Politti.
I always thought the band's name referred to the writings of Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Although of course the eagle-eyed amongst you would have realised that they should then have been called Scritti Politici rather than Scritti Politti. Perhaps their influences were more Norwegian, in a pre Royksopp sort of way (meaning 'puffball mushroom' in Norwegian and hence the Norwegian title of Fay Weldon's novel 'Puffball'). If they had been a Norwegian band then the seminal album 'Cupid & Psyche 85' would have been from a Sting spin-off meaning (approximately) 'Steps by the Police'.
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