Fredrikstad, Norway

Circa February 2009

“I know a place that we can go.”


She drove which was unusual for her on these cabin drives. We took no laptops and neither of us had in those days not so long ago devices which took up messages where ever we are. At Oslo airport I had bought four bottles of wine, the maximum allowed in duty free to last for a four day stay just south of the Norwegian town of Fredrikstad. Four bottles would barely last four hours in my social group in Sandwich, Kent.

Stopping off at two supermarkets we bought a stock of food to use in the cabin. We bought a lot, some to cook some ready to eat direct from the very secure Norwegian packing. We will be just two but we may not want or be able to cook on the stoves they have provided. There was cheese and bottled herring.

The map provided online and printed out was not clear at least to us and we crossed the bridge at Fredrikstad three times looking for the correct side of the fjord to be. It was to be south of the town; I think so, the map I checked later suggested south. The cabin was hard to find. We walked on paths of coarse sand and bare rock down to the beach, to where there was a bridge across the fjord. She looked carefully raising her head furrowing her brow, checking the numbers and look of the several deserted cabins against the bad black and white photograph and the address on the map. She looked hard, her rarely employed intense look, at a cabin by the beach. The key worked in a shabbier place on the hill giving a good view across the fjord from a slab of black rock. There was wind, cold air, sunshine, to be expected in Norway, February.

Across the sight line from the cabin there was a bigger place, a house, equipped for all year occupation. A sign advertised a business which after some pause she translated and the meaning being insignificant to my story I have since forgotten. This lapse in memory troubles me. A couple sat outside making the most of the winter sun. He black bearded, long hair, rather troll like, the woman dark haired, long, white arms and some muscle in her torso, rather troll like.

I waved at them.

“What do you think you are doing” she said, her blue eyes flashing anger, “Are you mad? You do not know them!”

After a pause, long for me, the man waved back but thankfully neither moved or glanced our way again.

“I expect they live here, even in the winter. They are not interested in watching you. They see a lot of city people come to stay in this and other cabins”

The guest book in the cabin had no entry written since October. But there was a letter to us, by name, hand written, dated the day before our arrival explaining how the place could work. She thought the cabin had not been left as clean as should be by Norwegian standards. I thought then about a hotel in Zanzibar on the beach at Nungwi. I thought of Mkokotoni harbour and the tea shop there. The same woman and I had met there as well and looked out to Tumbatu through the haze.

The second morning we scrambled on the black rock on the coast. The wind was strong, we took shelter by the faces and huddled in the crevices. We were warmed with walking. In the times between noon and the darkening she drove us to the coast, through a town and we stood on a bluff above the sea where pointed at the land beyond:

“Over there Basset is Sweden. That is Sweden.”

And then smiling she said “Idiot. you are an idiot Basset”



In 1998 two students from Uppsala university stayed at the place I ran in Mikocheni B, Dar es Salaam whilst they did the field research for their dissertation. They dedicated their dissertation to me, “our catcher in the rye” and the paper was lodged in the university library. Twenty one years later it was perhaps a flimsy excuse to make my first visit to Uppsala.



It was a time of poverty and though I stayed at the commended Hotel Fyrislund to keep up face there were no funds left for exploration. The meetings were barren, I waited and felt the sadness we all might feel from being stood up. I waited longer than was dignified. There began a foreboding borne out by subsequent events. My sadness and my irritation at the spoil of a visit twenty years expecting left me with no memory of Uppsala. I wiped it deciding that I would plan to visit again, in more cheerful times and on my own account. That time draws near as I write today.



Around Victoria both train and bus the taverns are used by people passing through, the staff busy, too busy to notice unless they are contracted. I get noticed too often. In such a tavern, the Shakespeare I met the Washerman to whom I was lamenting and being consoled.

“These things happen in life, Plans change.” That kind of stuf
Then “It is very unwise to accept an offer of sexual favours from a Swedish woman in Sweden"

“I have never accepted an invitation to bed from a Swedish woman, in Sweden or any where else”
That is all right then.