{"id":545,"date":"2006-09-10T00:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-10T00:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2006\/09\/back-to-blighty\/"},"modified":"2006-09-10T00:21:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-10T00:21:00","slug":"back-to-blighty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2006\/09\/back-to-blighty\/","title":{"rendered":"Back To Blighty"},"content":{"rendered":"

It felt like I was entering a huge advertisement as I walked into the Great UK Machine at Heathrow, still high on being away from this dirty, fierce and degraded home of mine. HSBC’s red letter logo is plastered everywhere – they bought the space leading into the passport control and baggage reclaim in order to make Blade Runner<\/i> a sooner reality. On the train which runs from Terminal 4, which is a couple of miles from the rest of the airport, or at least it feels like that, there are screens showing time-lapse film of various urban centres around the world. Reassuring. They are all still there then. We got on, to be told to get off again to allow a security check. Wearily we picked up bags and waited. I felt a lot more secure now. As I got off, the screens began to play me news, about a bomb going off. But I don’t want to hear the news right now,<\/b> I found myself saying alound, I only just started to feel secure after the CHECK…<\/b>, and I watched a young asian girl to my left smirk with either embarassment or mild scorn or both at my naivety. Clearly I am now a bumpkin in my own city.<\/p>\n

One of the joys of spending time in a world which doesn’t run in your own language is to have all conversations removed – public, private, eavesdropped, broadcast, subtle, or rammed down your throat, all speech and most text has been for two weeks in Norwegian, which, with a few exceptions, I couldn’t follow. Thus I have remained in a bubble of non-comprehending appreciation, except that the kind and educated people that surrounded me all spoke perfect English. I was reduced to saying the odd “Tak”<\/i> mostly as a token gesture of internationalist goodwill and to acknowledge that they do have their own perfectly serviceable tongue<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Personally, I like Norwegian and would like to learn enough to have a decent conversation, make a joke, or at least, purchase my mandolin plus hard case with nae bother. Some of the words are like or exactly the same as English – send, for example – or Scottish – barn \/ bairn = child. Norwegian of course has its own particular rhythmic inflection, which M<\/i> once described as Oompa Loompa,<\/i> and which the infamous Chalkie White termed Hurdy Gurdy Wordies<\/i> to describe and illustrate the predominant rhythms of Nordic speech – or at least, the cadences which are not shared with English and which to our ears stand out.<\/p>\n

What did I like this time around? Everything is a lot more laid back; people seem to have a lot more time for each other. There’s a great deal of humour and warmth. Technically, everything actually works;<\/b> the public transport system works on a presumed honesty system. I never once saw anyone check for tickets but everyone seemed to have one. Yes alcohol is expensive, but the food is fresh – even supermarket food is far better than in the UK. Norwegian music is dynamic, inventive, and often exquisitely performed, and fine art flourishes, due to a large amount of native talent and good funding. <\/p>\n

What did I find myself missing, found in a shop in Gr\u00f8nland, siezed upon and carried with us for the remainder of our time? Tea – Orange Pekoe of course! There’s only so many glasses of luke-warm Lipton’s<\/i> Earl Grey you can bear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It felt like I was entering a huge advertisement as I walked into the Great UK Machine at Heathrow, still high on being away from this dirty, fierce and degraded home of mine. HSBC’s red letter logo is plastered everywhere – they bought the space leading into the passport control and baggage reclaim in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[780],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funky-original","tag-funky-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}