Fjord-Prince; the boat heading for Florø left at 8 AM and I was painfully aware of the fact that 8 AM is nearly my bed-time, hardly the time of day I'm likely to be found standing on a pier waiting for a boat. Today however I was. I stayed up all night--watching Red Dwarf on video, and packing while trying to upload files to my homepage at the same time--I knew there was just no way I'd be able to wake up if I had gone to bed.
I hate boats. First of all I get seasick--in fact I'm one of those people who can get seasick in the bathtub. Then there's the engine-sound--the constant roaring of the propellers--I'm sorry; I have a problem with noise. I also have a problem with the way the safety-instructions are pinned everywhere--sorry, If the boat (yes boat, not ship) goes down I'm going down with it. As if sitting in that big boat for nearly five hours isn't bad enough, there's just no way anyone can stuff me into a tiny raft (in the company of 39 other people--all wearing lifejackets and brave faces) and tell me to sit there for hours on end waiting to be saved. No, I'd stay in the boat with my copy of Lord of the Rings and the bar of chocolate substituting for my breakfast. There are knifes on board the rafts; apparently to cut the rope once the raft is in the water, but I think it is for killing yourself with when at last you realise that no one is coming to your rescue.
I got a rather good seat actually; a comfortable window-seat with a view to the TV-screen that keeps showing the emergency-procedures, it wass slightly off-season so nobody took the seats next to mine--all in all it looked as if it wasn't going to be such a bad trip after all.
That was when they arrived; my second worst nightmare (my worst nightmare being too long, horrible and complicated to explain here), the ultimate torture; a family on holiday.
Might I just ask what I've done to deserve this? I don't steal, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I'm always friendly to animals--unless they've got six or more legs and make crunchy sounds when you squeeze them. I lie quite a bit, but only for artistic purposes (read: absurd stories) or to people I don't like. So why am I doomed? I am going on vacation to get away from my own three whiny younger-siblings, and now this.
They were a family of six--that is not counting the grandmother they left in the smoking-department on the second level--four children, none over the age of twelve. The youngest one might have been a year or so, and kept making screeching noises from the moment they arrived. The entire clan decided to occupy the seats behind me and the seats on the row next to me, and I was already praying for a quick death. Apparently they were all hungry and had decided to eat breakfast on board. There was whining about lack of orange-juice and nobody wanted the cheese-sandwich.
Those kids did not shut up for a second of the journey--it is beyond me how someone can chatter continually for four hours straight and say absolutely nothing at all.
Don't get me wrong; I like children--individually. It's when they gather in mobs with the sole purpose of annoying me I freak.
This in combination with the fact that I hadn't slept for more than 20 hours and that I'd skipped breakfast made my right knee jiggle continuously (it does that). After quite a while I resolved to ignore them and read--now Lord of the Rings is apparently not the book you read when half-asleep--I quickly gave in. I tried writing in stead--writing is one of my favourite hobbies, surpassed only by web-design--but the mushy soaps I write during periods of sleep-depravation are not the kind of stories you'd like to encounter in a dark back-alley. Lack of sleep is the only thing in the world that can make me write anything resembling romance--ask anyone who knows me; I'm an anti-romantic--the characters in the story usually die though; all of them. This particular story was so disturbingly mushy and morbid that it scared even me. I vow to you now: No one will ever read that story.
In the end I gave up writing too--I was just too tired--even though for once I knew how the story should end; they die.
The constant swaying and rolling seem to try to convince my breakfast that it would look much better on the floor--luckily I'd been in a bit of a hurry this particular morning and skipped breakfast altogether.
After a few hours the lord apparently decided that I'd suffered enough. The noisy family stepped of on a little island--I had to restrain myself from dancing with joy.
Then at last we were there--the promise-land! Uh, well, Florø anyway.
I had to wait for Sunni on the pier for quite a while. Ten minuets they'd told me I'd have to wait, I timed her--ten minutes and 48 seconds.
After all the standard greetings and welcomes we went shopping. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not a shopping-person. Quite frankly; I don't like shopping. I hate stores. Whenever there's something I have to buy I'll put it of for days before I actually force myself to go to the store. The only things I ever buy voluntarily are books--loads of books. However, Sunni's family-cabin is located in the middle of nowhere--half an hour to forty-five minutes by buss from the city itself, and the buss-ticket is not too cheap--so we had to buy all the candy we were going to eat for the next couple of days. We bought a lot of candy. We nearly killed ourselves trying to carry all the candy and soda back to the buss-station, and I also had to carry my bag--containing half a ton of clothes I'd probably never wear anyway and all the books I'd never get time to read--my shoulders still ache just thinking about it.
Still we got home in one piece.
The cabin is not the biggest one in the world, but it's got both a bathroom and a kitchen and that's all I ask for--although the shower was kaput. It's got two bedrooms, a living room, with a TV and a collection of romantic literature so large it could keep a housewife occupied for a year. They even had a laptop I could use for my writing, the ideal would be if I'd be able to do some graphics-work too, but with a 256-colour solution that's optimistic.
The out-house was where we slept--and by out-house I do not mean outside lavatory--just big enough for two beds, one stool operating as a make-shift bedside-table and an old record-player without any records. The sheets were orange--hunter's orange--and if I'm ever marooned on a desert island and need to signal to passing boats, I'd want those sheets.
They were comfortable though.
Introduction