I'm not a sunbathing-enthusiast--quite the opposite actually; I spend most of my summers (and autumns, and winters, and springs) indoors, in front of my computer or behind a nice book. My reluctance to fresh air in combination with my enthusiasm for my computer and sleeping away the entire afternoon has resulted in me leaving the house rather rarely. Usually the only thing that can pry me out of my room is when on occasion Sunni and I go and see a movie, but Sunni leaves town in June and don't come back until August. All this have left me a little pale; when I first arrived in Florø it must have been a full year since the last time I was out-doors for more than an hour, and I was pale as a ghost, white as a sheet, incandescent, Michael Jackson coloured, you get the deal.
Luckily (or whatever) for me, Sunni had resolved to make sure I got a tan over the summer. Personally I didn't mind my purplish-pale complexion, but it's easier not to argue with her.
I've come to believe that tan-lines are the tool of the devil. Somehow it just seems to me that those white marks left by the bikini are in some way--I don't know--evil. I don't like them, and if avoiding them means staying out of the sun, that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
And there starts the tale of July thirty-first: Somewhere along the way we'd gone reckless, perhaps we just didn't think or maybe we underestimated the absolute power of Murphy's law.
We had taken the long walk up to the big dam again, settled in our usual spot, drunk some soda, taken a long rather refreshing swim in the cold water and finally settled on some rocks trying to catch a tan. I think I've mentioned it before but I will do it again; this dam is a pretty secluded place, there runs a large road next to it, but it's used almost exclusively by the buss that comes three times a day and the occasional commuter. What we failed to register, or perhaps just didn't find important enough for considering; was that there lay a hiker's-path just on the other side of the dam. Normally this would be a minor problem--it would have been just as secluded as the road--but on this particular Saturday the weather was perfect, and hikers flock to paths in the sunshine.
Foolishly I left my clothes--all of them--on the dam.
Now--we were lying on some fairly large, sun-warm rocks trying to catch an even tan. Even in this case meaning in spots usually covered by a bikini. There I was quite content, half-asleep on my blue 101 Dalmatians towel, when suddenly Sunni called for me.
At first I didn't see what she was trying to tell me--I wasn't wearing my glasses or anything else for that matter--however; judging by the tone of her voice it seemed important.
It was--important, that is--it was also a hiker.
I had quite a bit of trouble covering myself up--I was sitting on my towel, and one corner was stuck between two rocks--I managed though; with an effort.
The hiker--obviously a native--was coming directly our way, and he had quite clearly seen us. Had he stuck to the path everything would have been just fine, but apparently he'd seen just a bit more of us than we'd hoped for, because he came down to the river where we were having some trouble getting decent.
This might be the best time to say this--If you ever see a couple of girls sun-tanning in the nude; do not, I repeat do not approach them. In all probability they just want to be left alone.
Obviously nobody had ever told him this. He did try to talk to us, although we couldn't hear much over the noise from the river. He might have asked us if we were swimming, at least that's what I think he asked.
"Swimming us? No. We're the Scottish Lesbian Naturalist Nymphomaniac Society on our annual hiking-trip" That's what we should have told him. We didn't though. It's the kind of witty, clever remark you don't come up with until the situation has passed. We did in fact not say anything--wouldn't want to encourage him.
I think Sunni was the first one who said something--not to him, though--to me: "What kind of a country is this." In her best British accent. He can't have heard her, he'd have very good ears if he did. None the less, that was when he tried speaking English to us. He tried. His accent made me flinch; it sounded as if he were a bushman deprived of contact with the real world having learned to speak from a dyslectic parrot. "You car?", "You bike?", "You walk?" it was hair-raising.
I'm not going to start explaining how bad accents annoy me--that would be a project for a rainy day. Reading it would. Writing it would be a project for a rainy year. It has probably got to do with the fact that I'm a perfectionist, but I won't start exploring that subject further.
Anyway--it was perfect. He spoke bad English, we speak fluent English, he thought we were foreign, we didn't mind him thinking we were foreign.
"Look, sir, we're just trying to catch a tan." I told him, in the British accent I've spent years perfecting.
I think that discouraged him--he couldn't been able to form a complete sentence in English if he'd tried--and from the look on his face; he wanted to try.
He left at last.
We broke down in gales of uncontrollable laughter, so to speak.
Well--I would like to include the moral of the story just about here, but unfortunately I cannot think of one.
Introduction