The Withby teashop: Bandtravels/camp -07

I have not had the pleasure of being a fan of Sting for all to many years. In fact, I was at best in my confirmation year before I understood that giants do really walk on earth. One of my favourites was, and still is, "Englishman in New York". For those of you who are not familiar with the text, the key sentence to why Sting is mentioned in this post, is:

I don't drink coffee I take tea my dear

At the age of fifteen I felt an urge to be able to quote this line from time to time. To do that, I had two tasks to complete. First, I had to make sure I did not start drinking coffee. Not an overall difficult task, as I had no strong feelings for mixing water and burned beans (Although they do smell wonderful). The other was to start drinking tea. Now that was somewhat more of a challenge. God knows I've tried many different dishes through the years. Snails, snakes, dog and even elephant, I believe. But starting to drink tea? That was a new one. Anyway, I did it, and the result was beyond anything I had expected. The project ended up in with a passion for tea in general, and Twinings Earl Grey in particular. I love the hot drink, and none of my friends would ever expect not to be served tea at a visit to the Cowie Residence. Andreas, for example, regards my informal "teaparties" (Quotation, but I've started using the word too) as a must for any of his friends visiting Egersund. Tea is no longer just a drink. It is a way of life.

It was with my little passion in mind that I entered a small shop in Withby last week. It was a tea- and coffee-shop, and I was determined to walk out with some examples of English tea at it's finest. First, I just looked at the boxes, but then I found out that I could buy in loose weight. Suddenly I was asking about that and that tea, and "Please, could I have a smell at that one?". It felt great. This was my kind of shopping! But after just a few different sorts (All too many of the teas were fruity. Passion fruit, mango, apple and the rest did not sound right), I settled for Kenyan High Mountain and the blasting green tea named Imperial Gunpowder. Suddenly I had a reason to get back to beautiful Egerøy Island. Surprisingly, I'd rather stay for some more time in England than we did. The tea could wait. But hey, you cannot dream of what might have been, but rather concentrate on the future. At one point my time in England was at it's end - for this time. I was back home with to small bags of tea in my suitcase. Time had come to put the kettle on.

I write this post partly on request from Simon, a rather unique fellow with a strong liking for not only tea, but also more powerful drinks. He is also the only person I've met who wears a "Yoda's Intergalactic Tour"-t-shirt. Simon asked for a comment on my new experiences with Taylors of Harrogate (That was the brand of the tea), and this is it. He probably had not thought about it as being a theme for a longer text, as he had no knowledge of my digital hobby, but well, I love writing longer text about rather strange themes. I started with the Kenyan High Mountain. I put in all too much, and the result was that the water needed little time to extract just the right amount of flavour from the leaves. A nice thing indeed. Dad and I had it for our evening meal, and both were well satisfied. The Imperial Gunpowder was not not used before the day after. Andreas came to visit, and as always, tea was naturally served. Unlike me, Andreas was well accustomed to the taste of this green tea, and commented that he normally used to teaspoons for one cup of tea. I used four for one litre, but let the water extract flavour as long as it was need to put the taste to it. And so was the time for tasting. My excitement was at a definite peak of the day. Would I spit fire? Would I make loud bangs when I talked? Or would Tom Cruise finally come out of the closet? (As in the direct meaning. I've never doubted that Tom Cruise was anything but heterosexual. There are limits of how much shit homosexual people should have to put up with. Cruise is a good actor, but a Scientologist, nonetheless). No such things happened. It was a nice tea, and I congratulated myself for the good timing. A long conversation waited, and all in all, the day was a good one.

That was it for the day. And if anyone needs a talk, please, give me a call. I'll put the kettle on right away.

First impressions: Bandtravels/camp -07

I have been out travelling before. My family is of those people who believe that home is sweet only for so much of the year. And instead of having a cottage in the mountains or at the seaside (Not only are they rather expensive, they also tend to bring in a lot of work we do not want), we travel. But the thing about these travels are that a backpacking adventure company (mostly Intrepid), and more importantly, my father, knows what is to happen. I'm just as exited every time, both because of the adventures sights, people and travel will bring. This time, things were different. Of course, I could barely wait to meet both new and old friends. The problem was, I had no idea of what was to happen, or what sights to be exited about. Some days were partly clear, so that my schedule was not entirely blank. Others were big black holes, and so they were to all but our English hosts. Yes, the brightest of you might see what I'm trying to say: Not even our own Norwegian tourleaders knew the program in full detail. Things could have gotten even more exiting than I would have preferred.

The trip started early. I was up a Monday morning, swearing that next time, I'd be in bed somewhat earlier when waking up at 05:00. The journey was okay. Always fun when great people are around, but it still felt good finally to arrive when the time came. The place we were to stay for the next days was a scout-center in the middle of nowhere. I felt rather alarmed when the bus drove over the hilltop, and we saw absolutely nothing. Well, that was not entirely correct, as there where beautiful hills with meadows all over, and a large lake. But nothing, not even the scout-center was visible from the place I'm referring to. We later found out the area's remoteness made it perfect for dogging - sex in cars where the participants where more or less random. If you where tired, you could always sit outside the car and watch. This took place on meeting-places along the route, and most fortunately none of these were in walking distance from the center. Instead, we sat by the fence or at our room and talked, we practiced, and we mingled with the good people we met.

It was a good start, and there was more to come. Have a cup of the and wait. Another post might come, and if not, then at least you will have learned to be a bit more patient. I just hope that the timetable you'll have when my postings are finished, is more filled than what mine was at the start of our journey.

A rather polite hello to the other side of the pond

Good evening everybody. Or should I say good night? Ruth Iris is sleeping, at least (or, she is on this splendid picture, shot by no other than Pål M. Rake). But not me. No, I'm up doing what I do second best only to sleeping on a late Sunday night or early Monday morning: Blogging.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. I play French horn in a school brass band, a fact that makes me per definition a bandgeek. To outsiders this might seem like an easy call in life, but it is fact not so. To become a good bandgeek, it is not enough to practise your on instrument, you have a much larger responsibility to think about. A Norwegian bandgeek, for example, has to make sure that on 16th of May, one of the mayor partying days of the year, he or she is relatively sober. If not, the parades on our national day (17th of May) would be lacking some of the grandness and power it normally possesses. Dozens of schoolchildren in ridiculous outfits (also called uniforms), trying to play some old marches and at the same time walk in line, really makes the difference. So, if the elders in the band had an abbreviated evening on the 16th, things might not work too well the next morning. It is though for all of us, but it is a sacrifice we will have to live with.

Another of these responsibilities is to keep up the myths of band camps. We can all thank the "American Pie"-movies for spawning these myths, or at least to bring them to the Egersundians and other ancient communities in Norway. But the Others (non-bandpeople) want more. They want to hear the real stories. So each year at least one greater gathering is needed, from where some juicy tales can be told. This year our quest for new band camp myths sent us over the North Sea, to a strange old island know to many as Great Britain. Halifax was the name of our destination, where Egersund Skolekorps' exchange band has it's nest. And there we stayed for the first week of July, making the most of the limited time a week was able to give us.

This post is not about those tales. It is just my way of saying hallo to whoever of my fellow band geeks who just now is visiting my blog for the first time. Hopefully, a more enlightening post about the trip will be ready soon, but I'm not giving anyone a guarantee. On the other hand, least I can tell you all that that next time I'm talking to some of the Others, I can tell them wondrous stories starting with the words: "And this one time, at band camp..."