The land of little wooden houses

We're back in the land of little wooden houses, yellow and red and white, and of blonde shirtless men walk their long haired dachsunds, the land of magical good-sowing football players and cardamon buns. The house has had a brand spiffing new coat of paint and the garden is no longer a wilderness of wild raspberries, but we've left enough around the edges so that the woman next door and her six year old daughter can pick some, as they did this morning, for jam. There are a lot of geese, a whole family of seventeen, teenage Canada geese, plonking and honking about. I am sitting on the deck that looks over the little harbour across the archipelago towards Sweden, and I'm suddenly interested in sailing boats and watching a woman at sunset glide gently across my view on her paddleboard. A gentle slosh of boats on water, a clink of ropes, little blonde girls in pink helmets on be-ribboned bicycles, the sounds of little boys running across the sandy parking lot and calling out to their mothers. I can't wait for my grandchildren to be here, to be able to run around so easily, to be in the place we spent all our summers. Nothing really changes. A lick of paint, yes, but the same familiar faces, the same drawers stuffed with useless treasures from fifty years ago, wine brochures from the Monopoly, old shopping lists, bits of fishing line, old lead weights, board games with fraying edges, red and white checked napkins that are old as I am, our wooden napkin rings that we carved on a particularly wet summer in the 1970s. What happened to the wet summers? What happened to the daily onslaught of rain that led our parents to marathon poker tournaments? Compared to most of Europe it's cool here, but it swelters by Norwegian standards. No problem. We fling ourselves in the sea, which is an inviting 22 degrees C. My father's toweling swimming robe still hangs in the main bedroom. He died a long time ago, twenty seven years ago, but here it was only really twenty seven fortnights ago. It's easier to remember him here where not much changes, instead of in the real world where everything whizzes by, new houses, new friends, new dogs. Here time just laps against the boats, gently, with an occasional shimmer of sunlight across the sea.

I will sit here when I'm ninety, I think, and nothing will be very different, slowly watching the world go by, waiting for grandchildren.

We meet Nils, the affable chap with the swimming jetty next to ours, who I remember as a tow-headed little boy, on our way to our lunchtime swim yesterday. The Oslo fjord is closed for fishing all around us and as far out as half way to Sweden, and as far south as a good way past Færder, the lighthouse. The baby fish breeding grounds have gone, he says. Too many nitrates in the water. Algae, everything turning brown. Years ago we pulled out mackerel and cod for supper; there was an abundance of fish. My brother tells me that it's something to do with the sewage systems that no longer work. The sea is a self-cleaning organism, but we've hit peak clean: essentially we've put so much shit in the sea that it no longer knows what to do with it. The first Climate Change conference took place in 1995. Apart from electric cars and a few more windmills, where are we exactly? My brother grumbles about politicians who want to be popular and how no-one has the balls to put unpopular laws on the books. There is no Planet B. "And we only see bumble bees" says Nils, "no honey bees." It all feels a bit bleak. We dive in nonetheless and put our faces into the salty water. I gargle with it as my grandmother did, because my throat is sore. What are we doing?

Today at 9.44 UK time is the new moon which according to a lot of people who know more about this stuff than I do -- a lot of learned and serious-minded people who study the history of astrology and its implications on our lives -- say that this is a gateway into a new era of consciousness for mankind. That we are ascending, and maybe not elegantly, maybe in dribs and drabs. And that this horrible place that we're in -- multiple wars, seismic activity, conflict, climate change -- is just part of the process, part of what we need to go through, as nature does, in the death and rebirth cycle. There is a rebirth happening and I guess you're either with us or you're not. My question is, does rolling ones eyes actually achieve anything? Wouldn't it be lovely to just take a leap of faith and join the happy band, to turn off our radar that pays attention to the awfulness and focus only on the higher good (of mankind, of the planet).

The same astrological alignment was present in 1789 when the people of France stormed the Bastille and the French monarchy ended.

And it's also my whippet Pip's second birthday.

I'm not sure why I'm so convinced of this stuff. I know it's an out there opinion. But, it's gaining traction. It's not the easy route. It's hard to be oneself and not defensive around people who are cynical (and frankly not particularly curious - isn't that the worst?) And I have a little club of about three or four people I can speak to honestly. One is a very old friend from school. We send each other surreptitious links. But doesn't it happen at this age, the moving into crone? I'm proud of that.  And Pam Gregory is our bright shining light, sane and strong and kind.

Be well, dear friends.